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Feay’s Palafox

03 Oct

Palafoxia feayi

Asteraceae

Today John and George hotfooted it through the oven-baked Saharan scrub in Seabranch State Park near Pt. Salerno, Florida.  It was so torrid my shoes melted off my feet.  Really.  Ask John.  (Well, one fell apart.)  Recently a paved bicycle Autobahn made its way through the park.  The concrete ribbon is wide, flat, and dang sunny, and it offers passage through dozens of scrubbish species growing in isolated clumps recovering along the disturbed trail margins.  A unique “garden” view of Prairie-Clovers, Florida-Rosemarys, Golden Asters, and assorted grasses and sedges alone and uncrowded.  One of the finest species to behold is Feay’s Palafox, a member of the Aster Family.

Feay's Palafox. All photos today by John Bradford.

Feay’s Palafox. All photos today by John Bradford.

William Feay (1804? – 1879) was a Savannah, Georgia, physician turned teacher with botanical instincts in the mid 19th Century.  During the Civil War Savannah Georgia was no place for a nice botanist.  He scooted to Florida, where he collected the original Feay’s Palafox specimen, conceivably abetted by another botanical M.D., Alvin Chapman, of Chapman’s Oak.  Just think, Feay’s Palafox is a souvenir of  the War Between the States.

Feay's Palafox

Feay’s Palafox

You don’t spend much time in scrub without seeing Feay’s Palafox, a slightly woody subshrub standing 2-8 or more feet tall with its showy white or pink flower heads.  Unlike most members of its family, the heads consist entirely of “disc” flowers, that is, the sort of flowers associated with the black center of a Sunflower head.  Our species hangs out in scrub or similar habitats, and seems to be fire-adapted.  Recent study show its strongest root-fungal symbioses to thrive after burning followed by decline during non-burned years, although the decline could be due to the recovery of competition.

What’s intriguing about Palafoxia is its circle of relatives.  We have three species in Florida: 1. Palafoxia texana,  a western species with a tiny weird toehold in the Florida Panhandle.  2. Palafoxia integrifolia, almost restricted to Florida.  And Palafoxia feayi, which is limited to Florida.

Feay's Palafox

Feay’s Palafox

The rest of the genus, about 9 additional species, are all more or less desert plants in the southwestern U.S. and Mexico.  This is reminiscent of Agaves, where we have two dubiously native species in Florida related to a big group in the Southwest, Mexico, and Caribbean.

That our local Palafoxia species live in Florida’s sandy scrub “desert” is no surprise then, given that they are far-flung offshoots of a posse at home in Death Valley and the Sonoran Desert.  Palafoxia supports a vision of Florida scrub as a now-isolated remnant of a once-contiguous Tex-Mex arid land stretching around the Gulf, eventually divvied up by changing conditions.  Similar Florida scrub-loving derelicts with Mexican roots include Scrub Jays and Gopher Tortoises.

If the Florida species of Palafoxia are spillovers from points west, do they represent one spill, or three separate splashes?  The latter:  Our three species are not closely related to each other.  Palafoxia texana stands aloof.   It does not even have the same number of chromosomes as our other two Florida species.  Likewise alone is Palafoxia integrifolia; as botanists who studied it said, it is “unquestionably the oddball of the genus Palafoxia,”  so odd, it used to be regarded as a separate genus.

Palafoxia integrifolia

Palafoxia integrifolia

Palafoxia feayi is allegedly most closely related to two species of the extreme Southwestern U.S., Mexico, and the Rio Grande Region.

How such an odd mixed up geographic pattern could come about boggles the brain.  One thing is certain, it dates back a long time, roughly (according to the botanists cited below) some 60 million years, before the continent-spanning genus fragmented into isolated lineages from Baja California to Seabranch State Park.

This all goes to reinforce nobody’s secret: Florida scrub is vastly older than other Florida habitats, with a history all its own.  When you walk in a Florida scrub, enjoy a little hint of the Tertiary Period when Mexico extended to Palm Beach,  when palm trees grew in Ohio, and when Gopher Tortoises raced Jackrabbits here from Chihuahua. (Apparently the tortoise won.)

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Notes:

Most of today’s data and taxonomic assessments on Palafox come from B. L. Turner and M. I.  Morris, Systematics of Palafoxia (Asteraceae:  Helenieae).   Rhodora 78: 567-628. 1976.

Our two local species are easy to separate.  Palafoxia feayi is semi-woody, well over a yard tall, and has the flower heads surrounded by linear green or purplish bracts.    Palafoxia integrifolia is shorter than a yard tall; its bracts are more or less white, and narrowly elliptic.

