The sedge masquerading as nutsedge

Yesterday I did a Sherwood Fox Arboretum tour with a group on campus (the Senior Alumni). We walked around a tiny corner of the campus, talked about a bunch of trees (but certainly not all!) that we saw on the way, they asked questions (I tried my best to answer most of them!), we laughed at my silly jokes, and then we all went on our merry way. If you're here reading my blog because I told you about it yesterday, welcome! I'm glad you found it. To the rest of the almost 21,000 of you that have discovered my blog: you're awesome! Thanks for helping make my "little project" turn into a rather large project read worldwide. I appreciate your eyeballs glancing over my blog every so often :)

Species name: Cyperus sp. (probably Cyperus strigosus)

Common name: false nutsedge

Location: Western University campus

Sedges are neat and wonderful plants, but most of them get completely overlooked by the average person. They are relatives of grasses (in that they're in the same order of plants, which I guess would make them cousins in a way), along with rushes, but have one notable characteristic that distinguishes them from the grass family. More on that later. A lot of people, even a lot of professional botanists and a lot of amateur botanists, completely ignore sedges (any kind of grass, really) when coming up with plants to identify because they're just so gosh darn hard to ID without a microscope. There are so many species of grasses and grass relatives that it is incredibly easy to misidentify them. There are only a few subtle characteristics that can be used to identify different species of grasses and sedges, most of which require the use of either a dissecting or compound microscope. Characteristics like the shape and size of the flower (in this species you can see the flowers in the bottom picture; they are about 1 mm long and are yellow, with the white stamens sticking out to disperse pollen), and the shape and size of the pollen grains (not pictured since that requires a microscope to see, and that would have required me collecting the plant which I don't normally do). Since I have neither of these to work with, the best that I can do is a "best guess" based on habitat (a place that regularly gets wet, and can be quite swampy at times), country location (North America), and colour of the flowers based on the time of year (many turn brown as the seeds mature, and seed maturation is in the spring for some species, the summer for others, and the fall for yet others). I know I definitely have the genus correct, this is most certainly a Cyperus. I'm also pretty certain about the species name (C. strigosus) because of the presence of wispy leaves at the bottom of the stem (many sedges only have leaves under the flowers, not also at the base of the stem), and the general shape of the inflorescences or the flower heads.

If I am correct about my identification, this species of sedge is native to North America, from Canada all the way south to parts of northern Mexico. It prefers disturbed areas, as this species is only good at competing for resources with other plants when there is low diversity and a large amount of available light. This is the same as many species of sedge; in established meadows it is rare to see a lot of sedges (although, at the periphery they might lead you to believe they might be common, since edge habitats are disturbed areas by definition). In areas of bare soil (like newly tilled agricultural fields or even backyard gardens), it is common for this plant to invade and spread rapidly. It can become invasive in some areas that are under constant states of disturbance, and is also considered an agricultural pest.

So what makes sedges, as a group, interesting? They look a whole lot like grass, and with one exception have no major economic value. The fascinating part about these plants is their stem structure: it's triangular. If you make a cross-section of the plant, it is incredibly obvious that the stem is triangular (mint stems are, as a general rule, square but some species have "rounded square" stems so you have to use your imagination a bit to see the square; this is not the case with sedges. They all have distinctly triangular stems). You can even tell that the stems are triangular in the middle picture by looking at the leaves emerging from just under the inflorescences: the largest leaves all radiate outwards from each edge of the triangle, and the smaller leaves under them radiate outwards from the three corners of the triangle stem. If you think about it, maintaining a triangle during growth would be incredibly difficult. The more you push the sides of a triangle outwards to "make room" for stuff on the inside, the more it becomes a circle. You'd think that after the stem was finished growing, it should be completely cylindrical and only have three ridges or bumps where the triangle's corners used to be. That's not actually what happens, since fully-mature sedges still have triangular stems. Plants aren't as simple as we think they are!

I mentioned somewhere up there that there's only one economically important sedge. Even at that, the economic importance of this species is significantly less than what it once was. I'll give you bonus points if you can figure out what it is (these points can be added to other hypothetical points you get in other places. You know, like bonus points you get for doing the dishes or walking the dog without having to be asked. Those kinds of points).

