Wildflower Wednesday: Bowman's Root Gillenia trifoliata

Bowman’s Root’s current distribution is in the eastern half of North America and it doesn’t seem to have naturalized outside of what is considered its native range. So, although this attractive wildflower is not ‘native’ to Alberta and only Canadian in the sense that it occurs in Ontario (hardly enough justification for some Albertans), I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt. The longer the glaciers stay at bay, the more likely it might have gotten here on its own. Although usually listed as USDA Zones 4-9, my trial planting in 2008 did so well that I added a second plant in 2009. Both are now if full bloom and add a graceful, airy elegance to two shady spots with dappled sun.

 Also called Mountain Indian Physic, Dropwort, Indian Hippo (short for hippocras – a medicinal wine-spice infusion), and sometimes American Ipecac (although this is more commonly applied to the more southern and less ornamental G. stipulata), Bowman’s Root grows to about 60-90 cm (2-3 feet) and does well in partial shade or sun (if the soil is moist) and mildly acid (pH 6.1-9) to neutral soils. Its natural habitat is dry, open deciduous woodlands. I especially like the loose panicles of pinkish white irregularly regular flowers as they wave back and forth on red stems in the slightest breeze. Although Bowman’s Root has a fairly broad distribution, its survival is considered ‘Threatened’ in Michigan, so this is one of those wildflowers one should not remove from the woods. Nor is their any need to since its seeds germinate easily and it is readily available in commercial greenhouses (my plants came from Hole’s).

 Bowman’s Root has been the subject of a fair amount of scientific study, mostly because it has a low haploid chromosome number (n=9) – although related members of the Rose family usually have 17 chromosomes – possibly derived from the doubling of 9 chromosomes and then the loss of one. Thus, something like Bowman’s Root may have been ancestral to a lineage of Rosaceae that now is home to much more famous, if woody and pome-producing, relatives like apples, pears, mountain ash, hawthorn, cotoneaster, and saskatoons. Less seems to be known about the pollinators of Bowman’s Root, but I have found records for the small carpenter bee Ceratina dupla, a couple of mason bees (Osmia albiventris, O. distincta), and a small sweat bee Lasioglossum (Dialictus) imitatum. I’ve seen a small halictid bee, possibly a species of Lasioglossum, pushing its way through the tight basal cluster of petals in my yard. The rather small opening does seem to indicate that the nectar and pollen may be somewhat exclusive, but the Scarlet Malachite Beetle pictured below had no problem forcing its way in.

 As well as having interesting chromosomes, Bowman’s Root was the cause of a minor taxonomic war during the last century. As I understand the casus belli, the name Gillenia was proposed by Moench in 1802 in honour of the 17^th Century German Botanist Arnold Gillen. Unfortunately, previously in 1763 another botanist, Adanson, had had the same idea, but for a different plant and proposed the genus Gillena. Unlike zoologists, botanists won’t tolerate names that sound alike but are spelled slightly differently, so in 1894 another botanist (Nathaniel Britton, the famous founder of the New York Botanical Garden) declared Gillenia a homonym and orthographic variant of Gillena and banished it in favour of a replacement genus name: Porteranthus (named for a buddy of his named Porter). However, both names continued in use with Gillenia dominating common usage and Porteranthus the more pedantic side. In the 1990’s a move was made to conserve the name Gillenia (a couple of snippy notes can be found in Taxon if anyone is interested in distilled botanical vitriol) and eventually triumphed because Gillena Adanson was a synonym of Linnaeus’ Clethra (which includes the beautiful North American shrub Clethra alnifolia – which, alas, cannot handle the Alberta winters) and not validly published.

 Bowman’s Root is also part of the American plant pharmacopeia. According to the Plants for A Future Database, the dried, powdered root acts as a cathartic, mild emetic, diaphoretic, expectorant, and tonic. In other words, it makes you head for the bathroom to run at both ends while sweating and coughing up phlegm and, when it is over, you feel better. I think my Bowman’s Root may be looking at me a bit apprehensively at the moment, but they should have no worries. Your roots are safe – I get my tonic from the bark of cinchona trees and with enough gin I usually feel just fine.

