Old Man Winter

is back... This time only a couple of inches, they say. Timely, as last Thursday's 12 inches were pretty much gone by last night. The chicken door, connected to the house by a Rube-Goldbergian contraption that allows remote opening, is not responding, necessitating a trip all the way out to the coop to free them. (Though it's not likely they'll come out much til this clears up.)

Was it just last week I was wondering whether the Juncos had left for good? Not so, they are still here in force and in just about every flavor: one dark-headed Oregon among the pink-sided and gray-headed. One of the latter even has white wing-tips; have been seeing him all winter. Joining them today are a few House Finches and several Pine Siskins. The Towhee is scratching madly under the rabbitbrush... The Downy Woodpecker came by yesterday for a taste of suet; and of course, always the Starlings, Scrub Jays, Magpies. Have not seen a Chickadee lately...

Is it really Old Man Winter, or is this the true face of graceful, feminine Spring? For another take on the seasonal gender, check out the Watcher, who persuasively argues for a female season here in the West.

Either way, yesterday I traveled to catch one more glimpse of the remains of last week's storm. Echo Lake was frozen, not surprising at 10,600 ft (3,231 m). Mt. Evans' vertical surfaces shed the snow, and much of the distant tundra had been swept clear, not quite the white-draped view I'd expected.

Going Dark...

Say what, Dave? After reminding all of us ten days ago, and even giving us a link so we could look it up again, you forgot?? As one commenter noted: "You missed the opportunity to make a token and ultimately futile gesture and possibly unbalance our antiquated power grid, just to watch a basketball game?"

That's right—last night was Earth Hour 2009, in which the whole world turns off its lights for an hour to give Gaia a little breathing space. What, you didn't hear about it? Neither did I, til I read about it on Dave's blog... and neither, it seems, did anyone in our neighborhood or visible area. I'm getting the distinct impression that this token and ultimately futile gesture has not breached the bastions of American unconformity. Can it be that the last eight years of propaganda have cost us our perspective, our sense of being part of a global problem and its solution?

After catching the drift last week at Osage, I managed to forget again too! Until it was too late to remind others and barely time to observe this auspicious occasion ourselves. Off went the TV and, yes, even the computer!, on went a few candles. What do we do, non-electronically, with an hour of quiet and dark? We've forgotten how to behave! Some obligatory chit-chat about the fate of the world, coming fast and furiously it seems... about our personal awareness and commitment and the inadequacy thereof and new measures we should be adopting. And reminders of a simpler time, when it seemed there might be answers to the world's most troubling questions: listening to a few rounds of old folkies (some dead) on... vinyl! The archaic turntable, though powered by the grid, seemed more appropriate than the flickering blue box, oh so addictive.

By the time we groped close to the clock with a candle, the hour was more than spent—we'd actually overshot the goal! And had a pleasant evening together to boot... something we should put on the agenda every week. This is an event we can celebrate anytime—it would do us all good to be reminded, I suspect, and... good practice for the future!

So, thanks, Dave, for making sure we didn't miss out this year!

(By the way, there's a great cartoon over at Tree Lobsters.)

Waiting for Winter

This time the weatherpeople sound serious. A couple of feet of white stuff by the weekend—the most promising outlook for moisture we've had all winter!¹ It was difficult to believe them, though, with temps hovering in the 60s, buds and flowers a'popping, meadowlarks back in town. Still, the clouds yesterday, the small scent of moisture in the air, and a light dusting this a.m. gave hope that, for once, they'd be right.

The whole picture is changing as the morning advances, and it's not even 9 a.m. yet. At last. The flakes are getting bigger, the day's scheduled events are being canceled... I'm glad I filled the birdfeeders last night, and am even having trouble working up enthusiasm for schlepping out to the chickens! But that chore must be done, whether all else is postponed or no.

At this point in the season, I'd have been happier with the liquid rather than crystalline version of H₂O, and I think the plants might have as well...but it's been SO dry, all of us will take any form we can get, and gladly! Bee Lady went out to check on the Mountain Ball Cactus, and reported they were trying to bloom, but the few plants she found were barely succeeding in putting forth a few pale flowers.

Would that I had a few seeds in the ground under this, but I'm not that good a gardener. I did manage to plant some of the cholla I salvaged, but that was all that seemed appropriate for what was shaping up to be one of our drier years (until today). Here's a preview of my new cactus garden; this weather should be good for them!

In all, a good day to stay home and reread The Phantom Tollbooth!²

"Oh no," said the little man, "I'm the Whether Man, not the Weather Man, for after all, it's more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be." And with that, he released a dozen balloons that sailed off into the sky. "Must see which way the wind is blowing," he said...

—Norton Juster, from The Phantom Tollbooth

——
¹ Now that it's spring, of course. For a description of Colorado springtime, see Spring Sap Rising.
² Highest recommendation... in fact I should have listed it on the book post! Time to get reacquainted with Milo, Tock the Watch Dog, the Humbug, Officer Shrift (shortest policeman you'll ever meet), Faintly Macabre the Not-so-Wicked Witch, and all the other wonderful characters out there Beyond Expectations.

Tree Cholla: Plant of the Week

If you're one of those people who rescues stray kittens, perhaps you'll understand the impulse that led me to bring home this bucket o'cholla last week. A new neighbor had apparently been inconvenienced (or perhaps attacked) by these plants outside his front door, and chopped them all down. Then he threw them across the street on untamed property. (Okay, a gulch in a horse pasture; but it's a nice gulch!) I couldn't help myself*; now I've inherited a moral obligation to give them another chance.

