Cat-Tails Twistin’ and Chillin’ in the Wind

Typha latifolia and T. domingensis

(Typhos is Greek for marsh and is an ancient name for these plants, latifolia means broad leaves, and domingensis means lives in Dominica.)

Typhaceae

Cat-tails by John Bradford

Fuzzy corn dogs on vertical skewers.  Cat-tails we all know—big, abundant, curious-looking.   John and I photographed today in the Haney Creek Natural Area near Jensen Beach, Florida where the cat-tails were twirling in the breeze.  Two native species share Florida:

1. Typha latifolia has a huge distribution, in the U.S. from Florida to Alaska, and far beyond. Its male and female flowers are distinctively adjacent on the spike. The seedlike fruits burst in water.
2. Typha domingensis likewise has a broad distribution, on average preferring warmer places, and often in brackish water. This species has narrower leaves, and the male and female flowers have space between them on the spike.   Its fruits don’t rupture in the drink.

Typha flower spikes sometimes have developmental abnormalities, such as two clusters of female flowers where there should be one,  or stalks with male flowers only.   Our two species hybridize, and the oddities could conceivably be due to genetic mixing. The hybrids can have orange spikes.

Deformed spike

Countless historical uses for cat-tails range from medicines to weaving and thatch.  Miami botanist Julia Morton in 1974  listed hundreds of uses (see link 1 below).  The rhizomes are food, including  “Cossack Asparagus” in Russia, although local authors warn against consumption due to yuk accumulation.

What I like are the millions of fluffy windblown seedlike fruits.   Soaked in kerosene, the puffy spikes become torches, and the flammable seeds once gave dramatic theater lighting effects.    The pillowy masses stuff anything that needs to be soft or buoyant such as lifejackets during WWII, and even baseballs and cradle linings.

By JB. Look to the left.

Cat-tails love nutrients to a fault.   As waters become enriched with pollutant nutrients, most famously phosphorus, cat-tails expand and displace other communities.  They sometimes form extensive monocultures interlaced with rhizomes that start growing shortly after seed germination.   Typha domingensis has a positive role in stormwater treatment areas removing phosphorus pollution, yet a negative role as a pollution-fed invader degrading the Everglades.

Pure CT stand.  Leaves brown.

Now for the cool part—

The leaves come up arranged in a fan, and twist artistically in unison as the blades  grow upward.

Leaf blades twisted, and with blue sunscreen.

Why grow twisted?  Optimal positioning for photosynthesis?   Botanists have been pondering that question for a long time, sometimes in engineering detail.   Biophysicists Zi-Long Zhao,  Zong-Yuan Liu, and Xi-Qiao Feng  recently (2016) took a deep stab at it (link 3 below.)  Their study rests on the observation that the twisted leaves twirl in the wind like those twisted front porch wind-spinners.

We can see it happen:  CLICK FOR SHORT VIDEO TAKEN THIS WEEK

The biophysicists determined the twisted twirling to serve two functions:

1.  To reduce wind-drag on the plants making damage less likely, and 2. To reduce wind-induced vibrations.

Now do not get me wrong, I’m not questioning their elegant analyses and hard-science conclusions, yet forgive me for tossing in a speculative add-on with no data:

Many leaves, especially in wide open hot places, experience too much solar exposure, suffering direct sun damage, interference with photosynthesis, and excessive heat.  Many tropical species of open sunny areas have a special mechanism called C4 photosynthesis to protect their photosynthetic production from the blazing sun.  Cat-tails do not have this mechanism despite sharing hot sunny haunts with C4-equipped competitors.

Cat-tails thus may need some tricks of their own.   The blue waxy covering on Typha latifolia can be interpreted as sunscreen.  When the leaves twirl, no single surface experiences direct sun exposure continuously.    Instead the rays distribute evenly on both sides of the blade.  Moreover, the natural spinning fan blades probably  shed heat directly and by evaporative cooling.   Have you ever seen a sling psychrometer used for measuring relative humidity?   It works by twirling in the air a thermometer surrounded by moist wrapping.  Its evaporative cooling rate relative to a dry thermometer measures humidity.   Twirling and evaporating likewise, the Cat-tail leaf is a living sling psychrometer perhaps.