Sawfly Sunday: Cimbex americana Leach

Wildflower Wednesdays and Sawfly Sundays have been on hold the last few weeks because writing lectures and teaching 14 hours a day at the Museum of Biological Diversity in Columbus, Ohio, have taken precedence. The enthusiasm and industry of the 18 students from Columbia, Germany, Canada, Argentina, South Africa, Spain, and the USA have made this course fun, but I do miss the Home Bug Garden. Similar experiments in urban biodiversity are not obvious among the vast expanses of lawn and concrete here. But the old deciduous street trees in some neighbourhoods (complete with defoliating elm leaf beetles) and the occasional sight of some exotic (at least to an Albertan) like a cardinal, black vulture, or Japanese beetle, and one not so exotic and very scruffy ground hog, provided a bit of natural relief. Now I’m trapped at the airport with a cancelled flight and a looming missed connection – but internet – so time for another Sawfly Sunday.

 Cimbex americana Leach is the largest sawfly that I have ever seen and apparently the largest in North America. Named for its predilection for American elm, a once common street tree in the pre-Dutch elm disease era, the elm sawfly also feeds on willows and the leaves of a variety of other hardwood trees. Although Dutch elm has yet to ravage the elms of Edmonton, none grow near the spot we found this large, wasp-like not-wasp: Elk Island National Park. Perhaps this monster is able to fly long distances, but a more reasonable assumption is that its larval stages were spent on some native like the willows that grow so abundantly in the park. The pale caterpillar like grubs have a black dorsal stripe and grow to 5cm (2 inches) in length, so if you have them on your trees, you are likely to notice them.

 Our elm sawfly very obligingly posed for a few pictures in hand before we returned it to a leaf. Many people would probably respond with a bit of fear and loathing to such a large and scary looking ‘wasp’, but this attractive insect has no real way to do more than pinch your finger with its mandibles. The wasp-like show is just that – all show and no sting (but, of course, a saw instead). BugGuide.net has a lot of pictures of the adults of this highly ornamented species that seems to mimic different wasps in various parts of its broad range. There are about 15 recognized species in the genus including the intriguingly named Button Horn Sheet Wasp (C. femorata). I wonder how it got that name?

Wildflower Wednesday: Pink Wintergreen

Gardens North is a fine place to find the seeds of many North American wildflowers and other unusual garden plants that are wildflowers in other parts of the World. They have a great on-line catalogue with thumbnails of flowers and information about their diversity of seeds that has helped me through many a long winter’s day. One thing that I especially like is that they point out problems one might have with their seeds. For example, for Pyrola asarifolia, which they stock, they note in their germination instructions: “There is no known method for germinating this species in an artificial setting.”

I’m not sure that I am up to that kind of challenge, but no worries, a P. asarifolia  seed or two figured out how to germinate in my yard all by itself. When I moved in I found a half-dozen leaves of Pink Wintergreen (also less euphoniously known as Bog or Liverleaf Wintergreen) peaking out from under the ground-hugging limbs of a giant white spruce, the trunk of which forms the southwest corner of a neighbour’s front yard, and the boughs of which formed a quite adequate barrier to block dogs from running across my yard. Other than mulching around the wintergreen and weeding out competing grass and dandelions, nothing much happened for several years until the neighbour decided to do some timber stand improvement and limbed the tree to 2m. Suddenly, dogs started crashing across the yard and previously invisible people strolling on the street seemed to always be staring in our front window whenever I had an inconvenient itch or trod through the living room in less than formal attire. A fence, a raised bed, numerous new plants, and a couple of years of labour later that corner of the yard is at least dog resistant. One beneficiary of the increased attention to that part of the yard has been the wintergreen. What was once a half dozen marginal-looking leaves is now a spreading groundcover. Even better, attractive spikes of pink flowers began appearing last year and have just started blooming again this year.

