Berry Go Round #46

One-seeded burr cucumber (Sicyos angulatus L.) in New Jersey after the first hard freeze.

 
Welcome to the 46th Berry Go Round...it is the month of November when most of the plants die of exposure where I live (New Jersey, USA).  But not all of the plant dies of course.  If some part didn't live through the winter (dormant stem, root, fertilized embryo) the species would cease to exist. Well, on that note...

Luigi at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog has been pondering the origin of broom corn...and tracks down some historical, oddly-shaped grapes...

Mike at Nature Hermit has been contemplating the existence of native cucumbers and their seeds... 

The Phytophactor has been thinking about Spanish Moss as a commensalist...dashing our perceptions about Cycads...and attempting to explain a Lotus...

Roberta at Growing With Science shows us some cool Texas Mountain Laurel beans...

Emily at No Seeds, No Fruits, No Flowers introduces us to Dryopteris ludoviciana...and gives us a peek down under at Australia's ferns...


Jessica at Moss Plants stresses out some sperm...

Julie at Net Results provides a well-researched debunking of the buckthorn diarrhea myth...

Anybody Seen My Focus? checks out some lily beds on the Cahaba River, Alabama...and shows us some fall wildflowers and finds a blooming witchhazel in Georgia...
Happy November!

Goat's rue and other plants I've never heard of

There are about 1861 plant species native to New Jersey (Anderson 1997). So it isn't really surprising that I keep running into new ones. This one (Goat's Rue, a type of pea, photographed June 1 in Lakehurst, Ocean Co., NJ) was particularly strange in its "bicoloredness": yellow and pink. Mustard and ketchup. And it was providing food for an interesting little weevil. Weevils incidentally are the most species-rich family (~60,000) in the most species-rich order of insects (beetles). So I won't attempt to identify it. Anderson (1997) lists 48 native "peas" in NJ (family Fabaceae), not including introduced or extirpated species. Many more peas left to meet.

Another plant I met this spring that I'd never heard of is "Cut-leaved Toothwort." It is in the mustard family, and was growing along the Musconetcong River in Warren County. It seems to be fairly common, but I was excited because it wasn't listed as occuring in Warren County in the great NJ plant-atlas book by Mary Hough. "A discovery!" thought I.

Cut leaved toothwort, photographed April 17 in Musconetcong WMA in Warren County.

Lit Cited

Anderson, K. 1997. A checklist of the plants of New Jersey. Self published. Mount Holly, NJ.