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Tag Archives: Haney Creek

Jeepers Creepers That Sedge Has Peepers

06 Jun

Nutrushes

Scleria species

Cyperaceae (Sedges)

John and George today worked along the Haney Creek Trail near Jensen Beach, a species-rich oasis of wet pine woods, ponds, and scrub.  A dog-walkers mecca it is, and we encountered a jolly Border Collie who, being an eco-friendly pooch, retrieves pinecones.

 

Tarflower was in bloom today. Photo by John Bradford.

Tarflower was in bloom today. Photo by John Bradford.

 

There are big Sweetbay Magnolias, Dahoon Hollies with red berries, and Tarflowers abloom, all very nice, and now cast your big white eyeballs downward, and little white eyeballs in the grass return the stare.  The white of your eye is the sclera.  The white eyeball sedge is Scleria.

Peekaboo! (Scleria baldwinii by JB)

Peekaboo! (Scleria baldwinii by JB)

 

Scleria is a successful genus of some 250 species peeping from undergrowth worldwide.  Several species live natively in Florida,  and we have some uninvited exotics, too many species for individual attention.   Interested readers, if they exist, check our website floridagrasses.org.

Sedges normally make tiny seedlike fruits, called achenes, which we’ll loosely call seeds; these are brown in thousands of sedge species.  Yet one genus has adopted bright white.  What’s up with that?

Fruits and seeds are all about dispersal.  Duh. So the main point of the glossy eyeball seeds  is most likely to catch the eye.  A plant in the grassy layer is competing with many other seed-makers for creatures to ingest and disperse the seeds.  Scleria seeds are displayed prominently and stand out visually—easily spotted from afar.  Several seed-eating and ground-feeding birds eat Scleria seeds.  One example is the Bobwhite.  The tough cover (sclera is Greek for “hard”) probably helps the seed pass through the bird unscathed.

This species (S. reticularis) has a waffle pattern.

This species (S. reticularis) has a waffle pattern.

 

Part of the in-flight obstacle course is the gizzard, where some birds collect grit to grind their daily bread.  A Weaver Bird roadkilled in Africa had Scleria seeds apparently serving as gizzard stones according to Mike Bingham of the Zambian Ornithological Society.  Bingham noted also that some of the Scleria seeds seem to have been gathered not directly from the sedge plant, but from the ground where the white color may help with selection.  Bird feed suppliers sell small white Proso Millet seeds for ground-feeding birds.  The millet and Scleria are similar.

To add to the mysteries, the seeds of different Scleria species have varied surface textures: smooth, or pock-marked, waffle, or bumpy, or ribbed like a pumpkin.  Go figure.

Scleria triglomerata, dispersed by ants. The "hypogynium" is the handy dandy ant handle at the seed base, at the left.

Scleria triglomerata, dispersed by ants. The “hypogynium” is the handy dandy ant handle at the seed base, at the left.

 

It is not just bird distribution, by the way.  One of our largest local Sclerias, S. triglomerata, has a handle called a hypogynium on the seed. (Many additional Scleria species do too.)   Ants use the hypogynium to drag the achenes to their nests, and probably eat the hypogynium away which could promote germination, as occurs in other ant-dispersed seeds.  An ant nest is a natural garden, with tilled soil, compost, and armed guards with an attitude.

 
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Posted by on June 6, 2014 in Scleria

 

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Water Lilies are Ungrateful

27 Jun

White Water Lily

Nymphaea odorata

Nymphaeaceae

Billy, John, and George hit the Haney Creek trail in Stuart for a third time in three weeks, and this week’s featured species is selected on the basis of smellin’ good: White Water Lily.   And it is as pretty as it smells.    Everybody has spotted this beauty at times in pondy places.

Before going on, it is relevant re. our recent blogs to re-mention hybridization.  Our species reportedly hybridizes with the native yellow “Mexican Water Lily,” Nymphaea mexicana.  Most of the garden Water Lilies are in fact hybrids.  Criss-crossing Nymphaeas was an institutional project of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis for decades.

Water Lily at Haney Creek this week by John Bradford

These are primitive flowering plants by certain measures.   Many plant enthusiasts are familiar with the split partitioning most flowering plants into two huge subgroups, the Monocots and Dicots.   The Water Lilies predate that fork in the road, and thus are neither Monocot nor Dicot.  Those big blossoms have leafy-looking parts, and they are the only flowers I know to commit pollinatoricide.  They kill their pollinators?  Sad but true.

When a Nymphaea flower opens it has at its center a pool of liquid surrounded by a wall of vertical stamens, like a backyard pool with childproof fence.  The stigma waits at the bottom of the pool.  An insect visitor splashes in and perishes, the pollen washing off its body sinking onto the stigma.  After that, the  stamens bend inward, covering the pool and releasing pollen.  At this point a different visitor is merely dusted with pollen and spared to fly away dusted pollen-wise and go plunk into  the pool of a different flower in its open-pool gotcha phase.  Nature is cruel.

Our examples of open-pool and closed-pool flowers are not actual Nymphaea odorata, but they play one in our blog.  It was either wade out there and shoot the real thing or use a nice dry hybrid substitute. We are wimps.

Proxy hybrid Nymphaea in the deadly open-pool phase.

