Weedy Euphorbias: Field Notes

 Almost ten years ago I got very interested in the weedy spurges popping up all over the yard. I had let the mulch groundcover evaporate under the unremitting Florida sunshine, and it seemed that members of this genus, Euphorbia, were colonizing every available sandy spot, of which there were many, and also growing in between cracks between the bricks in the driveway.  

I started drawing them because their gracefulness and complexity intrigued me. I also attempted to decipher their structure and identify the different species. It seems that I am attracted particularly to subjects so tiny and complex that I nearly blind myself trying to sort them out, and my weedy Euphorbias are a perfect example. 

Unidentified Spurge

The ones I have tend to be small and multi-branched, which can make drawing them rather tedious.  Deciphering and depicting their very complicated blooming structures, called "cyathia, " is a huge challenge. 

It's a poor workman who blames his materials, but I got discouraged by the drawbacks of the magnification available to me, and the project sputtered to a halt. I also lost confidence that I was drawing accurately.

I noticed the plants again a few weeks back as I was strolling around with no purpose, and thought about resuming my old project. You have to get down to, or practically down to, groundlevel to appreciate these diminutive weeds. Getting down isn't so much a problem, but years later, getting back up is increasingly arduous! 

I dug out my old sketches, and was surprised by how far along I actually had gotten. Some were basically diagrammatic, but others showed, although crudely, a hint of the plants' innate gracefulness. In fact, I was gratified to go back to my field guides and discover that the common name of one, Chamaesyce hypericifolia, is "graceful sandmat."

Euphorbia  hyssopifolia?
Eyebane

This plant is graceful, but it seems more to resemble the species hyssopifolia than hypericifolia. The leaves as depicted bear some resemblance to hyssop leaves, which are about the same shape. It also resembles plants of this species as shown in Internet images. But my notes give no hint about the color of the cyathia, stems or leaves. I drew the 2 bottom-most  leaves seem with toothed margins, but I drew the margins as all the other leaves as smooth (entire). I also made a note about this, which could prove important. The drawing is pretty primitive, but it does show that the inflorescences are on stalks, and that they sit just above a pair of leaves or bracts.

Now the plot thickens. The descriptions of this plant that I can find show that it has finely serrated leaf margins. Is this another species? Did I not draw it correctly? I also have no notes about where it was growing. Most of our yard is dry and sunny but there are parts that are more moist and shadier. I have a note that the leaves have stipules, but I haven't drawn them, and that could be important. I didn't draw any seed, either, and now I find that seeds can be identifiers in Euphorbias. I also discovered that the plant has been reclassified as from Chamaesyce hyssopifolia to Euphorbia hyssopifolia.

The stems between leaves (internodes) look a little zig-zaggy, but I didn't make a note whether the plant was wilting or had a sort of drooping habit. At least I recorded a date, Nov. 11, 2015.

Is this the same species? Months later - Regardless, it is quite pretty.

This might or might not be the same species. Often drawings give more information that photos, and this photo clearly shows colors, serrate leaf margins, a slightly oblique, or unequal base, and a cymose inflorescence.  Since the photo is from the top, looking down, it doesn't give a good idea of the habit. If I had made more notes when I made the pencil drawing, I might be able to id both.

Now let's look at a sketch that has some color.

Euphorbia hypericifolia?
Graceful Sandmat?

Here the stems appear red and hairless. The stipules look magenta, which is characteristic of hypericifolia. The leaves have slightly toothed or irregular margins. The base of the leaf is not even, "oblique" in botanese, and are wider than the tip.  I have no notes regarding the hairiness or smoothness of the leaves.  I show a little of the branching pattern, but not enough to convey a clear idea of the habit. While it appears  to be upright, I don't indicate whether the specimen is the whole plant, or just a part.  There's no note as to whether it is multi-trunked, spreading, weeping, etc. The only thing I can glean about the inflorescences from this sketch is that they appear to be at the ends of the stems. 

One more sketch.

Details of Inflorescence

Even though the page is disorganized, at least I have recorded some hard information, such as relative sizes, notes about the seeds, and  a quick habit sketch. The leaf margins seem toothed or somewhat serrate, and the inflorescence is clearly cymose. Even so, I don't quite have enough information to make a solid identification. 

I know a lot more about botany and scientific illustration now than I did when I made these drawings, though one never knows it all. I have pages of such studies/sketches, and hundreds of photos. Since I have an actual body of work to evaluate, I can see clear deficiencies in my sketches and notes, and can start improving my work considerably. 

