Squirrel Corn’s Pollination & Seed Dispersal Strategies
Finely dissected leaves, white heart-shaped flowers and small, yellow clustered underground bulblets that look like corn kernels – these are the characteristics that identify the early ephemeral Squirrel Corn (Dicentra canadensis).
Sometimes a plant’s strategies for accomplishing pollination as well as seed dispersal can boggle the mind. Squirrel Corn’s fragrance, nectar and pollen attract queen bumblebees who are out gathering food for the first of their larvae. It is a win-win arrangement: young bumblebees are nourished and pollination is accomplished.
Later in the season Squirrel Corn (and many other ephemerals) achieves seed dispersal by once again attracting insects. Each seed has a tiny packet attached to it (elaiosome) which contains fats and proteins, a highly prized source of food for ant larvae. Ants collect the seeds and bring them underground where they extract the elaiosomes and feed them to their young. They then deposit the seeds into their waste pile, a perfect site for germination as it contains fertilizer in the form of ant frass. This type of mutually beneficial seed dispersal is known as myrmecochory.
Naturally Curious is supported by donations. If you choose to contribute, you may go to http://www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com and click on the yellow “donate” button.
Spring Beauty Rust
Spring Beauty is one of the early woodland ephemerals that greet us before tree buds have opened and released the leaves that will soon shade the forest floor. With April showers plentiful the ground is often damp, encouraging the growth of Spring Beauty Rust (Puccinia mariae-wilsoniae), a species of rust fungus that grows on both species of Spring Beauty (Claytonia caroliniana and C. virginica) that we have in the Northeast. There are approximately 7,000 species of rust fungi, all of which are parasites of plants from which they obtain nutrients and on which they reproduce and complete their life cycles.
Spring Beauty Rust can be recognized by the scattered clusters of reddish-brown sori (clusters of sporangia, structures producing and containing spores) that cover the surface of Spring Beauty’s leaves, stems and the sepals on the outside of flower buds.
If you survey a patch of Spring Beauty you will see that some are quite white while others have deep pink nectar guides and pollen. As a rule, Spring Beauty Rust infects plants with pinker flowers.
Naturally Curious is supported by donations. If you choose to contribute, you may go to http://www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com and click on the yellow “donate” button.
Male Walkingstick Cerci
Congratulations to Sharon Weizenbaum, Beth Herr and David Ascher for correctly identifying the Mystery Photo as the tip of the abdomen of a Common Walkingstick (Diapheromera femorata), also known as Devil’s Darning Needle, Devil’s/Witch’s Riding Horse, and Prairie Alligator due to its unusual shape. While the Common Walkingstick is a mere 3” long, the largest North American species can grow to 7” and one tropical species may reach 14”.
The Walkingstick lives up to its name – it is easily mistaken for a twig with its slender body and legs. By remaining motionless during the day (or gently swaying in the wind like a leaf or twig would), and feeding on the leaves of various deciduous trees at night it avoids many predators with its physical and behavioral adaptations. The practice of using both camouflage and mimicry is referred to as crypsis.
Both the male and female Walkingstick possess a pair of appendages at the tip of their abdomen known as cerci. The cerci on a female are short and straight, while those on the male are longer and curved. They are sensory organs, but in addition, the male uses his cerci to grasp the female when mating with her (see inset). According to entomologist Dr. Gilbert Waldbauer, the cerci are very effective, allowing the male Walkingstick to clasp the female for many hours (weeks for some species) in order to prevent another male from mating with the female.
This is the time of year you are most likely to notice Walkingsticks, as this is when they are maturing and reproducing. Females drop their eggs to the ground from the canopy and because a portion of the outside (capitulum) of each egg is edible (like the elaiosomes of many spring ephemerals), ants carry the eggs below-ground to their nests and eat the capitulum, leaving the intact eggs to hatch and develop.
Naturally Curious is supported by donations. If you choose to contribute, you may go to http://www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com and click on the yellow “donate” button.
