Apple #705: Clover

St. Patricks' Day is right around the corner. Easter with all its candy is already here, if you believe the grocery story displays. (Just what does that word "Easter" mean anyway?)  Soon we'll be seeing daffodils and forsythia sprouting everywhere.  Before you know it, Spring Fever will have set in.

All right, I'll stop with the link-bombing.  The point is, I've been doing this here Daily Apple thing for so many years, I've already covered most of the obvious subjects.  So I thought it would be a good time to talk about something small, unassuming, often overlooked.  Like clover.



Clover, four-leaved, no less.
(Photo from McPeak's Assisted Living)

Finding a Four-Leaf Clover

• What are the odds of finding a four-leaf clover?  On your first try: about 10,000 to 1.  

• Keep trying, though, because apparently the pursuit is not as difficult as it's made out to be.  Some people report finding 5, 6, or 7 four-leaf clovers in a single clover-hunting session.

• Scientific American estimates that one four-leaf clover should be present in every 1.2 square meters' worth of clover patch.  So if you've got a roughly 1-square-meter patch of clover, you'll probably find a 4-leaf one in it.

• But 4-leaf clovers have apparently become ho-hum.  The real prize to find now is a 5-leaf clover. 

5-leaf clover. For reals.
(Photo by Annamaria Campbell, at Ann's Creative Photography)

• You would think this would be even more difficult, but clover-hunters report finding multiple 5-leaved clovers in a single hunting session, too.

• Clovers with 6, 7, and 8 leaves have also been found.  People have set records finding clovers with as many as 21 and 56 leaves. 

21-leaf clover, bred & grown & found in Japan by a farmer named Shigeo Obara.  I don't know if it counts as a "find" if you bred it & grew it yourself.
(Photo from neatorama)



56-leaf clover, bred & grown & found by that same farmer in Japan, Shigeo Obara.
(Photo from National Geographic)

• This cloverleaf bounty probably has to do with the fact that plant cultivators have figured out how to breed clover for the recessive gene that produces multi-leaved clovers.

• Some tips for looking for the multi-leaf clovers: don't go scrutinizing each one with a magnifying glass.  Instead, find a patch of clover, preferably white clover, and cast your gaze slowly over the patch, maybe ruffling the patch gently with your hand, while you look for the shape of 4 leaves -- or 5, or anyway an odd shape that stands out from the rest.  

• Once you've found one, keep looking in that same patch of clover because you'll probably find another one nearby.  It'll have more brothers & sisters around somewhere.

White clover, identifiable by the presence of the white crescents on the leaves. . . 
(Photo from Walter Reeves.com)


. . . and the little white ball-shaped flowers, sometimes tinged with pink, that stand up high above the leaves
(Photo from Seedland.com)

• Speaking of cloverleaf, anybody remember the Cloverleaf in Ann Arbor, before it was downtown, when it used to be out by that Kroger?  Ah, the old days.

The Cloverleaf today.  Look, it's all downtown and cafe-like and everything. Right on Liberty Street.
(Photo from visitypsinow. Which is kind of funny. Because this place is in Ann Arbor.)

Is it a Weed or Is it a Crop?

• Many home gardeners think of clover as a weed.  It does tend to spread, so people often get frustrated with this and rip it out.  And keep ripping it out -- it is rather persistent.

• Some farmers, however, have a different opinion.

• All those stories about cattle and bunnies loving to graze in the clover are apparently accurate.  According to the USDA, clover--especially white clover--is "highly palatable" and "nutritious" for a wide variety of grazing livestock.

• You do have to be careful to keep the cattle from standing in the clover all day.  Because they'll keep eating it and eating it, and then they'll get the bloat.

• As a plant for plant's sake, clover is a legume.  Its roots fix nitrogen in the soil, so it helps revitalize the soil.  Some farmers even call it a "living mulch," which means just by planting it and letting it grow, it will improve the soil it lives in.

• Some farmers use it as cover in the space between crop rows.  For example, blueberry farmers in Michigan are discovering the benefits of planting white clover between the rows of blueberry bushes.  It doesn't compete with the berry bushes for sunlight, it out-competes other weeds, and it doesn't take much labor to mow it or seed it, since it often re-seeds itself.

• Clover is also traffic-resistant.  This means you can walk on it, and you won't kill it.  It won't survive a lot of heavy livestock grazing, or a ton of foot traffic all the time, but it's also not so sensitive you have to avoid walking on it.

• Bees love clover.  If you've got clover planted among your other crops that you want the bees to visit, the clover will act like a "POLLEN HERE" sign to the bees, and while they're there, they'll stop by your other plants and pollinate those too.

This bee is thinking, yum yum yum, clover
(Photo from Open Source Ecology)



This bunny says, "What? Nobody here is eating clover.  I don't know what you're talking about."
(Photo by HDR Cafe on Flickr, but found on Pinterest)



This duck likes clover, too.
(Photo from Open Source Ecology)

• So you might see why the phrase "we're in clover" means we've got it pretty good.

Clover in Song

• Remember that song, "I'm Looking over my Dead Dog Rover"?  Turns out, that's a spoof that aired on Dr. Demento. The original was "I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover."  I guess I was one of those dang kids who only knew the joke and not the thing it was based on.

• Of course, you can't talk about clover without this.  Please to hit play.

