LOW PRAIRIE-CLOVER FLOWERING
At the weedy edge of a clearing below the hut a belly-high plant bearing lots of tiny flowers crammed together in numerous short, dense, spike-type flowering heads turned up, shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208da.jpg
The small, pinnately compound leaves were typical of the Bean Family, though they were unusually hairy and their surfaces were oddly warty-surfaced, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208db.jpg
The Bean Family must be our best represented family of flowering plants here, and a lot of the Bean Family's species bear pinnately compound leaves, though the leaflets' surfaces so rough with tiny warts was something a little special. Also a little unusual were this plant's flowering heads, which were uncommonly small and congested, giving the plant something of a messy look, as shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208dc.jpg
Up close, the individual flowers confirmed the plant's membership in the Bean Family, though the blossoms were so small that it was hard to discern their bean-type or "papilionaceous" structure. You can see that the flowers' corollas were pinkish and the calyx's sepals were strikingly long, slender and hairy, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208dd.jpg
Breaking apart a mature, withered calyx in the hope of finding a fruit, I exposed the items shown on the tip of my finger at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208de.jpg
The minuscule, one-seeded legume-type fruit -- or maybe the seed itself with the husk removed -- is shown at the left, wile a piece of the calyx with its slender, hairy sepals and glandular surface appears at the right.
Glandular herbage, pinnately compound leaves, long, hair-like sepals that themselves are very hairy, along with the plant's small, congested clusters of very small flowers... That's a combination of features we've seen before, up in Texas, though on very different plants. Those dry-grassland loving herbs were the Golden Prairie-clover and the Dwarf Prairie-clover. Remembering that, I suspected that here we had another prairy-clover species, a member of the genus Dalea.
In the Yucatan we have two Dalea species, and our weedy plant is one of them. It's DALEA SCANDENS, in English known as the Low Prairie-clover. the plant bears an English name because it occurs from Texas to southern Mexico, and in the Caribbean.
I enjoy finding new species of kinds of plants I'm already familiar with -- the "variations on a theme" thing -- and Mexico is the best place on Earth to find variations on the prairie-clover theme. Some 165 species of the genus Dalea are recognized, all restricted to the Americas, and nearly half of the speciesare endemic to Mexico. Mexico appears to be their center of diversity.
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TROPICAL MISTLETOE FIGURED OUT
At https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/psittaca.htm we've looked at the commonly occurring, red-flowered mistletoe sometimes called Tropical Mistletoe. However, when that page was set up in 2008, not much literature was available about the four genera and ten mistletoe species listed for the Yucatan Peninsula, and I could identify our plants only to genus level. During the last ten years CICY, the Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán in Mérida has published a lot about the Yucatan, much of it freely available online, so this week when a Tropical Mistletoe turned up flowering atop a Crepe-Myrtle tree beside the garden, I decided to see if new literature was available to help me identify our plants to species level.
The mistletoe atop its dry-season-leafless Crepe-Myrtle is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208ps.jpg
The mistletoe's handsome flowers at branch tips and leaves with rounded tips are shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208pt.jpg
A close-up of the flowers with their greatly projecting stamens is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208pu.jpg
A close-up showing the stems enlarging below leaf-producing nodes, and bearing squared corners, is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208pv.jpg
And, lo and behold, last year CICY published a paper by Tun and Martínez-Ambriz entitled Psittacanthus mayanus y la familia Loranthaceae en Yucatán, which included an identification key for all the Yucatan's mistletoes. In less than a minute of using that key I knew our Tropical Mistletoe's species.
It's PSITTACANTHUS MAYANUS, endemic to just southern Mexico and parts of Belize and Guatemala. Based on that species name, I'll begin thinking of our plants as "Mayan Tropical Mistletoes."
Otherwise, little is known about the species, other than what is true of other mistletoes as well, which is that they are only partly parasitic on trees, being able to manufacture their own food because of the chlorophyll in their leaves. Normally they don't seriously damage a tree, but do provide great service to wildlife such as hummingbirds and flying squirrels.
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AN IMPORTANT TREE FOR BEES
At https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208gy.jpg you see a commonly occurring, medium-size tree bearing so many small, whitish flowers that from a distance it looks like a big snowball.
Up closer the few leaves still on the tree despite the advancing dry season's hot dryness show their shape, but the flowers still are too small show much, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208gz.jpg
All this tree's flowers were beyond reach, but the camera telephoto lens give us a closer look at the limbs' triangular unopened flowers and a few open ones, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208gx.jpg
Now it's clear that this really is the Gymnopodium floribundum, who we've already profiled at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/gymnopod.htm
I hadn't been quite sure of that until seeing the flowers better, because until now I'd seen only smaller trees in shaded places, bearing much fewer flowers -- despite the species name floribundum, "flower-abundance."