My motives weren't entirely altruistic. Once you get past their forbidding exterior, these are more than acceptable landscape plants, in my view. (I'm not sure kids would be as wary of them as the dogs are, but they too would learn in time.) That they are alive was confirmed by the fact that, though sprawled horizontally for a week or two, the tips had already turned up, toward the light. It's tough to kill a cactus, but it's always easier to do it with kindness than with neglect.

This cholla, Cylindropuntia imbricata, is the only species of its type to occur naturally in eastern Colorado, as far as I can tell, though we are surrounded south and west by states with many more species. (C. whipplei occurs in a few southwestern counties.) As you can see, it is not reported from the county (triangle) where Foothills Fancies is based. Like coyote gourd, it is another outlier, or perhaps an introduction, in these more northern sites. (Map adapted from USDA Plants Database.)

Kingdom Plantae – Plants
  Subkingdom Tracheobionta – Vascular plants
    Superdivision Spermatophyta – Seed plants
    Division Magnoliophyta – Flowering plants
      Class Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledons
        Subclass Caryophyllidae
          Order Caryophyllales
            Family Cactaceae – Cactus family
              Genus Cylindropuntia (Engelm.) Kreuzinger
              Species Cylindropuntia imbricata (Haw.) F.M. Knuth
                – tree cholla

By the way, I've never actually heard anyone call it tree cholla, but maybe that's because it doesn't actually occur around here. Our other source, Weber's Colorado Flora, calls it "Candelabra Cactus." I suspect the "tree" name translates an older scientific name, Opuntia arborescens, given it by George Engelmann himself.

Here's what the one in my yard looks like today. I know, kinda droopy and repulsive. The yellowish fruits hang around all winter, until they rot or new growth pushes them off, I guess.




Ahh, but this is what it looked in recent memory, given an appropriate spring/summer.

Then, every bee and nectar-loving winged thing anywhere in the vicinity was happy, very happy, with this plant. For its ability to attract pollinators alone, this plant is worth having in your yard! Click to see insects at work.

Back to our bucket—here's a quick lesson in cholla anatomy. These branches are, of course, main stems. Leaves are briefly apparent only in season. Spines come in clusters at locations called areoles, usually at the end of bumps called tubercles. The fuzzy look to the areoles relates to the presence of tiny glochids, which our source** says are "inconsequential" here. (On other Opuntia species, it does not pay to dismiss the glochids so lightly.) One does not handle these without gloves or, preferably, tongs. Long-handled tongs.


Here's a bug's eye view. If you'd like one of these cute fuzzy stray kittens for your very own, call me!

Now I just have to go back and finish off the Myrtle Spurge that's escaping that same neighborhood yard!

——
* I have trouble with the idea that living beings are disposable; hence my difficulties with Poinsettia as well.

** Colorado Flora: Eastern Slope, W.A. Weber, 1990. But see also Catalog of the Colorado Flora (which eludes me at the moment) and Flora of North America.

Crazy spring...

Temperatures took a dive yesterday, down to freezing this morning after being in the mid-60s and 70s (roughly 18-24C) all week! We've had a couple of mini-blizzards this afternoon, one minute snowing and looking a bit serious, the next back to high and dry.

The Easter Daisies (above) don't care what the weather people say; they've been thoroughly convinced by other forces. I captured these yesterday just as the sun was dipping below the foothills (or an hour or so before real sunset). I wanted to make sure I got them before the snow expected by the weatherfolk arrived. Townsendia hookeri (or maybe T. exscapa; didn't look that closely). Asteraceae, Sunflower Family.

No snow still this morning, so I prowled the yard in search of a Biscuitroot in reasonable bloom. Also known as Salt-and-Pepper, these Lomatium orientale are very early and relatively nondescript; easy to overlook unless you happen to be looking specifically for them. They are among the first, but this year, at least, the Spring Beauties had gotten there before them. I swear this flower stalk was drooping, struggling to get by on the near-complete lack of moisture in the soil. Times are tough, and if they don't do spring early, they may not get to do it at all. Fern-like leaves + umbel flowers = Apiaceae, Carrot Family (in this case).

Even the exotics are fooled; maybe I should say "especially the exotics." Lilac buds are greening and swelling, promising flowers that may never appear if snow or rain continue to elude us. The Chinese Elm flowers are past swelling and into full bloom. Male flowers (left) and female flowers (right) on the same tree tell us the plant is monoecious ("one-house") but the flowers themselves are unisexual or imperfect. (Click to enlarge.)

Your assignment, should you choose...

Yesterday I had a surprise note from a stranger: Arj at Science on Tap. Seems he's launching another blog meme and tagged me to contribute a list of "half-dozen-or-so books you would recommend every young person read by the end of their school years to help them maintain a sense of connection to, and value in, the natural world." (I don't know, Arj, isn't this a little personal?)

I've been browsing around in Arj's blog, brand new this year, and it looks like a pretty cool place to hang out. I especially recommend his post featuring a zoom video of a Mandelbrot set! Comes with its own music, an ode to Mandelbrot himself.

What's the blog world coming to? I was happy just snagging a Fractal of the Day once in a while, and now we can zoom M-sets on You Tube! (Today's fractal is nice, but yesterday's was blue! Even better...)

