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False-Foxgloves and the Angle of the Dangle (revisited)

05 Sep

Agalinis linifolia and close kin

(Agalinis translates roughly as “much flax” because the foliage resembles flax, having linear (linifolia) leaves.)

Orobanchaceae, a family of parasitic plants

In the places where the mud is ankle deep lives a pretty wildflower, or should I say a few, as there are about 17 lookalike Agalinis species in Florida, perhaps three in our immediate area.  They are tall, thin, delicate and attractive, not to mention partly parasitic, swiping nutrients from neighbor’s roots.

Agalinis by John Bradford

The flowers have a weird life history, possibly not 100% true, yet documented for Agalanis species in other regions and seemingly applicable locally.  Each flower lasts only a day or less,  so hurry…get pollinated!  

  

by JB

The blossoms open early in the morning, releasing pollen before the pollen-receiving stigma is ready to go.  Any bee who happens along picks up that fresh pollen and takes it to a different flower ready to receive.  This delay holds the door open to cross-pollination as opposed to self-pollination, the ultimate form of inbreeding. Spoiler:  Selfing may follow.

The long light violet dohicky is the style, the stigma at its tip. The pollen-filled anthers are horizontal at the top of the entrance.

As the day progresses the originally short style grows and grows while its stigma tip becomes pollen-receptive.  The style attains a ridiculous length, bending down across the entrance to the flower so that an incoming bee must push under its stigma-tip and dust it with pollen to access the interior.

No bees today?  No problem…then comes backup:  The style ultimately grows into the shape of a J curling up under the pollen-releasing anther.  With luck gravity may drop pollen from the anther onto stigma tip curled under it.

Corolla dragging pollination.

Last chance to pollinate.

But a pollen sprinkle is iffy, and the flower has an even better finale.  Late in the day the petal tube and attached pollen-shedding anthers begin to drop free.    The hooked style is attached to the plant, not to the tube.    As the funnel-shaped tubes begins to  fall, its inner anthers slide past the hook, maybe even snag on it.  The passing stigma scrapes pollen from the anthers and/or mops pollen out of the narrow end of the funnel.   Wind motion may help the scouring process. Another name for the petal tube is the corolla, and this type of last-ditch self-pollination is called “corolla dragging.”    On other species of Agalinis dangling in the wind can last an hour.

It worked. Fruits.

 
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Posted by on September 5, 2020 in Agalinis, Uncategorized

 

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Ecosystem on a Stick

22 Aug

Things on Corkwood

Stillingia aquatica

Euphorbiaceae

Corkwood by John Bradford

Stillingia aquatica is an amphibious shrub prominent in the depression ponds near my home.  One of multiple light-wooded species called “corkwoods” in the U.S., this little shrub and I are the best of friends.   Its flower spikes are a world of entertainment.   You’d think, well, yea, flowers, some bees or something come and go, and you get fruits.  

Well yes, true, but if you keep your eye on the spikes, there’s more going on.

The main pollinators are wasps, wasps and more wasps….

Polistes dorsalis
Polistes major

That much is not unexpected, but that’s also where I met what I learned to be this rakish katydid nymph.

Even more fun…the lifeform below is not a fancy ant…it is an ant mimic however, the nymph of a broadheaded bug.  I guess nobody messes with a big badass ant.  It is actually a vegetarian.

This Ebony Bug on corkwood chooses armor over intimidation.

But not the next creature.  This green lynx spider looks so nice and photosynthetic, but it hides among the flowers to ambush a pollinator.

By John Bradford
Hiding on the corkwood

Caught dinner! Is the prey bigger than the predator?