Relevant links:

1. Botanist Julia Morton and a million uses for cat-tails:  CLICK
2. Cat-tail weaving:  CLICK
3. Reference for Typha leaf twisting:  CLICK
4. Sling psychrometer:  CLICK

Pat Bowman after the blog appeared sent this cool video of the seed release.  Stand back and CLICK 

 

DOLLARWEED

Hydrocotyle umbellata  (and several close relatives in Florida)

(Hydrocotyle means water plate.  An umbel is the type of flower cluster shown below.)

Araliaceae (Apiaceae)

Dollarweed Flowers by John Bradford

Dollarweed today…a monoculture, with floating rhizomes.

John and I worked today at Haney Creek Natural Area.  A million bucks worth of Dollarweed there.   Did you know it is native?

To help out today I’ve invited a lawn specialist, Dr. Hoppy Lubber,  who agreed toshare 5 minutes of his precious time.

CLICK HERE

 

Air-Potato Yam

Dioscorea bulbifera

(Dioscorea honors ancient Greek physician Dioscorides.  Bulbifera manes “bears bulbs.”)

Dioscoreaceae

What’s the difference between a Sweet Potato and a Yam? Answer below.

Today was pleasingly a “normal botany Friday” under hot sun after too many weeks with distractions in John’s affairs and mine, more disruptions to come.  We worked today on a photo project at the Haney Creek Natural Area near Jensen Beach, Florida.

Air-Potato Yam there is a super-vine rising over six inches per diem bullying other vegetation all the way.  For yam-lovers that sounds like a top crop, but truth be told, the underground tuber is small and bitter to toxic.  The stem-borne tubers (bulbils) resemble potatoes in appearance, but again, not lunch.

Overhard spud. By John Bradford.

A superior yam producer is a very similar likewise local invader, the Winged Yam, Dioscorea alata, different most notably by having a 4-angled or winged stem (vs. round), a bigger better underground yam, and smaller aboveground tubers.

Now back we go to Air-Potato.    Its tough, durable, nasty yams provide an old explanation of how it came to tropical America, as ship-board grub, maybe on slave ships.  The cruise chefs were not picky.  Confounding this old notion, however, are recent DNA studies showing Chinese ancestry for Florida populations.   Multiple arrivals are likely.  Apparently the USDA, sparked by introduction-king David Fairchild, deliberately introduced Air Potato into Florida.   Rockstar horticulturist Henry Nehrling possessed the cursed vine by 1905, noting even then its aggressive demeanor.

In yam leaves all the main veins converge at the notch.  By JB.

As with other “edible” species, some cultivated air-potatoes are non-toxic or minimally risky with correct preparation, whereas other strains can be dangerous, in this case with toxic compounds so similar to human steroids they have been used in making pharmaceuticals.  The first birth control pills came from yam steroids.

This “potato” had dropped to the ground.  Looks like once there, it means business!  Taken today.

Whatever its edibility vs. toxicity, the plant has ancient history in food and medicine, especially in the Old World tropics, where it evidently originated, although where it is “native” is vague because humans moved it around even in ancient times.   The recorded historical medicinal uses would fill a page.  You name it. I don’t even know what some of those old ailments are.

When a plant invades, a  common course of combat is to seek its natural enemy in the invader’s homeland.   The enemy of my enemy is my friend.  True of Air-Potato, with the deliberately introduced leaf eating beetle Lilioceris cheni, which I hope remains our friend.

An obvious concern is the hit-beetle might expand its lethal ravages to native species, in the present case most notably Florida native yams.  Nobody would be dumb enough to unleash the destructors without testing their disinterest in the good species.  But, for neurotics like me, there remains the dubious doubt of potential change of tastes.  Such pest-of-the-pest introductions have run out of control before.  I think of it pessimistically this way…many weeds and insects have evolved immunity to pesticides;  it is commonplace, so why couldn’t some little enzymatic mutation allow the beetles to start munching non-target species?   And how effective are the beetles at controlling the naughty vine to begin with?    Skeptics are such nuisances.