A monster looms in the bluebells...

Species name: Taraxacum officinale

Common name: dandelion

Location: Ontario

Feeling like you have deja vu? That might be because I've already blogged about dandelions before, but they were regular ordinary dandelions. This one is special! If you'd like to read my last blog about dandelions and learn a whole bunch of cool stuff about dandelions in general, you can do so HERE.

Dandelions are most likely native to Eurasia, but there's a significant debate about their origins. There have even been a few people to suggest that the true dandelion that carries this species name is only found in North America, and that there's a separate species in Europe. The Europeans always feel they have to be special... :) Regardless of the true species name, almost all dandelions are created equal: they flower in the spring when you're just trying to get your grass looking good again, most people hate them, they have taproots that are nearly impossible to get out of the ground unless you're weeding after a heavy downpour and the ground is wet (if you've never weeded after it has rained, give it a try. You'll thank me later. You're welcome), they have bright yellow flowers that turn into fluffy seed heads, and no matter what kind of biological warfare you use on them the always come back. You know, typical boring (some might say ugly, but I rather like them) dandelions.

Except this one!

Instead of just talking about why dandelions are cool, I wanted to talk about why THIS dandelion is cool. You can see right away from the top image, highlighted in the bottom two images, that the flower head of this particular plant doesn't look like a typical dandelion plant. This phenomenon is called "fasciation", and so this dandelion plant is fasciated. This means that all of the flower heads that would have developed into their own flower under normal conditions have, for some reason, fused together and created a mutant giant flower head (caused by the fusion of many separate meristems at the end of the inflorescence stalks). This, to me, is one of the most fascinating phenomena of the plant world, and has been documented in over 100 species of plants. The best part? No one has any idea why this happens in any given plant. There are lots of ideas of why this might happen in general: exposure to radiation, attack of a virus, exposure to low doses of specific chemicals (like 2,4-D, or Roundup, for example), mechanical disturbance, insect damage, or genetic mutations. But could anyone tell you why THIS PLANT became fasciated? As of our current knowledge, no. You could definitely speculate and come up with the most likely scenario but you would never be 100% sure (and there are likely other reasons why this happens that are currently undocumented). Normally this phenomenon is incredibly rare in the plant world, and to see it would be a real treat...except dandelions. Apparently dandelions do this all the time! Silly plants. The speculation here is that in this plant species it is more than likely pre-determined by genetic mutations that can be passed on through the seeds, but also exposure to common pesticides like 2,4-D also play a role (and dandelions are always on the end of chemical attacks, it seems!). Unfortunately, someone ripped this plant out of the ground (and by someone, I mean the people that do grounds maintenance on campus) before it had a chance to finish flowering and turn to seed. I would have loved to continue taking pictures of the flower development and collect some seeds to see if I could grow a new fasciated dandelion! Yes, I know what's coming. "You know you're a nerd when..." :) Don't worry, Mom and Dad. I would have done it in the greenhouses at school!

Have you ever seen a fasciated plant? Now that I know it exists, I saw the remains of a fasciated tulip growing in a bed on campus. Fascinating fasciation!

EDIT: I guess I should mention that this phenomenon isn't just restricted to the plant world; it also happens in fungi. Next time you're in the grocery store and have some time to kill, go pick through the bin of shiitake mushrooms. I bet you'll find a mushroom with a single squashed-looking stalk with two caps on the top. Fasciated shiitakes are quite common; I guess that makes the shiitake the dandelion of the fungus world!

The last of the palms: Otto von Bismarck's tree

Species name: Bismarckia nobilis

Common name: Bismarck palm

Location: Dominican Republic

Well, we have finally come to the end of my images from Dominican Republic, and this is my last plant species to profile from my lovely vacation in February (I can't believe these pictures have lasted me until May! I need to go on vacation more often...). I figured since it's the last one, I should probably go out with a bang...

