August 9, 2018
A YOUNG RED-CHEEKED MUD TURTLE
At the rancho's cement-lined little pond I sat waiting for something to happen. Then something stirred beneath the layer of submerged decaying tree-leaves at my feet. Prodding beneath the leaves, I retrieved the juvenile turtle shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mt.jpg
Since White-lipped Mud Turtles already had turned up in the pond and this one had pale lips, I figured that it was that species. However, there are always surprises, so while this little critter was in hand I knew to take what pictures were needed for a definite identification. First a head picture better showing the pattern of blotches' pattern, seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mu.jpg
Now the top shell, the carapace, showing the pattern of its scales, or scutes, or "epidermal lamellae," and a low crest or "keel" across the top, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mw.jpg
A side view, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mx.jpg
And a bottom view of the alga-covered plastron at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mv.jpg
Thing is, when I double-checked on the scute patterns, they didn't match those of the White-lipped Mud Turtle. They did match those of the Red-cheeked Mud Turtle, so apparently those red cheeks develop only on more mature individuals. We've encountered a Red-cheeked Mud Turtle before, on the Caribbean coast down north of Mahahual, and you can see that mature turtle's red cheeks at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/mud-turt.htm
On that page not only are the red cheeks nicely illustrated, but also the barbels beneath the chin. Barbel presence, size and position often are important in turtle identification, and in the view of our little turtle's underside you can barely see appropriately size and positioned barbels for the species.
Red-cheeked Mud Turtles are widespread, distributed from northeastern Mexico all the way south through Central America to northern Argentina in South America. Subspecies are recognized. In the Yucatan ours are KINOSTERNON SCORPIOIDES ssp CRUENTATUM.
Jonathan Campbell in his Amphibians and Reptiles of Northern Guatemala, the Yucatán, and Belize describes the species as omnivorous and living in streams, rivers and lakes. Now to that we can add "cement-lined little ponds."
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FALLING PERSIMMON FLOWERS
As I read beside the deep pit next to the hut's porch, a tiny flower from a tree above bounced off my head and tumbled onto my lap. Then I noticed that the ground all around me was littered with many such fallen blossoms. Ants were carrying away some of them, so the flowers must still have contained a little nectar, or maybe the ants were feeding on the corollas' flesh. At first I could see no flowers in the tree above me, but eventually a few small, inconspicuous clusters turned up on a few branches of a persimmon tree, Diospyros anisandra, whose leaves and red persimmons are shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/persimm.htm
A typical flower cluster on my flower-dropping tree is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809di.jpg
A close-up of a flower is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809dj.jpg
Persimmons belong to the Ebony Family, the Ebonaceae, in which either individual plants produce either all-male or all-female flowers (plants are "dioecious"), or else a mixture of unisexual flowers and flowers with both male and female parts (hermaphrodite flowers). Breaking open the blossom that fell on my head, I found only male parts, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809dk.jpg
The brown, banana-shaped items are old anthers from which pollen has been shed. On a nearby female tree on which I've seen fruits, I couldn't find female flowers, though I bet they were there.
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PANTHER ANTS CARRYING DROPLETS
At https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/joch.htm we look at the famous Hairy Panther Ant, a large predatory species that nests colonially, but whose individuals roam about alone hunting for prey. Their bites hurt about as bad and hurt as long as wasp stings. They nest in almost any cavity, including hollow tree trunks, and a colony has set up residence somewhere in the hut's thatch roof. They don't bother me at all. In fact, each morning at dawn as I eat my granola I enjoy watching workers traverse the wire fence that keeps the dogs and me from plunging into the deep pit below us.
On the fence, workers travel alone, and maybe one passes every five minutes, going one direction or another. Those leaving the nest carry nothing in their mandibles, but those approaching always carry either what looks like wads of butchered small invertebrate animals or, about half the time, glistening droplets of liquid, such as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809pa.jpg
At first I assumed the droplets were water, possibly gleaned from morning dew or my washbasin, but reviewing our page I see that they're known to harvest nectar to share with other workers, and larvae in the nests, so it well may be nectar instead.
In fact, I've seen two panther ants meet on the fence and it looked as if the one leaving the nest touched the droplet the other was carrying, possibly ingesting some of it, but not much.
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GREEN LYNX AT THE BLOSSOM'S DOOR
At https://www.backyardnature.net/n/a/grn-lynx.htm we look at the Green Lynx spider, and see one feeding on a honeybee. This week as I was admiring our Purple Allamanda's blossoms, a Green Lynx turned up in a classic position, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809ly.jpg
In that picture you can see that the lynx has caught something. A closer look is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809lz.jpg
Green Lynxes are common here, with several in the garden, often seen on the same plant day after day.
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LEAF OR NOT?
At https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809gm.jpg you can see something interesting on a spot ot the forest floor not far from the hut.
What's noteworthy is the leaflike item that's not a leaf, but rather a moth camouflaged to look like a fallen, yellowing leaf.
I can't identify the moth, but it doesn't need a name for us to admire what it does.
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GUATEMALAN CRACKER CHRYSALIS UPDATE
When volunteer butterfly identifier Bea in Ontario read last week's piece on a Guatemalan Cracker freshly emerged from its chrysalis on a Mother-in-law Tongue plant, she wrote that "...although crackers are not particular as to where they crawl up to enter into the chrysalis stage, or to which rotting fruits they feed upon, they ONLY lay their eggs on the host plants that are members of the euphorbia family..."