You can scroll down for some Strange Attractors too. Sprott's daily fractals now come with their own fractal music even. Isn't the internet wonderful?

Oh dear, was I procrastinating? Guess I'd better get back to business. Six books. Must-read books. That's tough, narrowing it down, so I'm offering a few more for those of you who want extra credit. Okay, here's what I came up with, in no particular (but definitely not random) order:

• The Living Landscape, by Paul B. Sears, 1962
  Ecological literacy at its first and best, a whirlwind tour of "everything you need to know about" your ecosystem, right down to its geological foundations, in a scant and readable 170 pages or so.
  (Extra credit: read his 1935 classic, Deserts on the March, which actually launched the environmental movement but didn't get the credit.)
  
  
• Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, 1949
  (This is the one that got the credit. Much as I love it, I'd hate to include it here if it bumped a lesser known book, but we won't let that happen.)
  
  
• Desert Solitaire, by Edward Abbey, 1968
  The protestors and innocent bystanders were getting tear-gassed at the DNC in Chicago or shot at Kent State, but Abbey was on a fire lookout tower in Arizona writing this book. Don't miss it!
  (Extra credit: The Journey Home, 1977. Granted it focuses on the American West, both of these do, but there's no reason Arj's mythical "every young person" shouldn't understand the American West. Sorry, no hall passes on this one.)
  
  
• Person/Planet, by Theodore Roszak, 1979
  This gentle but uncompromising book convinced me, a lifelong misanthropist, that there was a causal relationship between human problems and the concerns of planetary ecology, and that's a tough sell. Roszak is a sociologist and philosopher, but I adore him anyway!
  (Extra credit: His 1968 Where the Wasteland Ends, the world's best-ever critique of science, which almost derailed my thesis when I read it in 1973.)
  
  
• The Revenge of Gaia, by James Lovelock, 2006
  Aha! This one's on my nightstand now, and that makes me (and Lovelock) look almost up-to-date in the world! If you believe in global climate change, you should be reading this book. Or at least a few of my comments on it.
  
  
• Deep Ecology, by Bill Devall and George Sessions, 1985
  For bringing Naess' work to light, giving us words like ecocentric, and helping us see our human bias and our blindness toward Nature, this thought-provoking book is well worth a read.
  

Book reports are due Monday! Get busy, people!

Good grief! I seem to have left out Loren Eiseley, Joseph Wood Krutch, Hal Borland, Paul Ehrlich, J. Frank Dobie, Wendell Berry, William Least Heat Moon, Robinson Jeffers, Konrad Lorenz, Lewis Thomas, May Watts, Verlyn Klinkenborg, and... well, you see where this is going.

Lastly, on this impossible assignment, I'm tagging:

Fred, at Fragments from Floyd
The Watcher, at Watching the World Wake Up
Dave, at Plummer's Hollow (or Via Negativa, his choice)
William, at A Sylvan Dream (if he's back to writing)
Dave, at Osage + Orange

——
Guess all this reveals my formative period. But actually, I didn't read Sears' books until I got interested in him as a research subject, circa late 2005. They, like the others on this list, hold up well despite their age and I recommend them anyway.

Having trouble finding them? Visit Alibris—there are worse ways to lose your paycheck!

Seasonal Reminder

Equinox already? Watching the Husband head east this a.m., I noticed the Sun was already closing in on mid-position on the hogback, my Stonehenge. The hogback, if I bother to observe it at the appropriate time of day, tells me when we are in the cycle of celestial movement, and, sure enough, we're almost back at the Vernal Equinox (and, not coincidentally, the 3rd anniversary of Foothills Fancies).

It's been 21 years, 21 trips around a 587-million-mile (947 million km) circuit since I first consciously observed the "movement" of the Sun up and down the hogback. I'm rounding off; you can check my calculations.*

Speaking of 108,000 (see below), check out this intriguing tidbit regarding the accuracy of ancient Hindu astronomical revelations, which I've had occasion to use in post comments on a couple of blogs lately. Figured if I park the link here, I won't lose track of it again.

I don't really know where we are;
They tell us we're circling a star.
I'll take their word, for I don't know,
but I'm dizzy so maybe that's so.

—lyrics from Defying Gravity by Jesse Winchester,
as recorded by Emmylou Harris

(hope that's the right reference; best I can do with this memory and a little help from Google; I apologize for image quality this a.m., must have been in a hurry... or maybe a little dizzy myself!)

——
*Had to do that calculation of the approximate length of Earth's orbit myself, as the sources Google found for me weren't interested in that particular figure. It went like this, if you want to make sure I didn't mess up the math:

365.26 days X 24 hr/day X 108,000 km/hr average speed X 0.62 miles/km = 586,987,430.4 miles

Never Believe a Groundhog

Bee Lady reported Spring Beauties in bloom down on the trail last week, but it took me a few days to get down and check it out! Not that I doubted her: spring wildflowers in February are no big surprise in Colorado, at least at this elevation, and especially not in this very dry winter we're having.

So here, for the record, is Claytonia rosea in full, if unenthusiastic, bloom on February 22nd. (I think the original report came in on the 18th from Bee Lady.)

A couple of weeks ago I got my state quarters* sorted out for just such an occasion, but naturally neglected to take one with me! My hiking companion, she with the neighborly fox alerts, just happened to have an appropriately sized object with her, so herewith we introduce the Scale Mint. (I think, though, it's just a little too reflective.)

