August 16, 2018
PURPLE ALLAMANDA FLOWERING
Last week when we admired the Green Lynx spider at the mouth of a Purple Allamanda flower, it occurred to me that previously I'd not mentioned the Purple Allamanda, ALLAMANDA VIOLACEA. It's a case of this very pretty ornamental species originally from Brazil being planted so commonly that I'd always assumed I'd mentioned it. You can see the three-inch-long (7.5cm), funnel-shaped blooms that make the species so desirable at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816al.jpg
A side view of a blossom shows how the corolla's slender base rises from an inflated calyx, then the corolla tube expands, and finally the broad corolla lobes flare outward at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816aq.jpg
A front view of the flower shows that the corolla tube darkens inside, then in the center at the very base displays a perfect little yellow star, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816am.jpg
Allamandas belong to the Dogbane/Milkweed/Oleander Family, the Apocynaceae, so the arrangement of the flowers' sexual parts are very different from most blossoms, and distinctive, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816an.jpg
The greenish part in the image's center is the stigma head. The yellow item above that is one of a few nearly stalkless, pollen-shedding anthers, and above that are long, stiff, sharp-pointed hairs directed upward. Pollinators entering the flower pass between tufts of these hairs. Notice that at the image's bottom, the hairs are pointing downward, encouraging pollinators to stay inside the blossom longer, thus more certainly accomplish their pollination task.
The Purple Allamanda's leaves are in twos or, more frequently, fours, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816ap.jpg
Many blossoms droop downward, and that's handy for insects wanting to escape the rain, or hide. I found most of our plant's blossoms occupied by some kind of invertebrate, mostly small ones, but some fair sized ones, such as the katydid shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816ar.jpg
A cricket seems to be entering his place of worship at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816ao.jpg
Our profusely branched Purple Allamanda stands about 12ft tall (3.7m) and is shaped like an upside-down feather duster. Later in the year, if the rancho's ground crew don't prune it, it'll be spherical in shape, looking like a huge scoop of strawberry ice cream. If the plant were never pruned, it would behave more like a vine or bushy vine, and would send slender stems up into surrounding trees, not twining among their branches like a morning-glory, just supporting itself on whatever comes handy. It's a good candidate to cover an arbor, or to cascade over a wall, or even to make a large hanging basket.
Several cultivars have been developed of Purple Allamanda.
You may be interested in comparing our Purple Allamanda with the closely related Golden Trumpet vine, Allamanda cathartica, also commonly planted in these parts, whose page is at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/allamand.htm
*****
A ROSY-FLOWERED, HAIRY PASSIONFLOWER
During my recent camping trip to southwestern Campeche state, on July 4th on a dirt road just north of Xpujil on the highway between Chetumal and Escárcega, among head-high weeds at the road's edge, splashes of rose color caught my attention, and it turned out to be something special, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816pf.jpg
With that extraordinary flower structure, instantly it was apparent that this was a passionflower, but I'd never seen a passionflower of this color. Normally they're purplish, whitish or greenish. If you'd like to review several different passionflower vines we've met, go to https://www.backyardnature.net/chiapas/passionf.htm
The spidery anatomical parts held before the blossom's mouth are what makes the the blossom unmistakably a passionflower of the Passionflower Family, the Passifloraceae, genus Passiflora. A side view of the blossom shows how the unique features are held above the corolla on a sturdy stalk, or "gynophore," at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816pg.jpg
In that picture the slender, white, hairlike items projecting upward around the gynophore constitute the "corona," which also is typical of passionflowers. However, it's the yellow-green structure at the top of that picture that's most interesting, and that's shown closer up at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816pk.jpg
In that picture the spherical, grainy-surfaced, greenish item at the top is one of three stigmas, each stigma being attached to the tip of a slender style, and all three styles uniting atop the fuzzy, white thing in the picture's center. That white thing is the ovary, the future fruit. I'd also never seen a hairy passion fruit, but this hairy ovary obviously was pointing in that direction. Below the woolly ovary arise five sturdy filaments, each terminating with a banana-shaped, pollen-producing anther. Having all these parts is not so extraordinary, but suspending them in this configuration above the corolla on that gynophore, is.
