Friday, May 31, 2019

Bloomlist for May 30, 2019


    This week's bloomlist for Wildflower Island is at the end of the post, and Bonnie's pictures
    can be found HERE. Peterson names are used for consistency wherever possible, and comments
    and clarifications are welcome in the comments section.



I was away this week and didn't get to see the Phoebe bird, whose family members (?) we often see around the gatehouse. Bonnie got a picture of this one at the bird blind.


Some comments on the Thimbleweed and Canada Anemone, which bloomed this week, a little later than some of the other members of the Buttercup family that we've been seeing for several weeks.

I just noticed there are two species of what Peterson calls "Thimbleweed." There's apparently been some dispute over the taxonomy based on size of anthers and seed heads, according to Wiki.

Peterson doesn't mention that particular dispute, but differentiates its two kinds by the shape of the bottom of the leaf: rounded in A. virginiana and more wedge-shaped in A. riparia. Based on that description, ours looks more like riparia, but saying that, Wiki mentions that some taxonomists list the A. riparia as A. virginiana var. alba, and others call it A. virginiana var. riparia. Not for me to choose.

Illinois's picture of the A. virginiana (right), which it calls "Tall Anemone," has the more round-bottomed leaves, the kind that Peterson seems to think separates it from the riparia.

Main take-away, though, with the Thimbleweed:
  • Sepals not petals, 
  • The center thimble-like "mound" or "cone" consists of a ring of stamens with yellow or light brown anthers surrounding a green pistillate seedhead that elongates as the sepals drop, eventually turning into a "fluffy mass with numerous dark seeds" that according to Illinois "remains attractive all winter" — when we never get to see them!
  • Deeply cut leaves are in a couple of whorls: they're on petioles (stems) and are further cut into shallower lobes. 
Below are close-ups of the blooms and fluff from Minnesota Wildflowers.

        

The leaf of the Canada Anemone (Anemone canadensis) is deeply cut but sessile, as shown in Andy's Ontario site on the right.

Again, the white sepals are very petal-like, as seen better in the close-up (below) from the Illinois site.



It's fun to compare this bloom with the Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora) below, which also just opened this week.


Also in The Woods are another two that are fun to compare. Below on the left are Bonnie's pictures of the pale blue aliens Bugle (Ajuga reptans) and Gill-over-the-ground (Glechoma hederacea). As Mints, they have square stems and lipped blooms, but structurally and otherwise quite different in substantial ways. You can see how the Gill blossom is much more blotchy than the veined, but more uniformly colored Bugle. 

      
  


Bonnie got a terrific shot of the Cleavers.  Note the teeny-weeny flowers and the scratchy leaf edges, which makes it possible to wear a sprig of this thing on your shoulder like a brooch.



We knew at some point the Tulip blooms had to start falling down on the path from the high canopy.


 There's a wonderful article on this flower at Louis the Plant Geek, which talks about their need to have insect pollinators. I'll quote part of the discussion here.  So interesting.

Tulip Tree flowers are heavy nectar producers—probably a necessity to motivate pollinating insects to forage for food so far above their usual ground-level sources of perennials, shrubs, and small ornamental trees.

Tulip Trees are unusual even in needing insect pollinators: Most of the large hardy trees—i.e., anything you'd call a "shade tree"—bloom much earlier in the season, before their leaves have emerged.  They just release their pollen right into the air; from on high it's entirely likely to be wafted far and wide by the slightest breeze, so has a good chance of landing on another of that tree's blossoms long before it would hit the ground.

But the Tulip Trees' large leaves would block too much of the breezes to make wind-pollination practical.  Worse, the blossoms are marooned high on branches that are (usually) fifty, a hundred, even a hundred and fifty feet higher than most insect pollinators' normal daily foraging.  No wonder the flowers are so graphic and colorful, and provide such a big meal to the insects that do make the high-altitude visit.  Then they'll remember to come back—and to bring their friends.
I've just bookmarked Louis's website.  Looks like a lot of fun.

The bloomlisters didn't detail The Woods this week, but I've given you some possibilities of what went on last year at this time.  Next week back to normal.













Thursday, May 23, 2019

Bloomlist for May 23, 2019



    This week's bloomlist for Wildflower Island is at the end of the post, and Bonnie's pictures
    can be found HERE. Peterson names are used for consistency wherever possible, and comments
    and clarifications are welcome in the comments section.



Sorry to say am rushing out on a road trip and won't have notes til next week, but here's a couple of things:

A great picture of the Wild Ginger:


And here's some sedges I'll be working on in due course.










Thursday, May 16, 2019

Bloomlist for May 16, 2019



    This week's bloomlist for Wildflower Island is at the end of the post, and Bonnie's pictures
    can be found HERE. Peterson names are used for consistency wherever possible, and comments
    and clarifications are welcome in the comments section.



