Milkweed Dehiscence

Day 42: After weeks of waiting patiently for my milkweed pods to dehisc, only to see them developing mold in our damp weather, I decided it was time for an intervention. I cut the stems and laid them inside the unheated garage where I hoped they would dry and split. I wasn't even sure they'd ripened, since they had never turned brown as I felt they should have done, left alone on the plants. Now it has to be said that I don't generally have much reason to go in the garage, so they were there for a week or two before I opened the door again. That brief disturbance of the air as the door swung back sent milkweed fluffies into every nook and cranny in the building! They drifted down like snowflakes as my mind struggled to comprehend what was happening, so unexpected was the sight. You know what they say: Be careful what you wish for. Dehiscence had indeed occurred. In spades.

Dehiscence

Day 294: Muppets. But seriously, your word for today is "dehiscence." That's what's going on here. The fuzzy-haired seed cases of Comptonia peregrina (Sweetfern) have begun to dehisc, i.e., they're splitting open to release their seeds. Each pod contains two to four hard nutlets, seen here poking out like shiny Muppet noses or beaks. Typically, very few of these nutlets will germinate naturally, and starting new plants from seed is challenging to say the least. Rather, the plant spreads by suckering, but even so, it is difficult to transplant, although I have done so successfully on several occasions. That said, I have had very little issue with unwanted suckers coming up from the parent plant. I keep my Comptonia pruned to a manageable size, and in so doing, the foliage is quite lush as opposed to the leggy appearance of Sweetfern in the wild. The leaves give off a wonderful scent on warm days, but unfortunately it is not sufficiently persistent to use in potpourri.

Dehiscence

Day 346: Here's a good word for you to drop into the conversation at the next party you attend: dehiscence. Of course, if your party companions are the same kind of people I enjoy being around, no one will bat an eye, but that's another subject. The term comes directly to us from the Latin verb "dehiscere," "to split open or gape," which is exactly what certain seed pods do when ripe. Legumes are notorious for their ability to dehisc violently when fully dry, often throwing seed 25 feet or more from the parent plant. Others such as the slender siliques of Fireweed simply split and peel backwards to release their fluff into the breeze. On the other hand, indehiscent fruits such as sunflower seeds and acorns open only when the germinating seed begins to exert pressure from inside, or when the hard outer shell is weakened by some external factor (freezing, fire, moisture, etc.). In the case of Fireweed (Chamaenerion angustifolium, shown here), the teensy-tiny seed attached to the silky pappus is so hard that it still requires scarification by fire before it can sprout. It is often the first plant to emerge in clear-cut timber plots which have been burned over to remove debris. But do not assume that fluff and dehiscence equate. They do not. Although Fireweed siliques dehisc to release their seeds, the common dandelion is indehiscent, its fruit an achene, albeit attached to a silken parachute.

Dehiscence

Day 220: I wish I could share the experience with you, but for now you will have to satisfy yourself with learning a new word with which to impress your friends: dehiscence. It is the term used to describe the point at which a pod bursts open to release the seeds in its interior.

A friend whose anonymity must be preserved for this exercise knew that I wanted to make another attempt at cultivating a few milkweed plants in the Barren Wasteland in order to obtain their husks for hobby purposes. The first time I tried it, the seeds came to me with instructions to give them a chill-down period of six weeks in my fridge. The experiment was a total failure. These, however, had experienced the chill cycle naturally, promising a better chance of success. Now whether or not the seeds and their fluff were attached to the pod when she packaged them up is a matter of conjecture. I suspect so, based on circumstances which occurred some time later. You see, the Post Office lost the parcel. It disappeared into the bowels of some facility in Chicago and remained there for almost a month before I initiated an official search for it by the tracking number. I had no idea what it contained, although the friend had cautioned me to "open it over a towel." When it finally arrived, I did so, but that did not prevent the coma...the fuzzy white parachutes...from flying all over my kitchen. If the pod had been intact on shipment, it had dehisced in transit and the seeds had detached from the coma, liberating a flurry of silk to any passing breeze such as that generated by my heating system. I cannot imagine that the nameless friend managed to gather them in that state. I had to wet my hands in order to capture them, and even now, 24 hours later, I am still finding milkweed fluff in odd places. Forget glitter. It doesn't hold a candle to milkweed coma when it comes to going everywhere.