• or the 80s version, if that's your fancy

Sources
The Minitab Blog, The Odds of Finding a Four-Leaf Clover [on your first try], March 16, 2012
Daily Telegraph, What are the odds? Woman finds 21 four-leaf clovers in her front yard, August 11, 2014
WikiHow, How to Find a Four Leaf Clover
Smithsonian Magazine, How to Find a Four Leaf Clover, March 17, 2014
USDA Plant Fact Sheet, White Clover
Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education, White Clover

Apple #592: A Whole Lotta Blues

I thought I'd finish up my series of blue entries with a whole bunch of blue things, with a few facts about each. Sort of like the finale at a fireworks show.

Blue Suede Shoes

(Photo from some site on Etsy that isn't loading)

• We all know Elvis Presley performed the song, but Carl Perkins is the guy who wrote it. He got the idea from Johnny Cash.

• Cash told Perkins about an Air Force sergeant he used to know was rather particular about his appearance. He used to say, jokingly, "Just don't step on my blue suede shoes!" The reason this was a joke was because he'd be wearing his Air Force uniform at the time, with his regulation-issued shoes.

• Cash thought this was a good line for a song, but Perkins didn't have any idea what to do with it. Not long afterward, he was performing at a dance when he heard a boy tell the girl he was dancing with, "Uh-uh! Don't step on my blue suedes!" He thought it was pretty incredible that the boy would care more about his shoes than the girl, and that's what made the song start to click in his head.

Baby Blues

 "I was shakin' in my shoes whenever she flashed those baby blues"


Blue eyes of a newborn
(Photo from info.com) 

• The phrase comes from the fact that a lot of Caucasian babies are born with blue eyes. It's supposed to suggest wide-eyed innocence, as innocent as a newborn babe.

• When people say that all babies are born with blue eyes, they are exaggerating. Some percentage of Caucasian babies are, but not every baby is born with blue eyes.

• Some babies' blue eyes will change to a different color as the babies get a little older. This is because the melanin doesn't kick in until it's exposed to ultraviolet light.

• Usually, after about 6 to 9 months, you'll notice a baby's eye color will have started to change.

• Some babies' eyes will continue to change for as long as three years.  In about 10% of babies born with blue eyes, it may take even as long as adulthood until their eyes have settled on their final color.

Bluegrass


Kentucky bluegrass, a.k.a. Poa pratensis. Its tendency toward lushness is what makes this a favorite "barefoot grass."
(Photo from Power Seeds Inc.)

• Bluegrass the music,is named for bluegrass the plant, which has a blue-ish tinge and grows in Kentucky.

• Naturally, you'd think that Kentucky Bluegrass the plant would be native to Kentucky. Actually, it's originally from all over the place: almost all of Europe, northern Asia, and the mountains of Algeria and Morocco.

• If you're just starting a lawn of bluegrass, don't mow it until it gets higher than 2 inches. And going forward, it's best not to mow it any shorter that 2 inches.

Blue Humor


The Aristocrats may be the quintessential bluest joke. Here's Gilbert Gottfried, after telling it at a friar's roast not  long after 9/11.
(Photo from Youdopia NSFW)

• Jokes that involve bad language or sexual or vulgar or crude situations are typically referred to as "blue humor."

• A lot of people say that this phrase comes from another phrase, "blue laws," which were laws going as far back as the 17th century that punished bad language, lying, swearing, public drunkenness, etc. In other words, laws that governed moral behavior. That much of the origin of "blue humor" seems to be true.

• However, people go on to say that the phrase "blue laws" comes from the fact that the laws were printed on blue paper.  This part is not true.

• The experts can't say for 100% certain, but they're reasonably sure that "blue laws" is related to the word "bluenose."

• A bluenose is a very rigidly moral person, presumably one who would write laws about what you can and cannot say in public.

Blueprints


Blueprints are architectural or other detailed drawings that have a blue background and the text and lines are in white.
(Photo from Twins Daily)

• Blueprints, as you'd expect, are so named because they are blue.  

• The paper doesn't start out to be blue, but it turns out that way as a result of the process by which the designs are printed on the paper.

• Technically, a blueprint is called a cyanotype. Making a cyanotype is a lot like developing a photograph. The process uses iron compounds, which start out to be green, but once they're exposed to UV light, they turn blue.

• (Sort of the opposite of baby's eye color thing then.)

• If you want to know more about how to make a cyanotype, a site called Alternative Photography has the instructions.

Blue Whales


The blue whale. Everything about it is superlative.
(Photo from Wonderful Whales)

• Blue whales are the largest mammals on Earth.

• They can get to be 100 feet long and weigh some 200 tons.

• Here's a weird tidbit: their tongues, alone, can weigh as much as an elephant. (I don't know who's going around weighing blue whale tongues, but I believe this assertion)

• They eat anywhere from 4 to 8 tons -- tons -- of krill per day.

• Baleen, the stuff over their mouths that they use to filter in food, is made of stuff very like our fingernails.

• They're also among the loudest animals on the planet. Their sounds are at very low frequencies, but they're so loud, other blue whales can hear them up to 1,000 miles away.

So many things to know about blue whales, I may just have to do a separate entry about them.

And now, with this last hurrah, I must tell you that I'm going on vacation.  Please of course browse around in the meantime.  With 591 other entries to choose from, I'm sure you'll find something to interest you.  See you in a couple of weeks!

