Flower Mimicry

Day 282: Team Biota is always on the lookout for the rare and unusual, and last week's outing provided us with a couple of Mystery Plants. One I managed to identify within 24 hours despite the fact that I only had foliage to go on. As I told Arnie, "If I was a taxonomist, I'd call it somethingoranother betulifolia," and sure enough, the plant's birchy-looking leaf was the clue I needed. I like it when Latin tells you something about the field characteristics! But then there was this critter, and it had all of us baffled, right up the chain to the curator of the WTU Herbarium. I was convinced that it was infected with some kind of pathogen and he agreed, but we couldn't determine the identity of the plant. Team Biota began planning the next trip around trying to find a) a healthy specimen and b) an open blossom, but I didn't think those red "buds" were really buds. I was ready to consign it to the Unidentifiables file, but while looking for information on another subject entirely, I stumbled across a photo which strongly resembled our unsolved Mystery. I checked the associated document and discovered that it showed a Boechera (Rockcress) which was infected with the fungus Puccinia monoica. The fungus creates a condition known as floral mimicry, i.e., it distorts the leaves and makes them look like...yep, flower buds. I spent the next several hours down a rabbit hole of scholarly treatises while exchanging emails with the Herbarium curator, and we narrowed the possible Boechera candidates down to two, which fortunately have one distinctly different characteristic to separate them. There will be another chapter to this story as soon as Team Biota has put the final piece of the puzzle in place.