I’ve no recollection of Potato-Vine in flower despite many field outings with my wife Donna’s ecology classes to examine it among other invasive exotics.  There are separate male  (pollen) and female (seed) individuals.   To the best of my Googling, male flowers seem to be unknown in Florida, and females rare.

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Sweet Potatoes vs. Yams.  I love both!  A sweet potato is in the morning glory family, and is a root.   A yam is unrelated, in a family among the monocots, with the edible part being a tuber, that is, a fleshy underground stem, or one of those air-borne bulbils.

 

Fiddle-Leaf Dock

Rumex pulcher

(Rumex comes from Latin rumo, to suck, because ancient peoples sucked the leaves to relieve thirst, see below.  Pulcher means pretty.)

Polygonaceae

Today splendidly in flower in a weedy meadow…I love weedy meadows!…was a locally rare treat called Fiddle-Leaf Dock.

Leaf looks a liddle like a fiddle if you see the resemblance.

It is one of 200 species of Docks enhancing most of the temperate world.  Like many Docks, today’s species is native to Europe and probably Asia, where plants of this genus are players in human affairs all the way back to that sucking mentioned above.   Docks are often called Sorrels, which is a flavor designation, not a botanical classification.   Sorrels tend to contain oxalic acid, giving them a “refreshing” acidy sour taste people still use for a quick pick-me-up.   I used to enjoy red Sorrel beverage in Barbados sweetened with Barbados sugar,  or with rum if you prefer.    Various Sorrels fall into divergent botanical groups, including  Hibiscus,  Oxalis, and Rumex sharing possession of oxalic acid or similar flavoring.  All this being so, Docks have long had a place in the kitchen and herb garden, where some cultivated species can be as pretty as they are tasty.

Taken today…pretty reddish tones.

Oxalic acid, even if refreshing in small doses, is bad for you in many ways, so please do not eat the weeds.   Species of Rumex contain also sometimes ascorbic acid, Vitamin C,  preventing knaves from becoming scurvy knaves.

Turning abruptly now to biology, species of Rumex have a particularly curious feature.  The fruit is a small seedlike unit called an achene (AY-keen).  Upon ripening it remains embraced in three persistent flower petals (technically, tepals)  serving as protective walls encasing the fruit.  Now for the weird part, either one or all three of these petals experience massive thickening of their mid vein into a thick glossy green, bright white, or red balloon called the tubercle. “Miss Kent” in The Magazine of Natural History described it well back in 1830:

The whole genus Rumex may appear strange at first sight on account of a tubercle (in some species very large) which destroys the outline of the flower. Some of these tubercles appear like little rubies, and add much to the beauty of the flowers.

Remember, the fancy tubercle is on the “petals” surrounding a tiny fruit, but why?  No single answer,  but first of all, the tubercle like a ruby is eye catching.  In Fiddle-Leaf Dock it is showy too, bright white rather than ruby.

Wacky fruiting units with the big white tubercles destroying the outline of the flower.  The fruit is hidden behind the tubercle-bearing petal.

It probably attracts birds, which for sure eat red or white berries and seeds.   “Grain-eating” birds are reported dispersal agents for Rumex.  Isn’t it convenient that the unit the birds sees and perhaps crunches is not the fruit itself,  but rather a false grain on the protective cover?   The actual tiny non-showy fruit presumably sneaks along for the ride achieving avian dispersal in one piece.    And there’s more:

Multiple botanists have documented an odd correlation between Rumex tubercle size and proximity to the sea.   Noticed too many  times in too many places by too many observers to ignore.  Large-tubercle species tend to be coastal, and far more interestingly, within single species bigger tubercles near the sandy shores and lesser ones inland.     That leads to the obvious suspicion of tubercles aiding sea dispersal as floats and as bumpers on abrasive sands.

If the oceanic adaptations are “the” function, why do inland species have tubercles at all? And why gorgeous little rubies and shiny white gems?   I’ll guess the tubercles probably started out serving variably as bird-bait as well as floats and bumpers, with those latter two functions gaining prominence in maritime habitats.  You know, sort of pre-disposed.

 

Three Petal Bedstraw…might curdle yer cheese and stain yer bones

Galium tinctorium

(Galium comes from Greek gala, for milk, because the plants have an ancient history for curdling milk, tinctorium means used for dye.)