Bloodroot A Fair-weather Friend
Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), utilizes contrasting white (petals) and yellow (pollen-bearing stamens) colors to attract insects and achieve pollination. The blossoms have no nectar, only pollen, and in order to protect the pollen, the petals of this member of the Poppy family close on overcast days and nights, a time when most pollinators are inactive. The reopening of the flowers depends on temperature and cloud cover. If it’s sunny out, the flowers will open when the temperature reaches 47°F. Native bees, which are Bloodroot’s main pollinators, don’t usually fly until it is 55°F., so flies, capable of flying at slightly lower temperatures, do most of the cool weather pollinating.
Naturally Curious is supported by donations. If you choose to contribute, you may go to http://www.naturallycuriouswithmaryholland.wordpress.com and click on the yellow “donate” button.
A Great Christmas Present!
If you’re looking for a present for someone that will be used year round, year after year, Naturally Curious may just fit the bill. A relative, a friend, your child’s school teacher – it’s the gift that keeps on giving to both young and old!
One reader wrote, “This is a unique book as far as I know. I have several naturalists’ books covering Vermont and the Northeast, and have seen nothing of this breadth, covered to this depth. So much interesting information about birds, amphibians, mammals, insects, plants. This would be useful to those in the mid-Atlantic, New York, and even wider geographic regions. The author gives a month-by-month look at what’s going on in the natural world, and so much of the information would simply be moved forward or back a month in other regions, but would still be relevant because of the wide overlap of species. Very readable. Couldn’t put it down. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the natural world, but there was much that was new to me in this book. I would have loved to have this to use as a text when I was teaching. Suitable for a wide range of ages.”
In a recent email to me a parent wrote, “Naturally Curious is our five year old’s unqualified f-a-v-o-r-I-t-e book. He spends hours regularly returning to it to study it’s vivid pictures and have us read to him about all the different creatures. It is a ‘must have’ for any family with children living in New England…or for anyone that simply shares a love of the outdoors.”
I am a firm believer in fostering a love of nature in young children – the younger the better — but I admit that when I wrote Naturally Curious, I was writing it with adults in mind. It delights me no end to know that children don’t even need a grown-up middleman to enjoy it!
Red-necked False Blister Beetle
If you find a blossoming Trout Lily in the woods it is quite likely that you will also find one of its most common pollinators, the Red-necked False Blister Beetle (Asclera ruficollis), on it. Ardent pollen eaters, this group of beetles obtain their common name because many species cause blisters when pinched or squashed against skin. Adults mate on flower heads during pollen feeding. Both sexes feed on pollen, which acts as an attractant, but the female will not accept the male until her gut is packed full of pollen. She stores the pollen in a special intestinal sack in which an enzyme causes the pollen to partially germinate — this causes the indigestible covering of the pollen grain to rupture. She then digests the contents of the pollen grain, which she uses to manufacture eggs.
Spring Beauty Pollinators
Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) is one of our earliest woodland wildflowers to blossom, and thus an important source of nectar and pollen for the earliest foraging insects. Pink lines (“bee guides”) on each of its five petals lead pollinators to the center of the flower, where the nectar is located. The pollinator in this image, Andrena erigeniae, is one of the more common species of bees that visits Spring Beauty in the early spring. Notice the slightly pink pollen she has gathered into the pollen basket on her hind leg. If you’re interested in spending time observing the series of different insect pollinators that visit Spring Beauty as the season progresses, there’s a golden opportunity for you. If you go to http://springbeauties.wordpress.com/ you can participate as a citizen scientist volunteer and participate in their survey.
Squirrel Corn and Dutchman’s Breeches
Squirrel Corn (Dicentra canadensis) and Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) are in the same genus, and their leaves and flowers reflect this close relationship. Squirrel Corn’s flowers are more heart-shaped, and lack the upright, pointed spurs of Dutchman’s Breeches flowers. It is in these spurs that nectar is produced. Squirrel Corn gets its name from the clusters of yellow, kernel-like bulblets, or tubers, that form on its roots. Dutchman’s Breeches, at least to the person who named it, resembled pants worn by men in the Netherlands.
Bloodroot
All members of the Poppy family have milky or colored sap, and Bloodroot (Sanguinarea canadensis) is no exception. Its sap is as red as its petals are white, and was used as a source of dye by Native Americans (for clothing and baskets) as well as for paint and as an insect repellent. The individual flower of Bloodroot lasts only two days, but on these two days, it reigns supreme amongst the early ephemerals.
Naturally Curious with Mary Holland 
What Other Naturally Curious People Are Saying