Naturalist Newsletter: Sep 12/ Nectar Providers

[Rob]

JIM CONRAD’S NATURALIST NEWSLETTER
Issued from Hacienda Chichén beside the Maya ruin of
Chichén Itzá in the central Yucatán, MÉXICO

September 12, 2010

*****

NECTAR PROVIDERS PASSING THE TORCH
In July and early August a certain high-climbing,
square-stemmed liana, or woody vine, bore conspicuous
clumps of 1½-inch long (3.8 cm), purple blossoms. The
vine was a member of the Trumpet Creeper Family, the
Bignoniaceae, and its flowers were shaped like those
of the North's Trumpet Creepers. The plant was Cydista
potosina, and you can see and read all about it at
http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/cydista.htm

As August wore on I expected those high-hanging purple
flowers to slowly disappear from the landscape, but
they didn't. In fact, as September began, an even more
eye-catching flush of purple flowers on high-climbing
lianas began appearing. It was a second species of
Cydista.

It was a beautiful case of a species taking over the
job of supplying pollen and nectar to a certain size
and kind of pollinator as the previous species'
flowering period gradually ended. You might enjoy
seeing if you can distinguish between Cydista potosina
at the last link, and the species flowering now, shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912cd.jpg

A close-up of one of the new species' flowers is shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912ce.jpg

I'll bet you can't see any significant differences
between them. In those two pictures I can't, either.
An important clue that we have a second species,
though, is shown in the stem close-up shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912cf.jpg

On the picture's right the squared stem slants upward.
The petioles of two compound leaves connect with the
stem above my middle finger. The clue that we have a
new species is the leafy, ear-shaped items at the base
of each petiole. Those are stipules, or modified
leaves, which some species have but others don't. On
Cydista potosina similar stipules are produced on
young shoots, but those stipules soon fall off. On
this second species flowering now, the stipules remain
on old stems.

A close-up of the stipules better showing the squared
stems, which actually are sharply "winged," is shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912cg.jpg

The top picture on the C. potosina page shows older
stems clearly lacking those stipules.

So, this second species is CYDISTA DIVERSIFOLIA, and
it's very closely related to the earlier flowering
Cydista potosina. Except for the stipules and the
different flowering periods, I don't think I could
tell the two species apart. Maybe by the fruits, but
we don't have fruits yet. Also maybe C. diversifolia's
stems are more sharply angled than C. potosina's, and
my impression is that C. diversifolia tends to live in
drier soils than C. potosina.

Both these Cydista species are used locally for
weaving traditional Maya baskets. In certain areas
both species have completely disappeared because of
overharvesting for basket weaving.

Cydista diversifolia occurs from southern Mexico and
the Yucatán south through most of the drier forests of
Central America.

*****

MARIGOLDS
You'd be surprised how few plants are flowering now
during the heart of the rainy season. It seems that a
blooming flush occurs at the end of the dry season,
around April, then another toward the end of the rainy
season, around November. Nowadays a few weedy, yellow-
blossomed Composites (Sunflower or Aster Family) are
coming online, but otherwise mostly there's just a lot
of lush, rainy-season greenness out there.

Maybe that's the reason I'm enjoying the marigolds --
also yellow-flowered composites -- planted beside the
hut's door. As I sit there reading and looking around,
I just can't keep my eyes off their frilly, orangish
blossoms, so vivid against dark green foliage behind
them or, better yet, against the blue sky beyond. A
typical flowerhead with a summery sky beyond is shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912mg.jpg

Besides drinking in the sheer, gorgeous colors, there
are textures and pleasing designs to dwell on. Since
we're dealing with composite flowers here, what's
shown in the photo is a flowerhead composed of many
individual flowers. Marigold flowerheads bear two
types of flowers, tubular disk flowers and flat ray
flowers. A diagram distinguishing the two types is at
http://www.backyardnature.net/marigold.jpg

A photo showing a ray flower (on the left) and a disk
flower (on the right) on the palm of my hand is shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912mh.jpg

The flowerheads of some Composite Family genera bear
only ray flowers (Dandelion and Chicory). Other genera
bear only disk flowers (Eupatorium and Ageratum). The
flowerheads of Marigolds (as with asters, sunflowers
and zinnias) bear both kinds.

The enormous Composite Family embraces maybe 1500-1700
genera and 20,000-25,000 species, and the pollen-
producing stamens of the flowers in each of those
20,000-25,000 species do something interesting that
people seldom notice because the stamens are so small.
You can see what they do in a marigold disk flower at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912mi.jpg

In that picture the disk flower's tubular corolla has
been split and pulled to the right. The Y-shaped item
at the top is two fuzzy stigmas, which are the female
part of the pistil where pollen germinates. The five
stamens doing their interesting thing lie just below
the projecting stigmas. What they're doing is fusing
their anthers into a cylinder surrounding the ovary's
style. The style is the "neck" connecting the ovary
with its stigmas. Anthers are baglike parts of the
stamen that split open to release pollen. Among the
thousands of Composite Family species there's mind-
boggling variation, yet always the flowers' four or
five stamens join at their anthers to form a tube
around the style.

