January 25, 2019
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COW OKRA FLOWERING
A cow trail cutting through the woods was littered with fair-sized flowers typical of the Bignonia or Trumpet-Creeper Family, the Bignoniaceae, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125ok.jpg
Features typical of the Bignonia Family include the flowers' bilateral symmetry with the corolla's top formed different from its bottom, the four stamens inserted on the corolla tube, and the corolla marked with colored nectar guides directing visiting pollinators toward the flower's center. A bee's-eye view of a flower's throat is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125ol.jpg
In that picture purplish nectar guides ornament the ceiling, and the four stamens bend up against the ceiling, twisting their two-celled anthers so that their pollen-releasing slits face downward, so that entering pollinators will get daubed with pollen on their backs. You can see that the stamens' stems, or filaments, are of two different lengths. This condition is so common among certain plant families that a word exists to describe it. The stamens are said to be "didynamous."
The curious thing was that among the network of stems and vines arching over the cow trail I could find no flowers of the kind on the ground. Finally two flower buds of the right size and color turned up on tree branches right above the trail, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125om.jpg
Also, an enlarging ovary where the corolla already had opened and fallen of was spotted, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125on.jpg
That looks right for the Bignonia Family, because the fruit seems destined to become an elongate capsule splitting along its sides, and the base of the ovary arises from the center of a green, doughnut-like structure, which is the "hypogynous disk" present in flowers of that family.
Most members of the Bignonia Family produce compound leaves that arise opposite one another on a woody stem, and that's what you can see on our flower-dropping tree at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125oo.jpg
Our tree's trunk was attractively blotched, but its branching was irregular, and smaller branches stuck out from the stems like oversized spines, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125op.jpg
The tree's distinctive 3-foliate leaves reminded me that we've seen this species before. Thing is, its fruits had been so interesting and unusually arranged that I'd never paid much attention to the details noted here. You can see our page for the species showing those spectacular fruits at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/cow-okra.htm
On that page we call our tree Cow Okra, Parmentiera aculeata, and speak of the species' medicinal value, and of how I enjoyed eating the fruits baked in the solar oven I had at that time.
Cow Okra is unusually flexible with its arrangement of flowers. Above we see a single fruit developing on a normal branch extending over the cow path. On our Cow Okra page, however, the fruits cluster together on the main trunk, which is something fairly unusual. On the Internet I find fruits pictured both on slender twigs and on the trunk, so this is just how Cow Okra does things.
I'm astonished that so far I've not noticed the fruits on this tree right beside a trail I often travel, The workers suggest that the cows eat them first, and with a name like that maybe that's the case.
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MOLDY BREAD & CHEESE
Draping a Wild Tamarind tree beside the entry road to Ek Balam a woody vine bore several long, slender flowering heads, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125pl.jpg
Though I'd not noticed before such flowering heads on a vine, the vine's twice-compound leaves looked very familiar, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125po.jpg
That leaf's general pattern of division into leaflets and subleaflets is typical of viny members of the often-climbing, mostly tropical and subtropical Soapberry Family, the Sapindaceae, of which we've admired a number of species here. But somehow until now I've missed seeing such flowering heads as these. A closer look at some of the spike-like racemes is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125pm.jpg
And a couple of open flowers are seen close-up at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125pn.jpg
There you can see that the blossoms are slightly asymmetrical, with some petals larger than others, and some of the eight stamens longer than others, features often found in the Soapberry Family. Each flower bears four petals and each white petal bears a stalked gland with a conspicuous yellow, knobby top
It turns out that this woody vine produces fruits much more spectacular than its flowers, so until now I've documented the fruits but not the flowers. Earlier we found the inexplicable English name for the species to be Moldy Bread & Cheese. It's Paullinia fuscescens, and our page showing the brightly red fruits is at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/paullini.htm
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THE SEASON FOR YELLOW FLOWERS
This week has been the absolute peak of that moment during the advancing dry season when area roadsides are resplendently ornamented with innumerable yellow, daisy-type composite flowers. The flowers are borne by the eight-ft-tall (2.4m) wildflower known as Sunflower Goldeneye. Near the bottom of our page profiling this super-abundant plant you can see how the species forms yellow walls alongside the Yucatan's roads, at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/viguiera.htm
