Nature Quiz of the Week 28

This is a little late in coming. I've been busy getting my dandelion wine going. Hopefully I will get the next part for the answer to last week's question up soon too.

Setting: Around my neighborhood in Kirkland last week.

A multi-kingdom set this week:

1. What species of bird?

This is a spotted towhee (Pipilo maculatus) - a bird that likes to hang out under brush. Its song is a fast trill and often makes a call (around here anyway) that reminds me of a squeaky door.

As in the comments, the tree it is sitting in is a douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii)

2. When in bloom, this plant is one of the showier natives of the Pacific Northwest. What species is it?

This is fireweed. I learned its scientific name as (Epilobium angustifolium). Apparently its currently accepted scientific name is (Chamerion angustifolium) though (thanks Kitty).

It has a pretty spike of pink flowers at the top when blooming. At this young stage, the leaves have a bit of a mustardy flavor when nibbled raw. The leaves can be made into a mild tea and the flowers are sometimes used for honey. After working on dandelion wine this past week I am interested in seeing how a fireweed wine might turn out. Hopefully I will remember to try when they start to bloom.

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Keying Out a Mustard Part 1

On my recent Nature Quiz I asked about the identification of a plant that grows in my neighborhood. I was pretty confident about its genus already, but getting down to the species level can be a little tricky sometimes. I was planning on being a wimp and just giving the answer at the genus level that I was comfortable with, but Kitty's comment inspired me to go and try to key it out.

I ran in to some trouble. Kitty kindly agreed to provide some analysis/commentary which is in italics throughout the post.

I used Flora of the Pacific Northwest (Hitchcock & Cronquist) with a bit of help from Plant Identification Terminology An Illustrated Glossary (Harris & Harris). Rather than jump to the genus I believed it was, I started at the Cruciferae (mustard) family level.

Trouble right away. The first fork of the key was:

1a Fruit stipitate (stipe as least 1mm) (Stipe means stalk supporting a structure)
1b Fruit Sessile or subsessile (stipe < 1mm)



I had scanned ahead to see where I wanted to end up and this was taking me down the wrong fork. But what the heck, might as well follow what the plant and key tell me rather than my preconceived notions.

I could clearly see a stalk supporting the fruit that was around half a centimeter long, so I chose 1a.

In this case stipitate refers to a stalk associated with the fruit, not the short stalk that connects the fruit to the main stem. If you look at the drawings in the H & C key, there is a clear join between the stalk subtending the fruit and the stalk that connects to the stem. I took 1b.

Next branch was easy (2b), this plant has siliques (long and slender fruits) rather than silicles (more oval fruits).

This is the correct choice, but you are definitely on the wrong road...

Then another easy choice (3b) since the flowers are white rather than yellow (see the quiz for photo with flowers). This is a nice illustration for a morality tale, one wrong turn... Then more trouble.

4a Basal leaves generally hastate (sort of arrowhead shaped), white petals, glabrous (hairless)
4b Basal leaves not hastate, petals often purplish, pubescent



The petals are clearly white, but the basal leaves are also definitely not hastate. There is not a lot of hair on the plant, but there is some. So neither fit exactly, but 4b seems to fit better which would take us to the genus Thelypodium.

The plant is definitely hairy, and the leaves not hastate, definitely not purple though, this is a clue that things are not good.

From the Thelypodium key

The first branch (1b) is easy because the stem leaves are petiolate (have a stalk), the next branch (5b) the plant is biennial (I believe), and I could go with often glabrous though I'm not sure what it means that the siliques are generally spreading to erect.

Fruit with a variable attitude? I don't like glabrous though

But both options of 6 have big problems:

6a Stem 1-6 dm (okay), sepals and petals purple (wrong), siliques 4-7 cm (wrong), ...
6b Stem 3-25 dm (wrong), often hairy (not exactly) petals 6-20mm (nope), ...

