It Started With Sanicula

Day 241: Earlier this year while hiking in Rimrock County Park, I found some odd foliage I couldn't identify. I referred it to my two tame experts, Arnie and David Giblin at the Burke Herbarium. They both identified it as Sanicula crassicaulis, and left it to me to determine the subspecies (var. crassicaulis). David said, "And be sure you get pictures of the flowers when it blooms." That was my project for yesterday: find a bloomin' Sanicula. I think David must have been having a quiet little chuckle, knowing what was ahead of me. I hadn't gone far up the trail when I spotted the familiar leaf. A few tall stems rose above the foliage, terminating in what I took to be seed capsules. As I continued on, I was kicking myself for not having made the trip in late May, thinking that the petals had already dropped, but then noticed a tiny fleck of yellow on another inflorescence. "Hang on a mo'," I said aloud. "Is that the freakin' flower?" What I'd seen earlier were buds. A hand lens would have been nice to have at this particular juncture, but no one had warned me. I put my eye right down on the yellow bits and discovered that yes indeed, the Sanicle panicle displays a number of tiny corymbs, all in a space no larger than the pink of your thumbnail. I'm trying to work that into a poem to drop on David as my revenge.

Paired Sciences

Day 328: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it my love of exotic and semantically precise words which lured me into botany? Or was it the discovery of a floral gateway opening onto a full garden of exacting terminology and thus into a paradise of etymology? I believe the two sciences have walked hand in hand for so long that I cannot make that determination. In any event, this was a week for words of a botanical nature, initiated by an earlier inquiry from a reader as to the term for a plant whose flowers and leaves appear in different seasons. It was a word I did not know, so I turned to Arnie. His reply was straightforward: "There's a word for that?" My next appeal went out to David Giblin, Collections Manager and Research Botanist for the Burke Herbarium. As was the case with Arnie, he was stumped, at least temporarily. Meanwhile and unbeknownst to me, Arnie was digging, and as a matter of course, found several other interesting words which he forwarded to me with an admission that by the time he'd arrived at them, he'd forgotten what he was looking for in the first place. Rabbit hole!

Apparently I'd struck some nerves because David was also searching. I mean, there had to be a word, right? Botanists have a word for anything and everything to do with plants. Take "serrate" and "serrulate" for example. Both describe a type of leaf margin, a semantic distinction based on the size of dentition, and one I'm not sure I could apply confidently with a leaf of each type in either hand. Would I need a ruler? A magnifier? A microscope? Where does one end and the other begin? In the end, David's hunt was productive. He came up with "hysteranthous," and sent along a paper describing the phenomenon as it applies to autumn crocus (Colchicum). My three-volume dictionary does not include the word, although it acknowledges "synanthous," i.e., those plants whose flowers and leaves co-occur. The etymology of "hysteranthous" eluded me until I found "hysteresis," their roots originating in an entirely different Greek word than that which gives us "hysteria" despite the similarity. "Hysteresis" means "the lagging of a physical effect behind its cause."

Meanwhile, Arnie had dropped in my lap "hypogeal" (bearing seed leaves beneath the surface of the soil) and "epigeal" (bearing one or more seed leaves above the level of the soil) as well as "perennating" (which was obvious) and "phanerophyte" (a perennial plant which bears its perennating buds above the surface of the ground, as per Raunkiaer's system of organizing plant life by life-form category). I thanked him kindly for directing me to several new and unexplored rabbit holes, down which I am sure I will find many, many more fascinating verbal treasures. Of course I'm going exploring! Who do you think you're talking to, anyway?