Want more blue things? How about bluebirds , blueberries, Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues," plus of course the entries from this series: blue-footed booby, blue jeans, bleu cheese, and the ever-popular blue-plate special. 

Sources
Squidoo, Elvis Songs: Blue Suede Shoes
Songfacts, Blue Suede Shoes by Carl Perkins
Rockabilly Hall of Fame, Blue Suede Shoes: Chronology of a Hit
Anne Marie Helmenstine PhD, About.com, Why Are Babies Born with Blue Eyes?
What to Expect, Baby's Eye Color
Texas A&M System, Aggie Horticulture, Kentucky Bluegrass
Snopes.com, Blue Laws
Patrick Bromley, About.com, Blue Humor
Dictionary.com, blueprint
Alternative Photography, Cyanotype - the classic process
National Geographic.com, Blue Whale
Enchanted Learning, Blue Whale, the Loudest Animal on Earth 

Apple #583: Time Lapse Video of Plants

I've had about 9,000 things going on lately and the Daily Apple has had to take a back seat.  Now I'm about to leave for the long Memorial Day weekend, so I won't be here to post my usual Sunday entry once again.

The other day I was out walking in the woods, which I haven't done in a while, and I noticed how much some of the plants had grown since the last time I'd been there.  That reminded me of time lapse videos I've seen of plants growing, taking over things at what seems like lightning speed.  I thought that might be a good metaphor for what seems to have been happening with the Daily Apple lately -- while I'm away, you can watch the plants grow!


How long do you think it would take for the plants to take over and erase that two-track path?
(Photo from Sustainability Campaign)


Of course it wouldn't be the Daily Apple if I didn't provide some informative facts for you.  So I'll start with David Attenborough, who explains a bit how vine-like plants grow the way they do:

• The rotation-like movement of the vines is one kind of plant movement called nutation.  Nutation means the plant is moving but not in response to stimuli, like changes in sunlight. Nutation is movement the plants do on their own.  In this case, the vines do that rotating thing, it is thought, in order to bump into a sturdy enough support on which to grow.

• Other plants do the nutation dance, but they're not seeking some surface to bump into and grow around. Instead, the nutation happens as a result of changes in cell and tissue growth. That is, some sides of the plant grow faster than others, or one side has more leaves than another, so one side of the plant weighs more and thus it bends in that direction. Then the other side grows more and it bends in that direction.

Here are some pepper plants growing and doing the nutation dance. The person who made the video isn't entirely sure why the plants on the right are growing faster. One side is Jalapeno peppers and the other side is Cubanelles, so that may account for the difference, or he said he may have planted the ones on the right a day earlier:

• Plants do, of course, move in response to changes in their environment. The environmentally-caused response we know best is when they move to try to get to more sunlight. The big word for this is phototropism.

Here's a time lapse video showing phototropism, made by third-grader Cameron Wright.  No, it's good! He tells you at the end how he made the video. And Cameron himself makes an appearance!

• There's also simply plants' growth.  They will grow and develop differently depending on how much sunlight is present.  The more sunlight, the more they leaf out and the greener the leaves get in order to gear up for photosynthesis.  

• If plants are grown in the shade or even in the dark, their energy goes into making the stems longer -- presumably to help the plant grow to a place where there is more light -- and they keep their leaves suppressed  The eleven-dollar word for this variation in growth depending on the amount of sunlight is photomorphogenesis.

Now that you've got a few facts under your belt, let's see some more of the sped-up growth of all sorts of plants.





Here's more of David Attenborough, attributing all sorts of nefarious anthropomorphic intent to the plants:

• I wanted to find some fancy word and description of how flowers bloom, but all I found was "the most extreme changes in cell and tissue expansion usually occurs in the petals of flowers" and "much remains to be understood."   

• Some physicists did discover that the shape a flower takes is dependent on what the cells are doing throughout the petals. Lots of growth happens at one part of the petal, and parts of the petal elsewhere curl up. It's another kind of nutation, I suppose.

• Blooming happens when a ton of growth happens at the very tip of the petal until the petals have no place else to go and they pop open.

• The physicists said that the entire process of growth to blooming of a blossom is based around "instabilities." More stuff is happening in one place than in another, so the plant moves or changes in response to that imbalance.

• Beyond this, though, the physicists said there's a ton they still don't understand.  Everyone agrees, the process by which a flower blooms is complex. And pretty remarkable, how plants make these spectacular, colorful, fragrant blossoms.

In this one, the rose fascinates me, how many changes it goes through:

Here's a day in the life of some tulips. They bloom and then as the light fades, they close up again slightly (phototropism!):




Now, I know that fungi are a whole different kettle of . . . spores, but I think this one is pretty cool.  These are blue oyster mushrooms:

It seems natural to provide you with some instructions on how to make your own time-lapse video of plants growing. But it seems to be a pretty involved process, with all sorts of variables depending on what kind of equipment you have.  So I'll recommend a few resources that seem to be good:

The BBC's Timothy Allen's tutorial on time lapse photography

Creative Pro's guide to making your own time-lapse photography system (2006)

Some basic suggestions from PCWorld about how to make a simple time-lapse movie

How to make a time-lapse movie if you have a DSLR camera, from LifeHacks

I'll give you one more video to close with.  This one shows plants growing and also snails wandering around over the plants. It's funny to see the snails moving quickly.




Enjoy!