 
7 Comments

Posted by on August 22, 2020 in Uncategorized

 

Acrobat Ants:  High, Dry, and a Little Mysterious

08 Aug

Crematogaster atkinsoni

Crematogaster is a name of controversial origin.  As spelled, it means burning stomach.   But they don’t need Nexium… the name probably originated from cremasto-.  Cremasto– means “suspended,” as in “cremaster,” the stalk suspending a butterfly chrysalis. The ant in its defensive mood arches its “stomach” (abdomen) suspended up over its head with its stinger facing forward, thus the name Acrobat Ants.  The stinger does not sting, but instead is a spatula for dabbing toxins onto foe.   They can bite too.   Professor George Atkinson (1854-1918) was a prominent U.S. entomologist.

ant nest 2

Carton nest in Hypericum

Around South Florida and beyond, a curious sort of ant nest decorates marshes, in John’s and my experience mostly the depression ponds dominated by Peelbark St. Johnswort (Hypericum fasciculatum) and Corkwood (Stillingia aquatica).  These “carton” nests are gray and papery resembling hornet nests in color and texture. The cartons range in size from a tennis ball to a cucumber, up on a host plant, usually Hypericum around here, safe and dry above the high-water level.

ant nest far

Don’t touch, we are nice but will bite if abused..

It was Professor George Atkinson who first described the nests in 1887, attributing them incorrectly to ant species not otherwise known to such constructive feats.  Something wrong there!

Ant nests don’t get much attention, and the next leap forward waited until 1919 when Harvard Professor William Morton Wheeler discovered the nest dwellers to be a previously undescribed species he named C. atkinsoni.  The species is especially fond of periodically inundated open marshy habitats usually near the sea.   Recently some entomologists reclassified C. atkinsoni as a variant of another species, C. laeviuscula, although an objection to the demeaning merger is the unique nest-building by C. atkinsoni.   Around the world, varied ants, including other species of Crematogaster, make carton nests broadly defined, but in the Southeastern U.S.,   C. atkinsoni has a monopoly.

ant

I live here.

To this day, the ant and its nests seems under-studied, at least as far as I can tell on Google. What does an ant colony in a paper box perched isolated above the flooded marsh eat?   What are its seasonal cycles? Given the abilities of tropical carton-nest ants, there are multiple possible answers on how to “get provisions” during high-water lockdown.  Your guess is as good as mine, although look twice at numbers 4 and 5:

  1. Capture food before the flooded season and store it in the nest?
  2. Capture insects or seeds visiting the host plant, or visiting neighbor plants accessible by leaf and stem bridges? (Even in high water the crowded plants touch each other so it is possible to get around a good bit.  C. atkinsoni has been reported to eat other insects.)
  3. Cultivate seeds in the nest? (Ants are known to nibble growing roots from seedlings in their nests. Some epiphytes establish in tropical “ant gardens.”)
  4. Cultivate fungi? (This is likely the (or a partial) answer…some non-U.S. species of Crematogaster cultivate fungi, including yeasts, on the carton material itself. Looking into this would be an interesting research project, by taking “biopsies” from the nest for laboratory culturing without destroying the colonies.)
  5. Farm sucking insects for their honeydew? (Other species of Crematogaster in other tropical habitats farm scale insects in their nests, and UF entomologist W. Whitcomb reported varied Florida crematogasters associating with aphids.)
  6. Wait it out, perhaps with some adult die-off?

Might be possible to find this out, and to a point is a tempting research project, but not if you’d have to poison the ants and destroy the nests. The nests are rare, complex, and beautiful, not to mention in protected natural areas.   Better to leave something to the imagination.

 
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Posted by on August 8, 2020 in Crematogaster, Uncategorized

 

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Fogfruit (Frogfruit) and the White Peacocks Who Love it…Revisited

01 Aug
Fogfruit (Frogfruit) and the White Peacocks Who Love it…Revisited

Phyla nodiflora

(Phyla comes from Greek phylon for a swarm, referring to the sprawling growth pattern.  Nodiflora means the flower clusters are borne at the nodes.)

Verbenaceae

I did not really intend to watch butterflies today, but White Peacocks active all around forced the issue.  They love Fogfruit which has appeared  in this blog a few years ago, but what the heck, the bunny says do it again.

bunny

Why am I out just before a hurricane?

This plant is worldwide in warm climates.  How it managed world domination is anybody’s guess.   The fruit segments resemble small seeds, so it might move via wind, birds internally or externally, furry bunnies, and human activity.  Floating stem fragments root along shores.   In any event, it is everywhere warm and beyond, in the eastern U.S. as far north as Pennsylvania.  Botanist Caroline Gross and collaborators recently studied its DNA to find the species originated in the Americas and spread naturally to Africa, to Asia, and amazingly to Australia.   I mean almost certainly before seafarers could have brought it.  There are not many plant species native to Florida and  to Australia.   Yea, right, just try to name one.  This modest mat-former is a globe trotter.

phyla close

By John Bradford.

