100 Species # 60 -- Partridge Pea

Specimen #60

Partridge Pea

Chamaechrista fasciculata or
Cassia fasciculata

Photo by me, Principal Park

July 2009



I first met this plant near Prairie City at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge back around 2001. My family and I invited a homeschool group for a guided nature walk. Since then, I have seen the partridge pea occasionally while out geocaching. It is not a woodland flower, but an open field flower, with a bright yellow flower and a brown center. I can tell that it is a legume by the leaves -- alternate compound, many leaflets. Like other legumes, it adds nitrogen to the soil it grows in.



According to the current Iowa butterfly forecast, we should look at patches of partridge pea for a chance of spotting a little yellow butterfly, Eurema lisa. The partridge pea is its host plant. (See here for more info on Eurema lisa.)




Seeds from the partridge pea look like legumes, and are food for wildlife, which you can see here against my hand for scale. (It was quite windy, so you'll have to excuse any blurriness for all of these photos.) I read here that birds, deer, and field mice will eat them.

Muncher grows

Back on July 28, I measured Muncher, then thought I'd take a rest day since his growth wasn't spectacular. Looking back, I think he's like my kids. They grow in spurts. The times when they do not grow, they are just storing up energy for a large growth spurt.

On the porch, July 30, he was 9/16" at dusk. That was only 1/16" of an inch since his last measurement.

July 31, in his jar, (I used a tape measure) he measured 13/16" in the morning. That's 1/4" overnight. And I just looked at him now. He looks like he's grown during the day!

As I dropped off my youngest at camp yesterday, I plucked two leaves off a milkweed plant and ended up with two tiny babies on one leaf. So now we have three monarch larvae, born about a week and a half apart.

Caterpillar

Our Muncher is now 0.5" long and much fatter than earlier. I'm graphing the growth in my nerdy fashion. As much as I would like, measuring its girth will not be possible without calipers. So no tracking its growth around.

100 Species #59

Specimen #59

Northern Maidenhair

Adiantum pedatum

Photo by me, July 24, 2009

EFMO, IA

Fan-shaped whorls gave this fern away. After two takes, Mr. TellBlast suggested the composition of the photo you see here.

This fern, and other maiderhairs, likes to grow in rocky places. There are many places at EFMO where visitors can see rocky outcroppings. Shelter and chert tools could come from these outcroppings.

When clustered, the stalks are supposed to look like a maiden's hair. Her hair doesn't grow very long. In this case (and many), the stalk is black, fine, and shiny.

Growth

July 25, 1/4" long -- I had to crop the photo to compensate for all the bad areas. Shame on me for waiting until after dark to photograph Muncher on the porch. I had to use my headlamp.

July 27, 3/8" long -- does that mean 1/16" per day? I'll have to graph growth once this is over. Hooray for me to remember that I should take a picture before the sun went down. Also yay for using the same ruler every time. That's the scientist in me.

Muncher is still not consuming entire leaves in one day. And my oldest and I were talking about how we wouldn't know the sex of the monarch until it was an adult. Maybe there are markings on the larva's side or legs to distinguish male from female.

100 Species # 58 and Find #212

Specimen #58 Yellow coneflower

Ratibida pinnata (and a bumblebee)

photo by me, Friday, July 24, 209

Effigy Mounds National Monument, Fire Point

I snapped this during the scenic view portion of our guided tour at EFMO (that's my nickname for Effigy Mounds National Monument). Yeah, I was looking at the plants. The entire tour I lagged behind to look at the plants. I mean, I saw the view, too. Here's the view. It's the Mississippi River from 808 feet. I'm guessing that sunsets are gorgeously beautiful here. But honestly, I was thinking, "I am really glad that I'm physically fit enough to trek up here. That grandpa over there is panting."

I've been told for about six years that my family needs to take the guided tour at this place. I'd also been told by my grandmother that the mounds weren't as impressive as you might think. But once I found that there was an earthcache GC19697 on site and my boys were going to visit with their scout troop, I was so conveniently hitching a ride. I definitely think the guide and the museum were key to my enjoyment. The information in the earthcache was very interesting.

The Ratibida is a prairie plant, and EFMO has prairies. The tour we took happened to be in more of a woodland area than prairie. Evidently the mounds were not originally located in a forest but a prairie? Mr. TellBlast and I are wondering how the prairie disappeared, because no one in their right mind would plow up and down steep hillsides. And the place was steep, and rocky, too. Anyway, the natives who built the mounds may have used yellow coneflower medicinally, but we'll never really know, because there is no written history and they were all gone by the time anyone realized what the mounds were. Later Indian cultures had no idea that mounds existed at what is now EFMO.

I have read that "[p]ioneers used the dried seed heads like cedar chips to protect clothing." (from this source)

This flower has drooping petals, which makes it very distinct from other flowers. You'll find occasional signs to identify trees and forbs along Fire Point trail. The forb signs are poor compared to the tree signs, just a name, no picture, no "months when blooming," no interpretation. Just a name. This patch of flowers did not have a sign.

Monarch Day 2

We think the caterpillar looks the same length, but fatter.