Sources
Roger P. Hangarter, Plants-in-Motion (tons of information here)
Daniel Strain, The Physics of a Flower's Bloom, Wired Science, March 22, 2011

Apple #421: Spanish Moss

Also while I was in Florida, I took some photos of Spanish moss.


Spanish moss, growing lushly on this tree in Sarasota, Florida
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• Contrary to what most people think, Spanish moss is not a parasite. It is an epiphyte, which means that while it grows on another plant, it gets its nutrients from the air and rainwater, not from the plant on which it's growing.

• It's also not really a moss. It's a flowering plant -- a Bromeliad, to be precise.

• It's not Spanish, either. The name comes from an insult. When the French showed up in the New World and saw the plant growing here, they called it "Spanish beard" to insult their rival colonists. The Spanish tried to get them back by calling it "French beard," but it was the insult to the Spanish that stuck.

• The moss will wrap its stems around the host tree and hang leafy stems down from the branches. This helps it to absorb more moisture and nutrients from the air and from the stuff that's collected in the crevices of the bark. The leaves have cup-shaped scales that catch the water, and the leaves' surface is permeable so the water that collects there can seep in more easily.

Spanish moss, up close and personal. Not quite close enough to see the cup shape of the leaves, though.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• It's so good at catching water, it can withstand long periods of drought. If the weather gets too hot and dry, the plant won't die but will only go dormant until it can get moisture again.

• The fact that it's so good at collecting water is what makes Spanish moss seem like a parasite. It can absorb up to ten times its weight in water. This means that the plant can become so heavy it can crack the branch it's growing on. If it grows lush enough, it can also keep the leaves from getting enough sun.

This much Spanish moss might be enough to break its supporting branches. Also note that while the moss is draping around the telephone wire, none is actually growing from the wire.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• It likes to grow on trees that have horizontal branches with lots of forks, and bark that's rough or scaly enough to catch the moss's seeds. This means it likes trees like hackberry or live oak.

• If you really don't want Spanish moss growing on your tree, you can pull it off yourself if the tree is small enough that you can reach the moss standing on a ladder. If the tree is larger and would require someone standing in a cherry-picker to get to all the moss, it's probably too labor-intensive and therefore expensive to hire someone to pull off the moss for you.

• The better recommendation is to prune the tree branches that are especially moss-laden. These will tend to be the more horizontally-growing branches. If you're judicious about selecting which few branches to prune, you'll have removed enough moss that the sunlight will be able to reach the leaves of other branches and thus improve the tree's overall health.

If the owner of this tree decided to get rid of the Spanish moss, he or she would do better to prune a select branch or two.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• Spanish moss also likes places where there's lots of humidity -- near wetlands, ponds, or rivers -- because that will give the moss the moisture in the air it needs to survive.

• You might see some Spanish moss on telephone wires. It may have been blown there, but Spanish moss can't actually survive on telephone wires (or on fences or on buildings or other non-living material). If you see moss that appears to be actually growing on a telephone wire, that's ball moss, not Spanish moss.
  

• It can't withstand the cold. If temperatures drop below 22°F, the plant will die. This is why it grows mainly in the south, southeast, and west coast of the United States and in Central and South America into Argentina.

• The plant develops buds that bloom -- depending on your location, any time from April to late summer -- into white flowers. Or again, depending on the location, the flowers may be yellow-green. Here are some photos (they're copyrighted so I couldn't insert them here) of Spanish moss in bloom in Savannah, Georgia. The flowers are very small and green.
  

• After about four days of blooming, the flowers give way to pods that hold little black seeds. These pods open in the winter to reveal anywhere from 2 to 23 tiny seeds. When the pods burst open, the seeds fly away on the air or are carried off by birds. Each seed is surrounded by a bunch of little hairs that help it float longer on the air currents.

A Spanish moss seed. If you looked at that link above to the flowers, you'd notice how the seed resembles the flower.
(Photo from Floridanature.org)

• The little hairs on the seeds end in tiny barbs so that when a seed hits a tree branch it will stick there and grow. The seed won't form any roots, though; Spanish moss has no roots. In about two weeks, the seeds will have sprouted stems and it will be pretty much the full plant.
  

• The plant can also reproduce if the wind or a bird carries a shred of it to a new plant. That shred will fix itself to the bark of its new location, sprout stems, and carry on with its business as usual.

• Birds like to use Spanish moss to build their nests. Warblers, owls, egrets, and mockingbirds are particularly fond of Spanish moss as building material. Squirrels like it for that purpose, too.

I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. I took this photo looking up at a branch. I don't know if the tree has produced an offshoot that the moss is now growing on, or if some other plant has also taken up residence in the moss.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• Lots of other creatures make their homes right in the Spanish moss itself. Chiggers (which are redbugs) and spiders like to live in Spanish moss. Since bats like to eat bugs, bats are also fond of living in Spanish moss. Since rat snakes like to eat bats, you can also occasionally find rat snakes in Spanish moss.

• So, because of all these creatures that call Spanish moss home, if you collect Spanish moss yourself and you want to use it as a decorative bedding around your plants, inspect it carefully before you take it home. Some people dry the moss first in their microwave oven before using it in crafts.

• All commercial processors that sell Spanish moss will have cleaned, dried, and heated the moss before packaging it to be sold in stores. So you won't have to worry about finding any bugs in your store-bought dried Spanish moss.