It loves moisture…so much that when a patch abuts open water, the watery side of the patch can be conspicuously more robust than individuals just a few feet away.  The species is not restricted to wet places,  occurring also in varied challenging situations, including dry sandy sites, dunes, and roadsides.   Fogfruit can withstand flooding, drought, salt, and limited frost.   Deep roots allow competition with grasses.  When crowded by competitors, Phyla rises to the occasion, growing oddly tall, and when there’s no need to rise it sprawls into a mat.   Some motivated  folks use it as a turfgrass alternative.

phyla medium

By JB

Other folks, lots and lots of them use it medicinally.  Phyla is a little green chemical factory, is clearly bioactive, and is “all over” traditional medicinal uses.  You could fill a boring page with 100 examples, such as dandruff.

What I really really like about the Phyla is its support for White Peacock butterflies.  CLICK Along a canal near my home are scattered patches of today’s little weed,  and every patch had a resident White Peacock.   The master of each patch perches on the tallest stem motionless sometimes for several minutes and at other moments wanders around the area of a ping pong table  enjoying the sweet Phyla nectar.  A little internet research shows the patch-masters as males, each claiming a territory which they guard from interlopers, and invite female guests for nectar and companionship.

peacock1

Having not much to do, trapped home by retirement, Covid, and approaching Isiasis,  I sat by the canal with binoculars and fire ants, and trolled White Peacock sociology.  I’m assuming with little basis every interaction I witnessed was male-to-male territoriality, except maybe for one long complex dance that seemed different, perhaps a dance of love.  But setting tawdry sex aside, the males mostly stayed within their territories.  It is possible to identify them individually by damaged spots and clefts in the wings, showing that after each encounter they returned to their proper corners.

peacock2

I watched two presumed males in particular in adjacent territories, Fred on the left and Joe on the right.   They mostly minded their own business perching and grazing,  but every now and then one would encroach a bit on the other, Fred mostly trespassing on Joe.    Joe would signal Fred to bug off by means of a split-second chase.  You can see it here CLICK slowed to 25% time.   A third Peacock came along and set foot in Joe’s kingdom and got chased off with much more bluster than the routine Joe-Fred border incidents.  The third party then went and tried Fred’s patch with the same determined result.   Hope he found a patch of his own.  Wow they are complex and beautiful.  I don’t think I’ll ever spray another insecticide.

 

 

 

 
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Posted by on August 1, 2020 in Uncategorized, White Peacocks

 

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Bighead Rush

18 Jul

Juncus megacephalus

(Juncus is an ancient name for rushes. Megacephalus means big head.)

Juncaceae, the Rush Family

juncus heads

Sometimes a plant deserves attention for merely being a curiosity.    Somewhat mysteriously, a number of marshy wetland species pack their flowers and fruits into spherical heads on wands that bend and blow in the wind, conking the ball-shaped heads into each other.  Examples include Tracy’s Beaksedge,  Sparganium, and today’s Bighead Rush.   There must be something good in the marshy environment about globes.  Gets the imagination going, although the benefit might be mutual protection of the flowers and fruits, circling the wagons, blocking pests,  maybe holding water, or buffering temperature extremes.  Does knocking together as the wind blows help with cross-pollination?  Later, do the impacts help knock the balls apart and disperse the seeds?

juncuswon sand

In any case, the well-named Big Head Rush is a prime example. The rushes dominate sandy/muddy shores inundated part of the year and exposed the rest of the year.   In  short, sometimes very very wet and other times in the miniature desert of a dried sandy shore.

The heads are not the only curiosity.   Like many aquatic (and additional) plants, the base where the plant meets the earth is bright red.   This phenomenon is better-known in more- prominent plants, for example, sugar canes,  dyes coming from the leaf sheaths in some sorghums  CLICK, , or red leaf bases helping to distinguish cultivars of rice.   The red comes from pigments known as anthocyanins, familiar in red petals or in red fruits as attractants to pollinators and to seed-dispersers.   Familiar also as “sunscreen” in young or stressed foliage.  Recent research has shown anthocyanins to be also anti-fungal, so maybe reddish, or purplish, or blackish fruits are fighting fungi instead of just attracting birds..

juncus red bases

Bright red at the base.