Some of my takeaways:

I need more patience and self-confidence while I am sketching and drawing. My old drawings of weedy Euphorbias in our yard aren't "bad," but they don't go far enough. If I'd had a little more patience, and a little more faith in my ability to record things accurately, I'd be much farther along.

I need to make detailed written notes along with my drawings, or at least label extensively and clearly. What seems clear at the moment may look ambiguous later - are there fine hairs on the stem/leaf/etc. or is my pencil line just blurry from the friction of the other pages in the sketchbook? More importantly, writing a summary first really would make me look at the plant that much more in detail and in its totality. 

I need to pay attention to all the parts, to the extent possible. I can't uproot a specimen in a protected area or cultivated garden, but if I don't recognize the plant, I don't know which details are going to be critical in the identification, so I need to record as much information as I can, and not just be seduced by graceful form, color, or leaf pattern. Obviously, I am not going to be able to find all stages from young leaves to seed on every plant I draw at any given time, so I need as many reference points as possible to connect later drawings to earlier ones.

The sketchbook format is not conducive to an intensive study of a species or genus. I love my sketchbooks, but when I am trying to zero in on specifics, I can't have dozens of disconnected drawings scattered through various pages and various books. I'm not going to give up my sketchbooks, but if I realize I am on the way to getting "hooked" I need to start keeping a specific portfolio, organized by real or tentative ids. That would mean drawing on separate sheets of paper that can be collated, revised, and stored so that the drawings don't get worn or fuzzy from rubbing against each other. I am reluctant to cannibalize my existing sketchbooks, but it may come down to that, too. 

I'm excited, though I'm not quite sure how I am going to develop my work, how to make the pages less random and more esthetically pleasing, and also how to integrate written comments with graphic notes. I also need to exert discipline so that it is clear which drawings are of the same specimen, and include dates. I have to discover a practical way of relating photos to specific specimens and drawings, and also to make notes on how and when and where the photos are taken. I've got to beef up my technical skills to find out what options my digital camera and smart phone offer in that regard.

I don't know whether I'll eventually make any contributions to the very real category of Citizen Science, or even who might eventually want to look at my work. I may be reinventing an old wheel. But regardless of those ends, I will be expanding my own education and enjoyment, and that in itself is worth every minute.

Florida Fishpoison Tree

 Piscidia piscupula, the Florida fish poison tree, Jamaica dogwood, or fishfuddle tree, is a tropical hardwood native to south Florida and the Keys, the West Indies, Bahamas, and parts of Central America and Mexico. It is semi-deciduous, ie - shedding its leaves quickly, remaining bare only for a short time  before pushing out new growth. Flowers appear on bare or nearly bare stalks. It hit its flowering peak in the last week of May, and first week of June this year. 

Piscidia piscipula in bloom; 
edge of Johnson Bay, Isles of Capri, FL

The name "Jamaica dogwood" refers to its use in boat building. South Florida naturalist Roger Hammer reports that "dogs" are spikes or bars used as fasteners in ship construction. The flowers certainly don't look anything like the dogwoods most North Americans know. The wood is very  hard and apart from boats, is used for wood carving, fence posts and charcoal. 

Flowers

Typical "pea" flowers are borne in elongated clusters (racemes), and appear before, and sometimes overlapping with the year's new growth. Under magnification, they are hairy, especially the cup-like calyx, which appears to be a soft grayed lavender, like a mole's skin, due to the tiny hairs. Parts of the flower itself also bear silky hairs that are pressed flat on their surface. Flower color can vary quite a bit, from white tinged with pink or lavender, to red, to muddy gray. Like other members in the family, they attract a lot of pollinators, especially bees.

The bark and leaves contain rotenone, among other chemicals, and when tossed in the water, stun small fish, which float to the surface and can be harvested, hence the name "fishpoison." This practice is illegal in Florida, though we've reached such a state of general ignorance that I doubt anybody under 60 even knows the trick. 

Rotenone supposedly doesn't harm warm-blooded animals, but the plant contains plenty of other substances that do. Dried root bark is used  both internally and externally in folk medicine to relieve pain and insomnia to the point of unconsciousness, and to treat nervous disorders and skin ailments, but the plant's toxic/medicinal potential remains largely uninvestigated. Dried extract is available on the Internet, but I don't plan to play lab rat myself! For one thing, there seem to be no generally accepted dosage guidelines, but plenty of warnings.