• People used to use Spanish moss for all kinds of things:

1. Mattresses -- the Spanish moss' natural insulating properties were said to help the mattresses stay cooler and more comfortable than ticking or other materials used at the time.
2. Stuffing in the seat cushions of Model T Fords
3. Bridles
4. Saddle blankets
5. Material used to repair fishing nets
6. Filler in potholes and puddles
   
7. Mulch
   
8. Mixed with mud, as caulk in the chinks of colonists' cabins.

• Back in the day (I'm not sure when; none of my sources provided dates for this) moss pickers wire hired to pluck the moss from the trees using long poles. They might be able to pull down as much as a ton of moss from a single large tree. Once dried, the moss might weigh only 20% of that.

• Spanish moss is still used today as stuffing in upholstery and as packing material. And it's being studied by medical researchers as an aide in controlling glucose levels in people with diabetes.
  
• But its most common uses today are as mulch to help retain moisture around other plants, and, dried, as decoration.

Even the Pottery Barn sells decorative Spanish moss.
(Photo from Not2Shabby)


Painter Hector Hernandez has still more ideas about how to use Spanish moss.
(Photo from Emvergeoning)



You might also be interested in this entry about true mosses.

Sources
University of Florida, Florida 4-H Forest Ecology, Florida Forest Plants, Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides)
University of Florida Cooperative Extension Service Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Spanish Moss and Ball Moss
Dennis Adams, Information Coordinator, Beaufort County Library, Spanish Moss: Its Nature, History, and Uses
Garden Guides, Spanish Moss - Plant Information

Apple #413: Smut

At the request of an entirely anonymous Daily Apple reader, I give you more smut.

Wherever possible, the Apple Lady does try to fulfill all requests.

• Smut is a parasitic fungus that can infect many crops, but most commonly, corn, wheat, and onions.

• On corn, smut penetrates the tissue of the plant, especially on the leaves or the tassels, and develops into large balls, or boils, or galls. When the balls are broken, a great mass of black, greasy, powdery spores are released.

Smut balls on corn ears
(Photo from Cornell University)

• When smut grows on wheat, it is typically referred to as "loose smut." In this case, the smut has infected the plant to such an extent that instead of producing wheat flowers and pollen, it produces smut pods that release smut spores.

Loose smut, or Ustilago tritici
(Photo from Virginia Tech University)

• On onions, if smut infects the seedlings, the seedlings usually die within 3-5 weeks. Those onions that do survive a smut infection and produce bulbs will retain black streaks or lesions, which contain more spores.
  

Smut on a white onion.
(Photo from the Manitoba Weekly Vegetable Report)

• Mature onions that have been infected also tend to shrink more rapidly in storage and they are more susceptible to soft rot.

• If an onions has turned smutty, and if the flesh of the onion is still firm, you can wash off the black spores and still use the onion. However, it probably won't be as flavorful as a fresher, non-smutty onion.

• Smut spores are extremely hardy and can survive for several years even underground. The spores can be eaten by livestock, pass through the animal's system, and still go on to germinate and produce more smut.

Spores of the corn smut fungus
(Photo from the University of Georgia)

• Smut spreads and yields more smut most easily during hot, dry seasons. The hot air blows the smut spores farther and to more places, from one farm to the next.

• Smut spores do require moisture to grow. Once the spores land in the niches of a plant, if enough water has collected there, the smut will penetrate the tissue and spread.

• Smut is very difficult to control and likely impossible to eradicate. Even if every gardener and every farmer across the country stopped all work except to inspect all the plants for any smut balls, cut them out wherever they were found, and burned them; and even if every gardener and farmer did this three times a year, perhaps the amount of smut could be reduced.

• Varieties of corn have been developed that are especially resistant -- though not impervious -- to smut. These varieties include but are not limited to:

• Bellringer
• Capitan
• Sweet Rhythm
• Sweet Sue
• Country Gentlemen Hybrid
• Golden Gleam
• Golden Beauty
• Spring Gold

• Smut does not seem to like garlic, as none has ever been found growing on it.
  

• (Vampires don't like garlic either. Could there be a connection?)

• In some parts of the world, smut is considered a tasty treat. It is collected, sometimes canned, and sold in Mexico as huitlacoche.
  

• I was going to post a photo of huitlacoche for you, but I found the images so disturbing and unpleasant -- they gave me the willies, if you want to know the truth -- I decided not to. For those who are bold enough to look at a whole lot of smut, you can do so here. Don't say I didn't warn you.

• P.S. The word "smut" first means "black mark, or stain," and it comes from Germanic verbs that mean "to make dirty" or "defile." The second meaning, "indecent or obscene language," arose at nearly the same time as the first, in the 1660s.

Sources
Cornell University Plant Disease Diagnostic Clinic, Corn Smut Fact Sheet
Doctor Fungus, Introduction to Fungi
Virginia Tech University, Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science, Wheat Loose Smut
Karen Delahunt and Walt Stevenson, University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension, Onion Disorder: Smut
Purdue University Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Diagnosis and Control of Onion Diseases
Online Etymology Dictionary, smut

Apple #412: Moss

After that last, somewhat steamy entry, I thought it was time for something nice and soothing. Like moss. Mosses are so soft and springy and spongy and green.


(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• Mosses grow everywhere on the planet except on the sea floor.

• There are so many different kinds of mosses and their parts are so tiny, the only way to identify them accurately is with a microscope.