A very important feature helping distinguish marigolds
from other composite flower types is shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912mj.jpg

On the left, look at the green, goblet-shaped item
from which the disk and ray flowers emerge. That's the
involucre. In the vast majority of composite flower
types the involucre is composed of two or more series
of more or less triangular, sharp-tipped, separate
scales or "involucral bracts." You can see that in
marigolds the triangular scales are long and slender,
there's just one row of them instead of two or more,
and they are joined at their margins. A couple of
weeks ago we looked at a Zinnia's involucre, which had
four or so series of overlapping bracts not joined
together at their margins. You can see that again at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100829zl.jpg

If you've forgotten what a marigold's pinnately
compound leaves with oblong or lanceolate, serrate
segments look like, you can see one at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912mk.jpg

My marigolds, nearly five feet tall (1.5 m), are much
larger than those I've seen up North. Their blossoms
average about two inches across (5 cm). In garden
catalogs this native Mexican species planted worldwide
is marketed as the Big, Aztec or African Marigold.
It's TAGETES ERECTA. The "African Marigold" name
derives from a time when everyone didn't know that it
really is from good old Mexico.

*****

"PILGRIM" IN RED
Once again biking Pisté's backstreets has paid off in
terms on discovering a gorgeous plant completely new
to me. This time it was a streetside bushy tree about
15 feet tall (4.5 m) with alternate, ovate leaves, and
with the inch-wide (2.5 cm), red flowers shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912jp.jpg

What was encountered inside each blossom was
surprising and beautiful, and you can see it yourself
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912jq.jpg

Those are ten stamens with their matchstick-like
filaments joined into a column, almost as in the
Hibiscus Family. Each stamen is topped by a long
anther splitting along both its edges to release
yellow pollen. Another striking feature of the flower
is that there's no hint of female parts -- no pistil
with its stigma, style and ovary. This is a unisexual
male flower.

Examining a leaf, where the blade attached to its
petiole, there were stalked glands shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912jr.jpg

Unisexual flowers, glandular herbage and more-than-
normal juice exuding from the wound where the leaf
broke of... and already I was getting an idea of which
plant family the tree probably belonged too: Surely it
was the Euphorbia Family, the Euphorbiaceae, in which
also are found Poinsettias, Castor Bean, and Manioc.

By using the thumbnail image feature of Google and
searching on the keywords "Euphorbiaceae red flowers,"
it wasn't long before I found a match. The pretty tree
in Pisté is known to the English speaking world as
Peregrina, Spicy Jatropha, and other names. In Spanish
"peregrina" is the feminine form of the word
"pilgrim." It's JATROPHA INTEGERRIMA, a native of the
West Indies, and especially well known in Cuba.

At first I was uncertain about the ID because many
images of the species on the Internet show leaves with
very different shapes. Finally I read that the leaves
are extremely variable, ranging in shape from oval to
elliptic, to even longish and fiddle-shaped. Also, all
the leaves in my picture are unlobed, but larger
leaves on older branches sometimes bore three low,
sharp-pointed lobes.

In southern Florida Peregrina has escaped from
cultivation so now it even grows in the US. Many
Internet pictures of the tree have been taken in
Hawaii so it must be a favorite garden plant there,
too.

*****

REALLY BIG AVOCADOS
As if spotting the Peregrina during my most recent
biking through Pisté weren't enough, that same day I
saw the really big avocado on a streetside tree shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912av.jpg

I could only see three fruits, and all were so high up
I couldn't measure them. However, an Avocado tree leaf
is about four inches long (10 cm) and the fruit seems
about twice as long as an average leaf, so that
avocado fruit must be around eight inches long, which
qualifies it as a very big avocado.

I thought that maybe I'd found a rare cultivar only
grown in Maya territory, but my Maya friends say that
it's nothing special, just one of several avocado
cultivars planted everywhere in the tropics. That
information is confirmed on such Internet pages as one
at http://avocadopoint.com/avocados/Avocado+Cultivars/

That page describes several cultivars, and a number
are mentioned as producing very large fruits. If I had
to guess which cultivar is shown in the picture I'd
say "Fuerte," but that's only because it matches
pictures of that fruit, and "Fuerte" is a fairly
commonly grown type.