The Bismarck palm is native to, like almost all palm species, Madagascar and is declining in numbers there (like many, if not most, of their endemic plant species). The fertile land is being cleared and converted to agriculture, with a few select trees being saved to represent landmark "specimen trees" throughout the landscape. Bismarck palms can be incredibly long-lived, have enormous canopies if given enough space, and provide great shade and habitat for other species. By leaving even just a few Bismarck palms, Madagascar is potentially saving tens of species who use these trees as refuge. Unfortunately, agricultural crops are worth far more money to the economy of Madagascar, and these trees likely don't stand a chance of sticking around for long. It's a shame; a country that was once one of the most biodiverse locations in the world is now becoming a barren agricultural landscape. I know I've poo-poo'd on Madagascar in a few blog posts, but the more people know about their biodiversity crisis the more that can be done about it. World economies really need to start putting pressure on countries that house the most diversity to stop cutting down forests because the species themselves have some sort of economic value. It's a slippery slope once you put a price on diversity, but it's true what they say in the business and commerce world: Money talks. Fortunately for the worldwide population of Bismarck palms, they are planted in huge numbers around the world as ornamental species (in the tropics and sub-tropics; they can actually survive temperatures as low as -6 degrees Celsius for short amounts of time). There are two main varieties of this tree: the green kind that's pictured above, and a variety that is almost blue because of a very thick layer of wax that is deposited on the outside of all of the leaves (which you might guess would be much more tolerant of drought and cold snaps; you would be correct with that assumption).

Bismarck palms are some of the most easily recognizable palm trees in the entire world...once you know what you're looking for. They have characteristic fan-shaped fronds with a very thick petiole connecting the leaves to the trunk of the tree. These petioles, as you can see from the image with the pink arrow, are curved presumably to allow the fronds to sway from side to side but prevent the snapping of the fronds if shaken up and down (since we all remember from elementary school that an arch is much stronger than a straight line...right?). This also provides a really unique habitat for animals, other plant species, fungi, and even bacteria since all of the rain that the fronds catch is funnelled down the petiole towards the trunk of the tree. Because the bases of these petioles are so warm and moist, they usually rot right off the tree before the leaf has a chance of dying, especially in very warm, wet areas. The inflorescences produced are also quite characteristic, and look a bit like marine ropes emerging from the base of a leaf. These mature into flowers (some male flowers are pictured in the 8th image; you can tell because they are full of stamens and very little of anything else), which either produce pollen or ovules. These trees, like the pacaya palm (which you can read all about HERE), are dioecious meaning one plant either produces male or female flowers but never both. The trees with the female flowers end up producing the fruit, which starts off green when immature and ripens to be yellow or brown (you can see the green fruit in the bottom image). The fruit are not reported to be edible by humans, although I'm sure someone somewhere has tried them. These are the preferred fruit of some birds and other animal species, so these trees do play an integral role in the food webs of the ecosystems they're living in.

I keep mentioning that these trees are integral parts of their ecosystems, so I think it's about time to show you what I mean. In the two pictures below (the same image, the first one is unaltered and the second one has a bunch of boxes around interesting features) you can see symbiotic plants and animals all living in the same tree:

The green and yellow boxes show the fruit of the Bismarck tree: the green box shows the immature green fruit and the yellow box shows the more mature yellow and brown fruit. Inside the pink box are three different species of plants, the heart-shaped leaf vine, the oval-shaped weedy plant, and the roundish-shaped weedy plant. What these species of plants are I have no idea; they were about 15 meters in the air and I wasn't about to climb the tree to find out! There are also a whole lot of sticks at the top of the tree, which is weird (in the purple box). In fact, I'm guessing that's the way those three plant species managed to make it up into the top of that lone tree; there are no trailing stems or roots to suggest that they "climbed" up there. In the orange box we have a lone bird, who seems to just be hanging out on an old petiole of a leaf. But is he really?

Well, Mr. Bird there isn't actually just hanging out on a petiole by chance; he's protecting his nest. Yes, that massive thicket of twigs was more than likely made by that ridiculously tiny bird (you probably are aware of the species; we call them "that brown bird that makes all the noise at 5 am during the spring" and this common name probably reflects about 500 species of bird). In fact, we stood under the tree for a while and watched more than one of these little brown birds fly to and from the nest; there's likely a whole family of them living up there. In hindsight, it was probably pretty stupid standing under the tree staring up at them (not that I'm afraid of a tiny brown bird or anything): if you're really observant you'll see white patches all over the underside of the palm fronds. Those aren't patches of fungi. Those are patches of "bird paint."

