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Proserpinaca pectinata

Haloragaceae

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What Linnaeus had in mind in 1754 when he coined the name Proserpinaca is its first mystery. A leading possibility, not my original idea, is Proserpina, Roman goddess of springtime and of the underworld. The plant  Proserpinaca does rise up from the underworld mud in the springtime like a little green goddess mermaid.  Pectinata means roughly, “looks like a fish skeleton.”

Proserpinaca pectinata with fruits by John Bradford.

You don’t have to work hard in dried out marshbottom mud  to find Proserpinaca pectinata rising, creeping, flowering, and fruiting.    We have two (+) species of Proserpinica around here, but let’s focus on just one.   I have no particular point to make about P. pectinata, except that it is shy,  odd,  and poorly known.

In flower, by JB. Pinkish stigmas between yellow anthers.

Looks like it is getting its own yellow pollen onto the pink stigmas.

Odd thing 1.  The mermaid lives in two separate regions.    The main region is semi-coastal from New England, across Florida and  Cuba to Texas.   The curious second region is central Tennessee.   A skeptic might say, well, some bird probably dropped it there and it spread.  Agreed!  But birds probably drop its little fruits all over the place, so why “take hold” and spread just in the center of Tennessee?   I dunno.

Map 1999 by botanist P. Catling. What’s going on in Tennessee?

Odd thing 2.  When the marsh bottom dries Proserpinaca can explode into a green carpet of zillions of crowded individuals covering a lot of space.   How does it do that?    The fruits are hard, floaty little “nutlets,” and clearly get around.  But at any given moment there don’t seem to be enough of them to take over, and you don’t see them sprouting  on the mud anyhow.   So where’s all that massive new mermaid coming from?   Old fruits accumulating dormant  in the mud? (probably)  Stem and root fragments breaking apart and floating around? (probably, the stems root where they touch).   Surviving plants that persisted during the last  inundation?  (probably).   Stem-creep? (probably).  That’s a lot of probablys.  Wonder what the main source of the springtime mermaid explosion is.   Maybe not even in my list.

Prolific!

Odd thing 3. Itty bitty flowers having no appreciable petals.   The flowers have three pink fuzzy pollen-receiving stigmas and three yellowish anthers releasing pollen.  The entire plant being short, the flowers are semi-hidden near the ground. Googling to discover the pollinators yields three (not necessarily exclusive) assertions by folks who obviously do not really know:

1. Wind pollination (I doubt that, as the flowers are hidden down out of the wind; they tend to be relatively few, and they don’t seem well “designed” for putting pollen in the wind.)     ((But never say never.))
2. Unknown insect visitors.  (Bet that occurs. Would be fun to catch visitors red-handed.)
3. Self-pollination (I like that possibility:   even in todays photo you can see self-pollen slopping onto the stigmas.  Self-pollination would explain why the  flowers reliably form fruits.)

Odd thing four:  The leaves  have tiny white doohickies directly in the angle where the leaflet joins the central leaf stalk.  The little attachments are made of several cells, and under a microscope look like a cluster of grapes.   These are a mystery.  Water lilies have somewhat similar structures, called hydropotes (“water drinkers”), but those probably do not drink water, and they too are of unknown function.   Many plants have water-release “valves” called hydathodes at the ends of veins. Could be, but the placement and appearance are very iffy. Anybody’s guess can be the function of the tiny appendages, if any.  Something to do with water uptake and output, or dissolved material?  Feeding tiny insects such as ants, and if so, why?   Help draw visitors to the flowers? Make the leaves taste like $#@#@! to leaf eaters?    Breaking free and micro-sprouting?

Thingamajigs at leaflet bases

Thingamajg highly magnified