Rubiaceae (Coffee Family) (Art by Heather Calderon)

Galium obovatum by John Bradford

John and I worked on weeds in Halpatioke Park today near Stuart, Florida.  How many species of weeds compete within a 100 yard square?   Bedstraws, species of Galium, are little weedy charmers in the Coffee Family with good looks, nice aromas, and historic roles in human affairs.  Galium is a huge worldwide genus, about 600 species.

Galium tinctorium by JB

Today’s species ranges essentially from the Arctic Circle through Florida to the tropics.  It likes low wet grassy places.

If you read the explanation of name above, you can stop reading now, as that is the story.   But if choose to proceed,  let’s start with the milk thing.   Vegetarians watch what cheeses they eat, or should, because most rennets (enzymes used to curdle milk proteins into cheeses) come from the fourth stomach of unweaned calves.   For those who want none of that, there are chymosin “fermentation” rennets using calf genes genetically engineered into microbes.    Behind door number three are vegetable and microbial rennets dating back into antiquity, and Galiums are among these.  Even better,  Galiums do not merely harden cheese, but they also color it ever so tempting.  (See their next set of useful attributes.)

Before that, however, a question:  Why would a plant develop the ability to coagulate animal proeins?  My guess is to deter herbivory, and that calls for an experiment.    Excuse me while I go fetch a piece of bedstraw to micro-nibble.  (Result below)

Red pigment in the weird fruits.

Bedstraws have a second set of ancient uses in addition to stuffing mattresses and making cheese.  Civilizations around the world use them as dyes.   They are very closely related to the madder dyes, and have quite a history of their own.   The lower portions of the plants and the roots yield a red or yellow dye.

Red pigment in plant base.

And that brings us to the final unwise use.  Please do not eat the weeds.   People have some history of eating some Galiums under certain circumstances.   I’ll say boringly that the plant is loaded with bioactive principles.  And far more interestingly, there is a report that eating Galium dyes the bones red.   I have no idea if that is so, but…..

 

Southern Needleleaf (revisited)

Tillandsia setacea

Bromeliaceae (Pineapple Family)

Tree of Tears

Live Oak – Quercus virginiana

Fagaceae

 

Today John had obligations so I did something botanical I enjoy near my home, perpetual exploration of Riverbend Park on the Loxahatchee River west of Jupiter, Florida,  living proof you do not need to go far for good times with Mother Nature.

Riverbend Park and the  contiguous Loxahatchee River Battlefield Park,  in these paragraphs jointly called “the park,” is the site of the two-phased 1838 Battle of the Loxahatchee where 1500 U.S. troops killed an unknown number of indigenous people to make room for St. Augustine grass lawns.

A park icon is the “Tree of Tears,” an old Live Oak in poor condition, where the Seminoles allegedly sheltered their battle dead and dying.   The historical connection between that specific tree and the battle history might be a little tenuous in a “scientific sense,” and it seems tacky for a modern author selling a book to dub the tree the “Tree of Tears.”  Apparently the Seminoles did not bestow the name on their tree.

Tree of Tears

Whatever its true history, the tree is a big gnarly old Oak among similar old gnarly Oak neighbors in the close company of likewise large Bald Cypresses and Water Hickories.  A magical, and noisy,  place with a drumline of three woodpecker species.

Southern Needleleaf on or near Tree of Tears

The massive Oaks are home to literally thousands of epiphytes representing numerous species,  with by far the dominant one being Southern Needleleaf,  Tillandsia setacea, a Bromeliad relative of Spanish-Moss, Ball-Moss, Cardinal-Airplant, and several others.      The Southern Needleleaf clusters can occupy the old (and sometimes young) Live Oaks lined up along the branches so numerously the tree looks like a Pine, since the epiphyte’s leaves are the size and shape of pine needles, although usually with a reddish cast.   This species has entered the blog before, and I feel moved to a redo.

Southern Needleleaf can occupy different host species, but in my experience around here it has a powerful predilection for Live Oaks.    Vigorously growing Live Oaks can sustain countess Southern Needleleafs which seem to shun the adjacent Bald Cypress and have little love for the Water Hickories.   Interesting pattern—Why?