 
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Posted by on October 3, 2014 in Feay's Palafox

 

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Chapman’s Oak

07 Sep

Chapman’s Oak

Quercus chapmanii

Fagaceae

On Friday John and George explored a corner of Seabranch State Park near Port Salerno, Florida, previously unpenetrated by us, a big area of scrub more mature with larger Oaks and Pines than many other local scrub areas.

The Prairie Clover (Dalea feayi) was pleasingly in bloom.

Feay's Prairie Clover Friday 9/5/14. All photos today by John Bradford.

Feay’s Prairie Clover Friday 9/5/14. All photos today by John Bradford.

 

The Yellow Garden Spider was enjoying the day.

What's a tuffet?

What’s a tuffet?

 

If we’re going to feature Chapman’s Oak, we better establish who was Chapman?  Alvin Wentworth Chapman (1809-1899) witnessed most of the 19th Century, remaining active to age 90.  He was a physician and founder of modern Florida botany.  Back then doctoring and botany often occupied the same soul.  (Come to think of it,  my own father was a physician-and part-time naturalist.)

Chapman's Oak

Chapman’s Oak

 

I believe many species distinctions we use in modern manuals date back to Dr. Chapman’s antebellum (1860) Flora of the Southern United States, setting up subsequent generations of addition and refinement in 20th Century floras.  Originally from Massachusetts and a Union sympathizer in the Civil War, Chapman lived most of his long productive life isolated in Apalachicola.

Most local scrub areas host Chapman’s Oak, and in Seabranch State Park this species is abundant, in fruit, big by local standards, and striking with two special eye-catching features:

Feature #1:  Galls as big as ping pong balls and as red as apples, before turning brown.

Gally-gee---they resemble apples

Gally-gee—they resemble apples

 

Eye-catcher #2:  Super-glossy-reflective leaves.  Chapman’s Oak has some of the larger leaf blades found in the sun-drenched scrub habitat where the general tendency in most plants is toward reduced leaf sizes.  You’d think those big Chapman solar panels might cook and dehydrate in the scrubby sunbath, and we’ll see in a moment that to be the case in a limited way, but I’d like to think that reflective surface offers protection.  We usually think of big leaf blades as typical of shade, so maybe Chapman’s Oak straddles the best of both worlds:  expansive blades for life in a mature scrub under the shade of Pines, and at the same time protected when un-shaded.  This is mere speculation—the prerogative of the individual who types the blog.

Chapman's Oak leaves and acorn

Chapman’s Oak leaves and acorn

 

Several species of Oaks grace our local scrubs, and they are an interesting committee.  We won’t sort out here how to tell them apart (for help see Lesson 3 in our online class), but some general remarks may interest a reader or two.

Would you expect a cluster of Oak species living in the same habitat in the same place to be closely related?  They are mostly just the opposite—a highly disparate group all thrust together.  Think of a bunch of new neighbors getting acquainted around the pool in a recently built Florida condo complex (perhaps built where scrub once was).  The first conversation topic over frosty Coronas at the meet & greet is, “where are you from?” —- “We’re from Syracuse,”  “I came here from Philadelphia,”  “Minneapolis,”  “Argentina,” etc.    Same thing with the Florida scrub-dwelling Oaks.  They all came to Seabranch State Park from different directions, different relationships, different histories.  How’d they all get together in the same scrubby sandbox?  Fairly remarkable, so Floridian, and just like human Floridian transplants, they have their own subtle climate preferences, especially with respect to differences in soil water on that scrubby sugar sand.  We’ll return to that.

You can divide the local Oaks into three distinct species alliances, the Red Oaks, the White Oaks, and the Live Oaks.

Representing the Live Oak species group, in Seabranch, we met Sand Live Oak (Quercus geminata) and Dwarf Live Oak (Q. minima).  From the Red Oak Guild was pretty Myrtle Oak (Q. myrtifolia).  Chapman’s Oak alone hails from the White Oak gang.

Today it is all about Chapman’s Oak.  Wonder why it is so rare in cultivation?  Apart from any necessary symbiotic microbial partners, its soil moisture preference is under 7%!  (Sand Live Oak, by comparison which is cultivated prefers over 12%.)  Chapman’s Oak, perhaps by dint of longevity, can extract water from fairly deep scrub soil, recorded down to over 6 feet.  It initiates leaves during the early rains of Spring, having them in place during the long hot summer and early autumn.  As the dry season rolls around, Chapman’s Oak is particularly prone to have those oversized leaves dehydrate internally…drier than any of several scrub species measured.   Remember our worries above how big leaves may dry out.  They seem to, to a point, but under protected control, on schedule, and basically okay.  Mother N watches over her Oaks.