It is sometimes said that the highest diversity of plants in temperate forests is the stratum of the herbs and small shrubs near the forest floor (e.g. a pleasant stroll through the understory in the Saskatchewan River Valley see The Garden Ms S). I suppose that it true – the understory of tropical rainforest tends to be boring – all of the action is in the sun-drenched canopies where trees, epiphytes, and lianas express their diversity 50 or more metres above ground. Since light is at very low levels on the forest floor, understory plants often grow very slowly and try to keep their leaves as long as possible, even in very cold climates. Being evergreen is a way to conserve previous investment in growth and take advantage of any light that happens to come along when temperatures are warm enough for photosynthesis.

Another way for forest floor plants to persist in low light levels has recently become a fervid topic of research interest – myco-heterotrophy. The associations between certain fungi that collect mineral nutrients and the roots of plants that exchange excess carbohydrates for these nutrients (mycorrhizal associations) has been known for a fair amount of time. You can even buy ‘mike’ preparations at the nursery to inoculate your perennial transplants. Some plants, however, depend on fungi for more than just minerals – they steal carbon (sourced directly from the air via the sun and photosynthesis in your typical green plant) from fungi. The extend of dependence on fungal carbon varies - from only during germination (possibly this is why Pink Wintergreen is so difficult to germinate - they need a certain fungus or two), to others such as Pyrola aphylla or certain leafless orchids (e.g. Corallorhiza maculata) that are completely dependent on mycorrhizal fungi – and their vascular plant hosts – for all of their carbon and nitrogen.

 Like most of its relatives, the Pink Wintergreen has unusual stamens that release pollen only from a pore at the tip (tomatoes and their relatives also have this type of stamen). Only certain bees are able to collect pollen from these flowers through a technique called buzz pollination. Essentially, a bee grabs hold of a stamen and shakes the pollen out by vibrating its wings and body. Most of the northern European species of wintergreens (including Pyrola minor, rotundifolia, chlorantha) studied by Knutsen & Olesen (1993 American Journal of Botany 80: 900-913) did not produce nectar and were mainly buzz-pollinated by bumblebees (Bombus spp.). The pistil is located far away from the stamens, so one would assume that outcrossing is preferred by Pink Wintergreen. We have lots of bumblebbees in the Home Bug Garden, and also leaf cutting bees (Megachile spp.) that are good buzz-pollinators, but instead of spending my days watching the pyrola to see what comes to pollinate, I trudge off to work. No accounting for taste.

Sawfly Sunday: The Creepy Loosestrife Sawfly

I never would have expected it, but I have become quite obsessed with sawflies – those strange relatives of wasps and bees that cannot sting, have a saw-like ovipositor, have no wasp waist, and whose larvae look like caterpillars and mostly eat plants. In the Home Bug Garden, they seem to be determined to eat everything and are usually somewhere between interesting and devastating. Ergo, I am initiating a new tradition in the HBG: Sawfly Sunday. Now, what with the new Wildflower Wednesday, working full time, taking care of two gardens, and generally getting old and decrepit, I don’t expect every Sunday will have a sawfly posting, but my wife has collected quite a rogue’s gallery of creepy caterpillars not, and damaged plants. So here is the inaugural issue.

Monostegia abdominalis feeds on plants in the Primrose Family (Primulaceae) including loosestrifes (Lysimachia) and pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis) and was first described from Europe by Johann Fabricius (probably Linneaus’ most famous bug student). Actually, I should say plants that I was taught belong to the primrose family – apparently there are molecules that suggest these two genera would be better placed in the Myrsinaceae along with cyclamen – but in any case Linneaus described both plant species so we have a very tight origin of names here.

