Author Archives: George Rogers

Ludwigia linifolia

Onagraceae   (Evening Primrose Family)

Changing season lengthening days,  heat, rain….and my favorite places after Dunkin’ Donuts, the depression marshes, are awake:    Bushmints, Gratiolas, Milkworts of every color,  Rosegentians, St. Johnsworts,  Stillingias,  Stripeseeds, Yellow Flax.     Flowers flowers and more flowers!   But you know what’s missing?  Pollinators (although there would more if I got moving early in the day).   Where are all the bees?

Part of the answer, I fear without “hard knowledge,” is that a lot of observers have observed a decline is native bees.  Don’t like that!     Somebody should assess the native bees in the rural, exurban, suburban, and urban WPB area.  Somebody did that in Brazil using Mexican-Clover growing along roads leading into urban habitats.   Problem is, Florida native bees may not be that enthusiastic about non-native Mexican-Clover, or about roadsides.    Also, there’s a correlation between more-specialized flowers and native bees.   Bottom line—this concern needs a local assessment!

A second reason for not seeing many pollinators in an expansive marsh is that in my personal experience the farther out across a large depression marsh you wade, the fewer the bees.   The wasps and dragonflies out there are strong long-distance fliers.  But are bees reluctant to cross hundreds of meters of marshland to visit a flower?  This speculation brings us to an important point:   pick any  flower species occurring far out into wet marshlands and odds are it can reproduce without insect pollinators.   Every plant in the list above is either known or strongly suspected of being able to reproduce without insect visitors.

Southeastern Primrosewillow by John Bradford.

A particularly attractive example in flower now is Southeastern Primrosewillow, a modest beauty you don’t see everyday.   It may be shy about hiding its sunshine yellow blossoms among the St. Johnsworts it resembles, but it sure isn’t shy about pollinating itself.   Go visit in the morning, and the pollen-bearing anthers are spread off to the side, out of the way in case a visitor brings pollen to the stigma standing tall at mid flower.  But in the afternoon just before the petals fall off,    the anthers clasp to the stigma and powder it with “self” pollen.    No way that blossom goes to waste, even if the bees let it down.

Morning with four white anthers spread to the side, stigma in the center. Enlarged portion of photo above.

Afternoon, anthers pressed against and pollinating the stigma. The pollen is white.

Southeastern Primrosewillow is native across the southeastern U.S.   But look it up its range in the authoritative Flora North America, and hey what’s that?   Tabasco, Mexico??

Ala., Fla., Ga., Miss., N.C., S.C., Mexico (Tabasco)

That’s 1500 miles away!   The key to that leap must be self-pollination. One seed carried by a bird or a  hurricane or a muddy shoe can establish far from home, self-pollinate, and spawn a nation.   If that is so, wouldn’t today’s pretty wild flower turn up “unofficially”  in additional hot wet places?   Let’s try India.  Yep, , “in rice growing areas.” Africa?—yep, one herbarium specimen in Gabon, and maybe in the People’s Republic of the Congo. You get the idea!   Self-sufficiency of the meek and humble.

Raphanus raphanistrum
Brassicaceae (Mustard Family)

Wild Radish is an Old World weed you don’t see much in South Florida natural areas. In some places, however, they see far more than they’d like, being a bigtime agricultural weed resistant to herbicides and having seeds as bycatch during harvesting. Some non-farmer folks fancy the plants as “edible.” But no no no! It picks up environmental toxins. Edible? Well, it is the parent species of the radish in my salad, and the two can intercross even now. And no, WR does not have a bulbous red root.

Today in Cypress Creek

I don’t want to poison it or eat it, or cross it with salad fixings. The interesting thing, documented back in the 80s by California biologist Maureen Stanton, requires a tiny bit of background:

Here is that background. A long-standing concept in plants and animals is a spectrum of degree of parental investment in offspring. Some species make a huge investment in each offspring, providing each an advantage in establishment: humans, elephants, coconuts. At the other end of the spectrum, some parents release a huge number of undemanding “cheap” offspring into the cruel world betting on quantity instead of quality: rats, spiders, dandelions. No species has to occupy either extreme, most species are intermediate, but what you do not often see (I can’t think of another example) is one species using both strategies, making a mix of high-investment AND cheap skitter-skatter offspring.

The pods break apart rather than opening.

Wild Radish does. As Dr. Stanton documented, the seedpod starts out making one “big” seed at the base. Then higher in the pod it forms one or more smaller cheaper extra seeds. The number of smaller plan-B seeds varies considerably—apparently in good conditions the pod enjoys the luxury of adding several extras. When times are tighter or the season is short, the pods still makes the main seed while holding back on its less-endowed smaller siblings. Sort of like a royal family having a well groomed heir apparent, followed by minor princes in reserve.

As cities get bigger and as suburbs sprawl, a lot of wild creatures have expanded their ranges into town (or gotten trapped in little remnant pockets). Duh: raccoons, possums, skunks, rabbits, and coyotes, old-school. Foxes, screech owls, and even otters and martens (up north) maybe a little more recently.