Swan babies have arrived! In the picture, one of them is to the left of the smaller adult in the water.


Just as you step onto the Island, there’s more signs of new life. A Highbush Blueberry ravaged mercilessly by the beavers is sprouting ton of new shoots.


Turning to the Phlox family, Illinois Wildflowers is so helpful in differentiating between Greek Valerian and Jacob’s-ladder — except in nomenclature, because they use the name “Jacob’s Ladder” for Polemonium reptans, which Peterson assigns to Greek Valerian. But very useful in its discussion are these points:
This is a rather floppy plant … with a distinctive appearance. The only other species that resembles it, Polemonium vanbruntiae [Peterson’s Jacobs-ladder], which is native to some of the Eastern States . . . [Jacob’s-ladder] is more erect in habit, and it has slightly larger flowers with exerted stamens . . . usually a darker shade of blue.
Importantly, P. reptans has “5 stamens with white anthers, and a pistil with a slender white style that becomes tripartite toward its tip . . . The stamens are the same length as, or shorter than, the petals of the flowers.” The stems of the P. reptans are green to reddish-green.


Perhaps the diagram on the right will help:
According to Wiki, the stigma (with a style at the tip) extends beyond the 5 anthers, as you can see in Bonnie’s picture from last week below left. Apparently, that makes self-pollinating difficult, mandating cross-pollination by insects.

To bring this point home, in the Jacob's-ladder, it’s the stamens, not the style and its stigma, that extrude way beyond the petals, as in the picture from the USDA on the below right. We do not have J.L. (P. van-bruntiae) on the Island.

 



A word about the very young Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris) we’ve seen growing bigger for the past few years. It’s in front of the boulder on the right side of the path near the Field Pussytoes. These new growths are called “candles,” and some people pinch them halfway so the plant fills itself out better (described here).

Below right is the white and fluffy, but hidden flower of the Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense), which you can't show anybody because it's too hard to get to. We're wondering why the Mottled Wild Ginger (Asarum shuttleworthii) hasn't bloomed at all this year.
More on the Northern Bayberry (Morella/Myrica pensylvanica) discussion from last week, trying to figure out whether the tiny growths along the branches were leaf buds or flowers. I believe now that they are flowers.

The Missouri Botanical website says the Bayberry is:
A mostly dioecious shrub (male and female flowers appear in separate catkins on separate plants). Neither catkin is showy, with only the male flowers displaying color (drab yellowish-green). Flowers on female plants, if pollinated, are followed by attractive clusters of tiny, grayish-white fruits in late summer which usually persist through the winter, but are not particularly showy. The fruits are covered with an aromatic, waxy substance which is used to make bayberry candles, soaps and sealing wax.
Here on the left is a picture of the blooms on the staminate (male) plant, and on the right are male and female flowers from a Cape May Identification guide:

  

I believe we have a female plant — obviously we do, since we always see the berries later on — and I'm thinking these protuberances along the stem in Bonnie's picture below are the female flowers, with tiny hairs sticking out of their tips.



In The Woods it was exciting to see the Long-spurred Violet (Viola rostrata) again. Below right is where you can find that patch; the picture was taken looking up the Witch-hazel hill, you can see the gate to the parking lot in the left top background.







The Hooked Buttercup (Ranunculus recurvatus) is blooming at the Waterfall Bridge. The name comes from the seeds, which is described on the website of the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden.  It says that at the base of the petals “is a ring of numerous stamens with yellow anthers which surround a green receptacle of pistils that lack styles.”

That “receptacle” is described by Illinois Wildflowers as a “dense green cluster of pistils" (see the picture below) that become "transformed into a dense cluster of flat-sided achenes with slender hooked beaks.”

On the right is a close-up from the Minnesota Wildflowers website, and there are some other greatly detailed pictures at that link, including the downward curving sepals (ergo recurvatus).




I wouldn’t say what grows on both sides of the bridge to the Island is the Common Duckweed (Lemna minor) species, but it’s definitely Duckweed, and I have unfortunately only just discovered that it is, in fact, a flowering plant. Not that you can see the actual flowers, they’re so small. It’s in the Arum (Araceae) family, all of whose members have a spadix like the Jacks.

Wiki says "Flowers are rarely produced and measure about 1 mm in diameter, with a cup-shaped membranous scale containing a single ovule and two stamens. The seed is 1 mm long, ribbed with 8-15 ribs."

Bonnie's picture is on the left, and I grabbed a picture of the tiny flower from GoBotany below right:

 

I was looking for when it actually blooms, but it might be all summer and we’ll never know from looking at it from the bridge. According to Wiki again:
L. minor can grow at temperatures between [43 and 91°F]. Growth of colonies is rapid, and the plants form a carpet covering still pools when conditions are suitable. In temperate regions, when temperatures drop below [42°F], small, dense, starch-filled organs called 'turions' are produced. The plants then become dormant and sink to the ground for overwintering. The following spring, they restart growing again and float back to the surface.