That means I had a problem somewhere along the way. Not surprising since I'm still pretty sure I am right about which genus it is (and even confirmed my guess using the much simpler key in Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast - though it doesn't even list Thelypodium as an option).

After I got this written up I think I figured out the original problem for myself. In the glossary's illustration the stipe is between the receptacle and the fruiting part, rather than between the fruit and the stem as I had been thinking. On closer examination the fruit seems to be sitting directly on the receptacle (is sessile). I will continue from there in the next part of this series.

Nice job figuring out the original problem.

Ants Hibernating through the Floods?

Tracking club was lovely today - the weather was nice, the birds were singing and there were more interesting track stations than we could fit into the morning. While I was wondering about looking for tracks that could become the tracking stations, I noticed numerous small ant holes. I've certainly seen ants out at the sand bar before, but hadn't really stopped to think about their seasons.

I think they hibernate during the winter time. I didn't notice their presence during the colder months and it appears that they are just getting started with their year now.

For a little while now some of us have been holding questions about what happens to small mammals during the winter floods. There are a number of places, like the tracking club sandbar, that get completely covered by the flood waters multiple times throughout the winter. There are deer mice, jumping mice (who also hibernate), shrews and moles in those areas. Do they climb vegetation, just die, move to higher land, swim, something else? If they die or move how long does it take to repopulate the area? For at least some of them it doesn't seem to take long for them to show up on the recently flooded landscape. While the water from one of the floods this winter was still receding we found numerous deer mouse tracks in the freshly deposited silk as well as a number of larger mammals. And I don't think it was too much longer before I noticed fresh mole activity.

But mammals are relatively big and mobile compared to ants. It would be a real stretch to expect ants to move to higher ground, though not too much of one to think they might climb a tree. However, if they are hibernating underground, what protects them from flooding? Perhaps they have chambers that manage to trap enough air during the flood or maybe they don't need much air while hibernating? Maybe like some insects, they are able to keep an air bubble around them in the water?

I did a little Internet searching on ants in floods and saw a lot of links about fire ants floating. There was also an abstract for an article about one species of ant that lived in bamboo and managed flood control by drinking water inside, then going outside and peeing. I didn't find anything about this sort of situation though.

Nature Quiz of the Week 27

Setting: Late March 2009, alongside the road in a residential neighborhood of Kirkland. For scale, it was probably 3 or 4 inches tall.

1. What species of plant is this (or if not to species, how closely can you identify it)?

This plant is in the mustard family Cruciferae, the four petals opposite each other is typical of mustards, the long slender fruit is also one of the typical mustard fruit types.

The mustard family is diverse and often weedy around here, so it can be difficult to get down to a particular species, though the genus is not as difficult to determine. I decided to attempt to key out the plant to the species level and wrote up a new post for part 1 of that experience.

2. Is it edible? If so, what does it taste like?

I am not aware of any poisonous mustards in this region (when eaten in moderate amounts). This one is definitely edible and has a peppery flavor characteristic of many mustards.

As a side note, many of our cultivated vegetables are in the mustard family such as broccoli, cabbage, radishes, turnips and brussel sprouts.

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Nature Quiz of the Week 26

Setting: Last October, just east of Snoqualmie Pass.

1. What species of tree is this?

This is a red alder (Alnus rubra). Note the bright color of the inner bark that gives it its scientific name.

2. What happened to it?

The damage to the bark is typical of an ungulate rub. Because of the height on the tree (which is a little difficult to ascertain in this picture) I believe it was from an Elk (Cervus elaphus).

3. Approximately how old is the damage?

The damage was fairly recent. As the wound on the tree ages the color will dull significantly, also note the fresh bark that has fallen on top of the vegetation on the ground. There are several leaves on top of the fallen bark which suggests it probably hadn't occurred within the past few hours but it had definitely occurred that fall. I have not studied the relevant clues enough (e.g. how quickly the color dulls in the bark) to feel comfortable being too much more specific than that. But take a look at Dancingfrog's interesting analysis in the comments.

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