Below this spectacular blossom there arose large sepals of a kind often seen on passionflower vines, but which seldom occur in other plant families, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816ph.jpg
That entire picture shows a single sepal divided into many feathery parts, many of the ultimate hairlike divisions tipped with sticky glands. The glands form a barrier to caterpillars and other invertebrates who otherwise might eat the flower's fleshy parts.
Passionflower plants are vines, usually bearing tendrils. At first I thought that this vine was leafless, because I'm accustomed to seeing passionflower vines bearing deeply three-lobed leaves. However, by following a stem away from its blossom, it became clear that this species' leaves not only were not deeply three-lobed, but also they were densely hairy, even woolly, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816pi.jpg
You can see just how woolly the leaves were in the close-up of a leaf's underside shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816pj.jpg
As the above pictures were being taken, an old man with his bicycle laden with firewood came trundling down the road, stopped, and could hardly believe that a gringo would be so interested in such a weed so common that it grows all over his house. Hearing that, I thought that maybe the species was a pantropical weed not occurring in the northern Yucatan because of its aridity, and that it'd be easy to identify simply by searching on "red passionflower." However, it wasn't easy
By comparing Internet pictures of each of the 13 Passiflora species listed for the Calakmul Region in Campeche, I decided that we must have PASSIFLORA PALMERII var. SUBLANCEOLATA, of which very little information and few pictures are available. From the few sketchy descriptions I could find, it may be endemic just to Mexico, a variety with more white on the flowers occurring in Baja California, and our variety sublanceolata being in southern Mexico, with only the state of Campeche mentioned as a definite location.
So, possibly this was a good find. Definitely it was a pleasure meeting such a beautiful, little-known species that doesn't disdain ornamenting an old man's backwoods hut.
*****
FLAMING TORCH BROMELIAD
At Genesis Resort, operated by the owner of the rancho on which I live, and from which I issue these Newsletters, pathways between rooms pass through a very pretty tropical garden. Nowadays some knee-high, ground-growing bromeliads are spectacularly flowering there, one of which is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816bb.jpg
There you're seeing a raceme-type flowering head, or inflorescence, arising from a rosette of stiff, tough, slender blades with margins bearing widely spaced, low, thick-based spines. A close-up of a flower in that inflorescence is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/18/180816bc.jpg
To distinguish the red flower from the may red bracts around it, locate the purple sphere at the image's right. That's the stigma, where pollen grains are supposed to land. It's affixed atop a slender filament that leads to the unseen ovary at the corolla's bottom. Just left of the stigma, the yellowish, banana-shaped items are pollen-producing anthers, borne atop slender, pale filaments. The tuft of filaments arises from a shadowy zone surrounded by backward-curving petals. The red, non-corolla parts are bracts, which are modified leaves, in this case serving with their bright color to attract pollinators to the flowers.
One special feature of this species is that its red sepals and corollas acquire a violet hue toward their tips, plus much of the inflorescence is sparsely covered with minute white scales which in some parts produce a silvery effect. In the above photo the bract tips at the image's left display such silveriness.
Because of its general form and flower structure, it was clear from the first that these plants were members of the tropical American Bromelia or Pineapple Family, the Bromeliaceae. Of the over 1300 species in that family, most live on tree branches (epiphytic), the Pineapple plant being an exception.
Our plant is BILLBERGIA PYRAMIDALIS, commonly known as Flaming Torch. It's native to northern South America and the Caribbean area. I read that in Florida it's probably the most planted bromeliad not only because it's pretty but also because it's tough, adaptable, and easy to propagate -- as long as it doesn't get cold. Ours is living very well on the ground, but I read that if individuals are perched on a tree limb they'll thrive there, too, and if planted at a tree's base, its plentiful offshoot-plants will slowly populate the trunk.