Could it be the Oak leaves?   Let me explain.   Epiphytes share a problem:  they are rooted high, dry, and nutritionally deprived up on tree branches.   No roots in the earth.   They each have their own fascinating special  tricks for coping within treetop living.    Tillandsias in general, including today’s species, have a covering of umbrella-shaped scales on the leaves able to absorb water and nutrients in the water.

Southern Needleleaf basal covering of absorptive scales.

The scales magnified.

Southern Needleleaf has its umbrella-shaped scales concentrated at the bases of the long spindly leaves.   That is exactly the same place the leaf cluster functions as a trashbasket capturing fallen Oak leaves and other debris, including possibly insect frass. (Frass from insects…suggesting symbiosis?   Ohhhh,  that’s pushing things a little too far for the moment.)

Southern Needleleaf catches debris in its trashbasket at the same level as the heavy covering of scales.

The leaf blades have the upper-inner edges rolled into a vertical groove, especially at the leaf base trashbasket zone.   Picture a drinking straw slit along one edge.    The grove is perfect for catching water and organic debris, which is present and sometimes stuck to the scales inside the groove.

The groove at the inner-upper side of the leaf base.

Now, of course there are no data, no proof,  but those scales and that groove at the debris-catching level look to me like this plant’s pantry.

Microscope view inside the groove, with trapped compost stuck to the scales.

 

Lark Daisy and the Nanobots

Centratherum punctatum

(Centatherum possibly comes from Latin for “central prickle,” referring it seems to the flower head of a related species.  Authors differ on interpreting this name.  Punctatum means spotted, referring to the foliage.)

Asteraceae, The Aster Family

In Halpatioke Park, where John and I traipsed today, is a secret meadow sporting luscious regal purple wild flowers proud in the dappled sun.   The meadow looks more like a garden than a woodland.   It is a rogue garden.

Today’s photos by John Bradford.

We are accustomed to non-native plants.   Of the roughly 4000 species growing wild in Florida, well over 1000 are visitors.   It is not just melaleuca and Brazilian Pepper.   This blog is not a soap box, so ranting shall be not.  Suffice it to say that it jolts even the long-standing jaundiced eye to see garden flowers intruding in the woods.    Just ain’t right!  And I say that ruefully as director of a college horticulture program.  Yes, we have skeletons in the potting shed. That’s for a different blog.

We’ve got the uninvited purple posies so we might as well own them.  And, even if in the wrong place, at least pretty.  So say hello to Lark Daisy, a side-steppin’ garden flower distributed from South America to Africa, Hawaii, and Australia.

The fragrant leaves inspired the commercial cultivar name ‘Pineapple Sangria’  familiar to some gardeners.  As with many tropical weeds creeping northward in Florida, I’ll bet it likes Global Warming.

Anybody who has looked up a lot of plants over decades knows that every species on earth has a history of medical uses against something.   What’s more interesting is when a species enters modern medical literature with research-based applications against specific ailments.  Even then, however, you have to wonder if our modern plant-drug enthusiasms still often overlie old fashioned wishful thinking.   In 1818 they wishfully favored plants for treating the ailments of the day:  childbirth problems, dropsy, hemorrhoids, respiratory ailments, skin lesions, and wounds.

In 2018  we like plants with emerging potential against cancers, HIV,  inflammation, and malaria.  Modern times!  More specific, more scientific, yet still often across the Grand Canyon from efficacy.  But not always, just as traditional plant uses sometimes worked.*

Lark Daisy has invaded pharmacology.   Almost 60 compounds enhance its fragrant leaf oil.  Its extracts kill the malarial parasite handily, but oh rats, the stronger the detriment to the parasite, the more toxic the drugs are to human cells.  Lark Daisy drugs inhibit reverse transcriptase, the Achilles heel enzyme of the HIV virus.   You guessed it—again, the good antiviral compounds kill people cells.   But look on the bright side, killing human cells selectively has interest against cancer, and our plant inhibits proliferation of certain lab cancer cell cultures, not that that is rare in plant drug screenings.

If you’d like something more unusual and hi-tech, consider this:  how about Lark Daisy chemical derivatives on silver nanoparticles  to suppress inflammation.  Over my head, and an investment opportunity!