We know, of course, that this sign is no lasting harbinger, and we still have hopes for a winter yet to come. We have no groundhogs in Colorado, only their close cousins, the marmots, and spring (as I've written elsewhere, in an essay that dates to 1995) is always a tricky business in Colorado, for us and for the plants! For more authoritative proof that this is not a new phenomenon, consider this account by Arthur Lakes, written in 1876:

In Colorado we never know when Spring is come, for one day we have a hot summer day, and the next we are toiling through snow a foot deep. Still there are signs that Spring is nigh at hand. About the first week in February we noticed the buds of the willow beginning to swell, and a rounder outline growing over the skeleton trees of Winter. Our Oregon grape, Berberis Aquifolium, like a little dwarf holly with its burnished leaves still retaining their autumnal hue, began to grow greener, and at the beginning of March to put forth catkin buds, soon to blossom in a cluster of gold. A party who had gone fossil-hunting to Green Mountain brought in triumphantly our first spring flowers, a cluster of large white daisies on a mat of flat leaves, looking up starlike and pure like resurrection beings from the dark soil, beautiful types of Easter. In a sheltered cranny of the rocks they had also found the modest pink blossoms of the Claytonia Virginica.

To update what "springlike" means in February, the thermometer hit 68F (20C) today. Absolutely lovely. Lakes' Berberis Aquifolium, Oregon grape holly, is now known as Mahonia repens or was last I checked; its "catkin buds" are there, waiting but not yet yellow. I did not check for Easter daisies (Townsendia spp.) on Green Mountain, but it's completely likely they too are out on the south slopes. My local patch is showing only buds. His Spring Beauty name, Claytonia Virginica, applies these days only to the eastern species; we have three species, of which C. rosea is the foothills version here.

——
*See the Lacy Lichens post below for appropriate botanical use of state quarters in a serendipitous discovery I made about 3 years ago. This one even recorded the date! Unfortunately this best example was my first and also my only use, to date, of this excellent aid.

Peaceful and Quiet

This quiet morning photo takes in a scene that, yesterday, was rather more busy. This version was taken on the 11th of February, looking just north of east toward Denver, and represents the norm... But looking out yesterday we saw a coyote, no two, just outside the fence between our yard and the neighbor's driveway, midground here.

That merited a closer look, as the chickens were already out. We watched as the coyotes puttered around for a minute, then dashed across, exiting stage right, which is left in this photo. One... two... three of them, going west about as fast as they could. Pretty impressive! And, thankfully, none of them carried a chicken!

For several days, a neighbor has been calling with reports of a fox in her yard, heading for ours. A quick dash to look has revealed nothing each time. Until yesterday. This time, she was a little more alarmed—"he's in your yard!" I stepped out, still nothing, it seemed at first; chickens all huddled quietly—until a red streak dashed from beside the chicken's gate to the far corner, up and over the fence, and (again) away to the west. I don't recall red foxes being so big! But he carried no afternoon snack away with him.

The dogs, of course, went berserk, but by the time they were allowed to scope out the yard, it was far too late for a close visit with their friend.

This morning it's quiet again, as this view to the southeast testifies. I find myself looking out to the north, the usual view, every few minutes, but only one hungry cervid and several hungry corvids are hanging about. I fear the dogs and I, however, will be on alert all day. A post on wild canids may be ahead of us, especially if the camera is ever at hand when opportunity strikes.

Lacy Life in Lichens

  Thursday was "Honor-an-Invertebrate Day" over
  at Life Photo Meme. You oughta pop over
  there and check out the adorable little
  octopod they found!

Meanwhile, here at Foothills Fancies, I'm just catching up with the previous week's challenge: Lacy... Something alive, and lacy. We're going to try it with lichens. First up is this specimen of Usnea cavernosa, in the group sometimes called "beard lichens." The genus Usnea is characterized by, among other things, the presence of usnic acid, a lichen compound that gives it a distinct coloration. Click to enlarge photos for a better view.

Beard lichens are fruticose, that is, 3-dimensional or, literally, "shrubby." This species is long and pendent, but look for shorter ones on tree trunks. Here in the Rockies, they are very common on conifer bark, for example. U. cavernosa is, in fact, the only pendulous Usnea I've ever seen or am likely to see, unless I get to the Cascades or coastal northwest, where the others live. You can see more long Usneas at Lichen.com, in the portrait gallery. That site is, by the way, a terrific reference for lichen information and photo-IDs. (The image above is a direct scan of the specimen, not a photo.)

This cutie is another favorite of mine, though I haven't figured out the species and don't expect to. (My best guess is C. squamosa.) I'm happy knowing that it's a species of Cladonia, and in this case, lacy is in the leafy squamules at the base of the critter. Cladonias are two-part lichens, often with upright structures called podetia. In this one, a slight suggestion of podetia can be seen, though those too are covered with squamules.

Lastly, a more typical lichen (or two) of the foliose growth form, Parmelia sulcata, lower right and center in this photo. Very common on moist rocks, where it often consorts with mosses, P. sulcata is steely gray when dry, somewhat more blue-green when damp, as here. The smaller frilly gray lichen around its upper edge is most likely a species of Physcia or perhaps Parmeliopsis.


Few lichens have real "by the people" common names, though specialists have been making up some just to make it easier for the rest of us to deal with these fascinating beings. Parmelia sulcata, for example, may be known as "hammered shield lichen." If you enlarge the photo, you'll see the hammer marks that suggest that name. The genus Parmelia in general is called shield lichens, but sometimes these new common names can be more cumbersome than the Latin binomials!