Fungal protection makes sense where the plant meets the ground, perhaps especially so in species with wet bases for long spells.   It isn’t just Bighead Rush.  Similar red bases appear in the marsh in Xyris, Sagittaria, Alligator-Flags, and varied grasses and sedges.

Bighead Rush leaves look like knitting needles, technically called terete (teh-REET) leaves.  That shape is often associated with hot, sunny, dry habitats where a normal leaf blade is vulnerable to drying and exposure.    Actually it serves a purpose at both extremes…standing up to hot and dry when necessary, and during the wet season acting like an air-pipe being filled with soft porous material between reinforcing dividers, as in bamboo.

juncus leaf

On the inside the knitting needle leaf is a reinforced air pipe.

 
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Posted by on July 18, 2020 in Juncus megacephalus, Uncategorized

 

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Peelbark St. Johnswort, Friend of the Fish

29 Jun

Hypericum fasciculatum

(Hyper-means above, and -icum comes from the same root as icon, above the icon, referring to the historical use of some species to adorn religious icons.  A fascicle is a bunch, such as a cluster of leaves.)

Clusiaceae

 

St. Johnsworts are many…around  500 species, 50-ish in the U.S.,  around 30 in Florida.   They are well known for bioactive contents, photosensitizing the skin of human and beast after consumption, locoweeds, and medicinal uses, especially to fight depression.  These things are all over the internet, and therefore of no new interest here.  More fun to go into less-documented aspects of Peelbark St. Johsnwort, Hypericum fasciculatum.

hyp fas bush

PBSJW.  Today’s pictures all by John Bradford.

So then, first, why “peelbark”?   Hypericum fasciculatum is mostly a species of seasonally inundated marshes…you might say “Hypericum marshes”…and of wet shores.   It spends much of its time up to its knees in water.   Seasonally flooded plants have a problem: ventilating their roots during highwater times.   Want another seasonally inundated plant with similar peeling spongy bark?  Bald Cypress knee bark resembles Peelbark St. Johnswort.   Those porous barks no doubt aerate the above-water regions. in my opinion the exposure in Bald Cypress sustains the living phloem just under (actually part of)  the bark.  In the St. Johnswort the peeling bark perhaps likewise feeds the phloem, and possibly ventilates the roots which have two special adaptations of their own.

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The first special adaptation is the formation of “adventitious” (on the stem) roots near the high water level.  This tendency has served during the dry months as a marker of erstwhile high water limits.

The second special root adaptation is a series of air channels (aerenchyma). Botanists who have studied similar roots in similar species have found the channels to help maintain optimal levels of the airborne hormone ethylene.

Why would an aquatic plant with unlimited water have narrow needlelike leaves resembling a dryland conifer?   It looks like a desert plant.  So does its marshland neighbor corkwood, Stillingia aquatica.  One  answer is probably that semi-impaired suffocating roots are unable to service large broad leaves well, and a second reason for skinny “desert”  leaves seems to be those challenging months when the shrub is high and dry.

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Here is a fishy mystery to ponder.  Why do Hypericum fasciculatum plants in bodies of water having fish manage a stronger seedset than those in fish-free habitats?  No. the answer is not “fish manure fertilizer.” Sometimes ecological relationships are fun to unravel, as UF ecologist T.M. Knight and collaborators did in 2005.   Fish eat dragonfly larvae.  Dragonflies eat bees and things.  Bees and things pollinate PBSJW.  So no fish =  many dragonflies = scarce pollinators. If fish abound, however, so do the pollinators and the seeds.

 
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Posted by on June 29, 2020 in Hypericum fasciculatum, Uncategorized

 

Rustweed – Three Weird Secrets

19 Jun

Polypremum procumbens

(Polypremum loosely translates as many-branched,  and procumbens means “lies down” without rooting from the stems)

Tetrachondraceae

 

Rustweed is a curious little thing.   Merely figuring out its relationships was a botanical head-scratcher for a couple centuries until DNA came along to solve all mysteries.  It lives on sun-baked sandy surfaces from Florida to Mexico and to the northeastern U.S., very abundant around Palm Beach County.  Branching is Y-shaped, and the paired leaves look like little sawtooth daggers.