The tree, which can reach 30-50 feet tall, with a broad, spreading crown, can make a striking specimen where it is not crowded. In shade and  competition from other plants it stays pretty spindly and unimpressive.  Osorio calls it "underutilized" in the Florida landscape. A sucking insect, the Jamaica Dogwood Psylla, occasionally can make the leaves unsightly, but again, acccording to Roger Hammer, doesn't make it undesirable in the landscape. It is highly drought tolerant once established, and grows behind the dune line on beaches, and in sand, rocky or gravelly soil elsewhere. Rather than falling over in storms, it tends to lose branches. 

Multi-trunked specimen,
Parking Lot, Collier-Seminole State Park
Collier County, FL

What first may appear to be leaves are actually leaflets. Like other members of the family, the fishpoison tree has compound leaves. They alternate along the branch, and typically have 4-8 pairs of leaflets plus a single terminal leaflet. The leaflets can vary in shape from more or less oblong to more oval, and the tips can be blunt, rounded or even pointed. They are fairly leathery on  top, and hairs  can give the underside a velvety feel. The leaves appear near the end of the flowering period. Leaves and individiual leaflets in the subfamily Faboidae, to which Piscidia piscipula belongs, are characterized by a swollen structure where they join the petiole or stem, called the "pulvinus." The leaves are a dark, matte green on top, and a lighter, softer shade on the underside. Varying pressure levels within the pulvinus cause the leaves and leaflets to fold up, seemingly at nighttime, but studies have shown that this is a biological rhythm not triggered by light levels. 

Piscidia
3 Mature Leaves; 3 Emerging Leaves

Members of Faboideae also are associated with the famous "nitrogen-fixing" bacteria, varioius species of Rhizobium. These symbiotic soil organisms "infect" root hairs of certain plants, especially members of Faboideae, where they transform atmospheric nitrogen into an ammonium form that can be used by the plant to produce plant protein. In turn, the bacteria gain carbohydrates from the host plant. Usually each Rhizobium species is limited to a single host species. Such complexity is probably one reason supposed "restoration" projects may fail, for replanting alone is a pretty simplistic approach. 

Black seeds are borne in a papery winged structure that passes from pink, green, yellow to brown. The tree apparently will grow readily from seed, as well as cuttings, so readily, in fact, that limbs used for fence posts make take root!

Seed Pods

The native Cassius Blue butterfly and the black and silver Hammock Skipper use the leaves as larval hosts. 

-----

I have relied heavily on the following sources for this article:

Roger Hammer. Florida Keys Wildflowers. Falcon. 2004. p.177. Email conversation.

Rufino Osorio. A Gardener's Guide to Florida Native Plants. University Press of Florida. 2001. pp. 265-6.

J. Paul Scurlock. Native Trees & Shrubs of the Florida Keys. Laurel Press. 1987, p. 123.

Wendy B. Zomlefer. Guide to Flowering Plant Families. University of North Carolina Press. 1994. pp. 160-166.

What Goes Around Comes Around - Musings from a Disjointed Year

 Or is it the other way around?

One evening in mid-March my husband remarked that there was something resembling,"a mocking bird on steroids," in the Simpson's Stopper. It was dusk, and all I saw was a dark silhouette flying off. I reckoned that it must have been a bluejay, though I really wasn't convinced. 

A few mornings later I had my answer when I startled a pair of brown thrashers that were searching for food by vigorously tossing bits of mulch with side-to-side, sweeping head motions. By the way, they made pretty deep holes. They left sometime in late April or early May - my last recorded sighting was April 27th.

We were visited by a pair of brown thrashers for the first time, as far as I know, in the winter/spring of 2018. The region was still recuperating from a direct hit by Hurricane Irma in September, 2017, and I attributed their presence to a general natural disruption. 

I hadn't seem them in the intervening years, but that doesn't mean they haven't been here. For one thing, our garden and the ones of our adjoining neighbors have recovered and filled out considerably, so these shy birds have a much better chance of hiding. 

For another, I haven't been outside as much. I injured my elbow cleaning up after Irma, so there are times that I physically can't do the down and dirty gardening I love. Increasing age and decreasing agility also meant giving up our beloved day-sailing activity. Instead of spending more time outside to compensate, I retreated indoors.

 For reasons that are not clear to me at all, I virtually stopped sketching outside. Botanical illustration requires an attention to detail largely unavailable in field sketching, but analyzing and depicting a part of a plant indoors doesn't produce the whole story. Field sketching includes context - what else is growing, what the weather and seasons are doing, what animals may be skittering around. After you've sat sketching for a while, birds either don't notice you, or decide you're not too much a threat to go about their business nearby. Small snakes have such a ground-level perspective that they just slither over my feet, but of course, disappear quickly when I jump from their touch. 

