Easter Bouquet

Day 190: Not in a flower pot. Not in a vase. This is how I prefer my Easter bouquet: outdoors, with their little feet planted firmly in the ground so that they can do what plants do best, i.e., grow and bloom, and make more plants. That said, I have been known to cut a few on special occasions, but now Merry provides a neat excuse for forgoing that. I'm sure he'd love to eat them or tip a vase over. The species tulips I planted last fall have made a poor showing, just two or three each of red and white. Likewise, the crocus bulbs must have been eaten by something, because even my old ones didn't show up. However, the alliums are coming along nicely, although they aren't putting up buds yet. The explosion of colour I had envisioned for my front flower bed certainly didn't live up to expectations, although stirring up the soil allowed the double daffodils to spread. Where I once had only a few, now I have dozens.

The Colour Garden

Day 300: Perhaps they aren't as unstructured as a traditional English garden, but my flowerbeds are nevertheless a themeless riot of hues and growth habits. I grow "for pretty," with no particular mind to borders and backgrounds, not objecting to those things which reseed with wanton abandon, totally happy when a solitary yellow snapdragon pops up amid the cosmos or nasturtiums creep out on the far side of the hellebore. This is my "colour garden," the morning-sun bed which often may sprout the occasional sunflower, courtesy of the careless eaters in the bird feeders nearby. I love the little surprises each growing season brings: Nigella over here, a Gazania which survived the winter, a pop of blue Lobelia from a seed a decade dormant. Nature knows no truly straight lines, and neither should a garden be anything other than a crazy-quilt in my conception, its floral patchwork calling to memory the dearest fabrics of bygone years.

Infestation!

Day 112: "Ladybug, ladybug...The most commonly seen ladybugs (ladybird beetles) were introduced to the United States to control aphids. As cute as they may be, these red and black insects may outcompete native species in some areas." So reads the interpretive tag I am including with the ladybug hats bound for Mass Audubon Joppa Flats Education Center's gift shop. As you can see, they've taken over my front flower bed and are wreaking havoc with the junipers. Oh dear! Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home!

I can vouch for these critters as competitors. They very nearly won over the rights to my house about twenty years ago. For about two weeks, I kept finding them everywhere, but the capping climax was the morning I removed 38 of them from my shower! And did you know that some species bite? I learned that the hard way, too. But all that aside, there has never been a more adorable "bug" despite the fact that they need to be accompanied by warning labels.

Sex Life Of Liverworts

Day 346: Marchantia polymorpha (a liverwort) is a common pest in nurseries and greenhouses, and that's how it came to find a home in my front flower bed. I "imported" its spores in a pot of Wintergreen, the thallus not yet developed and visible, and although I've tried to eliminate it by removing the infected soil, it continues to reproduce abundantly. You see, Marchantia is sex-crazed. It reproduces in any of three different ways: by spores contained within the gemmae found in the gemma cups (left), by spores contained in the receptacle (right), or via pieces broken off the main thallus (vegetative propagation). That's "sexessive" even among other thalloid liverworts!

This is the first time I've observed the receptacle (cute little palm tree!), and no wonder; they're supposed to appear in spring, to be followed in summer and autumn by the gemmae. When it releases its spores, they can be carried some distance by wind. On the other hand, the spores in the gemmae wash out onto the soil when the cups fill with rain, much like the peridioles of Bird's-Nest fungi. It's doubtful I can win out over such a complex and successful reproductive strategy, so I might as well just start thinking of my flower bed as a field laboratory for liverwort biology.

Today's Puzzle - Marchantia Polymorpha, A Liverwort

Day 299: While I love to be able to track down the identity of a species in my field guides, I am equally pleased and dismayed when I cannot do so. I'm sure you'll understand why I'd be frustrated, but you might not immediately catch on to the logic involved in the enjoyment of defeat. "Why would anyone be happy they failed?" you wonder. Because, my dear readers, that failure affords an opportunity to learn.

I don't know what this lichen is. Several rosettes of it are growing in my north flowerbed, almost entirely shadowed by Hosta leaves. It hugs the ground closely. Its apothecial disks are open and some contain teeny-tiny spores or spore capsules reminiscent of those found in the Bird's-nest fungi (Nidulariales). Nothing, and I repeat, nothing in Brodo's 40-pound "Lichens of North America" resembles it, to the extent that I am at a loss to even place it in a family.

When I spotted it, my first thought was, "I've got to get a picture of that." Down on my elbows, I was able to get a better look, and noted its field characteristics before consulting Brodo for the first time. When I came up empty-handed, I resorted to stronger methods, i.e., I took a sample, cleaned it, photographed it under controlled conditions and examined it under a magnifier. With it enlarged on the computer screen, I again consulted Brodo. Nada. Not even close.

The final chapter in this story is waiting on a professional opinion. That was the next step: refer it to an expert. Maybe I missed something in that weighty field guide; maybe not. One way or another, I will learn from the experience and will be richer, not only for discovering the identity of this lichen, but for being shown points of identification I may or may not have overlooked.

Update: The mysterious "lichen" isn't a lichen at all. It's a thalloid liverwort, Marchantia polymorpha. I am grateful to Dr. Irwin Brodo, author of the 40-pound field guide to "Lichens of North America" for his personal response to my request for an identification.

What I mistook for apothecial disks are gemma cups. The "spore capsules" are gemmae, asexual propagules of the plant.

Gardening Day

Day 198: I don't enjoy weeding. I don't think anyone does (not really), but those of us who garden, however lackadaisically, have convinced ourselves that crawling around on our knees and grubbing in the dirt is somehow fun.

The weeds have been calling to me for the better part of a month now, and weather was largely responsible for keeping me from the task; weather and, as honesty compels me to admit, other outdoor activites when the sun broke through the clouds. Warmer days or not, the ground is cold still, and long roots are reluctant to release their hold on chilly, compacted soil. The aeration team has only just begun to rise and writhe, and by the time their job is nearly done, their numbers will have increased sufficiently that I will have no scruples about inviting a small contingent out to fish for perch. Right now, their labour in the flower beds is far too valuable to sacrifice them to the hook. A few self-seeding annuals are struggling to emerge through the shield of moss which invariably spreads over the soil during the idle season, and inevitably, I pull a few things I didn't mean to pull in the process of scraping down to dirt.

Today was a preliminary attack on my foes, the weeds. I took out their generals and commanders, and reduced the first wave of their army. But it is a battle I am destined to fight again and again, for their recuperative powers are phenomenal. Like the Phoenix of legend, they will rise as vigorously as before. I'll be back out there next week, grubbing in the dirt again, my complaints tempered by some misplaced sense of enjoyment which tells me I like to garden.