If someone knows more about its bloom, please jump in. I hate to put it on the list when I actually can’t see the flowers.




https://www.dropbox.com/s/yohu0g2q1d8qg38/2019-5-16.pdf?dl=0

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Bloomlist for May 9, 2019


    This week's bloomlist for Wildflower Island is at the end of the post, and Bonnie's pictures
    can be found HERE. Peterson names are used for consistency wherever possible, and comments
    and clarifications are welcome in the comments section.




Near the start of the path is a Speckled Alder (Alnus incana), whose blooms are perennially confusing.


This Univ. of Wisconsin link helps a lot, though.
They say:
This shrub is one of the first “wild” plants to flower each spring (usually only Silver Maple and Skunk Cabbage bloom earlier). It has long male “catkins" which open very early and shorter female catkins which mature over summer and, after dropping their seeds, persist into the next year. The leaves have not begun to emerge when the plant is in flower.
So we missed the buds because of the shrub’s height, and are now looking at new male catkins and last year’s females. Hard to see them against the Red Maple samaras in the background.


A miraculous time of year for the Interrupted Fern, which is looking very macabre in Bonnie’s picture (left). They’re really in their prime at this moment, compared to a week or so from now when the sori will start shedding spores and begin looking a bit moth-eaten.

Below is a group of white-petaled Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) to the right of the patch of pale blue ones. I'm pretty sure I’ve never seen these before, and I haven't found a separate species variety for them.








We may have missed a Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) around no. 13, as it was in that area last year for a couple of weeks. It's also possible that one or more of them can be found on the left side of the path between 5 and 7.

There’s some distinctive red galls (below) on a couple of small trees, which I didn't think to identify at the time, nor probably couldn’t have anyway.


One website describes them this way:
Spindle galls, caused by the mite Eriophyes emarginatae, are red spindle-like structures of leaf material caused by the mites feeding within. These tiny mites begin feeding as soon as cherry leaves expand in the spring. Although they can occur in large numbers, the galls will not stop leaves from photosynthesizing, and the trees will put out new leaves after mites are inactive. 
Wiki lists various Eriophyes spp. here, and different trees associated with these mites (e.g., maples, chokecherry, black cherry, linden, lime trees) are mentioned in various places. The Department of Agriculture put out a comprehensive monograph on them with lots of pictures, but I still can't pinpoint the one we saw this afternoon. Maybe it's the guy on the right.....









Here’s the Northern Bayberry stage we’re at now, which is decidedly not "in bloom" yet.

We're thinking that these are actually leaf buds along the branches under hefty clusters of opened leaves at the tops of stems.

But check out the stages of flower buds and blooms below right (from this website), particularly the one in the center, which shows the leafy top cluster looking the same as ours and decidedly free of leaves down the branch below it:







In the Woods, there’s a very beautiful Large-flowered Trillium (T. grandiflorum) visible from the path uphill from the Foamflowers area, in among the Witch-hazels. There are also some Smooth Yellow Violets (V. pensylvanica), matching all the characteristics in Peterson: stemmed with untoothed stipules, basal leaves and lacking the fine hairs of the Downy. But they hybridize, he says.

We may also have in The Woods what Peterson calls a Large-leaved Violet (V. incognita). Unlike the Cream Violet (V. striata) on WFI, this one is stemless. Efloras.org stipulates the V. incognita is synonymous with V. blanda, though it says further down the page that the taxonomy is as yet "currently unresolved":
[The incognita] is said to have pubescent leaf blades, greenish peduncles, nontwisted lateral petals, and a preference for moister habitats. Most of these characters fall within the range of variation observed in V. blanda. N. H. Russell (1965) noted that V. incognita is principally found in glaciated areas whereas V. blanda is found in nonglaciated areas.
Our area is glaciated. By the way, Peterson’s Sweet White Violet (V. blanda) has reddish stems and upper leaves twisted. GoBotany shows the reddish stems (right), our plant has green stems.

The North American Native Plant Society has a Large-leaved White Violet (V. blanda var. palustriformis), but not wishing to go down any further rabbit holes, I’m sticking for now with Peterson’s name: Large-leaved Violet (V. incognita).



These are the flowers of the Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor), which I suspect were blooming last week as well judging by the the thinness of the inflorescence.

Ithaca.com has an interesting discussion of trees and pollen here:
A pollen grain is a protein coat around the genetic material of the male plant. These proteins vary by species and some are more reactive with human immune systems. Some of the trees that most commonly give people problems are oaks, maples, and elms, although the list of “the worst” is much longer. Our immune response, said Pritts, is basically a flawed response to a perceived poison. With an allergic response “a body can’t distinguish between harmful and not harmful,” he said. “Over a long period evolution might straighten this out."