Short Nature Post
Today ended up being nicer than I expected it to be... the sun came out even though the wind was chilly... so I stopped on the way home to take a walk on the other trail (the one that isn't by the lake). This is the trail along the creek where I always find all the red trilliums, and I figured it was much too early for them yet, but I might at least see some starting to come up. I hadn't planned on going for a walk, so I just had my phone with me, but I'm starting to think it takes better pictures than my phone, at least at a distance.
ANYWAY...
This is apparently a good year for trout lilies... they are everywhere! I knew there were going to be lots because those mottled leaves are quite distinctive even before the flowers come out. This one was fully open, but most of the other ones I saw were closed, probably because of the below-freezing temperature last night. It's always hard to get a good picture of the flowers because, unlike most flowers, they tend to face straight down. This is because their pollinators aren't bees or other flying insects... they're ants, so the flowers need to be available to a ground-dwelling pollinator. It's too early in the year for bees, but the ants are out... since they live underground they can become active earlier in the season and then take shelter if it gets cold again. There have been lots of them in the house, to the annoyance of the cats, who have discovered that ants are not good to eat because they bite and are full of formic acid.
Random fact: anteaters are so well-adapted to eating ants and nothing else that they do not produce any hydrochloric acid in their stomachs... they just rely on the formic acid from the ants they eat to do all their digesting. Don't ask me why the formic acid doesn't digest the ants BEFORE they get into an anteater, because I don't know.
It's hard to tell from this picture, but everything green that you see on this hill is a trout lily (Erythromium americanum). Their pollination-by-ant method seems a bit hit-or-miss, but that's okay, because like many members of this family they are excellent at spreading by underground bulbs that split and and produce large clusters.
While the former plant is a native, this one is not... it's an unwelcome invasive, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata). While it is apparently a popular culinary herb in some places, it is NOT popular here. Not only is it toxic to almost all North American insects, but it also produces chemicals in its roots that poisons the fungal partners that live symbiotically with other plant and tree roots. Remember me talking about how what we learned in school were "root hairs" are actually symbiotic fungi that drastically expand the area of the plant's root system and help it take up nutrients from the soil? Well, this plant kills those fungi, which weakens or kills neighboring plants. In its native habitat, its chemicals are not effective against most of the plant-root fungi, which makes sense because they have had time to evolve to be resistant to it. Our local plants have no such protection. Even deer won't eat this weed, and deer will eat ANYTHING.
I was surprised to see these guys already so tall... I usually don't expect to see May apples (Podophyllum peltatum) until a few weeks into May. Things on the slopes of this steep hill over the creek seem to get an early start on my lake residents... perhaps the hillside's near-constant sun exposure means the ground warms up earlier and signals them to grow. Although May apples can spread by distribution of their fruit, most of the plants are not reproductive in any given year. The reproductives have two umbrellas instead of one (you can see one just to the left of center in the picture and also at the very bottom just peeking up). The others are non-reproductive but are busy collecting energy that feeds the colony, because this is a colony, a network joined by a common root system, and all of them are clones. Genetic variation is introduced by the reproductives, which are fertilized and then produce fruit, but the clones seem to do very well for themselves.
I was hoping to see some trilliums coming up, but I was NOT expected to find them already blooming! Trilliums (Trillium erectum) are one of my favorite spring ephemerals, plants whose life cycles are perfectly timed to take advantage of the short time between spring thaw and shading by tree leaves. They are very temporary and their response to their surroundings is carefully orchestrated, so these ones, like the May apples, are on a very exposed and sunny hillside. There were no trilliums in the shadier spots, although I know they'll be there later, but these ones are using their advantageous location to get a headstart. The deep red color is one of two color "morphs" of this species; the other is white. Despite being pretty, like most spring ephemerals they cannot rely on bees for pollination... they smell vaguely like rotting garbage and are pollinated by flies.
A hillside of trilliums basking on their steep, sunny slope. Many of them aren't blooming yet, but several are. Because the seeds often don't go far from the parent plant, the color morph that lives in one area tends to dominate. Around my lake I only find white ones, and here only red. While the plant relies on flies to pollinate it, it needs ants to disperse its seeds. To encourage this, it produces its seeds in an elaiosome, a thick oily structure that serves specifically as ant food. The ants collect the seeds, eat the nutritious elaiosome, and then get rid of the seed, which has been carried away from the parent plant.
Just to be annoying, the leaves of trillums are not actually leaves. Trilliums do not HAVE leaves. What they have are bracts, which are technically part of the flower. Usually they're the little green bits around the base of a flower. In this case, they have taken the place of the leaves, which no longer exist. They look just like leaves and there is no reason for anyone to think they are not leaves unless you are the kind of person who deeply and passionately cares about such things. I find this information interesting because weird things interest me, and a perfectly ordinary-looking plant that has actually completely gotten rid of leaves and replaced them with part of the flower seems quite random. I can't imagine what evolutionary strategy this serves, but it must be successful. Maybe it lets them pop up earlier in the spring. I have no idea. But if you tell anyone that trillums do not have any leaves they will think you have been smoking funny things, so don't bother.