Like most bromeliads, Flaming Torches are "monocarpic," meaning that once the plant fruits, it dies, though normally sprouts are left behind to take its place.
*****
KATRINA'S GROWL
We're down to two dogs at the rancho, Negrita and Katrina. Both are friendly, good-natured female dogs, but they're very different from one another. Negrita is a young adult, eager to play all the time, and not much of a thinker, still not having realized that it's no good barking and leaping beneath a tree with a high-up squirrel in it. Katrina is old, mellow and she thinks things out, makes plans, and looks disgusted when Negrita jumps toward treetop squirrels.
Both want to stay with me at the hut all the time, but Katrina won't let Negrita come without growling and baring her fangs, at which time Negrita must flop onto her back, expose her belly, look pitiful, let Katrina smell her all over and stand beside her for three or four minutes. Only when Katrina looks away can Negrita slink onto the hut porch and curl up in her designated spot. This happens, even though Negrita is by far the stronger, more agile dog, and easily could beat Katrina in any fight. However, Negrita is as submissive as Katrina is insistent on constantly being recognized as Top Dog.
The situation upsets Negrita and causes her to stay at the tool shed much of the time. Then Katrina misses her, for they're close friends, loving to roam the woods together. When Negrita is gone, Katrina spends hours gazing up the trail down which Negrita eventually will come. Katrina looks forlorn, and Negrita at the shop looks sad. But, the moment Negrita approaches, the growling begins and Negrita has to flop. Both dogs look sad most of the time, missing being together.
Dog sociology is cartoonized commentary on human society, thinking and feeling. Basically, both dogs and humans habitually are victims of their own headsets, their own belief systems, their own genetic and social programming, the main difference being that sometimes humans can consciously and consistently overcome their programming.
But, it's hard to overcome programming. As I've thought about the matter this week, I've come to agree with many others that, at least for humans wanting happy, sustainable lives, at the heart of the difficulty lies our egos -- our self centeredness, our pride, our self indulgences, our Top Dogism. It's Katrina's obsession with her personal status that brings canine disharmony to the hut.
Among others who have focused on the ego as the prime source of human misery are the Buddha, who taught that to achieve nirvana one must lose all sense of self. In Hinduism's concept of reincarnation, the goal is to be born into ever more enlightened states of being until the rebirths stop and, again, there's no self.
Nature, though, seems to indicate that human self-awareness/ego is important, for She takes care to create among us humans all degrees of self centeredness, from the most miserly, self-serving, self-indulgent tyrants to the most generous, community-minded, humble, self-disciplined among us. Maybe Nature's teaching here is that for internal peace and happiness the problem isn't having egos, but rather that we should manage them -- manage our selves -- ourselves.
An insight that can help in ego managment is that the egocentric predisposition seems, at least to me, to be distributed throughout humanity according to the Bell Curve. The vast majority of us function more or less in the Bell Curve's middle, between the most self-centered and the most other-minded. The masses in the middle can sway toward either side, depending on which side has the most charismatic leader -- right if it's a Hitler, left if it's a Jesus.
To support these notions, there's history. I'm reading now about ancient Greece, and it's striking how equally the population back then was divided between the right-wing, dictator/oligarch-loving Spartans and the relatively left-wing, democracy-craving Athenians. Before Hitler, Germany was fairly equally divided between right-wing fascist tendencies and left-wing socialist. And today, there are the Trumpists and anti-Trumpists.
The sad thing is that history also shows, again and again, that once a certain threshold of animosity between the right and left of the Bell Curve of Self-Centeredness is reached, compromises no longer are possible. Things get worse and worse until one side makes the other side flip onto its back, display total submission, and look pitiful. Eventually the winner's imposed order does fall apart, and things start all over again, but by then both sides -- and normally also the environment, ravaged by wartime resource extraction and destruction -- have suffered awfully.
For humanity, all these conflicts have fueled biological and social human evolution. However, the fragile, vulnerable little Earth just can't stand being the stage for many more of humanity's self-inflicted conflicts between right and left.
*****
Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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