For all of these potentialities, of course the hard part is the step from the test tube to safe effective clinical applications.   Don’t hold your breath.

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*Yes, I am aware of several examples of traditional plant uses with effective benefits, and I am also aware that a large percentage of pharmaceuticals are rooted in the plant world.  No e-mails on this topic necessary.

 

Drymary, West Indian Chickweed

Drymaria cordata

(Drymos is Greek for forest.  Cordata means heart-shaped.)

Caryophyllaceae (The Carnation Family)

It was Halpatioke Park near Stuart, Florida, today for John and me.    We could talk about the dazzling Cardinal Airplants, or the gnarly Live Oaks overhanging the river, but nawww, how about a crummy little turf weed that sticks in your cuff?   So much more exciting!

Drymary sprawling

Drymary is an around-the-world weed.   Native to Florida?   Hard to be sure, some informed observers say yes, others deny.     There are no Florida collections of it before around 1900, but then again,  easy to ignore.    The stems mostly creep forth, loving moisture, happy in sol or sombra.   Sometimes they tower vertically to 8 inches, especially at flowering time.    It must reach up to deposit its seedheads on a passing possum.

I like weeds because we step on them daily, but if we stop,  look,  think, and Google they offer as much good botany as tropical tourism.

People like to eat this weed.  Why!?  Go to Publix and buy tofu jerky instead.   Some folks think plants come in two varieties…edible and inedible.  That’s not very nuanced, sort of like saying boys sort into good boys  and bad boys.     Fact is, most wild plants have chemical defenses against herbivory.   So before you get out the Asian Sesame Dressing,  here is a discouraging word, “The flower, fruit, seed and root have given very weak positive reactions for the presence of haemolytic saponin.”   Does the “very weak” comfort your apprehensions?  Do you feel lucky?

So then, if you don’t eat it, what’s Drymary good for?  How about smoking it?   The plant has a pleasant fragrance, and yes, it has been smoked.    I might have puffed some except for two things—a trip to the gas station for medical marijuana rolling papers.  And, well, there’s this, “Topical application must be done with caution as prolonged treatment causes burning.”

Stem with glandular hairs

So the best enjoyment of Drymary is nonconsumptive.  The stems have a coat of stiff hairs tipped with glistening droplets.  Maybe that is where the fragrance resides.  In any case, why all those sticky hairs?    Probably protection, maybe from ground-dwelling pests, and/or sun-baking.   Obvious possibilities, but there is more.

When your pants cuff  drags through the meadow the seed-heads snap off along with a short stem fragment.    The seed head itself has hairs, and the stem fragment acts like Velcro.    So, maybe then  possession of a protective hairy stem was pressed into service secondarily as a dispersal aid.  This is the one Drymaria species, out of almost 50, spread all around the globe.

My shirt with Velcro-stuck seed heads.

There’s another oddity.  Between the two opposed plate-shaped flat leaves, immediately below their bases, is a set of twisty-pointy Halloween fingers.  (Vocabularious readers may recognize these as stipules.)    We then ask in unison, what do those fingers contribute to the well being of the weed?

Funky fingers immediately below the leaf pairs.  What good are they?

My first idea favored preventing  soil buggies from climbing  to make pests of themselves.  Okay barricades maybe, but I went outside, plopped down on my sixpack abs, got the Velcro heads on my shirt, and saw something more interesting:

Little gem on the paired leaves just above the fingers.

The paired leaves collect water on their top surfaces, capturing beautiful glistening drops in the angle where the two leaves meet immediately above the fingers.   Do the fingers have something to do with holding the water a little longer, or influencing its drainage and distribution?   Maybe they help support the drop before it slithers down between the leaf bases, or more likely (and observed), as the drop falls between the bases, it can catch in the fingers.   Could the snag help the plant retain moisture?   I don’t know, but pretty to contemplate, if you like sprawling on the ground with fire ants and curious neighbors.  Your choice.

Droplet clinging to the fingers, or vice versa.

 

Leaves With White Veins

Today John and I started a new old project….to update and upgrade the photos in the old Palm Beach State College Guide to South Florida Weeds.

We soon met a Southern Leopard Frog happy to duck amphibian decline.

