Though this looks like artistic velvet flocking, it’s actually a closeup of a flower.
Persian carpet flower (Edithcolea grandis) is a desert plant from East Africa named for Miss Edith Cole (1859-1940) who found it in British Somaliland during a plant collecting expedition in 1895. It’s the only plant in its genus.
When you step back from the flocking, it looks like this:
Very beautiful. No wonder people plant it in desert gardens.
(both photos by Frank Vincenz from Wikimedia Commons. Click on each photo to see its original.)
Solidago, the genus name for goldenrod, is a member of the Asteracea or Composite family. In North America there are about 100 species of goldenrod, many so similar that it’s hard to tell them apart. Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide lists 29 species in eastern North America but I’ll bet there are more. Goldenrod can hybridize and eventually form new species.
Most goldenrods are “short-day plants” whose blooming is triggered by longer nights and shorter days. They are actually light sensitive to darkness and require lengthening periods of uninterrupted night in order to bloom. If their nights are interrupted by bright lights they don’t bloom at all. Fortunately moonlight and lightning don’t affect this. (I wonder if floodlights do.)
By July the nights are long enough to trigger blooming but most goldenrods wait for August. Early goldenrod is called “early” because it blooms just after the summer solstice.
Like all members of the Composite family, goldenrod produces windborne seeds with fluff to carry them on the wind. Composite seeds are so lightweight that strong winds can carry them thousands of feet above the earth where they’ve been found by scientists during atmospheric sampling. At this height the seeds can travel around the planet and eventually colonize remote oceanic islands.
Imagine this: A strong winter storm passes over Jennings Prairie in the months ahead. It blows the goldenrod seeds to atmospheric heights where they travel around the world and over the Pacific. Eventually the seeds land on Midway Island… and in some future September the offspring of Jennings Prairie bloom as an echo more than 5,000 miles away.
This morning I really examined a nasturtium for the first time.
Though it has five petals and sepals, the flower is slightly irregular in shape. The two upper petals have crenellated stripes, the lower three have feathery edges. Together they form a bowl but the bowl is porous. If you pull on a petal you can see that the petals and sepals aren’t connected.
Like many flowers, nasturtiums raise their stamens and pistil at different times in the blooming period. These line up behind the feathery lower petals and force visiting hummingbirds to hover rather than perch. No problem for hummers!
I say “hummingbirds” because the nectar in this flower is inaccessible to bees. It’s not in the bowl but in the long, narrow nectar tube whose entrance is a tiny hole. When I looked at the nectar tube I said “Aha!” It’s the same shape and size as a hummingbird’s bill.
We humans see the nasturtium’s face — and so does the hummingbird — but the real goal is that insignificant tube.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the photo to see the original)
This four to ten-foot plant has big flowers and odd leaves.
The leaves are 8″ long and 5″ across and grow opposite each other on the stem. The most amazing thing is that they are joined at the base to form a cup that’s large enough to hold water.
You can see the outside of the cup in this photo (red arrow). Click here to see the inside.
Some wild plants are completely edible. Others have both poisonous and edible parts. Still others are poisonous most of the year with a brief window when you can safely eat them.
Mayapple is one of the tricky ones. The entire plant is poisonous except for the ripe fruit.
Ripeness is key — don’t eat it too soon! — but good luck finding one. Wild animals usually consume them before we find the fruit.
Last weekend, Dianne and Bob Machesney found a ripe mayapple and decided to taste it. Dianne sent these photos and said:
“We found a mayapple that the chipmunks missed and it was ripe. I know that they are edible when ripe but never get to taste one before the critters. Bob cut this one in half and we shared it. It was juicy and fresh tasting, like a lemony cucumber and the good news, we are both still alive.”
The roots are another story. Dianne told me “legend has it that any female who digs up a mayapple will get pregnant” but I wonder how this legend came about. Native Americans used small doses of the powdered roots as a purgative/laxative but the dosage had to be small. Too much meant death.
In the 13th century an Italian named Fibonacci changed the course of history. In the process he used numbers to describe this spiral. Here’s how.