.
.
.
ANYWAY...
This is apparently a good year for trout lilies... they are everywhere! I knew there were going to be lots because those mottled leaves are quite distinctive even before the flowers come out. This one was fully open, but most of the other ones I saw were closed, probably because of the below-freezing temperature last night. It's always hard to get a good picture of the flowers because, unlike most flowers, they tend to face straight down. This is because their pollinators aren't bees or other flying insects... they're ants, so the flowers need to be available to a ground-dwelling pollinator. It's too early in the year for bees, but the ants are out... since they live underground they can become active earlier in the season and then take shelter if it gets cold again. There have been lots of them in the house, to the annoyance of the cats, who have discovered that ants are not good to eat because they bite and are full of formic acid.
Random fact: anteaters are so well-adapted to eating ants and nothing else that they do not produce any hydrochloric acid in their stomachs... they just rely on the formic acid from the ants they eat to do all their digesting. Don't ask me why the formic acid doesn't digest the ants BEFORE they get into an anteater, because I don't know.
It's hard to tell from this picture, but everything green that you see on this hill is a trout lily (Erythromium americanum). Their pollination-by-ant method seems a bit hit-or-miss, but that's okay, because like many members of this family they are excellent at spreading by underground bulbs that split and and produce large clusters.
While the former plant is a native, this one is not... it's an unwelcome invasive, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata). While it is apparently a popular culinary herb in some places, it is NOT popular here. Not only is it toxic to almost all North American insects, but it also produces chemicals in its roots that poisons the fungal partners that live symbiotically with other plant and tree roots. Remember me talking about how what we learned in school were "root hairs" are actually symbiotic fungi that drastically expand the area of the plant's root system and help it take up nutrients from the soil? Well, this plant kills those fungi, which weakens or kills neighboring plants. In its native habitat, its chemicals are not effective against most of the plant-root fungi, which makes sense because they have had time to evolve to be resistant to it. Our local plants have no such protection. Even deer won't eat this weed, and deer will eat ANYTHING.
I was surprised to see these guys already so tall... I usually don't expect to see May apples (Podophyllum peltatum) until a few weeks into May. Things on the slopes of this steep hill over the creek seem to get an early start on my lake residents... perhaps the hillside's near-constant sun exposure means the ground warms up earlier and signals them to grow. Although May apples can spread by distribution of their fruit, most of the plants are not reproductive in any given year. The reproductives have two umbrellas instead of one (you can see one just to the left of center in the picture and also at the very bottom just peeking up). The others are non-reproductive but are busy collecting energy that feeds the colony, because this is a colony, a network joined by a common root system, and all of them are clones. Genetic variation is introduced by the reproductives, which are fertilized and then produce fruit, but the clones seem to do very well for themselves.
I was hoping to see some trilliums coming up, but I was NOT expected to find them already blooming! Trilliums (Trillium erectum) are one of my favorite spring ephemerals, plants whose life cycles are perfectly timed to take advantage of the short time between spring thaw and shading by tree leaves. They are very temporary and their response to their surroundings is carefully orchestrated, so these ones, like the May apples, are on a very exposed and sunny hillside. There were no trilliums in the shadier spots, although I know they'll be there later, but these ones are using their advantageous location to get a headstart. The deep red color is one of two color "morphs" of this species; the other is white. Despite being pretty, like most spring ephemerals they cannot rely on bees for pollination... they smell vaguely like rotting garbage and are pollinated by flies.
A hillside of trilliums basking on their steep, sunny slope. Many of them aren't blooming yet, but several are. Because the seeds often don't go far from the parent plant, the color morph that lives in one area tends to dominate. Around my lake I only find white ones, and here only red. While the plant relies on flies to pollinate it, it needs ants to disperse its seeds. To encourage this, it produces its seeds in an elaiosome, a thick oily structure that serves specifically as ant food. The ants collect the seeds, eat the nutritious elaiosome, and then get rid of the seed, which has been carried away from the parent plant.
Just to be annoying, the leaves of trillums are not actually leaves. Trilliums do not HAVE leaves. What they have are bracts, which are technically part of the flower. Usually they're the little green bits around the base of a flower. In this case, they have taken the place of the leaves, which no longer exist. They look just like leaves and there is no reason for anyone to think they are not leaves unless you are the kind of person who deeply and passionately cares about such things. I find this information interesting because weird things interest me, and a perfectly ordinary-looking plant that has actually completely gotten rid of leaves and replaced them with part of the flower seems quite random. I can't imagine what evolutionary strategy this serves, but it must be successful. Maybe it lets them pop up earlier in the spring. I have no idea. But if you tell anyone that trillums do not have any leaves they will think you have been smoking funny things, so don't bother.
.
.
.