- Home
- Angry by Choice
- Catalogue of Organisms
- Chinleana
- Doc Madhattan
- Games with Words
- Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
- History of Geology
- Moss Plants and More
- Pleiotropy
- Plektix
- RRResearch
- Skeptic Wonder
- The Culture of Chemistry
- The Curious Wavefunction
- The Phytophactor
- The View from a Microbiologist
- Variety of Life
Field of Science
-
-
From Valley Forge to the Lab: Parallels between Washington's Maneuvers and Drug Development4 weeks ago in The Curious Wavefunction
-
Political pollsters are pretending they know what's happening. They don't.4 weeks ago in Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience
-
-
Course Corrections5 months ago in Angry by Choice
-
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Catalogue of Organisms
-
The Site is Dead, Long Live the Site2 years ago in Variety of Life
-
Does mathematics carry human biases?4 years ago in PLEKTIX
-
-
-
-
A New Placodont from the Late Triassic of China5 years ago in Chinleana
-
Posted: July 22, 2018 at 03:03PM6 years ago in Field Notes
-
Bryophyte Herbarium Survey7 years ago in Moss Plants and More
-
Harnessing innate immunity to cure HIV8 years ago in Rule of 6ix
-
WE MOVED!8 years ago in Games with Words
-
-
-
-
post doc job opportunity on ribosome biochemistry!9 years ago in Protein Evolution and Other Musings
-
Growing the kidney: re-blogged from Science Bitez9 years ago in The View from a Microbiologist
-
Blogging Microbes- Communicating Microbiology to Netizens10 years ago in Memoirs of a Defective Brain
-
-
-
The Lure of the Obscure? Guest Post by Frank Stahl12 years ago in Sex, Genes & Evolution
-
-
Lab Rat Moving House13 years ago in Life of a Lab Rat
-
Goodbye FoS, thanks for all the laughs13 years ago in Disease Prone
-
-
Slideshow of NASA's Stardust-NExT Mission Comet Tempel 1 Flyby13 years ago in The Large Picture Blog
-
in The Biology Files
A plant pundit comments on plants, the foibles and fun of academic life, and other things of interest.
Holly or Oak?
When you're in a new place you make some snap identifications, and sometimes they're right and sometimes they are wrong. This one was tricky because the first plant TPP saw was just a shrub. My initial guess was a holly; it just had the look of an evergreen shrub and the leaf was quite holly like, although some time ago TPP got quite a surprise when entering "holly" into the google search engine. However a day later, there was the same leaf, but now it was on a tree that had a most decidedly oak look to it, and sure enough, there were little acorns forming. Little acorns, there can be little doubt of what you've got. Turns out this "resemblance" has been recognized for some time, so this tree is another iconic species of this Tuscan area, Quercus ilex, the holly oak, not the oak holly. It is an evergreen, a sort of local Tuscan live oak. You don't see a generic name (Ilex - holly) used as a specific epithet very often, but the International code of botanical nomenclature does say this is "legal".
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Dearest Phactor,
i am glad you are enjoying your Italian soujourn - i am enjoying your posts.
Another holly-like oak that grows in the mediterranean and fooled me until I saw the acorns is Quercus coccifera.
The naming of holly and Quercus ilex is really the opposite of what you suggest. "ilex" is the ancient latin name for Q.ilex. (Modern italian "(Il)leccio" or "elche"). Holly acquired the name "Ilex" later because of the similarity of the leaves to that of the oak.
buone vacanze!
Ciao
BrianO
Many thanks for getting TPP turned around on the holly oak. And thanks for the tip about Q. coccifera - saw it yesterday, and knew it was an oak from the get go as a result.
Post a Comment