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Today’s non-microscope and non-butterfly pictures by John Bradford.

The first of three Polypremum oddities is that the plants transform from leafy green to rusty orange-brown at times of extreme sun exposure or drought.   They are not dying…merely getting a tan.   Do they go back from rusty to light green?  I don’t think so.   Somebody ought to conduct a comparative study on their performances and tolerances in the two phases.  Do the rusty plants thrive under stresses green ones can’t handle? Do the green ones grow faster under favorable conditions?

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A second oddity is microscopic and beyond my photographic ability, so below is a drawing from a 19th Century German treatise on plant hairs.

glands

The leaves have on their undersides microscopic “glands” with a beautiful structure and recessed into the leaf surface.  What do they do?  I’ve been wondering that since the 80s.  We often think of glands on leaves as producing nectar to favor defensive ants.   Not in this case.   To make a varnish to protect the leaf?  Naw, wrong placement.  To excrete excess salt?  I doubt it, wrong habitat.  Drain excess water?   Water-secreting structures are common, but these have the wrong structure and placement, rejected. You know what they look like to me?  The complex structures on Tillandsia leaves that function in part to take in water in a stressfully dry habitat.

49096041086_832e7bb0c6_c

Did somebody say stressfully dry habitat?  You know, like Rustweed-inhabited sand in a Florida scrub.   Speaking speculatively, I’m guessing those little “glands” help take in precious water from rain, mist, and dew out on those parched sands.  Might be tough to test and prove without sophisticated gear, although weed scientists have shown plant hairs on other species to take up herbicides in water.  Things that matter get studied.  One quick test that might suggest or nix water intake would be to see if the leaves gain weight upon foliar water exposure, with no water applied to the root.

Polypremum procumbensTWO

With a tan

Oddity number 3  requires a speedy pre-lesson.   In a flowering plant’s sexual cycle, to make a long story short, the pollen grain sprouts a tube called the pollen tube, and the pollen tube delivers the sperm to the egg inside the future seed.  The textbooks tell us the pollen grain with its seminal cargo arrives from another plant thanks to the birds and bees.  Textbooks lie.

_DSC2935DaintySulphur-PolypremumProcumbens-Lampkin

Dainty Sulfur meets Rustweed, contributed by John Lampkin

Suppose you are a lone Rustweed, bereft of that “another plant,” established by a wind-blown seed on some remote sandy patch to colonize.  Rustweed has colonized  Hawaii, Guam, and Palau.    How can it reproduce all alone and isolated?   Not a problem,  as iconic botanists Asa Grapy and John Torrey noted back in 1841.  They found Polypremum to germinate its pollen tubes within the flower that made them, no need for pesky birds and bees.   That germinated pollen (i.e.  with pollen tube) takes care of fertilization without ever leaving its home flower.  As far as I can tell, nobody has re-noticed or mentioned it since, although various forms of self-pollination are not rare.   That 179-year assertion by Torrey and Gray had to be checked, what if they were wrong OMG!!!, so I brought some Polypremum  home today for  a look.  They were correct, the pollen trapped inside the flowers is still sporting pollen tubes rarin’ to go.

Polypremum pollen tube

Pollen with its pollen tube hanging around today inside the flower that made it.

 
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Posted by on June 19, 2020 in Polypremum, Uncategorized

 

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Meat-in-a-Mist

06 Jun

Passiflora foetida (Love in a Mist)

(Foetida means smelly.)