Lathyrus Torreyi

Day 299: I just had to have a pea. I can't take credit for this find of Lathyrus torreyi (Torrey's Peavine), a plant on the state's list of rarities. No, the information on where to find it came to me from the manager of the Burke Herbarium who got it from one of his colleagues. She had reported it from this SECRET location previously in 2017 and had seen it again recently. She alerted David, David alerted me, Arnie and other Park staff, and I emailed my botany partners, afraid that I wouldn't be able to document it myself, thanks to a Post Office screw-up which failed to forward my license tab renewal to me before my tags expired. I've been waiting for the new ones to arrive, which they did late yesterday. I was so excited about L. torreyi that I couldn't sleep last night and bounced out of bed at 4:30 this morning, grabbed a quick breakfast and was out the door a little after 5 so that I could arrive on site without risking contact with another human.

Don't let the photo fool you. This is a small, vetch-like legume, not a full-sized "sweet pea" flower. Most of the blossoms had withered since the plant had been sighted by David's colleague, but I was able to find two still fresh, if perhaps a little pale. They are normally somewhat darker blue. The site where L. torreyi occurs is at the extreme northern edge of its range, and as I said, it is considered rare in Washington. I'm glad I got to see it.

A Day At The Museum

Day 39: Everybody loves a field trip, and yesterday seven members of the Park's Interpretive staff took the day to visit the newly-reopened Burke Museum at the University of Washington. It gave us the opportunity to witness interpretation from the other side of the fence, as it were, and I think we each found some valuable take-aways from the experience. I particularly enjoyed the chance to see curation in real time, i.e., being able to view through floor-to-ceiling glass people at work cleaning and preparing specimens for archiving. I felt that it brought science closer to the visitor, helping them make a personal connection. As for the exhibits, I started on the top floor with paleontology and worked my way down through biology and contemporary culture, and it was in the last area where I spent the most time, intent on the textiles and basketry. I would have liked more detail about each specific item, since most were labelled with a minimum of information. The minimalist style of interpretation seems to be prevalent elsewhere these days as well, not just at the Burke. As far as I know, no detailed guides were available.

That said, the highlight of the day for me was to be able to meet David Giblin, Collections Manager for the Burke's Herbarium. We've corresponded by email for many years, but had never met face-to-face. I had intended to take an hour to walk across campus, visit for a few minutes and then walk back to join the rest of our group, but when I arrived at the facility, David greeted me with a huge hug and brought me in for a full tour. I spent the next hour and a half or so nosing into specimen boxes containing vascular plants, lichens and macrofungi, and talking shop with David. As a parting gift and thank-you for the photos I've contributed to the Herbarium's gallery over the years, David presented me with a copy of the newest edition (2018) of Hitchcock's "Flora of the Pacific Northwest." It was Christmas come early for this naturalist!

A Record Abundance

Day 309: Given the abundance of Lactuca taking over the roadsides of Pierce and Thurston Counties, you'd think it was highly unlikely to fall under the category of "discoveries." I'm not sure I want my reputation in the botanical community to rest long on a weed, but as humble beginnings go, at least I have a toe in the door.

First off, I was sure I had two species since the leaf shape was radically different from specimen to specimen. I took photos of both, expecting to be able to sort them out easily. Finding it much more difficult than I'd imagined, I sent the images off to my contact at the WTU Herbarium. He replied, "You'll have to examine the fruit. Leaf morphology can be highly variable with Lactuca." He went on to say that he thought that my plants were all Lactuca serriola, and added, "...but Ben Legler reported Lactuca virosa in Lewis County." Off I went to gather seeds.

Upon arriving home with a selection of mature fruits from various individual plants, I put them under the microscope and compared them to images of L. serriola and L. virosa. The two are visually distinct, and my specimens all appeared to be Lactuca virosa. I sent the microscope image back to David at WTU and his enthusiastic reply made my day: "Thanks for sending the great batches of photos! As usual, these will go up on Thursday. Your images of L. virosa are the first ever for the Image Gallery. We have images for 2,863 species, so adding a new species at this point is quite impressive! The leaf and inflorescence differences between L. serriola and L. virosa are nuanced and largely indistinguishable. The fruits are truly diagnostic."

It's a weed. It's just a weed. It's my claim to fame at the moment, although something else much larger is in the works!