Screech by John Bradford

One that I find fascinating, perhaps because they’re frequent visitors around my totally non-waterfront suburban subdivision home, are ospreys.

by John Bradford

It has long been known that ospreys take okay to cities, but usually that means the birds nest on the shore among humans yet remain on the edge of the usual bodies of water where they fish. An osprey may nest in Stuart and still have a waterfront view to the big ol’ St. Lucie River.

But what I’m noticing are ospreys nesting in urban/suburban sites far from any expanse of “obvious nice fishing places.” Some seem to nest and hang out these days in “funny” (not ha ha funny) places. The one(s) that visit me like to perch atop a big ugly Norfolk Island Pine overlooking the drainage canal passing by. The canal spawns unlovely catfish and tilapia, and maybe the occasional Mayan Cichlid. Not a gourmet menu….but easily snatched from the foot-deep water.

Nest in upper right corner above stinkwater.

There are plenty of fish in the sea (and evidently in the canals), so what do ospreys compete with each other for? Maybe suitable nesting sites.

I do a bit of botanical snooping concerning weeds in relation to resilient gopher tortoises along a stagnant canal near home, between a huge urban golf course and a roaring RR track. Not very aesthetic setting, and the “seafood” is crummy. Along the way, though lives a beautiful family of ospreys bravely nested on a powerline pole among the insulators. Explain to me again why they don’t get electrocuted up there in the hotseat. I understand the safety of birds perching on a single wire, but the potentially soggy nest spans several wires, insulators, and the pole itself which is grounded. Kinda worrisome but they seem unconcerned.

Watch them feed the babies:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iVgjgE_aJUrVk63ISTdux-v6LuVaYFsm/view?usp=sharing

S

Argemone mexicana
Papaveraceae (Poppy Family)

From a botanical standpoint, there are green gems sprouted along RR tracks from seeds ridin’ the rails from faraway places. The parents of todays’ trackside Mexican Poppy were probably weeds in an agricultural field along the route. This stunning prickly yellow species has made a prior appearance in the blog, but today’s angle is different. (https://treasurecoastnatives.wordpress.com/?s=poppy)

An old tropical disease, mostly in India, also South Africa, is called epidemic dropsy. Dropsy is an old-fashioned term for edema linked to heart failure and related events. Edema is usually sporadic and spotty in populations relating to age and to additional factors, so when it sweeps through a region like the flu, that’ll raise some medical eyebrows. That has occurred lots of times, causing lots of deaths, even in the “2000’s.” As recently as the 1930s, the cause remained unknown, As explained in the article we’re about to examine, there were then three theories: 1. “Contagion” (i.e. germs), 2. Bad rice. 3. Mustard seed cooking oil. Drs. R.B. Lal and S.C. Roy in the 1931 British Medical Journal narrowed the cause down to the almost-correct mustard seed oil theory, but with a big piece of the puzzle still missing. in

What is interesting is how they did it, raising the questions of were they heroes, or rat-finks, or some of both? First off, the two doctors shared an historical account of the disease around Calcutta. I call your attention to the “permanent damage to the heart” part. That sounds like something to avoid. Stay tuned on that.

The three theories then got an overview. Apparently at that time, “respectable members of the profession” had negative vibes about the mustard oil notion.

But the doctors listened to citizen science and showed those respected colleagues the path to truth by means of an experiment. And here is the kicker: The experiments took place on 12 healthy young volunteers “willing to take the risk.”

HUH? How informed was their informed consent? Did they read the fine print above about the reaper and the heart damage? I wonder how they were “volunteered.”

Glad to hear groups B and D were so cheerful! I’d be cheerful too if excluded from groups A and C. The docs never mentioned what happened to the un-cheerful group A and C volunteers. I wonder if they lived long enough to hear the rest of the story. Which is as follows:

For the rest of the story we have to know that today’s species has long been cultivated around the warm world for “argemone seed oil.” That’s good if the argemone oil is used for lubrication, fuel, and industry. Thanks to those non-food applications, Mexican Poppy has become an abundant worldwide agricultural weed. Just don’t let argemone seed oil get into the mustard seed oil, either from weedy seedy cropfield mixing, or more often, as a cheap adulterant to expensive mustard seed cooking oil.

(By the way, in more recent times argemone oil has been tried “externally” in massage oil, but guess what, it can enter transdermally, so your exotic massage then can have a very unhappy ending.)

Just ask the Great Golden Sand Digger
Sphex ichneumoneus or similar species

[technical note, I hear from a reader that the photo may in fact be a different tho similar species of digger wasp acting Sphexish]

When does a digger wasp in Cypress Creek meet Big Bang Theory? Leonard Hofstadter took his fictional name from Nobel Laureate physicist Robert Hofstadter (1915-1990). Robert’s son Douglas Hofstadter likewise achieved fame and glory, in computer science, in A.I., and in thinking about thinking. Douglas coined the term “sphexish” to describe (apparently) irrational repetitive behavior. You know, broken record. Look at the Latin name of the wasp above, and then witness this Sphex (or close relative) being sphexish. Over the last couple days I’ve come to suspect that the behavior might (might) have to do with seeking pebbles filling in the nest. But then why all in the same groove?

Click below for hot diggidity digger (repeat) action!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1U0XEaN4tJPBPNIHL-XczTNi0fw-QzE9C/view?usp=sharing

Added later—worth a look