Portrait today by John Bradford.

The frog’s fancy-pants pattern brought to mind the patterned leaves encountered sporadically in weeds and other plants.  Setting aside variegation caused by mutations and by viruses, what I’m thinking of now are species with white veins.

In houseplants

In orchids

And so forth and what-have-you.  Compare this Milk Thistle to the similar but unrelated Mexican Poppy below:

Why would unrelated plant species do the same odd thing?  Gotta be an adaptive benefit.    The proposed benefit I like, not original with me, is that maybe leaves with white veins are mimicking the streakings and vein discolorations of senescent, nutrient-deficient, or infected leaves.  Such leaves presumably offer poor nutrition to pests and may be unpromising nurseries for buggy eggs.   Go bother a different “healthy” plant!   Of course  this is pure speculation.

Sick leaf.

The most striking local white-veiner is the Mexican Poppy, Argemone mexicana, which is arguably native here.     This prickly beauty has spread itself around the world in agricultural seed, and maybe sometimes as a garden flower or oil-producing and medicinal plant.

Mexican Poppy

The traditional medicinal uses are many, and are the ancient roots of its name, probably from Greek argemos for cataract, as in the eye.  But beware, in India over-exposure to its many toxins has caused plant-induced dropsy (aka heart failure).   The seeds give up oil for lamps and for lubrication.

White veins, as promised.

Being a poppy, does Mexican Poppy have psychotropic effects, as in opium poppies?    Probably,  to a limited and poorly documented point, but to be repetitive and uber-emphatic the yellow sap is dangerously toxic, laden with alkaloids, and AT LEAST damaging to the heart it seems.  So forget it.

For a weed taking over the world, MP sure is fussy about appearances in South Florida.  I can’t recall encountering it in a wild area.   The species likes agriculture.   The bristly capsule drops seeds all over the ground.   They lie dormant then in the seedbank until cows or plows rouse them to sprout, often in unison.  You know, fields of poppies.

 

Yellow-Eyed Grass Has a Mysterious Friend

Xyris ambigua and related species

Xyridaceae

 

Today was the perfect day in South Florida, temperature pure paradise, fragrant breeze, puffy white clouds.   Just the kind of day sez John and me for the swamp.  So off we went to the Hungryland Slough with boardwalk in the Corbett Wildlife Management Area just west of North Palm Beach, FL.

It was hopping happening place.   The Tillandsia “airplants” were in their glory.

Cardinal-Airplant today

A resident barred owl looked down upon the intruders.

Slightly annoyed barred owl today.

The Pine-Hyacinth (Clematis baldwinii) displayed its Einstein-hair fruits.

Clematis fruits today

And  yellow-eyed-grasses,  species of Xyris,  rose in varied life-stages in the wet soil.

Xyris ambigua by John Bradford.

Spend time around Xyris,  and you may spot something weird:  little white “cigarettes” jutting out perpendicularly, woven basally with fine threads to the plant’s seed-heads.  Very mysterious, off-white, fluted, stiff, and protruding, not to mention the silky web defining that basal attachment.   Inside cowers a little chestnut brown larva.

Xyris seed head with pupal cases from Coleoophora xyridella.

These are the pupal cases of a moth that existed undiscovered to science until 2005.  (And we think everything has been found.) How did entomologists and botanists overlook these little white cigarettes for hundreds of years?   I suppose because the Xyris moth is extremely similar to a different moth of the same genus that lives exclusively on rushes.  Now there’s an argument for entomologists to learn plants, and for botanists to learn insects!

Here is the 2005 description.  Look at page 10.   CLICK

This is another view of the moth.  FLUTTER HERE

Coleophora xyridella is not rare around our stomping grounds, and I’ll bet other local naturalists won’t have much trouble spotting its cigarettes.  As the moth’s describer J. F. Landry noted, the moth is not well studied.   Among the things not known are its preferences with respect to different Xyris species, if it eats the seeds, or for that matter any other details of the relationship.    For starters, I’d like to know if the moth uses the non-native introduced Xyris jupicai.  Interestingly, that is a South American species, and in 2005 Dr. Landry described also a South American species of Coleophora.  The plot thickens.