Gathering our garden 'shrooms

Our shady gardens have no shortage of leaves, and mostly with the help of the leaf shredding elves (for hire), they get mulched.  After all how else do you keep woodland plants happy?  So while our examining our gardens for flowering events, TPP's keen eye spots a mushroom in the leafy mulch. Mushroom hunting in forested areas is quite the big deal here in the Midwest, and on a few lucky occasions TPP has done OK in the mushroom gathering department. In this case the mushroom was a morel.  And it wasn't alone!  No one stops there; of course you're going to wander around and examine the rest of the estate. And somewhat to our surprise another species of morel was discovered. 

The first one was what is called the black morel, Morchella angusticeps (used to be M. conica), and while this species hasn't been a problem to my knowledge, this mushroom always comes with warnings about toxicity. Supposedly morels are foolproof in terms of ID (at least to genus), but TPP has had to warn people about eating the "giant morels", so big they made the local news, that were clearly Gyromitra, although you would never mistake them for black morels, however Verpa bohemica, is another matter and a mistaken identity and upset GI tract would not be a surprise.  The  other species was a very easy ID, a gray or white morel, Morchella deliciosa, which may also just be an earlier appearing variety of M. esculenta.  Both specific epithets say if all.  Suffice it to say, they were all good. 

Friday Fabulous Flower - Quince

In spite of the nasty freeze in mid-March, this has been a slightly early spring, not significantly earlier than several recent springs, and our gardens have done very well.  All the Magnolias have looked just great and that's way better than general around here.  Just checking the gardening first flowering date log and 79 plants have flowered so far this spring, and we're only half way though April. 
Today's FFF is actually pretty common probably because flowering quinces (Chaenomeles speciosa - key-NOM-eh-leez) are easy care and pretty reliable early flowering shrubs.  The unique orange-ish flower color makes them stand out.  In 2015 TPP put in a new variety called 'Scarlet Storm' that has double (more than 5 petals) and a 'tomato-red' color. It seems to handle mid-day shade quite well.  It's slightly later than the standard flowering quinces, but it might be its location on the north side of our house.  At 1.5" diam, aren't those grand?  Enjoy. Actually the shrub is sort of ungainly and leggy, but after flowering the pruning sheers will begin the process of solving that problem. 

Buttercup confusion

It was a simple chance encounter. TPP was walking along a county park trail, and suddenly this cute little buttercup florally beckons, as it was intended.  A nearly 1" diam, bright yellow flower does get noticed when on a smallish plant, and while certainly a member of the buttercup genus, Ranunculus, what species was it?  This identification turns out to not be an easy task because a number of technical characters are involved to sort out the considerable number of both native and introduced species.  Fortunately, having an herbarium is a great asset and once things get narrowed down to a couple of species, you simply compare your plant to ones previously collected. In this case a couple of misIDed specimens were found too, showing that the confusion is nothing new.  To add to the problem the image is a bit over exposed so the pistils are hard to see.  Fortunately a hard-working master naturalist retrieved a specimen, and it was considerably easier, not easy, but easier, to ID when in hand (this early there were no mature fruitlets to examine (achenelets)).  So this appears to be R. fascicularis, which turns out to be similar to R. hispidus, which has a couple of varieties. 

Reversion - varigation gone

Look at this weirdo shrub.  This happens sometimes.  A perfectly nice green columnar top shooting up from a yellow, spreading, variegated base.  Strange stuff like variegations and weeping forms are found from time to time growing on regular plants and these 'sports', mutant shoots, are kept by grafting them to regular root bases.  But every now and then portions of these 'sports' revert to the more normal type.  TPP has a variegated agave, and after it flowered, the main shoot began to die and in the process it produced side shoots that continue the growth of the plant.  But in this case half the side shoots were totally green probably because the population of cells in a particular meristem did not have chlorophyll free cells that make the variegation.  If they contain cells of both normal and cholorphyll free types, the shoots are called chimeras, part one thing, part another (see link below).  If TPP has left them alone, his agave would have been a regular green plant for the future.  Here, the reversion produced a green shoot without the yellowish pigmentation, or rather with it, but the yellow being masked by regular chloroplasts.  A quick nip with the clippers would have left this a spreading yellowish evergreen (yellow?) shrub.  But no one noticed, or they did but didn't clip the green shoot, now the more vigorous green shoot with the regular columnar growth pattern has taken over.  Sometimes people inadvertently prune away variegated portions of their ornamental plants, and they wonder what happened.  If the shoot becomes completely white, devoid of pigmentation, it will grow only as a "parasite" on the rest of the plant. These are best known for redwoods.

Friday Fabulous Flower -Rue those anemones

Today's FFF is a great little plant (and here too), but really wish the taxonomists would leave the names alone, of course TPP can never remember if this was the rue anemone or the false rue anemone.  Sounds like which ever came first claimed dibs.  This particular variety 'Shoaf's double pink' hardly counts as a native, but it's terribly cute. In this case it means developmentally stamen primordia have switched to producing petal-like flower parts, so the flower has that "rose" look to it, rather than having a single perianth surrounding multiple stamens and pistils. And then both the foliage and perianth have a nice pink tint to add to the cuteness. 
When first teaching about spring flowers way back in the early 70s, this plant was Anemonella thalictroides, but this species has now been submerged into the genus Thalictrum, so it becomes Thalictrum thalictroides.  Thalictrum was the genus of meadow rues, and it would help if someone knew what rues were.  These are members of the buttercup family, not the Rutaceae, the rue family. So no help. Although now TPP bitterly regrets bringing this up. Soon you will get to see another rue anemone whose name has been changed too.  

