Thursday: 17 August 2006
The first word of the title, meant to bring a sparkle to your Thursday, is: nice
Toward the end of June I posted on the flowers of “Climbing Milkvine”. Early last September I posted on the Milkweed Tussock Moths that were feeding on the leaves of this very plant, and then in late November declared by the brilliant yellow leaves of again, this very plant, that fall had officially arrived. We do take our milkvines seriously here.
Here’s the developing fruits:
As I pointed out, it’s unusual that any of the many many flowers actually become pollinated and produce fruits, so this is quite a bonanza. I attribute it as another piece of evidence that climbing vines fail to produce unless they have actually begun to climb.
Neither of us can remember who planted this under the river birches, but Glenn certainly did the training, and it has been wildly successful.
When we first moved here, we had another species as well, “Spinypod”, which is similar to the above photo except the fruits are covered with blunt prickles. This may have been the threatened/endangered Matelea alabamensis. We haven’t seen it since the late 80s, but in the interim the Microstegium took over and we suspect genocide. Now that I’ve liberated the Fairy Ring area there are abundant milkvines in the process of finding their trees and when they do we may discover that we have resurrected the Spinypod.
While I referred to these as a “pod”, they’re actually follicles, the simplest kind of fruit. A follicle is simply a modified leaf, folded over and fused, with the ovules (seeds) developing along the midrib of the former leaf. This fruit is actually a bit of a step up in complexity since it is (probably) *five* follicles fused together to make a single fruit.
TAXONOMIC NOTES TO SELF:
Toward the end of June I posted on the flowers of “Climbing Milkvine”. Early last September I posted on the Milkweed Tussock Moths that were feeding on the leaves of this very plant, and then in late November declared by the brilliant yellow leaves of again, this very plant, that fall had officially arrived. We do take our milkvines seriously here.
Here’s the developing fruits:
As I pointed out, it’s unusual that any of the many many flowers actually become pollinated and produce fruits, so this is quite a bonanza. I attribute it as another piece of evidence that climbing vines fail to produce unless they have actually begun to climb.
Neither of us can remember who planted this under the river birches, but Glenn certainly did the training, and it has been wildly successful.
When we first moved here, we had another species as well, “Spinypod”, which is similar to the above photo except the fruits are covered with blunt prickles. This may have been the threatened/endangered Matelea alabamensis. We haven’t seen it since the late 80s, but in the interim the Microstegium took over and we suspect genocide. Now that I’ve liberated the Fairy Ring area there are abundant milkvines in the process of finding their trees and when they do we may discover that we have resurrected the Spinypod.
While I referred to these as a “pod”, they’re actually follicles, the simplest kind of fruit. A follicle is simply a modified leaf, folded over and fused, with the ovules (seeds) developing along the midrib of the former leaf. This fruit is actually a bit of a step up in complexity since it is (probably) *five* follicles fused together to make a single fruit.
TAXONOMIC NOTES TO SELF:
In the comments to the previous post, Glenn agreed that the species was previously Matelea gonocarpos, but according to Weakley(2006) all anglepods are now Gonolobus, their own genus. So it is now called Gonolobus suberosus - Eastern Anglepod. According to USDA Plants, which usually keeps up with these things, the situation appears to be reversed - what was *previously* Gonolobus suberosus has become my original classification - Matelea gonocarpos. So it’s possible that we have a conflict between two authorities. Or that what was originally G. suberosus became M. gonocarpos (recognized by USDA Plants here) which then was returned by Weakley to G. suberosus and has not been updated by USDA Plants.
Funny!