• Mosses are Bryophytes. The reason we care about that word is because it means they were the first green plants to evolve on land.

• That makes mosses about 350 million years old. Older than flowering plants, older than conifers.

• As the first green plants, mosses were very simple, and they have stayed simple. They have no stems, no roots, and no leaves in the sense that we think of them.

• Without typical roots and stems, mosses don't have a vascular system, or a way to deliver moisture & nutrients to all parts of the plant. So mosses depend on their environment to supply the entire plant with adequate moisture and nutrients.

• In other words, mosses prefer to live in moist places. They are very inventive at finding places where enough moisture collects.

WHERE MOSSES LIVE

• In the northern hemisphere, mosses like to grow on the north sides of trees. You might see moss growing all around the base of a tree, but you'll see more of it on the north side.

• The reason mosses like the north side is because less sunlight shines over there. That keeps the north side relatively shady and damp, a nice home for a moss.

Apparently the right half of this tree is to the north. That whole side is covered in moss while the other side is nearly free of it.
(Photo by the Apple Lady. Sorry about the blurring.)

• Some other places that mosses especially like:

• Up the sides of hardwood trees. They collect the rainwater as it trickles down the crevices of the bark.

Moss growing in a nearly perfect vertical stripe.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)


On this white ash tree, moss is also growing in the bark crevices on the roots.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• On fallen logs and stumps. The nooks and crannies in fallen logs make them ideal spots for mosses. Water collects there as do other nutrients. The mosses that live on fallen trees don't even need to take any nutrients from the fallen tree itself (which means they're epiphytic).
  

Moss growing all along the top of this fallen tree trunk.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• Rooftops. Shingles made of wood or composites or even asbestos make a friendly place for the mosses to sit. Ash that flies up from the fireplace provides nutrients, and if it's nice and shady up there, the roof doesn't dry out so fast and the mosses like it even better. At my parents' cottage by a lake, it's one of our fall tasks to climb up on the roof and sweep off all the moss pillows. Now I know why we get so many moss pillows up there. That roof has all the ingredients that mosses like best.

Moss pillows growing out of the cracks between shingles.
(Photo by Holly Holston, age 14)

• Sidewalk cracks. The cracks collect nutrients and moisture that isn't easily dried up by sunlight. Again, a naturally happy place for mosses to grow.
  

Moss growing in the crevices of a sidewalk in Cotacachi, Ecuador.
(Photo by Gary A. Scott)


Moss growing like mad all across the surface of a sidewalk.
(Photo by Sean Dreilinger on Flickr)

• Some mosses can ferret out even the tiniest cracks in cement so it seems almost as if the cement is the moss' soil. This can make cement walkways very slippery. For suggestions about how to control such slippery moss, see Oregon State University's reluctant suggestions for moss control.
  

MAKING MORE MOSSES

• When it comes to reproducing, mosses are again dependent on their environment, but for this function they need wind as well as moisture.
  

• Male mosses produce zoospores. The male mosses fling their zoospores out and the wind carries them off. Some of the zoospores land on a female moss. The zoospores and the egg cells on the female moss will try to get together, but they'll only be successful if there's enough moisture.

• Once the female plant's eggs are fertilized, she shoots up a stalk, also called a seta or a sporophyte. At the top of the stalk is a little knob or a pod, called a capsule.

Female moss reproductive structure
(Diagram from Oregon State University)

• The capsule contains single-celled spores. They're sort of like tiny seeds, but they're even biologically simpler than seeds. When the female plant decides the moisture and wind and all those conditions are right, the capsule opens and the spores fly off on the wind.

• The spores might land anywhere, but again, they need enough moisture to become a plant.

MOSS IMPOSTORS

• Some things get called mosses but they're not really.

• Spanish moss -- not a true moss. It produces flowers and it's a Bromeliad, like a lot of houseplants. It also happens to be epiphytic, which means it grows on another plant but doesn't take any nutrients from it.

• Club moss -- Ground Pine might be a more accurate name. These are an evergreen herb.
  

• Flowering moss -- if they produce flowers, we know they can't be a true moss. Better known as Creeping Phlox.

• Reindeer moss -- actually a type of lichen, which is like the marriage of a fungus and algae.

MORE REASONS TO LIKE MOSS

• Besides the fact that they're soft and springy and green, we like mosses because they help prevent erosion. By hanging onto the soil, they help prevent it from being blown or washed away. At the same time, they help to increase the amount of moisture that the nearby ground is able to store.

• They are also good indicators of pollution. Or rather, their absence is. There are so many different kinds of mosses and they're so good at finding little nooks and niches where there's water and nutrients, if you don't see any around, chances are you're in a place where there's lots of pollution.

With all this moss growing like a carpet along the gravel path, we know we don't have to worry about air pollution here. And if we felt like it, we could take off our shoes and the moss would feel so nice underfoot.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)


Sources
Oregon State University, Basic Biology of Mosses
US Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, Special Forests Products Bryophyta (division) Moss, 2001
Wise Geek, What is Moss?
Backyard Nature, Mosses
Indiana Public Media, A Moment of Science, There's Moss on the North Side, September 27, 2003

Apple #403: Ironweed, not Joe Pye-Weed

I originally posted these pictures and identified this plant as Joe Pye-Weed. But it turns out I was mistaken. So I had to take down the post and re-do it.