Chapman’s nearest relative, as revealed by DNA, is the so-called Bastard White Oak (Q. austrina).  BWO inhabits more-northern Florida and beyond on soil with more moisture.  In short, you might interpret Chapman’s Oak as a heat-seekin’ dry-lovin’ derivative of its bastard northern cousin.

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Note:  Technical data largely from article by J.  Cavender-Bares and collaborators.  Phylogenetic Overdispersion in Floridian Oak Communities. Am. Naturalist 163:  823-843. 2004.

 
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Posted by on September 7, 2014 in Chapman's Oak

 

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Sand Pine

01 Feb

Sand Pine

Pinus clausa

Pinaceae

Friday John and George visited Seabranch State Park near Hobe Sound, a scrub area, or you might say a scrubby pine woods.  Except for a mantis praying, not much out of the ordinary, so we enjoyed the ordinary dominant Sand Pine trees.

Praying Mantis

Praying Mantis.  All of today’s photos are by John Bradford.

Two pines are native in our usual haunts, one being Sand Pine and the other Slash Pine. CLICK  Sand Pine tends to be a small gnarly hurricane-whipped scrub tree, although, given a chance, it can reach 60-80 feet tall.   They mature quickly, able under ideal conditions to form cones at under a year old, often reproducing by five years.  Yesterday we saw mature cones on the trunks of youngsters.  That’s one way of coping with fires and hurricanes: make seeds before trouble hits.

Sand Pine in the scrub.

Sand Pine in the scrub.

Todays the pines were maturing male cones resembling small yellow cigarettes, some already releasing pollen.    The emerging female cones are about the size of a pea, but scaly.  They take two years to mature into the familiar woody pine cones, and may remain on the tree for many more years until fire separates the scales and allows the seeds to fall onto the fire-cleared ground,

Young male cones.

Young male cones.

The Sand Pines in South Florida tend to have “serotinous” cones, that is, requiring fire to open up, although a walk in the woods shows some to open fireless.   “Clausa” means closed-in.  Oddly, there exists a second, northern, population in and near the Florida Panhandle separated from the southern distribution by a geographic gap.  The northern population has non-serotinous cones.  That is, they differ from the southern Sand Pines by having the cones open when mature and letting the seeds flutter without benefit of flames.

Young female cone

Young female cone

Now hold on there, that’s interesting.  To reiterate, we have a species spread the length of Florida with a gap in the middle.  North of the gap the cones open up, whereas south of the gap the cones wait for fire, although these tendencies are not 100%.  The difference has led some botanists to classify the northern open-cone-pines as one variety and the southern closed-cone-pines as a separate variety.   (Variety is a category below species in the classification hierarchy.  Species can be subdivided into varieties.)

This mature female cone opened with no apparent help from fire, even though it comes from the southern "closed cone" population.

This mature female cone opened with no apparent help from fire, even though it comes from the southern “closed cone” population.

The formal designation of two distinct varieties isn’t very convincing and doesn’t interest me much, but how that north-south difference in cone-behavior came about is something to ponder.  Three possibilities come to mind:

Possibility 1. Slow evolution.  Perhaps the two populations have been apart long enough for each to experience its own evolutionary divergence, with the cone difference being the most prominent distinction.  If that is so, was fire historically more a factor in the southern region than in the north?  Or could it be that in the cold north it is better to drop the seeds into the protective earth than dangle them in the frosty air?  (There are other serotinous pine species in northern regions.)  Of the three possibilities this one strikes me as most likely.

Possibility 2.  The southern population originating from a few closed-cone founders.  Maybe the Sand Pines originated in the north while most of Florida was submerged, and then maybe just by chance a closed-cone great ancestor jumped whatever gap(s) existed in prehistoric times to populate the southern region with its closed-cone descendants.  Scrub habitats at times of high water in millennia past were islands, and maybe a closed-cone “island” population developed and spread southward.  This possibility is called the “founder effect.”   There is a nice Wikipedia elaboration on this linked in the notes below.

Possibility 3.  Environmental cues.  Conceivably some environmental difference—soil, water, temperature—determines the cone type on any given specimen during its individual development.   If you have 10 years and a truck, you could plant some closed cone-types in the northern zone and vice versa and see if the reciprocal transplants each conform to their new digs.  Don’t hold your breath.

Possibility 4. None of the above, or a combination of factors.

