Heather

I mentioned last week, when I blogged about my whale sighting, that I had gone for a run north to the neighboring town and had gotten a few pics of a plant in bloom. The plant in question is a species of heather, or heath, though I won't guess which species it is.  I'll only give you the genus, which is Erica.  

Erica is, quite obviously, in the Ericaceae or heath family.  I also often refer to it as the blueberry family, as Vaccinium is a member as well.  Other popular relatives include Rhododendron, Kalmia, Leucothoe, Eurobotrys, Pieris and Oxydendron.  (By the way, I CANNOT believe I haven't written about Oxydendron yet.  Shameful!)  Similar to many plants in its family, Erica prefers acidic, well drained soil.  Genera native to the US are often found growing in shady wooded mountainsides, whereas Erica species (over 700 of them) are typical to locations like the fynbos in South Africa or the moors and heaths of the British Isles.

Depending on your exposure to romantic English literature, you probably remember references to the moors in books like Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë.  The moors of Dartmoor are also featured in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles, a Sherlock Holmes story. 

American Beech

A few posts back, I promised to write about the American beech, or Fagus grandifolia, at Dumbarton Oaks.  To be sure, if you have been to Dumbarton Oaks, you know precisely which tree I'm talking about.  Even people who wouldn't be able to identify this tree as American beech would remember this particular specimen, as striking as it is.

 

Beeches are extremely slow growing (and Fagus grandifolia is more slow growing than its relative, the European beech, or Fagus sylvatica). In Central Park, specimens of European beech abound, but it's hard to find an American beech like this.  Low-branching and with shallow roots resting on the ground, this is an ideal specimen for introducing the plant to students. 

It's easy to identify a beech by its smooth (elephant skin-like) bark, which is often covered with graffiti.  In fact, a part of beech trunk, with the words "D. Boon Killd Bar o this tree 1775" inscribed on it, is on display at the Grandfather Mountain Nature Museum, though it's been proven that Daniel Boone himself was not the graffiti artist.

Of course, in the Virginia-Maryland-DC area, American beeches are downright ubiquitous.  I encountered the one above while running on the C&O Canal in Georgetown.  In its native forest habitat, beeches tend to sucker and so you will also find communities of beeches. I've been on old tracts of land where the only tree around is the beech.  That's the result of this suckering tendency and because it has very hard wood  (which consequently protected it from harvest until the chainsaw was invented).

The fall color is...okay.  It has a rusty golden-orange color which is just fine.  The leaves are ovate and the presence of very small spines along the margin help distinguish it from Fagus sylvatica, which has an entire margin.

Beeches produce nuts that provide food for dozens of birds and forest mammals.  The seedcaps are fuzzy, four-winged capsules which are persistent on the tree through early winter or spring.  The plant also provides habitat for many caterpillars.  The wood is used for furniture, flooring and woodenware.

Though the bark alone makes beeches easy to identify, the buds are also very distinctive.  Long and slender, they have always reminded me of a spindle on a spinning wheel.  I'm guessing, more specifically, in some deep recess of my memory, they remind me of the cursed spindle that Sleeping Beauty is fated to touch. I looked up a clip online and am pretty sure that's where my association comes from.  Since it's Friday, and who doesn't like a bit of Tchaikovsky and Disney, see for yourself here.

Teddy bear (cactus)..and bunnies!

Not that I particularly need an excuse to post pictures of cute rabbits (or hares - what's the difference anyway?), but it is Friday and that makes this post a bit more festive anyway.  Why not throw in a few pics of this desert cottontail.  Which, by the way, is a true rabbit.
 

 

I saw this in a small park next to what looked like unmanaged desert on the way back to Phoenix, right off of I-17.   There were literally dozens of them when we drove into the park, scampering to safety before we could even hop out of the jeep.  Luckily, I found this one hidden in a mess of cholla, or Cylindropuntia.

That genus name should be vaguely familiar.  Cylindropuntia literally means cylindrical Opuntia.  Indeed, for some time chollas (pronounced CHOH-ya) were considered members of the Opuntia genus, but the absence of paddle-like stems has finally merited its own genus.   

Above, a small cholla, no more than 24" high.  I am stumped about which species of Cylindropuntia this is.  It looks quite a bit like C. tunicata, but that's native to Chile and I doubt this plant is an invader, they were ubiquitous in Arizona.  If it was an invasive non-native, I'm sure I'd have figured this out via books or websites.  C. spinosior is the most common cholla in Arizona, but this looks too hairy or spiny to be considered a member of that species.  Frankly, to go along with the thematic 'cuteness' of bunnies, I'm hoping this is C. bigelovii, or teddy bear cholla. 

There are 22 species of Cylindropuntia in the United States, so chances are this specimen is none of the above.  Though seeing a common name like teddy bear cholla (called that because from afar the plant looks more fuzzy than spiny).

 Happy Friday!

Saguaro

I spent this past holiday weekend in Arizona and took hundreds of pics of the beautiful ecosystems there.  Our home base was in Sedona, but we spent time in the Grand Canyon and Phoenix as well.  Phoenix is in the northern limit of the Sonoran desert - known perhaps best for its most famous inhabitant, the Saguaro cactus, Carnegiea gigantea.
 

 

The saguaro is endemic to the Sonoran Desert, which stretches from Phoenix to northern Mexico.  Some occur near the lower Colorado River in California as well.  It's a massively tall tree, reaching heights up to fifty feet.  When you encounter one that tall, you can speculate that it's lived for as long as two hundred years. 

 

The tree's structure is not like a typical woody tree - instead the interior is comprised of wooden rods.  This allows the plant to expand and contract based on the amount of water it is storing.  Roots are shallow and stretch as far as fifty feet away from the trunk - this maximizes the amount of water the plant can capture during the rare rainfall.

 

The saguaro provides habitat to many desert birds, including gila woodpeckers and flickers, as well as desert raptors like elf and screech owls.  In addition to the many bird species found in the Sonoran Desert (350), there are 60 mammals, 20 amphibians, 30 fish and 100 reptiles.  In this little roadside park, I saw dozens of desert cottontails and greater roadrunners.

 

Here a younger saguaro is in the foreground to the right.  Saguaros must reach fourteen to sixteen feet in height (age 75, approximately) before it begins to branch.  

Saguaros are by far, one of the most iconographic American plants.  It's easy to overlook how big they get.  For precisely that reason, here's a shot illustrating its massive size.  For the record, I'm about 5'-3"!!