In Canada, our probable alien invader sawfly was first recorded on the introduced and naturalized garden plant Creeping Jenny (Lysimachia nummularia) around Ottawa and Montreal in 1965. In 1970, Peter W. Price – the famed insect ecologist who seems to have spent some time with the Forestry Research Lab in Quebec during his migrations from the UK to the USA – published a very nice study (Canadian Entomologist 102: 491-495) of our – lets call it the Creepy Loosestrife Sawfly – devastating a once unusually successful colony of the native Lysimachia terrestris around the frequently flooded margins of Caousacouta Lake in Quebec.

Now one might think that a loosestrife with the species name terrestris was more terrestrial than most, but it seems to be like most loosestrifes – they like boggy ground around water. Like most loosestrifes that I am familiar with, it has yellow flowers, so the common name Yellow Loosestrife is a bit useless. Swamp Candles is another common name and seems more evocative – especially if we want to build up some outrage that it is being eaten alive by an alien insect. However, the unusual success of Swamp Candles at  Caousacouta Lake was due to artificial flooding by the local hydroelectric company creating an excess of suitable habitat. Without the flooding, the plant might well have been too uncommon to notice it being defoliated – and perhaps would not have been colonized by our Creepy Loosestrife Sawfly to begin with.

Peter Price’s paper has an excellent overview of the life history of the sawfly and its interactions with the native loosestrife. The sawfly had, more or less, two generations a year – but some larvae in the first generation hedge their bets and decide to wait until the next year to emerge from their underground pupation chambers. The second generation started in August in Quebec, but I suspect there is only time for one generation here in Alberta. Males are extremely uncommon and Peter suggested that our Creepy sawfly is thelytokous – that is females do not mate, but reproduce parthenogenetically. The females live only a few weeks but mature 30-70 eggs that they have available for sawing into the upper surface of the leaves of the loosestrife. The larvae will drop off the leaves if disturbed (I can vouch for that) and consume a tremendous amount of plant material (I can also vouch for that) – so much so that the loosestrife is mostly defoliated and many plants die. Or at least that is what was happening 40-odd years ago – I wonder what is happening at Caousacouta Lake now? Did the sawflies eat all the loosestrife and go locally extinct? Was the hydroelectric company forced to stop flooding the lake – what would that do to the dynamics? Has the loosestrife evolved resistance to the sawfly? One wonders if this isn’t an interesting historical entomology study waiting to happen.

Setting aside my minimal angst at the decimation of my Creeping Jenny (it was a free gift from Adrian, did far too well for the first couple of years, and now I don’t seem to need to worry about it becoming weedy), I do have a bit of worry about the sawfly’s ability to colonize native species. Dave Smith – the North American sawfly guru at the USDA with about 250 publications on sawflies - has a pdf plate on the web showing the adult, pupa and late instar larva and damage to the native fringed loosestrife. The fringed loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) is one of two loosestrife species that live around the lake at our place in the country (the other is Tufted Loosestrife Lysimachia thyrsiflora). They aren’t very common, so perhaps they are relatively safe – unless someone starts a loosestrife farm nearby and the overflow of Creepy sawflies eats them out. Also, I wonder if the sawfly isn’t the reason my expensive Variegated Golden Alexanders (Lysimachia punctata ‘Alexander’) disappeared from my bog garden. Hmm, just checked my notes and I’ll be buggered if it doesn’t say “cocked it Winter 2007-08, after sawfly defoliation 2007”. Bloody sawflies!

Wildflower Wednesday: Canada Anemone

I have a friend who gardens on a grand scale on a large acreage in the country. He has a great appreciation for flowers of all sorts, and the larger or more exotic the better he likes them, but he can’t understand why people would want to plant wildflowers in their garden. ‘If you want to see wildflowers’, he says, ‘why not go for a walk in the woods?’