So now seeing what a Gymnopodium floribundum is capable of if given enough space and sunlight, I find it easier to believe what at least one online source says about it: That Gymnopodium floribundum is the Yucatan's most important tree for honey-producing bees.
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FLOPPERS FLOWERING
When I arrived at the rancho in late 2016, I found growing wild in the woods along the road a waist-high plant originally from Madagascar, but naturalized and "gone wild" in much of the world's tropical and subtropical zones. It was Bryophyllum pinnatum, known by numerous English names, among which my favorite is Floppers. A remarkable feature of this plant is that if you take what appears to be a leaf and keep it moist awhile, new little Flopper plants will sprout along the "leaf's" scalloped margins. That day in 2016 I collected a leaf and got from it several little plants, all documented on our Floppers page at https://www.backyardnature.net/mexnat/airplant.htm
Floppers are perennial plants, which helps explain why during 2017 and 2018 my plants grew to about waist height but didn't flower. This year they did flower, and you can see the one beside the hut's sitting-rock, topped with a basketball-size flowering head, at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208br.jpg
A close-up of some of the flowering head's pale green things is at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208bs.jpg
In that picture the largest item, at the lower right, is a blossoming flower, while the smaller, pale green items above the flower are flower calyxes expanded to form protective bladders around the immature corolla and sexual parts inside them. These much-inflated calyxes very conspicuously have been dangling there for several weeks now, glowing prettily during breakfast when back-lighted by the rising Sun. A calyx with one side removed, revealing the immature corolla within it is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208bt.jpg
In that picture the green corolla at the inflated calyx's base is constricted in the middle, the corolla's bottom half appearing pea-like. A mature flower similarly with one side of its bladdery calyx removed is shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208bu.jpg
Now we can see that the corolla's pea-like bottom part, with part of its side removed, reveals itself as also bladder-like. This bulging bottom part of the corolla loosely surrounds four ovary divisions, which will develop into follicle-type fruits. Atop each future follicle rises a hard-to-see slender style terminated by a stigmatic, pollen-receiving zone. The four small black items opposite the rosy-colored corolla lobs are the stamens' pollen-producing anthers. The complete flower bears eight stamens.
A neat feature of all this is that the calyxes create large bladders, inside which the corolla pinches into a bladder-like bottom part -- a bladder inside a bladder. Cutting across the corolla's bottom bulge, you see what's shown at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208bv.jpg
The four whitish items in the corolla's center are chopped off, future follicle-type fruits.
Hungry cattle roamed the forest in which in 2016 I collected the leaf from which all my plants derived, and I wondered why those wild succulent plants hadn't been eaten. Now I see that Floppers contain compounds called bufadienolide cardiac glycosides, which are known to cause heart problems, particularly among grazing animals. Two calves fed two days with Floper leaves died due to ataxia (loss of control of bodily movements) and irregular heartbeat.
But toxic plants often are medicinal in small dosages, so various cultures have been documented using the plant in traditional medicine, for ailments ranging from kidney stones, headaches and fevers to inflammations and cancer.
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FUNGAL FOAM ON FLOWERING "SPRING" TREE
Beside the trail from the hut to the tool shed, the dry-season-leafless limbs of a certain smallish tree were resplendent with white, bean-family-type flowers. Though common throughout most of Mexico, the tree has no good English name. In much of Mexico it's called Primavera, which means "Spring," and if we have a spring here, this week may have been it, so it's not a bad name. You can see the spectacular tree and read about it at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/gliricid.htm
One morning this week as I passed down the trail admiring the tree in dazzling, blue-sky sunlight, I noticed that about twenty feet up some of the top branches appeared to be covered with white foam, as you can see at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208sl.jpg
Atop the tree, In an area about the size of a refrigerator, maybe five or so foam gobs could be seen, all small except the cross-shaped one occupying the picture's right side. No other part of the tree bore such foam bodies, and none of the dozen or so other trees of this species I checked had any. A telephoto shot showing this tree's foam closer up at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/19/190208sm.jpg
The closest thing I've seen to this was back in 2009 when my friend Karen and I found a conspicuous body of orange slime stuck to the side of a wild grapevine. I had no idea what it was and it took years before I could put together a story about it all, and ;post pictures of it, which you can still see on our "Orange Slime" page at https://www.backyardnature.net/n/x/orgslime.htm
That orange slime turned out to be produced by an ascomycete fungus (mildews, molds, morel mushrooms) called Fusicolla merismoides. The fungus produces slimy orange sheets covering the stem, with spore-producing bodies embedded within and on the slime. By the way, keep in mind that "slime molds" are something else entirely, not even considered to be fungi.
But, the foam on our "Spring" tree isn't really slime. Is it caused by another of the seven listed species of Fusicolla, besides the one making orange slime on grapevines in Mississippi?