Who could resist these guys? With their variety of form, color, texture, and habitat, and more than 17,000 species to keep us guessing, lichens are a great way to make it through long winter months when other "plants" are dormant.

Whatever Happened to the Sphenopsida?

This and the previous post are on Edition #13 of Berry-Go-Round, the plant carnival, hosted this month over at Watching the World Wake Up. Watcher has put on a great show, so go check out the rest!

Not long ago, I was shocked to discover that some of my old college pals had disappeared. Not just the Sphenopsida, but the Psilopsida were gone, and the Lycopsida had become virtual strangers. (If you’re not conversant with Old Style Plant Classification, you may want to check the review at the previous post. Also note: The Nostalgia Alert invoked in the previous post is extended in full force to this one.)

Way back in the Dawn of Time, between the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment, back when the atom had been split but not yet fractured, between the advent and the breakup of the Beatles, I wrote a college paper called A Description and Discussion of Early Vascular Land Plants. At the time, it seemed no one was quite sure what to do with these guys, but I fell in love with them. They were the psilophytes, and a more rowdy, diverse, and exciting bunch was hard to find in 1969. Young and blinded by infatuation, I failed to see the clues... they wouldn't stick around long.

Here's Psilophyton, the ringleader (aka type genus) of the group. Look at the dichotomous branching, the cute pairs of terminal sporangia... Psilophyton princeps here represents the genus described by Sir William Dawson in 1859, but not accepted at the time. From the Lower Devonian, it was among the earliest vascular land plants, and several species are now known. The spine-like emergences on the lower stem have no vascular tissue, but the stem has a small central stele. Where did Psilophyton go when the gang broke up?

Priscilla (the Phylogenist) did not spare my feelings for old friends. She said: "Nobody seems to have come up with a good term for whisk ferns + ophioglossid ferns, but the phylum Psilophyta is defunct now. Ditto several other plant phyla. Although whisk ferns certainly don’t look like they have macrophylls, their close cousins do, so their ancestors probably did. Both extant groups have reduced root systems, whisk ferns more drastically than ophioglossid ferns."

The whisk fern she's talking about is Psilotum, a living representative of the entire group these days. (Or, classification being what it is, perhaps not even related anymore to this ancestral group.) I'm still trying to figure out why whisk ferns (or Psilophyton) are linked with grapeferns (ophioglossid), or ferns for that matter. Is it the horizontal rhizome? The circinnately coiled tips?

Continued help from Priscilla: "Monilophytes refers to the fern clade – whisk ferns, horsetails, lepidosporangiate ferns. I’m feeling lazy, so here’s a link to a reasonable listing on Wikipedia." The horsetails and their relatives were once known as the Sphenopsida, so now we know what happened to them—they got absorbed by the Monilophytes. Elsewhere, they're known these days as Equisetopsida. [Or were, on December 7th when I first downloaded this tree; now the Equisetopsida are gone too—having been converted into the Polypodiopsida. Compare the cladogram in the previous post. Plus c'a change, eh?]

A couple of the boys turned up elsewhere; you'll be glad to know they've done well for themselves. One source tells me “The Asteroxylales were originally included under the Protolepidodendrales, but they are a much more primitive lineage and have been given their own taxon (of ordinal rank). They stand midway between the Zosterophyllopsida and the more developed lycophytes.”

Judging by name recognition, I conclude that my old friends Asteroxylon and Zosterophyllum have now found good homes hanging out in and around the Lycopsida. At least by the classification scheme below:

Class Lycopsida ("club-mosses") [this list from Palaeos]

• Order Drepanophycales (ancestral types)
• Order Protolepidodendrales
• Order Asteroxylales
• Order Lycopodiales (Club "mosses")
• Order Selaginellales (Spike "mosses")
• Order Lepidodendrales = Lepidocarpales (Scale trees)
• Order Miadesmiales
• Order Pleuromeiales (intermediate forms)
• Order Isoetales ("quillworts")

I can easily believe a lycopsid affiliation for Aster; you could almost lose him in a patch of Lycopodium lucidulum; except for those frilly tops, he'd blend in quite well. He's a Scot, though, from the Rhynie Flora of Early or Middle Devonian age (400 million years ago, give or take). He and two other genera (Rhynia and Horneophyton) were described by Kidston and Lang in 1920.

As you can see, Zosterophyllum looks nothing like his pals, especially Asteroxylon, above—not surprising, as he comes from the other side of the planet. Zoster is an Aussie, a member of the Baragwanathian Flora of Late Silurian age. I think he and his cohorts, Yarravia, Hedeia, and Baragwanathia, were the earliest land plants known back when I drew these mug shots. Zoster was, as you see here, then interpreted as having an aquatic habitat. The sporangia were 3.5 cm across, distributed radially on a terminal spike. Baragwanathia, however, could pass for a long-lost brother (or grandfather, given the age difference?) of Asteroxylon. [Details here and here. Speaking of Dr. Cookson, it was this color picture of Cooksonia that got me started on this nostalgic trip in the first place. Thanks, Phytophactor!]