The yellow walls of Sunflower Goldeneyes are most spectacular in early morning when sunlight slants in low from the east, giving the whole landscape a golden tinge, and you stand looking at a wall of them with your back toward the Sun. That's because the Sunflower Goldeneyes' individual flowering heads turn to face the sun, just as regular sunflowers do. Atop our Sunflower Goldeneye page, a picture shows such a back-toward-the-Sun view. However, if you look at the blossoms from the side, the "wall effect" vanishes, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125vg.jpg
While taking that picture, I noticed that other yellow-flowered species had chosen this exact season in which to blossom, too. For example, you can see dry-season-leafless but brightly yellow flowering Silk Cottontrees rising over a wall of Sunflower Goldeneyes at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125yw.jpg
You can check out those Silk Cottontrees on our page at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/cochlosp.htm
Once the Silk Cottontrees' contribution of the exact same hue of yellowness as the Sunflower Goldeneyes' was noticed, I looked around and saw that all along the road Twin-flowered Cassia trees similarly were offering up that same bright yellow hue. You can confirm that on our Twin-flowered Cassia page at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/senna2.htm
Also along the road the Aldamas were flowering with the same yellowness, as seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/aldama.htm
What is it about this season that encourages plants to adorn the green landscape with the brightest hue of yellowness? Ecologically, this exact stage of the dry season is special because soil still holds a little moisture from the rainy season, but now soil moisture is about to disappear, plus the air will start getting hot and dry fast. Already some of the herbaceous layer is dying back, and deciduous trees are losing their leaves.
This opens up the forest and roadsides to more light and wind, even as the landscape pales from its rainy-season vivid dark greenness, taking on tones of brown and gray. And my subjective judgment is that in this particular environment, no color shows up better than yellow.
So, this is the last chance for species to use what's left of soil moisture to sustain flowering and fruiting, and those fruits must get their job done now if there will be seeds ready to germinate when the rainy season returns in May or June.
That's just my guess. The main thing I wanted to celebrate here, though, is just that these days constitute a special season that it would be a shame to overlook.
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LOW CROTON FLOWERING
Last week when I introduced the shrubby Ek Balam Croton, I mentioned that thirty-four species of the genus Croton, in the Spurge/Euphorbia Family, are listed for the Yucatan Peninsula, and probably at least a dozen might occur in our area. With so many look-alike species, identifying crotons can be hard.
In fact, this week when I was looking for more croton species, I realized that I'd been overlooking a commonly occurring one, one that often grew with -- even tangling branches with -- the Ek Balam species so abundantly growing along cow trails through the woods. You can see a flowering branch of this second species, looking a good bit like the Ek Balam species, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125cr.jpg
This second species doesn't grow as tall as the Ek Balam, isn't as strongly woody at its base, the leaves' secondary veins are less crowded, the leaves' petioles grow longer, and the the whole plant is a little less hairy than the Ek Balam species. The relatively long petiole and less hairy undersurface of a typical leaf is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125cq.jpg
Another interesting difference is that in the Ek Balam species I don't see male and female flowers on the same plants, and even with this second species most individual plants bear unisexual flowers of just one sex. However, this second species sometimes produces female flowers below the raceme of male flowers, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125cp.jpg
In that picture the female flower is at the bottom, left, while male flowers appear at the top, right. A close-up of a female flower with its ovary expanding after pollination, and its stigmas turning brown and shriveling up, is seen at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125co.jpg
A male flower bearing 26 or so stamens is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125cs.jpg
Last week we saw that sap of the Ek Balam species was orangish. This species' sap is almost clear, maybe with a slights tinge of orange, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125ct.jpg
All these features lead to CROTON HUMILIS, a good old Linnaeus name, so it's been known for a long time, in contrast to the late-discovered Ek Balam species, which is endemic to the Yucatan. Croton humilis occurs mainly in the Caribbean area, but also the Yucatan Peninsula and Mexico's Gulf coast as far north as Texas and Florida. As such it's known by several English names, including Low Croton, Pepperbush, and Salvia. The latter two names are applied to other plants, but "Low Croton" is a translation from the binomial, humilis meaning low-growing or dwarf, so we'll call it that.