Yes, the Apple Lady sometimes makes mistakes. But she fixes them as soon as she becomes aware of them!


New York Ironweed, not Joe Pye-Weed.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)


This plant that I have seen growing here and there in my town is actually New York Ironweed.

It was an easy error to have made, confusing Joe Pye-Weed and Ironweed. Both plants

• Like to grow taller than any other plants around it.

• Bloom at the end of summer--late July or early August--through October or the first frost.

• Like to grow in moist soils, along riverbanks, or along roadways.

• Are fast-growing and may overtake other plants in your garden.
  

• Are very popular with the butterflies.

But the major difference between this plant, New York Ironweed, and Joe Pye-Weed is the color. Joe Pye-Weeds may be dusty pink or white. New York Ironweed is a vibrant, brilliant purple. Even though I put my trusty camera on a setting that is supposed to capture foliage in all its splendid color, these photos -- and other photos I've seen online -- don't quite capture the intensity and depth of the purple in these flowers. It's really astonishing and magnificent.


New York Ironweed buds & blossoms -- super-purple
(Photo by the Apple Lady)


Other differences include:

• Sweet Joe Pye-Weed (Eupatorium purpureum) smells like vanilla.

• Spotted Joe Pye-Weed (Eupatoriadelphus maculatus) has flecks of purple on the stems.

• Coastal plain Joe Pye-Weed (Eupatoriadelphus dubius) grows along the Atlantic coast.

So we know it's not Joe Pye-Weed. But it is a species of Ironweed. But which one? There are about 30 species of them, growing anywhere in the United States from Montana, Utah, and Arizona eastward.

I used the USDA Plants database distribution maps to narrow the options down to 4. Close contenders include

1. Giant Ironweed (Vernonia gigantea)
2. Prairie Ironweed (Vernonia faciculata)
3. Missouri Ironweed (Vernonia missurica).

The shape of the buds of those others wasn't quite the same, or the color was more pink than purple, or the length of the petals on the flowers was different, or, as is the case with the Missouri Ironweed, the stems were really hairy. No hairy stems here.

So I am fairly certain I have this plant identified correctly now as New York Ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis).

Now that we've got all those errant identifications out of the way, let's talk about New York Ironweed. In addition to characteristics I've already mentioned above (tall, blooms in late summer, grows in moist areas or along roadways, big hit with the butterflies), here are some facts about our friend the New York Ironweed:


More buds on the New York Ironweed. The darker, spear-like leaves belong to the Ironweed.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• They are called ironweed because their thick, tough stems stay pretty much intact through winter.

• They grow to be about 2-8 feet tall.

• They bloom in late summer.

• They like a lot of sun.

• They grow in moist places, along streams or marshes, or also along roadways.

• Butterflies & bees love them. Cattle do not. They'll graze around the ironweed.

• If you plant these in your garden, you may discover that they crowd out other plants or grow way faster than everything else and take over. If so, thinning them out of pinching back the seeds in the spring keeps them in check.

• It is probably this variety of ironweed after which William Kennedy's novel, Ironweed, was named.
  

• Ironweed takes place in Albany, New York, and tells the story of an alcoholic, Francis Phelan, who returns home 22 years after having killed his child and left. The book makes lots of comparisons between Phelan and the ironweed plant: disregarded and unwelcome (weed) yet strong and persevering even in harsh conditions (iron).

• A movie closely based on the novel was made in 1988, starring Jack Nicholson & Meryl Streep. The cast also includes Michael O'Keefe (Danny Noonan from Caddyshack), Tom Waits, and Nathan Lane. Quite an assortment.

• And I will reiterate, the color of these plants is tremendous.

New York Ironweed
(Photo by the Apple Lady)


Sources
New York Ironweed
USDA Plants database, ironweed
North Creek Nurseries, Vernonia noveboracensis: New York Ironweed
Connecticut Botanical Society, New York Ironweed
Virginia Tech Weed Identification Guide, New York Ironweed: Vernonia noveboracensis
eNature.com, New York Ironweed
Easy Wildflowers, Vernonia Ironweed Seed & Plant
Joe Pye-Weed
Marcia Bonta, Naturalist Writer, August Natives
David Beaulieu, About.com, Landscaping, Joe-Pye Weed
Kemper Center for Home Gardening, Eupatorium purpureum
Dave's Garden, Plant Files: Sweet Joe Pye Weed
Brenda Hyde, Old-Fashioned Living, Growing Joe-Pye Weed
USDA Plants Database, joe pye weed
University of Michigan - Dearborn, Native American Ethnobotany database, Eupatorium purpureum L.

Apple #385: Manzanita plants

Now for another entry about the things I encountered during my recent trip to California.

As I was wandering around up in the hills of the high desert in southern California and looking at all the really fantastic plants around me, I noticed that the branches of one plant were two different colors. Some looked all dried out and dead-gray, and others were a bright red. Crazy! thought I.




I thought maybe one plant was growing right up next to another one, and that this was just a fluke. But I turned around, and there was another one. It was doing exactly the same thing.



I straightened up and looked about me and realized I was standing in a whole grove of these things. It was almost like an orchard that somebody had once planted and then abandoned. They were growing all over the place.


Only a small portion of the maybe hundreds of these plants growing on the north side of the hill.
(Photo by me, the Apple Lady)


I have since learned that the name for a whole bunch of plants growing together like this is "community."