Friday Fabulous Flower - Pretty in pink - Loebner's Magnolia

Three years ago TPP got this Loebner's magnolia (Magnolia x loebneri) 'Leonard Messel' from a big-box end of season sale for $20. It was a great bargain, and in very good shape considering its pot confinement and summer vacation in the garden shop yard. The tree is now a bit over 7 feet tall and growing very well.  It's not quite as early to flower as one of its parents, the star magnolia, which allowed it to avoid this year's mid-March freeze with very little damage to its flowers.  Although some star magnolias are pink, TPP wonders if they have some hybrid ancestry? This one's flowers are definitely pink with fewer, broader, shorter tepals than star magnolias; quite handsome in our sea of blue. In terms of growth and foliage, it looks quite like its star magnolia parent.

A peculiar limp, pink leaf flush

Spring seems to have arrived and since the spring showers (actually a downpour) is currently curtailing TPP's field and garden work, blogging seems like the right thing to do.  Even in the glasshouse a number of plants respond to the return of longer days. And this includes one of TPP's favorites, the silk handkerchief tree, Maniltoa lenticellata (Fabaceae: Caesalpinioideae) a native of Queensland, Australia. TPP has featured this tree before (here and here), but that was some years ago now (OMG, TPP has been blogging for nearly a decade!).  But this spring's tree flush was pretty spectacular, so spectacular that even plant diversity students noticed! 

At any rate the amazing displays of new foliage are pink, very pink, and a whole leafy branch drops out of a bud all at once (this one if about 18" long).  A student pointing to a bud asks, "How does all of that fit in there?" TPP responds, "Ah, good, curiosity." And he picks off a bud, a really big bud, and says, "Take it apart and find out."  Clearly, judging by her reaction, that was an unexpected event. However this is a quite instructional activity so why not share it with readers?  Since the tree flushes more or less all at once it can be quite a decorative display. 
The buds do get quite large, some 5-6" long before they open, so the flush never comes as a surprise, unless the buds contain flowers (see 2nd link above). Actually the students quite accurately observed that the overlapping bud scales make the bud look a bit like a shrimp. Removing the bud scales is fairly easy, but sorting out the interior is a bit of a challenge. 

The leaflets are folded in half upper side in and each leaf  usually consists of 8 leaflets in 4 pairs. Each leaf also has a pair of long, thin, pale, and early dehiscent stipules at its base. The leaf rachis and stem are sort of looped into S-shapes to shorten them.  So here's the bud with the scales removed. You can see the scale scars on the greenish stem at the top.

Now you have to rather carefully tease the whole thing apart. This bud contains 5 leaves and the length of twig to which they are attached.  Here it is in the same relative orientation.

Starting at the top, the upper most leaf if to your right; the rachis is a bit pinker than the twig and you can see the long, white stipules at its base.  Then the 2nd leaf is to the left, then follow the twig along a big C-shaped curve to get to the 3d leaf (to the right again), then back to the left for the 4th leaf and lastly more or less in the middle, and smallest, if the 5th leaf.  Isn't that grand?
These long pink flushes gradually fade into a pale green as the chlorophyll develops.  Eventually the twig and leaves lift themselves up into a graceful arching branch. The function of such pink flushing and the limp branches has been debated.  TPP remains uncertain.

Narrow-minded, short-sighted university administrators

One is tempted to ask, "Are there any other kind?"  Actually, yes, for which TPP is most grateful for his. But admini-minds at the Univ. of Louisiana, Monroe, are the worst kind.  Biologists were given 48 hrs to solve an insoluble problem of where to relocate their natural history museum to, and of course no justification for keeping it was going to be accepted.  According to their web page, these admini-minds could "find no value in the collections and no value of the collections to the university." "The College was given 48 hours to suggest an alternate location for the collections so that Brown Stadium can be renovated for the track team." In this case the collections involve 5 million fish specimens, a very major collection, and over 500,000 plant herbarium specimens.  That's pretty close to 10 time the size of TPP's herbarium.  The stoopid arrogance of such admini-minds is astounding. We cannot image a use or find a value to having such collections, so they must be junk, and if not relocated the collections will simply be trashed!!!  Yes, decades of biologists efforts, irreplaceable data and specimens, and out it all goes unless the biologists can find a home for them, elsewhere!  Naturally another use for the land has been found, the very valuable track team. The ignorance of such admini-minds is boundless. And a 48 hrs deadline is just infuriating; clearly no solution was wanted. You think climate change may affect Louisiana and the distribution of fish and plants as a result? No value to historical records at all. Sad! 

Stoopid environmental action

It's just hard to believe how awful President T-rump is, and how much worse it may get. TPP has been reasonably silent about T-rump and his ignorant approach to being president. Dear foreign readers, so sorry.  Rolling back fossil fuel emissions is just about the stoopidest thing any president could do, and with it the USA gives up on clean air and having an environmental leadership role in the world.  And T-rump fancies himself a shrewd businessman, and yet he cannot see that new jobs and emerging industries are what will support a green, sustainable energy future, and that coal is basically dead. Sorry miners, it's the same with lumberjacks; the trees are gone. Getting so it's impossible to watch the news without getting so mad, and listening to Mrs. Phactor and the F1 yelling at the media delivery systems doesn't help except as a certain type of self-help, don't-go-crazy therapy. TPP blogs, sorry readers, you'll have to put up with this every now and again. Hope Mar-a-Lago is the first property to go under as sea levels rise.  

Peak blueness

Today is Peak Blueness.  It isn't as blue as some springs because of last week's shot of very cold weather and snow, although the latter doesn't harm these plants very much.  This is a portion of what passes for lawn at the Phactors.  The image was taken from a way back across our gardens and while the resolution does not allow it, the blue is the result of 10s of thousands of Scilla flowers. The Phactors haven't planted a one of these; they have been naturalizing and on their own for decades.  So plant them now for your future blueness.