Here's another example of plant species that exploit this tree. Again, I have no idea what species this is since they're just tiny seedlings, but these are growing from seeds that would have been blown down those arc-shaped petioles and landed at the base of the leaf where there is likely an accumulation of organic material that is damp and warm: perfect conditions for plants (amongst other things) to germinate. These plants likely won't last long being squished into a petiole like that, but depending on what species they are they might be able to complete their entire life cycle without ever leaving the protection of their host plant. If those are species that are perennials or require much more space to grow, they'll likely die before producing anything substantial.

And, like I promised in my first blog post about pictures of plants I took while in the Dominican Republic, lizards also call this tree home. These pictures represent what is likely two different species of anole lizard (Anolis spp.) that are in all likelihood native to Dominican. If you think about it, these trees are absolutely perfect habitat for lizards to hide from predators in the petiole hollows, build nests at the bases of petioles, and jump from leaf to leaf to catch bugs to eat. They were pretty curious as to what I was doing holding a camera so close to their home; I guess I did neglect to ask them permission to photograph their treehouse. Next time I'll make sure to bring "lizard waivers" with me!

I hope you've enjoyed the rather long series about "Plants in the Dominican Republic" over the last few months! 

The Magnificent Mango

Species name: Mangifera indica

Common name: mango, Indian mango, common mango

Location: Dominican Republic

The mango tree, the largest fruit tree in the world, is native to India and Pakistan, but was brought very early in the domestication process to the Philippines (the native mangoes to India and Pakistan were once thought to be a different species than those in the Philippines, but now we know they're the same species with different locally selected features through traditional breeding). I was under the impression that "mangoes" were a single species with some variation in fruit characteristics due to traditional breeding, but it turns out that there are over 70 species in the Mangifera genus, about 25 of which produce edible fruit that are "mangoes." The Indian mango is the most commonly grown in the world, and other species are grown on a much more localized basis. This genus is in the family Anacardiaceae, which is probably a very unfamiliar name. It will be very commonly known once you know the common name: the Cashew family. It also has some other, not so nice members: poison ivy and sumac (a very popular ornamental genus). Both of these species can produce intense skin irritation and rashes, and some people being so sensitive to poison ivy that sumac (sometimes called staghorn sumac) and mangos produce the same effect. The cashew is only the seed of the cashew apple (which does look remarkably like a mango!), so it is unlikely that someone with a hyper-sensitivity to poison ivy would have the same result with a cashew.

You'll have to excuse my poor photograph of a mango inflorescence; the wind was blowing quite hard and it was nearly impossible to get the flowers still (I was even pulling on the bottom of the branch in the photo to try to stabilize the flowers...). I hadn't had any rum that day (yet), I swear! :) The flowers are usually quite inconspicuous, but the sheer number of them make a mango tree in full flower a sight to behold. Almost the entire tree turns yellow, and the scent is also quite impressive. Each flower, if pollinated, could become a mango. Some trees produce 20 mangoes per "bunch" during their peak in productivity! With hundreds of bunches on a tree, that's a whole lot of mangoes.

Mangoes are incredibly important fruits around the world for a variety of reasons. In India and Pakistan, the fruits are not only eaten (and if you go to an Indian restaurant, count the number of dishes that contain mango in some form!) but the mango tree leaves, skin of the fruit, and fruit itself is used in their traditional herbal medicines (called ayurveda). It is believed that the mango can clear the digestive tract that is blocked due to vatta or heat. This might sound like a bunch of hogwash, but if you consider how spicy some Indian food is (in other words, contains "heat"), the addition of mangoes to that dish, or eating them on the side, has a real calming effect on the taste buds and the esophagus leading to the stomach. In North America we wouldn't give these digestive issues the same fancy terms, but if you want spicy food to taste less spicy, eat it with a mango! To Hindus, the perfectly ripe mango is regarded as a symbol of high attainment and perfection, and Lord Ganesha is often depicted holding a ripe mango in either his trunk or in one of his hands. The mango itself is the national fruit of India, Pakistan and the Philippines, while the tree is the national tree of Bangladesh.

Don't squish this spider!