Of course, he has a woods to take a walk in and is willing to spend 2 hours a day commuting back and forth between his acreage and work. I spend 2 hours a day commuting too, but that is by foot and public transit in the City. I do see a few wildflowers, now and then, when crossing the River Valley parklands, but not enough to keep me satisfied. Also, there’s this experiment I’m allegedly conducting – the Home Bug Garden – and aren’t native plants supposed to be best for native bugs?

Well, whether or not that peculiar hypothesis turns out to be true, I have accumulated a fair number of both Alberta ‘native’ plants (i.e. allegedly part of the flora of Alberta before Europeans arrived) and North American native plants that may eventually have reached Alberta on their own, assuming our current inter-glacial period lasted long enough. Also, although I think blogging should be a recreation and not another chore, I could use a bit of a stimulus to post more regularly. So, I shall now embark upon a new tradition at the HBG: Wildflower Wednesday.

First up is something so native its provenance is Albertan and its name Canadian: Anemone canadensis, aka Canada or Meadow Anemone (Zones 2-9, moist to dry soil, shade to sun). Although its flowers are not as large as the domesticated Eurasian Snowdrop Windflower (Anemone silvestris), they are almost as showy and a similar bright white with yellow centers. Usually, Canada Anemone starts blooming here in late May, although this cold spring has held it up for a few weeks. The HBG has more shade than sun, but Canada Anemone tolerates shade well. In fact, it is probably a better plant in a shady garden than in a sunny one since it spreads by rhizomes and can be aggressive. The first sets that I planted came from a ranch in southern Alberta where the lady rancher was yanking them out of her garden by the handful. I’ve since added a local set from our place in the country because I’d read (Douglas & Cruden 1994 Amer. J. Botany 81: 314-321) that Canada Anemome is xenogamous – it is an outcrossing species that likes fooling around with alien pollen and doesn’t set seed well with its own pollen. The only pollinators that I could find records for were sweat bees (Halictidae), but the HBG has lots of halictids, like the Halictus confusus that graces the picture in the header.

Rain, Snow & Arachnophobia: An Ode to Spiders in the HBG

As I expected, yet another cold front has hit Edmonton. Below normal and wet is dragging through its 6th day and making a muddy mess of the May Long Weekend – traditional time to plant-out one’s annuals & veggies here on the northern edge of Zone 3. Oh well, the basement spiders don’t seem to mind the snow mixed with rain. The wet grey does tend to bring out the green and certainly has been good for all the plants I’ve already impatiently planted-out. No frost yet and we wish Itztlacoliuhqui full speed south (from the predictions, though, tomorrow morning is iffy). I’ve dead-headed the spent tulips and daffodils, but it is too muddy and cold to do more. Perhaps I should be doing responsible things like Spring cleaning, and then there is that mountain of unfinished work, but instead I’ve been irresponsibly indulging myself in the bug blogs.

Best discovery so far, thanks to an old 2008 post by Chris Taylor at Catalogue of Organisms has been Attercopus fimbriunguis - a Devonian fossil on the way to (or perhaps just in) the spiders. Problematic characters include a whip-tail, no distinct spinnerets (but fossil silk), and no poison glands (although modern segmented spiders apparently never had poison glands and at least one more modern family, Uloboridae, does without them). According to the Wikipedia article (at least at this moment) the generic name is from the Old English attorcoppa for "poison-head", clearly a misnomer in this case.

Fear of “poison-heads” is called arachnophobia – and it is true that most modern spiders produce venom. Few, however, have venoms that we need to be afraid of, which makes the apparently widespread fear of spiders amongst bug bloggers even more interesting. Today’s surprise confession was from the Dragonfly Woman, but it reminded me that arachnophobia runs the bug blog gamut from the bug-photography god-like heights of myrmecos to rock-bottom-up The Geek in Question. “Very interesting” (as former colleague and mammal-tooth-fancier Gordon Sanson might put it).