The caterpillar is on the top side of the leaf that we found it on. Yesterday it was photographed on the underside of the leaf, which is fuzzy. The fuzz makes the leaf look gray. Without the fuzz, the leaf looks green. It's yellow here because I photographed it on the porch at sunset.

Monarch sighting

July is typically the time we search for monarch larvae. My older son was weeding a garden bed at church after lunch and pulled a milkweed. After he told me, I had him pull it so I could inspect it and found this tiny guy. I also found a couple eggs and an eggshell. 'bout went cross-eyed looking at it, and found that blowing up the photo of the egg was much better than using the naked eye. Click on it and see if you are as amazed as I was.

This bottom photo is the egg the photo above it, taken as a profile (close to it), cropped, and enlarged. I always wondered if the eggs were really like barrels and now I know.

The larva in the top photo is now living with us. It is 1/8" long. We'll feed it as needed (those caterpillars get pretty loud when they're hungry!). Updates will made here on this blog. We've raised plenty of monarchs here, but I have never showed any on this blog. (I've shown a newly hatched adult here.)

The best way to find small larvae (the large ones are extremely easy to spot, for humans and birds) while out in the field geocaching is to find milkweed leaves with holes. Once you find hole-y leaves, inspect the undersides. Monarch larvae are striped yellow, white, and black with two fleshy black antennae.

May Apple update

My brother is creating a prairie restoration plan for the homeplace. While we were walking around, we found many of these -- the fruit of the may apple.

To me, this really indicates the change that have evolved over the last 20 years or so at the homeplace. What was once a mowed yard has grown into a woodland. We have no natural history of the place, so he's really working from scratch with educated guesses, with the goal of oak savanna.

100 Species Challenge #57

Specimen #57 Common Mullein
Verbascum thapsus L.
also goes by many other names

photo by me at Ledges State Park

Native to Eurasia. My kids always called this lambs ear when they were little because of the soft leaves, like the garden perennial lambs ears. We find them in "waste" areas and margins (as you see here). Different states view them as dangerous in varying degrees.

In addition to the leaves' velvety texture, they are pretty recognizable from their gray-green color.

From Zen's WNC Nature Notebook (the WNC would be West North Carolina. Another amateur naturalist like me):

The velvety leaves and flower stalks have found many purposes. Dipped in tallow or grease the dried stalks have been used for torches, and the leaves still used as wicks. Reportedly, American Indians lined their moccassins with the leaves to insulate against cold and white colonists used them inside their stockings for the same purpose.

A tea made from the leaves was used to treat colds in Appalachia, and in other places the leaf tea was considered good for dysentery. The leaves were smoked for asthma and sore throat by some American Indians and other groups boiled the roots for a mixture to treat children with croup.

The leaves are soothing for mucous membranes and have been used to soften the skin and protect it.

The flowers contain an oil that has been used for earache.

Dealing with the Neighbors

Here I am at an unnamed cache. Story below.

I recently had 3/4 of GAIN Academy and a friend of theirs out and about. Midafternoon, weekday. We hit a couple urban geocaches and had an encounter with a neighbor. I've been thinking about the incident for a while, and since this woman did not share her thoughts, I really do not know what her purpose was in approaching us. The situation was like this:

The kids and I are walking along a ridge, which was the top of a berm planted with trees. On one side of the berm is a building and parking lot. On the other side is wooden fencing. The fence separates the building from the backyards of a neighborhood. Some yards had gates in the fence.

We're tootling along in the hot sun, finding a shady spot to sit and sign the log book, when a gal comes out from behind a fence.

Staccato voice. "What are you doing here?" Her voice is not friendly at all. I think we were clearly not casing the neighborhood with the intent of burglarizing. We were looking in the trees. I answered, "We are geocaching."

Her voice remained unchanged. "What's that?"

"It's a game. You get coordinates for a treasure hunt, then go to the coordinates and find it."

"Where do they come from?"

"The location with the coordinates come from the geocaching website. This cache has been here (I look at the top of the logbook)....since last March."

Longer pause than in the past. "Are other people coming?"

"Well, anyone can play the game. It's self-regulating, so people finding the cache report and let everyone know if the container is still here to find, if it's missing, logbook is wet, etc."

"N" inserts that some people are nutty about the finding caches, and names a player as an example. I respond to him loudly (so that the neighbor and the friend could hear) that the player in question was third person to find the cache. "N" of GAIN and I were sincerely as friendly as we could be -- friendly between ourselves, friendly to her. She wasn't warming up to us or the hobby. This continued for two more minutes, ending with her abruptly leaving, no good byes. And she never got physically close to us to see the container or log book, despite our attempts to engage her.

Did we convert her to the sport? I doubt it. Is she concerned about her safety? Probably, but now she has an idea of what to expect -- that we aren't coming after her, her property, or her family. Should we use more stealth with urban caches? The answer will always be yes, but it leads to: Should the hiders design different caches or choose different hiding places? Again, the answer will probably always be yes, but what about the lovable cache quality of "the unknown." The variety of hiding spots and situations make the sport (hobby?) awesome. I don't think anything should change.

We did the best we could and that's all we can do.