A Wandering Botanist
Tales of a lover of plants, history and travel.
Sunday, July 21, 2024
Sunday, July 14, 2024
After Fire, Rocky Mountain Wildflowers
Sunday, July 7, 2024
Polyploidy. Part 5: Patterns of Autopolyploidy
switchgrass, Panicum virgatum, famous autopolyploid |
Polyploidy is whole genome duplication, uncommon in animals, but common in plant evolution, between living plant species and in individuals within plant species. (See previous blogs link). Although it is actually a continuum, botanists recognize allopolyploidy, when the genomes that duplicated come from two different species and autopolyploidy when a single genome doubles. This post is about autopolyploids.
Sunday, June 30, 2024
Middle Elevations in Rocky Mountains in late June
Summer moves steadily up the mountains. As you rise up above the plains of Colorado into the Rocky Mountains, the plants that are done flowering at 5,000 feet elevation are in full bloom at 8,000 feet, but are still in bud at 11,000 feet. Of course not all the plants are able grow from 5000' to 11000' elevation, but many do.
These photos were taken in a ramble around Lily Lake, at 8,931' elevation.
Lily Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado |
Sunday, June 23, 2024
Plant story-- Eriogonum alatum, winged wild buckwheat
Winged wild buckwheat, Eriogonum alatum in flower (yellowish, center) |
Sunday, June 16, 2024
Plant Story--Pussytoes, Antennaria
Pussytoes (Antennaria species, sunflower family, Asteraceae) are cute little plants, easy to recognize when flowering, inconspicuous when they are not. There are about 45 species of Antennaria, mostly in North America plus a few in Europe and South America. The U.S.D.A. plants database gives 36 species of Antennaria in North America, counting Alaska, all of them native.
Antennaria pussytoes |
When flowering, they send up clusters of round flowers, easily imagined as cat feet. (Catsfoot is another common name). The non-flowering plant is a cluster of quite small oval gray-green leaves on the ground, often below the grasses, and so quite inconspicuous.
Sunday, June 9, 2024
Pinks
This flower is a pink. But it is clearly not very pink.
pinks, genus Dianthus |