Since Mother-in-law Tongues don't belong to the Euphorbia Family, I went back to where the cracker had emerged and found not two meters away (2 yards) a planted ornamental member of the Euphorbia Family, Pedilanthus tithymaloides. So, once again Bea is right, and cracker caterpillars may crawl wherever they like, after feeding on a member of the Euphorbia Family.
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BLUE MORNING-GLORY
During my recent camping trip to southwestern Campeche state, on July 4th between Becán and Xpujil on the highway between Chetumal and Escárcega, along the roadside there appeared a car-size mass of overlapping morning-glory vine stems bearing 3½in long (9cm), bluish-purple-to-pink flowers, and leaves that sometimes were heart shaped and other times deeply 3-lobed, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mg.jpg
The pink item at the photograph's top is an old corolla fallen from its calyx. This shows that freshly opened blossoms are bluish but turn pink as they age.
We've already identified 15 morning-glory species here in the Yucatan, which you can browse at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/yuc-vine.htm#o
Of those 15 species, several bear violet/purple/pink flowers and several produce deeply 3-lobed leaves, but that morning between Becán and Xpujil I stood awhile thinking that this combination of such large, blue flowers and 3-lobed leaves seemed like something new to me. Because so many morning-glory species exist -- 85 species in the Morning Glory Family, the Convolvulaceae, just for Veracruz state -- I knew that identifying this vine might be a challenge -- that eventually I'd need to "do the botany," so pictures of the vine's main field marks were taken. First of all, a side look at a flower showing a corolla pink at the base and bluish-purple at the top, is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mh.jpg
In nearby Veracruz state, where Andrew McDonald published a study on the Morning-glory Family in 1993, the 85 species were distributed among eleven genera. To distinguish the genera, among the most important features are the number and configuration of the blossoms' styles and stamens, and stigma shape. You can see that our flowers bore five stamens of different lengths, had hairy filament bases, and that the single style was topped with a spherical stigma, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mi.jpg
These are features of the genus Ipomoea, which is bad news for identifiers, because over half of the Morning Glory Family's species belong to that genus. We've already identified ten Ipomoea species in the Yucatan. In this genus the calyx's sepals do interesting things, so a good shot of the sepals is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180809mj.jpg
The sepals of some Ipomoea species are hairless, while others bear long, stiff hairs. Our vine's sepals are hairy with short, soft, lying-down hair -- they're "appressed pilose."
All these features led to IPOMOEA INDICA, in English often known as the Blue Morning-glory, though that name is shared with several other blue-flowered species. Despite its species name indicating that it's from India, it's native to South America. However, it's both cultivated and "gone wild" throughout the entire planet's tropics. The species is variable in certain of its features. For example, at higher elevations it produces tightly grouped flowers and the sepals are relatively slender, while in the lowlands where we were the flowers are more loosely arranged and the sepals are broader. This is a perennial vine that can live for 25 years or so.
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AUGUST, YELLOW BUTTERFLIES, BUT NO LI PO
I remember that during my late teens on the farm in Kentucky I'd sit beside the tobacco field reading and thinking this: "When I'm old, I want to write poems just like Li Po's." Li Po, also known as Li Bai, lived in China from AD 701 to 762. Here's an example of something he wrote, translated by Ezra Pound:
The leaves fall early this autumn,
in wind. The paired butterflies are
already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
This week when I stumbled upon that poem again, I said to myself, "It's August, we have plenty of yellow butterflies, and now I'm an old man," so I set about trying to write my Li-Po-like poem. It got off to a good start. The first thing that happened on the morning of the day I'd chosen to start poetizing was that I popped off the lid of my big mug so I could pump water into it, and inside, seemingly impossibly, there was a black, shiny little cricket, all legs and face and fluttery wings.
So, there was my topic. For, a terrified little cricket in a receptacle that usually bestows comfort and pleasure surely is imagery just as good if not better than Li Po's falling leaves and yellow butterflies.
But, no poem came.
Also this week there've been: sleeping, dreaming dogs yipping, smiling and waving their feet; a limestone rock on whose flat face natural fractures spelled "HI"; a fledgling Yucatan Jay who jumped with fright when a caterpillar on the leaf beside him suddenly uncoiled its body; a young turtle very interested in biting me but with a mouth too small to get my finger into it; a male persimmon tree that dropped its flowers onto me as I read beneath it each afternoon;a little cumulus cloud one day at noon that showered me for a few seconds, though it was so small and white in the blue sky it looked like it couldn't even cast a decent shadow... All good stuff for a Li-Po-type poem.
But, no poem.
Maybe it's because my life isn't as tragic as Li Po's, for it seems that the best poetry comes when times are bad. When Li Po wrote, war was tearing apart his world, and he seems to have really regretted turning old. That "west garden" he mentions, in the poetry-code of his time, refers to the west where the Sun sets -- as soon he would -- and his garden was a place of pleasure that in August was drying up, destined for a wintry death. Despair within despair. In fact, much of Li Po's writing was done during bouts of wine drinking.
In contrast, despite my present world being in such a mess, with just as much misery and pointless destruction as during his time, I personally feel pretty good, maybe too good to get into a proper Li Po mood. I don't even drink, or brood about my desperation and life's pointlessness. I just can't feel desperate, because I understand that the "point" of things is simply to be, to feel, to think, and to evolve, and I'm doing that.
Still, this poetry business is a funny thing. I suppose that even in my being unable to summon a Li Po poem, there's a poem. But, I can't summon that one, either.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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