Passifloraceae, the Passionflower Family

Want to try a creepy adventure?  This morning I got up at dawn to beat the thunderstorms, which have not come.  Plunged into the murky mists in an inundated Hypericum marsh to tend to a little botanical business.  In over your knees in the morning twilight among reeds, tussocks, fallen logs, bird groans, croaking frogs, and wil-o-the-wisps, it is eerie to hear “things” swimming.  I mean what swamp dwellers splash when they swim!?   The imagination runs wild.  Critters  splash into the black water as you approach.   To the neurotic, a frog plop sounds like a hippo.    Any pythons in PB County? Do Cottonmouths splash when they flop in from a low branch?  Not so spooky are the Zebra Longwing Butterflies out in force today, interestingly going about their flutter duties low in the foliage. Zebra Longwings bring to mind Passionvines, the topic with such a long lead-in.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

By John Bradford

Today’s blog rests on the shoulders of titans.   Biologist Dr. Walter Bien suggested the topic and sent info.  He and John Bradford took the photos.  Passiflora foetida, native to South America, is introduced and weedy all around the hot-climate world, including here.    If we must be invaded the intruder might as well be beautiful, and curious.

The pretty flower looks like many other passionflowers.  The fruit suggests a red cherry, helping to explain its global conquest with the help of birds.   Today’s focus is on the net wrapped around the fruit, inspiring the name “Love-in-a-Mist.”  The mist is made of bracts wrapping round from beneath the flower.

Now any fool can guess the net protects delicacies within. Demonstrably so.  If you want to keep the bad guys out, a little toxin can be useful.   Could offing pests be a first step toward carnivory?   If you’re going to kill’em you might as well eat’em.  Granny salvaged roadkill after all.

passiflora bracts wb

By Walter Bien

As Dr. Bien related, the net is protocarnivorous.  Glands on it secrete a compound called passifloricin and sticky mucilage to trap insects.  Passifloricin is a lactone  a broad family of cyclic molecules often bioactive and in many fragrant essential oils.  Passifloricin kills microscopic protists and undoubtedly also small insects.  Going beyond mere defense, the secretions have protein-digesting enzymes.  Drumroll please! That ability is characteristic of carnivorous plants.

[assifora fruit

Walter Bien

Tests on Passiflora foetida by biologist T. Radhamani and collaborators in the 90s showed the substances to digest dead ants into amino acids, the building blocks of proteins.  They showed further a traceable amino acid smeared on the bracts to wind up in the seeds.  In short they demonstrated slaughtering the fresh meat, processing it, and recycling the stolen nutrients.

Please don’t go push poor little buggies into the web of death, but it might be interesting to peek in with a magnifying class.

 
9 Comments

Posted by on June 6, 2020 in Passiflora foetida, Uncategorized

 

Bartram’s Rose-Gentian

22 May

Sabatia decandra (S. bartramii)

(Sabatia honors Liberato Sabbati,  an Italian botanist.  Decandra refers to 10 stamens. William Bartram was a brilliant 18th Century plant explorer in Florida and other states,  artist, and eloquent writer whose (father’s) garden you can still visit in Philadelphia.)

Gentianaceae

Sa atia drawing

By William Bartram

Sometimes all it takes is good looks.  Try to find a more magnificent wildflower than this.  Shocking pink with a yellow star!   Anyone need a logo?  What pollinator could resist? This floral celebrity has  a web presence bigger than Beyonce!…with the same info over and over, so the trick here is to find something new.  Will do.

Sabatia fem ale phase JB

By John Bradford

Sabatia is a genus well represented in Florida by a dozen species, all of them pretty, generally not cultivated however, probably due to finicky habitat requirements. Today’s species beautifies wetlands in the Southeastern corner of the U.S. Descriptions call it a biennial, and I’m not saying it isn’t, but I’m not sure that is the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

IMG_4037

It looks like a biennial in the sense that it rises from a basal rosette like a standard backyard weed biennial.   However,  the species grows in seasonally inundated places so if the rosette sits around a year, it is sitting underwater half the year.  I think the rosette and the flowering top can rise in the same year.  Another wet-dry plant with a similar slightly succulent rosette is Brookweed, Samolus ebracteatus.

sabatia bud

The bud is a perfect frame for a web.  Many of the buds are inhabited.  I wonder if that helps protect the flower.

I promised something new and here it is.   Species of Sabatia, and dramatically S. decandra, have a system to force cross-pollination, first functioning as male then  later becoming female. As the flower opens, the pollen-producing (male) stamens get busy dusting pollen onto floral visitors.   At the same time, the pollen-receptive (female) stigma is twisted and flattened horizontally as removed from the pollinator action as possible.

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Male phase…the female stigma and style are flattened out of the way on the left.