It's interesting to see how these two similar, apparently very closely related species flower and fruit at the same time in the same places, often their branches intermingling. A principle in ecology is that two different species can't occupy the exact same exact niche for long, before one out-competes and extirpates the other. The thing to note about these two species is that Croton humilis averages about half the height of the Ek Balam species. Along the cow trail, pollinators visit croton flowers at chest height on the Ek Balam species, at knee-to-waist height on Croton humilis.
Paul Standley, the great botanical explorer of the Yucatan, Belize and Guatemala during the 1930s, reported that Croton humilis was used medicinally as a stimulant, a diaphoretic (inducing sweating), an expectorant (promotes mucus formation in air passages so it can be coughed out and clear the passages), and to treat malaria.
The online Flora of North America observes that in Texas the male flowers of Croton humilis bear 30-35 stamens, but in Florida only 15-20. Therefore, our Yucatan plants fall between those two extremes, our sample flower with 26 or so stamens.
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DUTCHMAN'S-PIPE'S IMMATURE FRUITS
At https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/aristolo.htm we've seen the very interesting and handsome mature fruits of our common Dutchman's-pipe species, Aristolochia maximaSo far I've been enable to catch the high-climbing, woody vine's flowers or the species' different-looking immature fruits. Once again the vine's flowering season has passed without my spotting the flowers, but at least now I can show you what the dangling immature fruits look like, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125aa.jpg
Three Dutchman's-Pipe species are listed for the Yucatan Peninsula, but the fruits of the other two species are a bit different, especially in lacking the comb-like "teeth" along the major sections' margins. Fortunately for ID purposes, this week's vine bore at least one mature fruit with the teeth typical of Aristolochia maxima, shown almost hidden high in the host tree at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125ab.jpg
On our Aristolochia maxima page the vine's pinnately compound leaves have lost most of their leaflets. A leaf with all its leaflets is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190125ac.jpg
Aristolochia maxima is distributed from southern Mexico south throughout Central America into northern South America
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SIMPLICITY FIST
When visitors to my hut see how I live, normally they decide that I'm impoverished, though I'm not. Even those not assuming I'm poor usually think I'm living a life of self denial. Most people have wrong ideas about "voluntary simplicity."
Though frequent readers of this Newsletter already know that for me a simple life in a hut is hugely rewarding, I decided that this week I'd state that fact outright. Far from denying myself and living in poverty, I am living luxuriously because I'm doing exactly what I want to, how I want to do to it, where I want to.
Also, many people seem to assume that we who withdraw from "the real world" generally are those who can't manage out there, or else are just too lazy to try.
Again, it's just the opposite. For, to abandon one's society and live differently is hard. It can't be achieved without decisive decision making, aggressive action taking, and a willingness to endure all kinds of social and emotional negative feedback, even hostility, from the surrounding society.
At first, to vigorously confront this notion that people living simply generally are weak or born losers, I thought about writing that voluntary simplicity is like a fist -- a fist to smash through the usual ways of doing things, and a fist willing to defend its right to be as it is.
But then in my reading I stumbled across some old Nazi literature from back when Hitler was psyching up Germans for war. Influential German Nazi-Philosopher Oswald Spengler wrote that man is a "... beast of prey, brave and crafty..." and that "The animal of prey is the highest form of mobile life." He also described hate as "... the most genuine of all race-feelings in the beast of prey." In Hitler's time, lower-middle class, mostly unemployed, angry and insecure Germans ate up this kind of talk, and there was enough of them to democratically elect Hitler as their leader.
Therefore, especially in the context of what's happening in heartland US society today, I lost my stomach for thinking of voluntary simplicity as a fist. Using that kind of simple, gut-level imagery to stir up and manipulate the basest of human impulses is powerful and effective, but it's like giving someone a hammer that's been used in a murder: The hammer is no less a truly fine tool than it ever was but, because of its acquired association, the healthy human mind recoils from using it.
So, here I'm satisfied to just state my feelings about voluntary simplicity unequivocally. Others more talented than I have written about what voluntary simplicity is and is not, so, if you're interested, you can let them tell you about it. For example, there's a good introduction to voluntary simplicity at The Simplicity Collective website.
Searching the Internet on the keywords "voluntary simplicity" turns up a huge literature on the matter.
The concept of voluntary simplicity is not like a fist. It's like a flower bud waiting to blossom and share its fragrance, if given a chance.
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Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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