Preliminary DNA study shows more variability within each of the two Sand Pine populations than between them.   In other words, DNA so far does not support recognition of two different named varieties, although there seem to be minor differences in their reproductive cycles.   The southern closed-cone types tend to be more uniform in age and in genetic variation (over small distances) than their northern counterparts.  Such uniformity might result from uniform repopulation after fire or hurricanes like grass regrowing uniformly after mowing, or maybe it comes from possibility #2, the founder effect, given that a small founder population would be less diverse than the large, widespread population to the north.

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Notes:

CLICK

CLICK AGAIN

Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Founder_effect

 
10 Comments

Posted by on February 1, 2014 in Sand Pine

 

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Root Parasites—Green Mammals?

26 Oct

Black Senna  

Seymeria pectinata

Orobanchaceae

Yesterday John and George tiptoed through the toadstools the Seabranch State Park near Hobe Sound.   The area we explored is a coastal upland scrubby pine woods, and it was beautiful in the comparatively “cool” October morning.  Much of the area is in the light shade of a mixed-species pine canopy, with a carpet of white and green lichens around an odd scattering of Giant Airplants (Tillandsia utriculata) with inflorescences rising from the lichen-lawn vertically 6 feet or more.  Mushrooms were abundant and Keebler-Elf-ish.  Adding to the splendor of it all were flowering Liatris and Polygonella species…a celebration of blooming nature in its vibrant glory.  So why is today’s topic is a dead, black, root-parasitizing annual in its autumn death mode? (Hey, for pretty flowers there are blogs aplenty.)

Black Senna on white sand (floral photos taken earlier in year, by JB)

Black Senna on white sand (floral photos taken earlier in year, by JB)

Black Senna belongs to the plant family probably having the largest proportion of root-parasites, the Orobanchaceae.  We have a lot of known root parasites in Florida, and no doubt several undiscovered, especially if you allow indirect fungal connections in addition to direct assault of one root on a neighbor, as we’re examining today.  Most famously and conspicuous are plant species so dedicated to theft they do not even bother to make chlorophyll, for instance in our area  Squawroot (Conopholis)  and Indian Pipes (in the Azalea Family) as well as many other non-green parasites elsewhere in Florida.  The shrub Hogplum (Ximenia americana in the Ximeniaceae) practices the same, and makes green leaves (or greenish-yellow) leaves too.  We have drifted so let’s return to the Orobanchaceae.

 
Black Senna (JB)

Black Senna (JB)

Several Orobanchaceae look like “nice” wildflowers but snitch nutrition and water secretly from the roots of law-abiding neighbors.  Witchweed (Striga) is a widespread crop-destructive parasitic genus so good at theft it can survive in the dark if its host is in the light.

Common on our botanical outings is American Bluehearts (Buchnera americana),  which should be called instead, “American Sneak Thief” for its subterranean larceny.

American Sneak Thief (JB)

American Sneak Thief (JB)

More pretty little parasites are the False-Foxgloves, the many species of Agalinis in Florida and beyond.

Agalinis (JB)

Agalinis (JB)

Yaupon Black Senna (Seymeria cassioides) is a pine-tree root parasite causing commercial losses, and thus well studied.  Its young seedlings die if they do not make effective contact with pine roots early in life (unless perhaps the mother plant helps out—stay tuned).  The southern limit of Yaupon  BS is probably  just a tad north of where John and I botanize, but no worries, we have our own local Black Senna, Seymeria pectinata, also parasitic but not studied much.  A glance at one in fruit shows vast numbers or small seeds scattered to find a victim, probably failing to survive without quick host contact.  The plant is an annual, and its distribution is clumpy, reflecting perhaps good spots for snagging host roots.

Black Senna (S. pectinata) root haustoria (root-sucking organs) on BS roots yesterday (JB). The suckers are the parts that look like the business end of a plumber's plunger.

Black Senna (S. pectinata) root haustoria (root-sucking organs) on BS roots yesterday (JB). The suckers are the parts that look like the business end of a plumber’s plunger.

While wondering how a parasitic annual manages to survive from year to year, here is something to ponder:  In some root parasites the seedlings reportedly latch temporarily onto the long-suffering and self-sacrificing mother plant for nourishment until they graduate to a proper host of their own.  Whether or not this occurs in Seymeria is for somebody’s future Masters Thesis.  I never like those anthropomorphic books attributing plants with animal-like qualities, but nursing the young is pretty impressive for a lowdown root-sucking weed.

Hungry Witchweed seedling attaching to corn root (by RJ Musselman SIU)

Hungry Witchweed seedling attaching to corn root like a tick on a dog (by RJ Musselman SIU)

 
 
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Posted by on October 26, 2013 in Black Senna

 

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