Avocados are native Mexican plants, and Mexico is by
far the world's greatest exporter of them. You might
enjoy reading about the history of avocado production
at http://whatscookingamerica.net/avacado.htm

If you have an Avocado tree and want to try to
identify which cultivar it is, a helpful piece of
information is that among Avocados there are two
flowering types: "A" and "B". "A" cultivar flowers
open as female on the morning of the first day and
close in late morning or early afternoon. Then they
open as male in the afternoon of the second day. "B"
varieties open as female on the afternoon of the first
day, close in late afternoon and reopen as male the
following morning. Once you know whether you have an
"A" or "B" type, you can rule out about half the
cultivars.

*****

MORA SAWDUST
I'd been helping Luis pull Picapica vines from his
milpa, or cornfield, and as I was leaving the milpa
area I came onto a spot where Luis had felled a dead
tree to make way for more milpa. What I saw is shown
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912ma.jpg

What's interesting is that the sawdust is so orange.
It makes sense, however, since the tree was a Mora,
MACLURA TINCTORIA, of the Fig Family. We've already
met this tree flowering and fruiting. The resulting
web page with pictures and discussion is at
http://www.backyardnature.net/yucatan/mora.htm

On that page I write, "Once Moras were highly regarded
because their wood produces a bright, yellow dye.
During World War II Mora contributed to the Allied
cause by producing a dye used to color soldiers' khaki
uniforms. Its commercial name was Fustic."

Elsewhere I write that "Mora woodchips soaked in water
produce a yellow dye, and this dye has long been used
by the Maya. Certain metals can be added to the
soaking water to produce a green dye."

I collected some sawdust and soaked it in water
overnight. The result is shown at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912mb.jpg

*****

SUNBURNED LEAVES
Last week we saw that many Maya believe that rain
falling during our current rainy-season afternoon
storms burns the plants it falls on. I'm skeptical
about that, but I know for a fact that leaves can
suffer serious burn from the sun.

We have many potted Royal Palm seedlings growing in
deep shade. They need to be moved into sunlight bit by
bit, so the other day I moved some to a sunnier spot
but misjudged how much sunlight they'd get. The
resulting white "killed areas" -- where the blades'
bent surfaces faced directly against the sun -- appear
at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912su.jpg

The same happened with a Ramon tree. Its sunburned
leaf with blotches of dead and dying tissue is seen at
http://www.backyardnature.net/n/10/100912sv.jpg

The Ramon leaf is interesting because when I moved the
seedling the leaf was just unfolding leaf a top the
seedling's stem. Leaves below it didn't suffer,
apparently because they'd been hardened enough over
time. Leaves developing later above the damaged leaf
didn't suffer either, because as they unfolded they
could adjust their defenses to the increased sunlight.
Clearly, Ramon saplings can accommodate a range of
sunlight intensities, but at least their young leaves
are vulnerable to sudden changes.

*****

WIND
A funny thing happened on the way to nirvana. As if it
were the road to quantum mechanics, halfway there the
rules changed, the map begun with proved all wrong,
and I even lost track of who it was, exactly, doing
the traveling, and why.

Nirvana, eventually it became apparent during many
years of seeking it, is no sudden epiphany, or
newfound ability to tap into mysterious powers or
insights. My opinion is that the nirvana-seeking
process is long and slow, with many setbacks along the
way. Nirvana gradually reveals itself as the state of
mind in which one identifies with the unity of all
things so completely that -- at least in brief flashes
of insight -- one discovers his or her own apartness,
or isolation, to be pure illusion.

Lots of people have figured this out, and I'm not sure
I'd have ever realized it if I hadn't been exposed to
the idea from several sources. Some write about the
insight in books or songs, others talk about it with
their friends, but I think most just keep their mouths
shut, knowing that even once the insight is achieved
there's not much you can do about it. No matter how
well you understand, you still end up as a spiritual
awareness stuck inside an animal body that's slowly
wearing out.

How I love the wind. Funny, but while thinking about
all this a wave of intense nostalgia washes over me,
and that's the thing I wish to say. Maybe it's because
as I write this, the wind scoots pretty, white cumulus
clouds across a blue sky, the wind shakes green bushes
visible through the openings of the hut's pole walls,
the wind carries to me the Melodious Blackbirds'
liquid calls, and the motmots' funny, croaky one, and
the odor of rich mud from yesterday's rain, and of
moldering herbage, odors so redolent of life and
process and, it seems to me, unity.

I'd like to be the wind, to flow in a vast, moist wave
off the Caribbean bestowing fragrance of salt and fish
onto Cancún then over Pisté and Chichén Itzá absorbing
odors of mud, of flowering acacia, woodsmoke, and
baking tortillas from a world of Maya huts.

And the beautiful thing is that to the extent my mind
truly embraces the nirvanic insight of unity, I AM the
wind bestowing, absorbing, flowing on and on.

*****

Best wishes to all Newsletter Readers.

Jim

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