Just to complete the story, here's the "plant evolution" diagram I included in my paper (Fuller & Tippo, 1954, apparently my college botany textbook—how scary is that?). There at the bottom are all those other algal and fungal divisions that made up the "Thallophytes" in the classification post; and there, in a central spot, are my wonderful Psilophytales, giving rise to the ferns and gymnosperms, and anchoring plant life on land for the first time. So, though a lot has changed in the phylogenetic world since then, here's the end of my paper:

The Psilopsids are the group that best demonstrates the attainment of the necessary characteristics that enabled plants to conquer the terrestrial environment, and make possible a whole new sequence of evolution.

Defunct or not, they deserve to be remembered.

My Kingdom for a Domain to Stand Upon

Nature mocks at human categories. —Harold Bold, 1961

Nature’s mockery, however, doesn’t stop us from sorting things into boxes (classification), naming them (taxonomy), or trying to arrange them in logical order (phylogeny).

Nostalgia Alert: This will turn out to be a historical look at certain aspects of botany I’m no expert on; I’m just trying to make sense of one of the revolutions I’ve lived through. When confusion overwhelms, I’ll try to point you to more authoritative sources.

The Basic Concept (Old Style Classification)
Once upon a time, all things were organized into two boxes: Life and Not-Life. Those in the Life box became the domain of biologists, those in the other box were studied by physicists, geologists, chemists, and other scientists, and all was neat and tidy.

Similarly, in this simpler time, everything in the Life box fit neatly into two boxes known as the Plant Kingdom (Plantae) and the Animal Kingdom (Animalia). All was neat and tidy, more or less, for a few hundred years, and the people were content.

Of course, there were many, many living beings to be studied, so more boxes were created within each of the Kingdoms, making a nice neat nested structure like this:

Kingdom Plantae – Plants
Phylum (in plants it's called Division)     ends in -ophyta
  Class     ends in -opsida
   Order     ends in -ales
    Family     ends in -aceae
     Genus     no specific ending
      Species     no specific ending

Complexity ensued, and it soon was found necessary to break up this neat nesting by adding new categories (each with its own distinctive suffix) like subphyla, superclasses, suborders, and subfamilies. Great fun was had by all.

But What about Plants?
Okay, here's how the "nested boxes system" worked for Plants. Once there were the Embryophytes (plants with, well, embryos; that is, Land Plants) and Everything Else. Embryophytes were a subkingdom-level category. "Everything Else" included seven divisions of algae and three divisions of fungi (which were, of course, then Plants).
If we opened the Embryophytes box, we found a box of Tracheophytes (division) and a box of Everything Else, in this case Bryophytes (in the broadest sense). The root trache- means pipe, but in this case, it's water pipe (not air pipe as it is used in animals). So Tracheophytes are the vascular land plants, those with piping.
If we opened the Tracheophytes box, we found four new boxes. These were the four classes: Psilopsida, Sphenopsida, Lycopsida, and Pteropsida!—corresponding roughly to early land plants (mostly extinct), horsetails and their relatives (mostly extinct), clubmosses and friends (pretty uncommon), and all the green leafy things we ordinarily call plants, i.e. ferns and seed plants (Spermatophytes). The latter include all the Flowering Plants (Angiosperms) and all the Piney-Looking Things (as Watcher would call them; or Gymnosperms).

Then What Happened?
The invention of cladistics changed this whole scheme. Instead of nested boxes or graceful arching trees, we were given clade diagrams, gene-mapping, and all the new relationships technology could uncover.

In a way, cladistics isn't that different; you just turn the tree on its side, and make sure every branch splits into two parts, each of which splits again and again in a nested series. A branch is One Thing and its sister clade is Everything Else; they share a common ancestor and differ by some significant new invention. Every time it branches, the cladogram splits off a single layer of the Onion of Life. Oversimplifying again, here's a clade diagram of sorts for the Embryophyta, based on the more detailed one at Tree of Life:

If we color it to match our nested box scheme, it looks like this:


More Kingdoms
Eventually, people grew troubled by the things that didn’t quite fit properly in the two original boxes. It was true that some things had been jammed in without giving full credit to their distinctiveness, and this became especially obvious after the invention of the microscope. Someone decided we needed a third Kingdom, and now, by one scheme, we have Five Kingdoms (courtesy friend Priscilla at Big Picture Science): Plants, Animals, Fungi, Protists, and ProKaryotes. But see also: Eukaryotes for a different view of things; even more trees here.


In Summary:
It's a very exciting time in plant (and all life) science, now that classification has moved beyond mere morphology and into molecular biology. As fascinating as it all is, I'd rather be out there looking at living things and figuring out their relationships on the ground. Maybe by now, you see why I'm sort of a cynic about classification—there are just too many ways to go! Take your pick; just remember this post only talks about the tip of the iceberg.

Here's another rub: It's tough work getting genes out of fossil plants; the morphologists usually get to keep those extinct groups. That often leaves entire lineages out of the cladistic accounting (though Tree of Life has done a pretty good job of including them; 10 of the 17 clades on their Embryophyte tree are extinct). We'll talk more about them in the next post.

I'm thrilled, really I am, that classification now recognizes the important fact that bacteria run the world and gives them their just place at the root of the tree of life. (See Microcosmos by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan.) It's just that I'd like the shifting sands to sit tight long enough for me to catch up!! But see Domains for evidence that's not likely to happen anytime soon!

——
For a more definitive account (and even better diagrams), please visit the American Journal of Botany's special 2004 issue on the Plant Tree of Life.