The Dragonfly Woman’s story comes from her teenage years and a fishing spider in her pool. So, perfect chance for me to drag up our own cherished male Dolomedes triton hanging out around our year old pond. Alas, I fear the male found no fair female and had to bugger off to an uncertain future (probably a more common fate for wandering male spiders than being eaten by their objects of desire). My wife and I, however, were delighted that he stopped by and only wish that more and bigger spiders would take up residence. Yes, we have no Arachnophobia (but are considering buying a dvd of the movie – which features an impressive cast of mostly Australian spiders, a moderately entertaining [if factually confused] script, and good, campy acting).

So, before I get serious about not enjoying my wet weeked and get out my kneepads and start cleaning out the lower kitchen cabinets, let me showcase a few of the interesting spiders that have been lurking around the Home Bug Garden. This is Alberta, so usually the only big scary spiders occur in the Autumn (especially the Jewel Spider) or in the basement (and those introduced buggers, Tegenaria domestica, and perhaps a hobo or two, do get big, hairy, and disconcerting - although the cats like them). Also, smaller spiders seem more likely to ignore a big black camera being poked at them, and so, are more photogenic.

Actually Araneus trifolium - gemmoides has two humps on its abdomen

The discerning viewer will note that all of the pictures are credited to my wife. That’s because she has the great Nikon and macro lens, not because I tend to stand a metre behind her saying “go on, get closer, it won’t bite”. Also, many are wandering males – again, “very interesting”, but in this case, I think, not unexpected. Movement and moving on to digital immortality are not unconnected.

Actually a theridiid - probably Crustulina sticta 

Tetragnatha is the correct spelling

Phylonetta impressa (formerly Theridion impressum)

May, Means & Extremes: Bowing to the Frost Gods

I knew it wasn’t good when I saw a flock of sandhill cranes flying south on the evening of 3 May, but April had been anything but a cruel month, so I wasn’t really expecting the blizzard of 4 May. Edmonton’s last frost is expected around 6 May, well, except for that alleged 10% chance of a later one. But then that is the downtown airport predicting and well surrounded by tarmac, buildings, and residual heat. The HBG has had last spring frosts on or before May 6th, but in only 3 of the 8 years for which I have records. There is a difference between frost and blizzard, though, and on 4 May we had the latter with about 20 cm of snow accumulating and followed by about a week of well below “normal” temperatures.

Environment Canada’s Edmonton Temperature “Normals”, presumably means daily high and low temperatures, but means are of little use in this climate. Measures of central tendencies in a truly normal distribution can be informative, but the weather here swings from one extreme to the next, often on a 10-14 [day] roll, and “normal” temperatures are rarely experienced except in passing. The snow stuck around for almost a week, frosts and flurries dominated the well below normal weather, and things looked bleak for the early bloomers and recently transplanted perennials.

But what do I know – except for a few burned branch tips and blasted tulips, most plants came through just fine. What most impressed me was the palm-leafed coltsfoot Petasites frigidus palmatus. Some plants avoid damage to their cells from ice crystals by shedding water when the temperatures plunge. This causes a loss of turgor - leaves and herbaceous stems become limp. Under the snow and even after the snow finally melted but the temperatures remained low, the coltsfoot looked like it had been beaten down by the weather. But it was just doing the obligatory obeisance to the Frost Gods. Perhaps to the Aztec god Itztlacoliuhqui, which Wikipedia tells me is best translated as "Everything Has Become Bent by Means of Coldness".

Since Wednesday 12 May, the temperatures have been well above normal, the snow is gone, the ground got a good drenching, and the bees and coltsfoot are together again. The heat has seeds and shoots popping up all over. The butterflies, beetles, wasps, hornets, and flies that also disappeared last week have reappeared with a vengeance – and the mozzies started biting yesterday 15 May, only a little on the late side (8-22 May is the range I have recorded). Although another cold front is undoubtedly waiting to swing through this week or next, one can hope it will just be coolly abnormal, maybe drop a little rain for the garden, and Itztlacoliuhqui will tend to his worshipers in the Southern Hemisphere until some time after the next equinox.