After pollination, the twisty floral stalk retracts, pulling the fertilized flower down below harm’s way for the fruit to mature. The weirdness continues: inside the fruit the seeds become encased in an aril (extra seed-cover).   Apparently (and I am not certain) the aril is a temporary float, causing the seeds to surface and drift away to sink out of the competitive radius of the parent plant.

Nymphaea classification is difficult.  Beyond hybridization, environmental conditions influence the sizes and forms of the plants.  Several dubious and controversial varieties of Nymphaea odorata have thus had their moments in Florida floristics.  The overall distribution of the species is from Newfoundland to Texas.  One big widespread plastic variable species.

Nymphaeas have huge roles in ethnobotany.  It is intriguing when a species or set of related species with similar bioactivity turn up having the same uses in geographically separate cultures.  Nymphaeas are psychoactive (with a little controversy on that point), as well as sources of edible starch, and had probable narcotic applications at least in ancient Egypt and in pre-European Mayan culture.  The period artwork from both civilizations is eerily similar with respect to Water Lilies.  If you watch the History Channel, of course you realize how aliens with a penchant for intergalactic species introductions shared the cosmic gifts with both Earth-civilizations while out universe-hopping.   Take us to your pollinator!

Proxy hybrid in the pool-closed pollen-releasing phase.

 
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Posted by on June 27, 2012 in White Water Lily

 

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Sabatia grandiflora, about as pretty as they come

20 Jun

Rose-Gentian

Sabatia grandiflora

Gentianaceae

Yesterday Billy, John and George visited the Haney Creek Trail near Stuart.  The site is a scrub-lover’s (and dog-walker’s) delight enhanced aquatically with borrow pits, ponds, marshes, creeks, and mystery regions to reconnoiter.

We squished through a flowery marsh which reinforced an old perception.   Now please understand that this perception is a figment of my imagination.  Sometimes wildflowers seem to cluster by color.  A person could make up a reason:  maybe if certain pollinators in a habitat naturally prefer or become “trained” to the color of the predominant flower, other flower species horn in on the action by mimicry.  As a comparable retail scenario,  everybody knows what a Coca Cola can looks like.  Some coke knock-offs use a similar color scheme and fancy-curvy script.  (It would take a little contortion to “floral color mimicry” in terms of evolutionary adaptation but it could be done in a more rigorous blog.)

Floral color mimics (photo borrowed from the Internet)

 

Possibly different species with similar rose-colored petals add up to a big collective pinkish attraction for pollinators who prefer that color, just as several shoe stores in a mall collectively draw those shoppers seeking footwear.   Who knows?  This is my daydream so I can imagine whatever I dang well please.  Yesterday the wet center of the marsh was all yellow:  Elliott’s Xyris, Yellow Polygalas, St. Johnsworts.  (Okay, the Carolina Redroot flowers don’t quite qualify as yellow but it has a lot of yellow in it.)

Sabatia grandiflora. The bright yellow pollen-bearing anthers are in the flower center. The two green stigmas are twisted together temporarily sidelined on the right. The flower will need that yellow eye to still imply “yellow pollen” when the yellow anthers fall away as the flower shifts to its female phase. (Photo by JB)

 

By contrast, the marsh fringe was predominantly pinkish-rosyish:  Meadowbeauties,  Rosy Camphorweed,  Rosegentians (also called Marsh-Pinks).   The last-mentioned were the stars of the show.  These shocking  pinkies (Sabatia grandiflora) were so abundant and crowded they looked like a flower garden, but better, being wild, natural, un-tended, and un-intended.  The petals are power-pink with a jagged yellow central eye rimmed with red.  To linger annoyingly on my daydream of  “floral color mimicry,”  similar starry yellow eyes peep from unrelated flowers.  For instance,  enjoy John’s photo of Sisyrinchium xerophyllum.

Sisyrhinchium xerophyllum (by JB)

 

Floral beauty runs in the Gentian Family,  with several species of Sabatia and other Gentians in Florida.  Our Sabatia is so purty can you cultivate it in the garden?   Not so readily.  This is a wetland annual.

Another question, how do you pronounce the name?  Some pronounce it as “seh-BAISH-ah.”   Let me suggest, contrarily, saw-BAT-ee-ah, given that the namesake is Italian botanist Libertus Sabbati, not a dermatological cyst.

That today’s species is an annual fits its shallow water lifestyle.  It scatters tiny seeds (with pitted surfaces, as in many wetland species), setting the stage for seedling opportunism where the moisture level and other critical factors may be hospitable at the moment.  A perennial lifestyle would less nimble keeping up with rising and falling waters.   If there was nothing else to do, I’d map the position of the Sabatia patches (and associated pinkish flowers) around a marsh relative to water levels one year and then repeat that comparatively  in following years.   But then again, the boss wouldn’t regard Sabatia mapping as a priority.  (Meetings are such a fruitful use of time.)

Sabatia changes sex dramatically.  The flowers are male first.  Look at John’s beautiful picture of the male phase with the stamens all yellow and assertive;  the stigmas bend off to the side twisted together demurely out of action.   Soon, however, the anthers fall way and the stigmas separate, rise, and take charge.

 
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Posted by on June 20, 2012 in Rose-Gentian

 

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