Adding To The Inventory

Day 299: Team Biota scores again! I'd gone one way while Joe and Sharon went another, and on my way back, shiny leaves caught my eye...shiny, like "poison-ivy" shiny, and three-lobed, but obviously not PI/PO. "Hmmmm...," said I. "I don't think I've seen that before." And then I walked right on past it as I heard Joe call out, "I've got another odd one." His turned out to be the distorted leaves of a plant we have yet to identify, the in-curling apparently the result of disease, insect infestation or some other stressor, and as we searched for other examples of it, I almost forgot about Mr. Shiny-Leaves. Once we were done looking for deformed plants, I said, "Oh, yeah...I've got another weird one in the woods a ways, just one of them." The three of us went in together for a multi-camera photo shoot, and when we got back to the car, we broke out the books. They were no help at all. We'd found another Mystery Plant.

At home, I broke out Hitchcock and stayed up well past my bedtime trying to nail it down. I got as far as Ranunculaceae, but no further. In the morning, I did the only sensible thing, and shipped the photo off to both Arnie and David. Arnie admitted to being stumped, and I didn't hear from David until Sunday night. He suggested Coptis laciniata, Oregon Goldthread. Initially, I wasn't sure, and thought it might be a different Coptis, but another session with Hitchcock settled the matter. The leaves were divided to the mid-vein, the factor which excluded my other candidate. Now we have to make a return trip to search more thoroughly for other examples of the plant. The best news? This is another new species for the Park (and I believe the county as well), and Team Biota is running victory laps.