BLOG UPDATE: Good news! I have now gone through all of my pictures from my vacation (can you believe that I took 600 pictures in a single day twice?!), and organized them into "plant pictures," "lizard pictures," and "other" pictures. Since I have so many of them, I might even find a way to squeak a lizard picture or two into a blog post somewhere down the line...

Thanks for bearing with me during my weeks of sporadic activity! Back to regular blog posts we go.

Species name: Hymenocallis speciosa

Common name: spider lily

Location: Dominican Republic

The spider lily, which should be incredibly reminiscent of my last blog post about the potted bulb of the "amaryllis" (which you can read all about HERE), is native to Dominican Republic and other islands in the West Indies. It has been spread all over the world in tropical and sub-tropical areas where it is very popular as an ornamental garden plant (it doesn't do nearly as well in a pot as the traditional amaryllis). While not the same genus, the "amaryllis" and the spider lily are very closely related, and have many characters that are similar between them.

One notable difference is how the flower itself looks. In the spider lily, the tepals are fused into a bottom structure called a staminate cup. Here, all of the stamens (and hence the name of the cup) emerge from the centre of the flower and produce huge amounts of pollen. The bottom of the cup is also where the nectaries are formed, and if you catch the flowers as soon as they open they reportedly have a very strong vanilla-like scent (I can't speak for that since all I smelled most of the trip where these flowers were growing was sunscreen and BBQ!). The seed pods are also quite different than in Hippeastrum; instead of being located on stalks coming off of the inflorescence stalk, they are sessile (or directly attached by their base to the stalk of the inflorescence). Other than those two differences, the leaves look nearly identical, the bulbs are completely indistinguishable from Hippeastrum, and the flower buds before they open look nearly identical.

The growth form of this bulb and where it thrives is also very different from the traditional houseplant amaryllis, and can be used as another easy way to distinguish the two genera. Hippeastrum does very poorly when submerged for any amount of time, and that's one of the reasons why it is recommended when you have an amaryllis in a pot that you water it from the bottom to prevent drowning the bulb. Hymenocallis, on the other hand, can grow in swampy areas where the bulbs are completely submerged in water for months at a time. They do require a dry period to store enough nutrients to support flowers the next year, but this doesn't have to be a significant amount of the year. Also, it does very well growing in pure sand, which is incredibly unusual for a plant since sand contains very few nutrients (the soil is so porous everything just flows right through). Since these plants are such popular ornamental species in the areas where they are native, their status as a common species is secure.

Probably not the chenille you want to knit with

Species name: Acalypha hispida

Common name: chenille plant

Location: UWO Greenhouse

The chenille plant, also called the Philippines Medusa and the fox tail, is native to a set of small islands off the coast of Australia, between Australia and Indonesia. It has now been domesticated throughout much of the world with a warm climate year-round (it is not frost-tolerant) such as the southern United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Belize. It is still common throughout all of its native range, and much of its naturalized range.

The chenille plant can almost be considered a domesticated plant in some areas. It no longer does well in the wild in some spots it has been introduced because we (as humans) have subjected it to artificial selection to favour traits we like. The inflorescences, while usually having quite a bit of "fur" on them, were much shorter and much less hairy in the wild ancestors than the ornamental varieties sold today. This is considered artificial selection as this would never have happened naturally in the wild; increasing the hairiness of the inflorescences actually decreases the plant's ability to disperse their seeds. Not a good thing if you're the plant! There are also some cultivars of ornamental plants that have orange and even yellow inflorescences as opposed to the "natural" red colour (but this has also been artificially selected for increased intensity).

The family that this plant belongs to is called the Euphorbiaceae, or the spurge family (sometimes the euphorb family). The easiest way to determine if a plant belongs to this family is if it produces a milky white latex from the leaves when they are broken (which you can see dried on the leaf's surface in the third photo). If so, chances are much higher it belongs to this family than not. If you have sensitive skin like I do, you'll also probably find out the hard way that euphorb latex is extremely irritating to sensitive skin, completely separate of whether or not you have a traditional latex allergy. This should probably suggest to you that perhaps this plant shouldn't be consumed if it has the ability to burn your skin on contact, and you would be correct. The chenille plant is deadly toxic to small animals, and would make any human that tried to eat it very sick. If you have cats, you might want to reconsider before buying this plant (either to plant outside or as an indoor plant); my cat would mistake the inflorescences for cat toys in a heartbeat and it would likely be a deadly mistake.