On our Orange Slime page I pass along the newest information about Fusicolla merismoides. At that time it was just being realized that instead of being a distinct species, genetic analysis was finding that what was called Fusicolla merismoides actually consisted of a large complex of many phylogenetic species.
I really don't know what to say about the foam on our "Spring" tree. Both the Orange Slime on the grapevine in Mississippi and the foam on our "Spring" tree occurred exactly when sap was rising in the host plants. My guess is that a fungus or fungus-like organism, or maybe a varied population of different kinds of windblown microscopic organisms found a source of carbohydrate in our tree's sap, maybe dripping from a broken twig, and set up residence in the sugary sap, maybe fermenting it. Fermentation could cause bubbles of carbon dioxide to form, creating foam.
The foam on our tree lasted at least for two days, but on the hot, dry, sunny, windy afternoon of the second day after I'd noticed it, the foam quickly disappeared, leaving not a trace, and has not returned.
So, as in 2009, I'm filing this information and the pictures on the Internet, hoping that someday someone will come along explaining it all to me, and then I'll pass the info on to others.
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LES MISÉRABLES, LENIN & THE TREE CALLED "SPRING"
In his classic Les Misérables, Victor Hugo writes that "Animals are just figures of our human virtues and vices, running around before our eyes, visible phantoms of our souls. God presents them for us to reflect on." (Les animaux ne sont autre chose que les figures de nos vertus et de nos vices, errantes devant nos yeux, les fantômes visibles de nos âmes. Dieu nous les montre pour nos réfléchir.)
I got a kick out of reading that, and because the behavior and looks of the rancho's dogs often vividly remind me of people I've known, I had to admit that there was something to it. That day I needed a lighthearted moment because while reading Les Misérables I'm also plodding through Dmitri Volkogonov's Lenin. That book, using information first made available after the collapse of the USSR, describes Vladimir Ilich Lenin's impact as the founder of Russian Bolshevik-type communism, and the first premier of the Soviet Union. It's depressing reading. Lenin killed a lot of people, and was responsible for the deaths of millions of others who became victims of "Leninism" practiced by Stalin and Mao Zedong.
But, this week, not only have Victor Hugo and Dmitri Volkogonov been my companions, but also a certain noble tree currently splendiferously flowering. That tree has no good English name, but in much of Mexico it's called Primavera, which in English is "Spring." That's appropriate, because a springy feeling is in the air, despite it being so hot and dry. Our page for the pretty tree "Spring" is at https://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/gliricid.htm
Atop that page you see clusters of white "Spring" flowers on black stems beneath a deep blue sky flooded with dazzling, scorching sunlight, but you miss the effect of the flowers trembling in a morning's moist breeze, can't see and hear the bees buzzing among them, and can't smell the blossoms' perfumy fragrance. Still, you can imagine how pleasing it is to see "Spring" flowering much like the Redbuds in eastern North America.
So, Victor Hugo's smiling remark, depressing reading from the life of Lenin, and these lovely Jabím trees. What does it all mean?
Sometimes powerful synergisms arise when certain seemingly unrelated phenomena end up side by side. Sometimes 1 + 1 = { 2 + a little more }. One thinking, feeling person looking into one starry sky is an example, for out of that 1 + 1 combination a third thing often arises, which is awe and maybe inspiration. This week it's seemed to me that the combination of the three instances of: 1) Hugo's animals-like-human-virtues-and-vices remark, plus; 2) Lenin's history, plus; 3) the flowering "Spring" trees... have conjured up something beyond the three juxtaposed but not clearly related events.
There was this long history of mass murders and perfect callousness with regard to millions of innocent people, but Victor Hugo reminded me that things in Nature (humanity is a subset of Nature) are presented "for us to reflect on." Reflecting on the matter, I decided that in this Universe it's true that unspeakably tragic and destructive events are commonplace, maybe somehow evenly balancing the Universe's joyous creative evolution toward ever greater diversity and ever more artful and pleasing interrelationships among parts. Moreover, standing beneath a "Spring" tree, looking up at flowers resplendent in morning sunlight, that morning Hugo's remark had conditioned me to recognize that something at that moment was blossoming that was beyond the mere sum of three events.
This something was something inside me, a kind of insight that quickly blossomed into an inspiration. The insight was that any mentality that can recognize transcendent patterns and ways of being, can focus on those ideals, and in so doing identify with them, even when the material world all around is falling apart.
Though the Universe may be haunted by every degree of tragedy and injustice, a mind fixed stubbornly on some vision of perfection still can enjoy personal peace and security. Someone or some thing well may imprison a body, torture it or kill it, but as long as the mentality is intact and can focus on something like "Spring" flowers dazzling in fresh morning sunlight, or anything else that deeply harmonizes with one's own makeup -- maybe a spiritual insight or a philosophy, or a strong natural urge to comfort or teach or defend others, for example -- the mentality cannot be dominated.
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Best wishes to all Newsletter readers,
Jim
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