After a few hours of walking around up there, I went into town into the local library. I was looking through some books they had about native desert plants, comparing the photos on my camera to the photos in the book, when a kind soul sitting across the table from me asked if I was looking up local plants, and was I trying to identify them. Yes, I was, I said.

His name was Oliver, he told me, and he very kindly looked at my photos of this odd plant and said right away that it was Big Berry Manzanita. Except first he told me the genus and species name (Arctostaphylos glauca). I blinked at him and asked him for the common name.



Big Berry Manzanita (according to Oliver)
(Photo by the Apple Lady)


It turned out he could identify nearly all the plants I had taken pictures of by both the genus and species name. He rattled these things off like they were his first and last name. So Oliver was extraordinarily helpful. Most of the plants whose pictures I may share with you in coming entries will probably be identified courtesy of Oliver's help.


Close-up of the leaves of the Big Berry Manzanita. Lots of the photos of this plant that I've seen online have a whitish-gray (glaucus) cast to them, and they look dusty. These leaves look pretty shiny to me. But one California nursery's site says that the Big Berry Manzanitas do well in very hot regions, including the Joshua tree woodlands. On the south side of this hill is where I saw all those Joshua trees. So even though these leaves don't look glaucus to me, I'm sticking with Oliver's identification -- Arctostaphylus glauca.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• There are all sorts of different species that get called by the common name of Manzanita. Some sources say 50, some say 76, others say as many as 106. Most of them grow in California, but some also grow in other places like Arizona and New Mexico, the Atlantic seaboard (Florida, Alabama, etc.), and even as far north as Canada.

• Manzanita is Spanish for "little apple" because when these plants produce fruit, they do look like little apples.

I had thought these were berries, but Oliver told me they are actually galls. Galls, he explained, happen when insects burrow into the leaves or bark of a plant and lay their eggs in the tissue. The plant produces a lot of goo that swells up around the opening the bug has made -- sort of like a blister, I guess -- and the insect larva lives in there. Now that I know those are essentially bug pods, it makes me feel all itchy and crawly to look at them. Aren't you glad I shared this piece of knowledge with you?
(Photo by the Apple Lady)



This is what the berries of the Big Berry Manzanita actually look like.
(Photo from Las Pilitas Nursery)

• You can eat the berries and the flowers, too.
  

• You can also make a cider-like drink with the berries, but don't go on a long trip afterwards because it's a pretty strong diuretic.

• People have also used the bark to make tea, which supposedly helps to assuage nausea.

• Butterflies and hummingbirds also like the flowers. In fact, as I was standing on the crest of the hill where these manzanitas grew, a really loud buzzing sound shot right past my left shoulder and I barely had time to whip my head around and see that it was a green hummingbird that had zoomed past me.

• Manzanitas are evergreen plants, which means they don't lose their leaves.

The fact that manzanitas are evergreens seems a little strange because I saw a lot of them with brown leaves like this. Not only were some of the leaves on this plant brown, it was as if someone had drawn a line down half of the plant; all the leaves on the left were brown while all the leaves on the right were green. I don't know if you can tell this from the photo, but what's even more strange is that the trunks in the green leaves are gray, while the trunks among the brown leaves are red.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)

• The wood is orange or red because of all the tannins in it. Tannins are very bitter and, for some organisms, even toxic. So the tannins help protect the wood against bugs and animals. In addition, most manzanita bark peels off a layer each year, which helps to shed anything that might have grown on it in spite of the tannins.
  

• People call manzanita "mountain driftwood" because the wood is so smooth and twists into such interesting shapes.

• Because manzanita wood is so slow-growing, it's very dense, which makes it for good firewood because it will burn for a long time. Be careful if you're burning it in an oven or a chimney, though, because the wood can burn so hot it could crack even a cast-iron stove.

• That's especially intriguing because botanists think that manzanitas originated about 15 million years ago and hybridized as the parent plants were burned up in fires. Some of the newer species will only produce viable seeds after a fire has heated up the plants.

• It seems like these plants just keep getting associated with fire. One variety of manzanita plants is kinnikinnick, which a lot of native tribes used to smoke as tobacco or burn as offerings to the spirits.

• One guy who makes his own pipes has made a few out of manzanita wood. They're pretty attractive.

• People also like to use manzanita branches in aquariums because its tannins won't leach into the water. Bird-owners use manzanita as roosts for their pet birds because the twisty branches give the birds interesting things to hop and climb on, and the wood is smooth and strong.
  

• Manzanitas are also becoming very popular to use in centerpieces. A lot of brides out there are frantically looking for manzanita branches. I'm not going to tell them where they can find these plants.

Here's some mountain driftwood for a bride's reception. Come on, it's nature.
(Photo by the Apple Lady)



Sources
USDA Plants Profile, Arctostaphylos Adans. manzanita
Jeff Schalau, Arizona Cooperative Extension, Backyard Gardener, Growing Manzanita, February 26, 2003
Guillermo Cabrera, Manzanita Park
Ron Sullivan and Joe Eaton, "Mysterious manzanita baffles homeowners," San Francisco Chronicle, May 7, 2008
Las Pilitas Nursery, Manzanitas from Central California
Mike Vasey, Why is manzanita bark so smooth and red? BayNature, April-June 2003
Geoffrey Coffey, "Manzanita charms Bay Area terrain," San Francisco Chronicle, December 18, 2002
Biology Online, gall