Flamboyant Flamingo Flowers

Species name: Anthurium sp.

Common name: Flamingo flower

Location: UWO Greenhouse

The common name "flamingo flower" actually refers to an entire genus of plant species; Anthurium is estimated to contain 1000 or more species with almost all of the diversity of this genus existing in the South American tropics. There are a few exceptions, but none of them are notable. Approximately 3/4 of the species known in this genus are either threatened or endangered due to habitat loss, which makes the entire group incredibly vulnerable to extinction. These flowers are actually remarkably difficult to grow from seed in a greenhouse, so plants in some locations were hunted almost to complete eradication for the international tropical plant trade. Now, ornamental species are grown in greenhouses and propagated from cuttings, which means two things: first, they are no longer collected in the wild (or at least very little wild collection), and second the populations grown in cultivation are all genetically identical. This could be devastating for the flower trade (and once again for the wild Anthurium populations) if there was a pathogen that invaded greenhouses and flower plantations and wiped out all of the plants because they had no resistance.

The Anthurium flower, like the Jack-in-the-Pulpit flower (which you can read all about HERE), is a specialized type of flower. Anthurium species break all the rules when it comes to determining if a plant is a monocot or a dicot. Monocots have flower parts in multiples of 3s, and have long, narrow leaves with parallel veins. Dicots have flower parts in multiples of 4s or 5s, and have wide, broad leaves with net-like veins. Anthurium is a genus of monocots with broad leaves, veins that are somewhere between parallel and net-like, and have one inflorescence made up of tiny flowers that have their flower parts in multiples of four. Someone should tell these plants that they need to read more botany books to learn the rules! Anthurium flowers are made up of two parts: the spathe, or the white shield-like petal surrounding the rest of the inflorescence (its role is to attract pollinators), and the spadix which houses all of the tiny little flowers (thousands of them less than 1 mm across!). On the bright side, we've made up a new rule concerning the ways to tell monocots and dicots apart when the plants refuse to read books: whenever you see a plant with an inflorescence made up of a spathe and spadix, it's always a monocot!

The blueberry-like white aster

Species name: Symphyotrichum ericoides

Common name: white aster, heath aster

Location: Ontario

This species of aster is native to much of North America, from Canada all the way south to Mexico. It has been introduced as an ornamental plant around the world, and is sold as a popular garden plant. One of the common names, the heath aster, comes from the fact that the leaves are notably not aster-like; they are instead very thick and almost bristle-like, which is characteristic of the blueberry family (or Ericaceae). For Latin names, wherever you see the ending "-oides" at the end of a species epithet (the "second name" of a species), that means "looks like." Like most white flowers with yellow middles, with multiple ray florets and disc florets (i.e. anything that looks like a daisy), this plant used to be classified in the genus Aster until DNA analysis showed it was in a different genus.

The story of this plant being sold in nurseries for ornamental usage is a long and complicated one, and shows how important it is to be able to identify plants when you're landscaping a garden. This is by far the most common "small, daisy-like plant" sold in garden stores, carrying the name "white aster" or "heath aster." Unfortunately, very little of what is being sold is actually the correct species of plant. More commonly it's misidentified S. dumosum, S. lateriflorum, S. pilosum or S. racemosum. This isn't a real problem in Canada and the United States since all four of these other species are also native, but in Europe this could be a big problem since only two of these species, S. dumosum and S. pilosum, can become invasive. Always make sure you know what you're buying and try to identify the plant yourself if you can (if the plant is mature enough to identify!). This problem has apparently been occurring continuously since the mid-19th century!

Most Symphyotrichum species are hardy, and resistant to infections. The exception, however, is when the plants are planted in close proximity with other plant species, and planted where the soil can not dry out fully between waterings. The roots of this plant (and the stem at soil level) are very susceptible to fungal infections, but this problem is all but eliminated when the plant is on its own in a sunny area. Something to keep in mind if you're going to be landscaping a garden in the spring.