Sabatia anthres

Stamens…male phase

After the pollen release time, the stamens commence senescence.  Then the patient stigma untwists, rises upright, and takes on a Y-shape to celebrate pollen-reception time as the stamens fall apart..

Sabatia female phase3

Female phase…the stigma now upright looking like a Y, the stamens falling away.

 
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Posted by on May 22, 2020 in Sabatia decandra, Uncategorized

 

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Water Hyssops

15 May

Bacopa monnieri and Bacopa caroliniana

Hyssop is an ancient name, including in the Bible, applied to any of many fragrant herbs.   Bacopa comes from an indigenous South American name. Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier (1717-1799) was a French scientist whose interests extended to botany.)

Plantaginaceae

Members of the genus Bacopa are easy to overlook, and in wet muddy habitats. Most passers by probably step on them.  The flowers are pretty although not eye-popping.   Despite their unassuming modesty, bacopas are botanical wack-a-moles popping up in disparate connections. Four species live in Florida, two native (including B. caroliniana with blue flowers), one (B. monnieri ) debatably indigenous, and one introduced.

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B. caroliniana by John Bradford.

Aquanauts

Bacopas are among an intriguing clique of species able to grow underwater like seaweeds yet also happy high and dry.  Pretty handy for Florida habitats submerged part of the year and sun-baked mud the rest of the year.  The underwater ability is why you can buy them as aquarium plants, and that in turn is in part probably why today’s species are invasive exotics in other lands. A second probable contributing factor to their global spread is via cultivation as ancient medicines.  Bacopa monnieri is so widespread  worldwide it is hard to know its original “nativity.”  It is an invasive problem species in Hawaii, the Cayman Islands, and in eastern Asia.  Bacopa caroliniana has made it to South Korea.

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Bacopa monnieri by John Bradford.

Green Lanterns

Taiwanese researchers infused gold nanoparticles into Bacopa caroliniana, and it glowed like a botanical LED.  That ability could be harnessed.   Big thinkers thought, well, it that works in a sprawling water weed, onward to  living street lights?   You saw it here first.

CLICK

Friend of the White Peacock

My wife Donna and I have spent Corona-time over-tending our backyard butterfly garden and its little villagers. Among the gorgeous visitors  have suddenly appeared a profusion of White Peacock butterflies.   They are broad in their floral tastes, yet picky about their larval host plants, in fact, limited mostly to species of Bacopa and Phyla (Fogfruit, aka Frogfruit).   Behind our house is a broad canal, at this moment almost dry, the exposed mud with big patches of Bacopa.   I’d go out now and try to photo a Peacock caterpillar but it is raining.

Lemony Fresh Nerve Poison

The name Lemon Bacopa fits Bacopa caroliniana.  Empowered with that knowledge, you will never struggle to identify it…just scratch and sniff.  Ahhhh, a cleansing whiff of lemon.  No trip to the mudflats is complete without it.  As with most plant stinkiness, we’re talking herbivore deterrence. A 2019 study showed it to have a similar mode of nerve-poison action against insects as commercial organophosphate insecticides, such as Malathion. Knowing that, no thanks on Bacopa medications.  (Please don’t eat the wildflowers.)  Fact is, Bacopas are green chemical factories and not everything in them is harmless.

Don’t Forget This

Want a medicinal plant?   Go outside and pick a specimen, bring it in and Google it.  Somebody somewhere has applied it for something.   That goes double for fragrant species.   So why delve into the usually boring realm of old plant uses here and now?  Because Bacopas, especially B. monnieri, are monsters of medicinal applications worldwide.  Always interesting when multiple separate human cultures find similar uses for a given plant.  Here is just one example of B. monnieri’s fan mail from hundreds:

CLICK

Most of the historical uses center on the nervous system.   Neurological (and additional) effects have brought B. monnieri into the fold of modern medicinal interest. Many parties feel the herb and its extracts enhance cognition, and may even help in Alzheimers, which could be true with the caveat that the world of plant-derived medicines tends to be  very very optimistic.  Really, it had me with host plant for White Peacocks.

white peacock on samolus ebracteatus

 
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Posted by on May 15, 2020 in bacopa, Uncategorized

 

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