Who’s at the base of land plants?—A major controversy in land plant phylogeny concerns the base of the tree (Fig. 2). Traditionally, land plants have been divided into two groups, vascular plants and bryophytes. Although vascular plants are strongly supported as monophyletic based on both DNA evidence (e.g., Nickrent et al., 2000) and morphology (Kenrick and Crane, 1997), bryophytes are now generally thought to comprise a grade of three monophyletic lineages (mosses, liverworts, and hornworts) of uncertain relationship to each other and to vascular plants. ... In our view there is as yet no clear answer, and therefore we show the base of land plants as a tetrachotomy.

THE PLANT TREE OF LIFE: AN OVERVIEW AND SOME POINTS OF VIEW
JEFFREY D. PALMER, DOUGLAS E. SOLTIS, AND MARK W. CHASE
American Journal of Botany 91(10): 1437–1445. 2004. (give the pdf 10-15 seconds to load)

Coyote Morning...

Just got home from the Big Box store, and Husband said "there's a coyote barking out there"... Sure 'nuf! Only took a minute to find him/her with the binocs!

Finally, coyote pictures to go with my stories!! Only minutes old as I post these... (Foreground pines and fenceposts are in our yard; the junipers behind him/her about 200 yards/meters beyond.)

Bee Lady says the coyotes are gone from Red Rocks; nice to know there's still at least one around.

The dogs were inside, fortunately, but clamoring to get out. A week or so ago, a woman in the Denver metro area was attacked by a neighborhood coyote.

Wait for dark—maybe you'll get lucky and find a fresh hen! (Thank goodness it's cold, and the cats are inside!)

For the Record: 2008

[This is one of those "blog-keeping" posts that's likely to be of interest only to yours truly. Feel free to peek and yawn, or to move on to something more interesting.]

According to Blogger, I’ve posted only 69 times on Foothills Fancies in 2008, not a terrific record for what’s supposed to be my “primary” blog. Twenty-seven of those posts have been written since Watcher nudged me to get going again in November, and 42 were in the first half of the year. I love blogging, but on the whole, it’s been mostly a winter sport to date.

However, in my defense, I have been active on other blogs, and this year I’ve written almost as many posts for other purposes (91, half of which were for work) as I have for my own (103). In 2006, I took to blogging with gusto, and set up blogs for every reason I could think of, eleven in total. Some of them never really took, and today four of them are completely dormant, with no posts since 2006. Two of those were set up for time-specific purposes and have run out, e.g., a trip blog that began and ended in 2006 with a respectable 68 posts, 55 of which were written by me. Other attempts at team-blogging have proven unproductive; no one I’ve invited takes to it quite like I do, but I keep having high hopes. (I even invited Cat Woman to help here at FF, but so far she’s resisted successfully.)

2007 was a highly dormant blog year, with only 51 total posts written for six blogs, including two new ones I created for nonpersonal reasons (Lariat Loop and Mountain Parks, see sidebar).

In 2008, three new blogs were created. One, a memorial blog for a friend who died last summer, seems to have run its course but remains as a static tribute. Another is a project blog that has yet to truly catch on. The third is a place blog that I will get back to someday. The memorial blog took off briefly in June and July, concatenation of the project and work blogs created a substantial spike in August, and the work blog continued strong in September.

So, rather than the 5-month hiatus apparent from the post record here at FF, there has been no true lull, and only two slow months, April and October. I'm doing better than I think! It's a bit slow starting this year, so far, but stay tuned, hope springs eternal...

Care to take a Dip?

Mountain streams are icy this time of year, but that doesn't matter to the Dipper. He's a plucky little bird unlike any other in this—or any—neighborhood. So nondescript in coloring that he's hard to spot (or she, the females look the same), but a delight to watch if you find one. Can you spot this one? If not, click to enlarge, that might help a bit.

On my walk by Bear Creek a couple days ago, I saw two dippers chasing each other along the stream, chattering all the way, but they were too preoccupied to sit still and be photographed. (Is it mating season already? A territorial chase between males, perhaps?) I prefer their alternate name, Water Ouzel; has a ring to it, don't you think?

Yesterday, with camera along, I found just one that was willing to demonstrate their unusual lifestyle. I wish this little sequence of photos could capture the Dance of the Dipper—constantly bobbing up and down on his rock, then popping into the stream where he walks around underwater looking for shiny morsels of food. He can also fly underwater. Moments later, he pops out somewhere else. These little guys are absolutely unwettable. Like a cork with legs, he suddenly appears on another rock, upstream or down, and begins the dance again. Dippers mostly forage underwater, but sometimes they stand on a chosen rock and pick insect larvae with only their heads under the water. They can forage on the bottom of streams so fast and deep a person could not stand.

Dippers, Cinclus mexicanus, are the only birds in their family found here in North America. They naturally nest on wet mossy cliff-faces, but have benefited from new nest sites under our bridges and other streamside structures. The effects of pollution have been less beneficial, reducing their food sources, which are similar to those of trout. Healthy dipper populations, then, are indicators of high-quality mountain streams and good trout habitat.

More on dippers at the Cornell Bird Guide. The local Audubon group, the Evergreen Naturalists, has named their website and newsletter after this delightful little bird.

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This one goes to Life Photo Meme, which publishes on Thursdays. I have trouble finding things that match their themes, but I love their concept! This week's theme is "Shiny"... Maybe the water is shiny enough?