Fibonacci was a great mathematician in the Middle Ages. In 1202 he published Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation) to introduce the Arabic numeral system to Europe.
Until that time, Europe used Roman numerals for commercial bookkeeping. Imagine CCXLVIII + MDCCCLXXIX = what? The new math was adopted quickly because it boosted European commerce.
In his book, Fibonacci included lots of examples showing how to calculate using 0-9 digits with place value. He also included “story problems.” Here’s the rabbit problem:
If you start with 1 pair of rabbits, how many pairs will there be at the end of one year?
Start with 1 male and 1 female rabbit in a field
They produce 1 male and 1 female rabbit every month from their second month of age onward.
The young rabbits mature, pair up, and mate producing 1 male and 1 female per month from the second month of age onward.
The rabbits never die.
The answer is a mathematical pattern. Start with 0 and 1 and put them in a row. Add them together to produce the next number in the sequence. Put this number at the end of the row and add those last two numbers to get the next one. Keep doing this forever.
The Fibonacci sequence is: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610,…
These numbers also describe spirals.
Imagine drawing squares whose edge lengths are the units in the Fibonacci sequence. Each time you draw a new square, make it touch the ones you drew before. Because each number in the sequence is larger, the new squares touch the old ones on their long edge. Eventually you’ll notice that you are drawing squares in a spiral. …Yes, this is hard to imagine. Here are some real life examples and Vi Hart’s YouTube video that shows how it works.
I’ve only grazed the surface of Fibonacci in nature so if you’d like to learn more see this educational math website from Surry, UK that has good, simple examples and animations.
I hope I haven’t lost you in math! I get excited by these things.
Yesterday I found this plant blooming next to the Youghiogheny River at Ohiopyle State Park.
This is groundnut (Apios americana), a perennial vine with irregularly shaped reddish-brown flowers. The vine lacks tendrils so the entire plant wraps itself around nearby vegetation. I found it climbing Joe Pye-weed.
You might know groundnut by one of its other names — hopniss, pig potato, potato bean or Indian potato — most of which refer to its edible tuberous roots that are high in protein and look like small potatoes growing in a chain. Each one is about the size of your thumb.
Native Americans taught European settlers that they could eat groundnut but neither of them bothered to domesticate it the way the potato was domesticated in Peru. If they had, we’d probably be eating groundnuts today.
p.s. An attempt has been made to domesticate it. Maybe we’ll eat it in the future.
Here’s a beautiful picture of an unusual butterfly from Marcy Cunkelman.
It’s a giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes), the largest butterfly in the U.S. and Canada with a wingspan of 3.9 to 6.3 inches. Not only is it large but it’s a fast flier with a hopping flight pattern.
In the photo you see its light-colored underside but it looks completely different from the top: dark brown with yellow stripes.
I’ve never seen a giant swallowtail and I’m sure I’ve overlooked its caterpillar because the larva looks like bird poop (click here to see).
Marcy was lucky. She glanced out the window, saw the butterfly, and ran outdoors with her new camera. The butterfly obliged by pausing on ironweed while she took its picture.
“Plantain” probably describes its leaves which are rounded and basal like the common plantain weed. “Rattlesnake” comes from the rumor that it cures snakebite, though it doesn’t as far as anyone can tell. “Downy” is the one word that really applies. It has fine down on its leaves and stem which you can see in photograph above.
This orchid is easy to identify at any time of year. It doesn’t lose its leaves in winter and they have bright white stripes down their centers and white patterns along the veins. In my experience we have no other plant with leaves like this. (Someone correct me if I’m wrong!)
When in bloom, downy rattlesnake plantain’s ghostly white flowers cluster on a spike 6″ to 20″ tall. The plant’s silhouette resembles common plantain, though the flowers are much larger. From a distance the flowers look like beads with lips because the petals curve around the opening.
Though uncommon you’ll find this orchid in coniferous woods. In southwestern Pennsylvania I usually find it on a hill above a creek because that’s where our most common conifer grows, the eastern hemlock.
Watch for this downy orchid, now blooming in our area.
.jpg "Close-up of a nasturtium (photo from Wikimedia Commons)")
