the forest |
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Visiting Northern Florida--Forest Walk at Birdsong
In February, 2014, I was in northern Florida and visited Birdsong Nature Center, just north of Tallahassee at the southern edge of Georgia.
The pine forests of north Florida and south Georgia were once part of a broad belt of forest across the southern U.S. Much of that area belonged to plantations that after the Civil War became hunting reserves for very rich northerners. That preserved them into the middle of the 20th century. Much of the southern pine forest has been lost to development but some remains as private and public reserves.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Plant Story -- Osage-Orange and the Animals of the Pleistocene
Osage-oranges on the ground |
I talked about Osage-orange's interesting wood previously (link). But Osage-orange has memorable fruits. See Osage-orange fruit They are bigger than oranges. The outer rind is warty. Inside it is more solid than an orange, with a row of small seeds. (Gray's Manual of Botany calls the fruits "disappointingly dry and hard" inside). Not much of anything eats them. People don’t eat them, some horses like them, deer eat a few and determined squirrels will tear them open and eat the seeds, but still the big fruits pile up at the base of the tree.
Mostly we don't think about what we see and ask "why?" But why does Osage-orange make a huge fruit? Plants are rooted. To get to new areas, something (wind, water, an animal) has to carry the seeds away. Osage-orange fruits seem horribly inefficient at dispersing the plant.
The current answer is: the fruits evolved to be eaten by animals that have gone extinct.
Mostly we don't think about what we see and ask "why?" But why does Osage-orange make a huge fruit? Plants are rooted. To get to new areas, something (wind, water, an animal) has to carry the seeds away. Osage-orange fruits seem horribly inefficient at dispersing the plant.
The current answer is: the fruits evolved to be eaten by animals that have gone extinct.
Labels:
anachronism,
avocado,
extinction,
fruit dispersal,
honey locust,
horse,
horse apple,
Maclura pomifera,
Moraceae,
Osage-orange,
Pleistocene,
Pleistocene megafauna,
trees
Sunday, March 16, 2014
Visiting Tierra del Fuego--A Walk on Cape Horn
beach at Cape Horn |
Sunday, March 9, 2014
Visiting Northern Florida--ooh! Magnolias!
At the end of February, I visited Tallahassee Florida. Tallahassee gets frosts and snow every decade or so--including this year, so in many ways it was still very early spring, but some magnolias were in full bloom. I was enchanted. Here are pictures of magnolias in flower in Tallahassee and especially at Maclay Gardens.
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