Star-Flowered Solomon's Seal

Day 263: It's a funny thing: sometimes the names of plants come easily to my tongue (Latin or English), and other times I overthink the process and wind up confusing myself.

(Interruption) Yes, I know there's a bug on the underside of that petal.

Overthinking goes like this. I walked past this plant and said aloud, "Star-Flowered Solomon's Seal." Fifteen minutes later (after a series of unsuccessful attempts to photograph our second species of Twayblade), I looked at it again and said, "No, wait...that's Twisted-Stalk. No, maybe not. Dang! I'll have to look it up when I get home."

My confusion is easy to understand if you look at the stalks. They twist. Therefore, you would assume that it was Twisted-Stalk. It's not. It's a classic case of a common name inviting error.

When I initially opened my mental field guide, my thoughts fell upon the page for Star-Flowered Solomon's Seal. My first response is most often correct in cases like this, possessed as I am of a fairly reliable eidetic memory. Nevertheless, I am seldom able to suppress the argument which emerges from the other side of my brain to remind me that I should know these common plants as well as I know my own face, but don't. It is the common species which most frequently trip me up. Why? Because I don't remind myself of their nomenclature every time I see them in the field. In fact, I generally regard them as "background noise" in my pursuit of rarer things.

In the Twisted-Stalk/Solomon's-Seal issue, we have similar leaves and angled stalks. If I had only remembered the first part of Rosy Twisted-Stalk's name, the debate would never have occurred. Then I would have recalled the kinks in the stems just above bell-shaped, pinky-red flowers, a trait not seen behind Star-Flowered Solomon's Seal's beautiful white stars. D'uh! STARS! Is there any doubt that these white flowers look like stars? And that's what I said in the first place. I just failed to say it with enough conviction.

And since you asked, I do not know what kind of a bug is under there. I didn't see it until I got the pictures out of the camera.

Pontia Beckerii On Plantago Lanceolata

Day 266: Another score for Team Biota! During one of our recent botanizing exploits, we were minutely examining a rock wall near Box Canyon when something near ground level caught my eye: a white butterfly on an inflorescence of Buckhorn, Plantago lanceolata. The similarity in colour to the individual Buckhorn flowers was striking, a pale yellowish green which seemed almost luminescent. The butterfly was perfectly motionless, so I sneaked in for a close-up even though I figured I wouldn't be able to identify it without a dorsal view. When I got home, I submitted the photo to BugGuide.net. Their response took a little longer than usual, and before I received it, I got a note from Joe and Sharon (my botany partners) saying that they had shown their photos to an entomologist who had identified it as Pontia beckerii (Becker's White). A few minutes later, I had confirmation from BugGuide. Joe later got an email from a contact at BAMONA (Butterflies and Moths of North America). In his words, "...this is probably a first county record for Pontia beckerii in  Lewis County, so it's a great find!"


When you're out hiking, don't just look at the broad views. Sometimes the greatest sights are those within arm's reach.