Barberries and Wheat

If you look at the entries in the Flora of North America for barberry species (Berberis), each notes whether it hosts Puccinia or not. That is not a common sort of entry into a plant description; Puccinia is a fungus, the genus of wheat rusts. (Examples  Berberis amplectens, Berberis aquifolium , Berberis bealei and every other one: scroll down to Discussion).

Japanese barberry

Here's the story:

Travel Story--South Florida Flowers, and More

It was February and South Florida was green, while the northern half of North America was white (or brown).

Plant Story--Wisteria, Big Purple-Flowered Vines

My first memory of wisteria is of my father digging out a big plant, shaped like a small tree that was growing at the end of the driveway of our new house in Ohio. He disliked the way it came up well into the lawn. I liked it for its beautiful, fragrant flowers. And that is a good summary of Asian wisterias in the United States.

Plant Story--The Mysterious Star-lily (Sand-lily, Leucocrinum)

star-lily, sand-lily, Leucocrinum montanum

Early in the spring on the Rocky Mountain Front Range, star-lilies (Leucocrinum montanum) bloom. They're neat little plants, very visible for a week or two, so early that your hike might be in sleet. Although common in some areas and easy to recognize, star-lilies are pretty mysterious.

Appreciating Mangroves

Early in my career as an ecologist, I had the opportunity to explore a stand of mangroves. I haven't wanted to do it again.

Seventh Anniversary

Waikiki beach from the Hau Tree Lanai restaurant, dawn
(hau is sea hibiscus, Hibiscus tiliaceus, lanai is Hawaiian for a partly-roofed patio.
Note the flower on the banister and more on the sand beyond.

This week this blog celebrates its seventh anniversary. This is the 375th published post. That sounds like a lot, but there are 400,000 higher plant species and surely as many neat places in the world to visit...no shortage of topics.

Playing Cupid for the Double Coconut

World's largest seed: double coconut Lodoica malvidica 
see in Foster Botanical Garden, Honolulu
The fitbit is for scale, but better is the dandelion at the top
of the seed. The seed is way bigger than a whole
dandelion plant.

I saw the double coconut, Lodoicea maldivica (palm family, Arecaceae) seeds, largest in the world--see previous post link--lying on the ground inside their cages at the Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu in April 2018.

I've seen seedling coconuts (Cocos nucifera); they send up a pretty dramatic set of first leaves.

Young coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, with four leaves
Note the coconut at the base

With the double coconuts, nothing seemed to be happening.

Plant Story--Double Coconut, World's Largest Seed

In April 2018, I visited Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu, Hawaii, and saw this:

Double coconut (Lodoicea maldivica) seed, April 2018

A cage around a very large seed.

It was the double coconut, also called coco de mer (sea coconut), and Seychelles coconut, the largest seed in the world. Largest seed in the world!--of course I was interested. It is the seed of the palm Lodoicea maldivica (palm family, Arecaceae), a very rare plant endemic to the Secheylles. (Lodoicea is Latin for Louis, honoring King Louis XV of France, maldivica is because it was thought, incorrectly, to come from the Maldives.)

This post, Plant Story--The Double Coconut, is about the plant. The next post, Playing Cupid for the Double Coconut, gives the story behind the seed in the cage in 2018 and what I saw on my return  in 2019.

Looking at 2020

Happy New Year! 2020.

I decided to make 2020 "the Year of 2020 Vision," reviewing my activities and all my stuff, asking if each is an active interest or something I think I might, maybe, do or use, sometime in the future. My possessions and surroundings should reflect my current self. The trick will be honest answers.

When I dial up 2020 Vision beyond the junk drawer, looking at my yard I find lots of ideas that I have carried over for years, to dust off and reconsider.

Walking Beaches

"Life is a beach."That might have been my father's motto. A metalurgist, he became a serious amateur seashell collector, retired to Florida, and walked a lot of beaches.

I think about him whenever I walk beaches. And, looking back over the last decade, I've been on a bunch of beaches. For example, a beach in the Lesser Antilles:

A lovely beach, Iles des Saintes, Lesser Antilles

Plant Story--Black Pepper, Everyone's Spice

Black pepper, Piper nigrum (pepper family Piperaceae) has been an important commodity for millennia. We get it as a dark powder, or if you have a pepper grinder, little round pepper corns.

Growing on Sandy Tropical Beaches

beach in Hawaii

Our world has more ocean than land, so there are vast coastlines. I live in the center of the second-largest continent, which puts me nearly as far from a coastline as is possible. So of course I'm enchanted by beaches.

Plants in Winter

When considering winter in Colorado, I often want to write that plants rest, but in fact, I don't think that is true. A rest is defined as a time to relax and recover strength. Plants drop their leaves and go dormant in winter because they cannot move ice in their tissues, let alone use it to grow. Furthermore, water expands as it freezes, so freezing rips up most cells. There is no recovery of strength in winter, only waiting out an impossible season.

That said, the plants that survive through the winter are an elite minority.

Plant Story: the Passionflowers, Passiflora

Amazing, peculiar flowers

The passionflowers, also called passion vines and passion fruit, genus Passiflora (passionflower family, Passifloraceae) include about 625 species, all but a couple dozen native to the Americas.

Reading Chinese Medicine Ingredients

The Chinese herbal supplement lists as an ingredient "Radix Alba Paeoniae." It doesn't look like a standard botanical term and a Google search is confusing.

The ingredients of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can be puzzling, but there is a system to it. This post is about interpreting Chinese medicinal ingredients. 

Plant Common Names--Rules and Customs

tomato, Solanum lycopersicum

The scientific community has given every plant a single scientific name, written as if it were in Latin (link). But mostly people call plants by a common name, one in the local language. Many--if not most--common names are unlike the scientific name.

apple tree, Malus domestica

Visting Michigan--Late Summer Splendor

There are lots of places to see in Michigan. I attended the University of Michigan and over the years visited many parts of the state. I had the opportunity to return this fall. The trees were tall and green, the forest dotted with meadows and ponds.

Here is a look at central Michigan habitats, roughly the area near Grand Rapids.

Plant Story--Day Flower, Commelina

dayflower, Commelina

Dayflowers were still flowering in late September this year. They are small plants with attractive blue flowers, peeking up through the grass all across North America. The scientific name is Commelina and there are a half dozen species found in North America, about half of them native. Worldwide, there are some 40 species.

Plant Story--Fragrant Oregano, Origanum vulgare

When I was a beginning gardener, decades ago, I tried to grow all the spices of my kitchen shelf: sage, rosemary, thyme, oregano and so on. I have had oregano in my gardens ever since.

Common oregano, also called Greek oregano, pot marjoram, and wild marjoram, is Origanum vulgare in the mint family, Lamiaceae (also called Labiatae). Origanum is the Greek name for the plant, although you can read the more romantic explanation that it is a combination of óros and gános meaning "mountain splendor" or "mountain joy," perhaps both are true. The species epithet, vulgare, means "common." Oregano in native to southern Europe where it has a number of close relatives, such as sweet marjoram (Origanum majorana).

Climate Change is Local

There are lots of places to look to see that global warming is happening: the average temperature of the earth has been higher and higher every year (graphics and charts at NASA); around the world glaciers are melting (National Geographic; NASA); pretty much everyone who keeps records has seen record highs recently, for example, France (link) and Alaska (link).

Fox Glacier, New Zealand, 2009

But weather and climate are complicated.