Audrey and the A Plants

Audrey is not well… I gave her a new big pot last year, and she thrived (throve?) outside all summer, under shade cloth. But since coming inside last fall, it’s clear she’s unhappy. Audrey is a big Philodendron selloum, adopted from a friend who was moving out of state—about six years ago, I think. So Audrey and I have done well until recently. As she drops one after another of her huge leaves, I’m thinking it must be overwatering (because of that bigger pot) and I’ve been trying to dry her out.

It’s an “A” day over at ABC Wednesday, and it occurred to me to list all the plants I know personally that start with A, in no particular order but without resorting to any external aids. Maybe it’ll bring back other memories of the A-list plants in my life. A stream-of-consciousness look at phytodiversity. (Haven’t gotten far yet; this could take a while.)

A Plant Alphabet for A

Araucaria, agave, aloe, avens, Acer, Acanthus,
Anemone, apple, ash, alamo, Agapanthus,

Abies, Asclepias, Acacia, Aglaonema, Aeonium,
Artemisia, Aletes, Astragalus, Allium,
Alopecurus, aster, Androsace, Asplenium...

Amorpha, Andropogon, Agrostis, Achillea
Alyssum, Argemone, Actaea, Aralia, Aquilegia...

Amanita, Acarospora, Agaricus...

Okay, that last line is cheating a little, but fungi were plants when I grew up in botany.

(Can't believe I missed Amaryllis... but Granny Smith caught it! Please let me know your favorite A plants if I missed them—or share a story about one!)

——
Thanks to Chuck Pyle for this concept, which I’ve barely executed at this point, but I might get back to it. Chuck played a song Saturday at the Arvada Cowboy Poetry Celebration that listed all the small towns in Colorado (under 3,000 in population). It was a tour de force that had the audience spellbound. Very melodious, too; it was amazing how many town rhymes he found! He calls it Little Town Tour—check it out!

By the way, the previous post also started as a bit of an "A" post, so you'll find more "As" there.

Amazing Plants

Plants, as a group, display such a variety of incredible qualities and, yes, behaviors, that it would be impossible to list them all! One of the things I enjoy about the internet is its connectivity, and we could easily explore that quality in plants as well. Last week, though, in two clicks, I found myself at a delightful homage to the wonders of the Plant Kingdom. (Yes, I know that's old fashioned terminology, but you do know I'm stuck in the past, right?) And it reminded me of these photos I want to share with you.

Today's quality to admire in plants is resilience. To me, perhaps few demonstrations of the power of life over death impress the senses the way a plant (or entire plant community) recovering from adversity can. Adversity can strike plants in many forms, but these photos tell a story that most of us don't encounter in person: recovery after burial in volcanic ash.

Here's the caption, from the USGS website where these photos from the public domain are available free of charge.

New vegetation breaking through ash deposits along North Fork Toutle River. Cowlitz County, Washington. 1980.

The new vegetation, in this case, is a plant of fireweed (presumably Epilobium angustifolium or another species; the genus is now Chamerion), something that looks like Oxalis, and a robust-looking fern.

This little tree (a fir perhaps?) is one of the lucky ones.

USGS caption: Vegetation, blast area, Clearwater Creek, east of Mount St. Helens. Photo shows new growth on scorched evergreen. Skamania County, Washington. July 16, 1980. Photo by T. Casadevall.

July 16th, the day the photo was taken, was just two months after the catastrophic eruption on May 18th.

Historical aside: I was writing that week to an uncle of mine, a Baptist minister, and I called it "the geologic event of the [20th] century" in a rambling philosophical letter that noted the eruption was less damaging, in terms of human lives lost, than the race riots that were keeping Miami police busy at the time. (Later, the eruption's death toll outdistanced Miami's.) Uncle Art and I conducted a lengthy correspondence in 1980-81 debating the value of Nature vs. Humanity. It was a wonderful meeting of minds, neither of which were permanently altered. We agreed, in the end, that it was a Good Thing different people had different priorities.

These trees were not so lucky. No ash slowly suffocated the life out of them; their demise was instaneous. It's been more than 28 years, though. The forest, we can hope, was more resilient than the trees. It would be nice to see what it looks like today. (I really recommend you click on this one for a closer look.)

USGS caption: Within a few minutes, hurricane-force winds from the May 18 lateral blast of Mount St. Helens transformed vast stands of evergreen forest into drab tangles of giant matchsticks. The trees were stripped of their branches, toppled, and "combed" into patterns. The logging roads shown here are about 12 feet across. This view is near Elk Rock looking east. Photo by A. Post. Cowlitz County, Washington. June 30, 1980. Figure 34, U.S. Geological Survey Professional paper 1249.

What happened to that "delightful homage" I mentioned? Okay, now you can go check it out and be amazed at the abundant adaptations apparent in the world of our green friends, the plants:

Botany Without Borders, brought to us by Love Plant Life.

Atmospheric Phenomena

As nothing is very visible out there today (another whiteout), please enjoy this photo from last Thursday. The colors at sunrise made these lenticular clouds exceptional, as did the "stack of pancakes" effect of their layering.

Because lenticular clouds (you may call them altocumulus standing lenticularis if you prefer) form in the lee of mountain ranges, we see them quite commonly. Rarely are they so colorful, usually just "shades" of white.

Find great photos of lenticular clouds here.

More about them at Wikipedia.

An entire fleet, seen at NCAR in Boulder, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where they pay attention to such phenomena.