And field sketching, like sailing and gardening,  not only gets you out of the house - it gets you out of yourself, away from your own belly-button. It becomes a sort of meditation - not a meditation about anything - just a state of mind without thoughts - a pure sort of concentration on conditions around you at the moment. 

Encyclia tampensis 'alba' - Bloomed in May

Blame it on COVID isolation, politics, world events, old age  - whatever - I recently realized that instead of heading out into the yard with my coffee and sketchbook before and after breakfast, I turn on the computer to read about the most recent disasters. That has to change, but bad habits persist, while good ones are hard to re-establish. 

Apart from tanking my productivity and contributing to a general sense of malaise, this virtual life I've been leading has deeper implications. 

When I stopped recording the version of the natural world that exists in our own backyard, I lost touch with something bigger. Edward Wilson's philosophy in his very personal account Biophilia: The Human Bond with Other Species (1984), proposes that  our very humanity  is rooted in our co-evolution with and along with all other life forms. In that sense he arguess that conservation should be understood in terms of, "protection of the human spirit." (p.140). According to Wilson, and borne out by my own recent experience, we need to maintain contact with the natural world to feel fully ourselves.

The increasing digitalization and virtualization of our daily lives threatens dire consequences. How  much of the alienation behind homelessness, dropout rates, mental illness and even murder can be linked to our increasing estrangement with the organic world in which we evolved? The computer is sometimes called a "window on the world," but have we forgotten about just looking out a real window at a real universe? Tethered to our devices, we risk floating thorough our lives with no anchors at all. 

Simplistic sloganeering or "back to nature" campaigns won't do it. But somehow, as a society, we need to unplug from the sterile, technological ersatz world in which we've started living, and establish a connection and appreciation for what's left of the real. 

Ludisia discolor - Terrestrial Orchid (not native)

Back to local reality, we've had our annual visitation by flocks of Southern White and Florida White butterflies. The swallowtail kites graced our skies with their acrobatics, and too soon, returned to South America. Songbirds like the thrashers visited on their return migrations northward. The Jamaica Caper and Seven-Year Apple are again covered with fragrant blooms, and the brilliant red-orange blooms of royal poincianas justify their Spanish name, "Flamboyant." 

There is something deeply comforting in these rhythms and patterns. As much as we try, we still haven't quite destroyed the natural world. Weeds, even flowers, still sprout in cracks in the concrete, and the Gaillardias have reseeded faithfully in what I euphemistically call the garden. Winters are too warm now for my native iris to bloom, and rising tide levels are killing mangroves. But the tides still rise and fall acccording to their rhthyms, not ours. 

Not everything in the garden is lovely, but at least there still are fragments of that original garden, and if we only will go out and look, we may be graced by glimpses of it. 

Royal Conundrum - Killing the Monarch Butterfly with "Kindness"

The monarch butterfly population has been in serious decline for years now, something many gardeners know. To compensate for habitat loss, gardeners have been encouraged to plant more milkweeds, the insect's larval host plant. But this has led to unforeseen negative consequences, especially in warm winter regions of the U.S.

Native milkweeds can be hard-to-impossible to find, so the tropical, showy "scarlet" milkweed has become ubiquitous in garden centers across the country. This plant, Asclepias curassavica, is native to the American tropics and has spread to pantropical regions worldwide. It has become invasive in some areas, and threatens to become a pest in South Florida. 

Many monarch butterflies harbor a protozoan, Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), that can weaken the adult, prevent the pupa from emerging from the chrysalis, or deform the wings. Monarchs visiting milkweeds deposit spores when they visit milkweeds. Normally, migration culls weakened individuals, and the OE spores die when the plants die back in winter. The plants grow back in spring and summer with fresh, uninfected leaves. But in areas with warm winters tropical milkweed grows all year, thus maintaining high levels of OE spores. Areas of Georgia, coastal Carolinas, Florida and the Gulf Coast have become hotspots of infection.

Monarch on Scarlet Milkweed

Apart from the immediate threat to individual monarchs, year-round milkweed is also, probably more ominously, threatening the migration itself. The presence of the milkweed affects the butterfly's hormonal balance, and works as a trigger to make it reproduce. So monarchs that find themselves in areas with warm winters don't migrate, and a year-round population gets established. With increasing warming trends this area of permanent, sickly individuals will only increase. 

Migration plays a critical role in maintaining a robust gene pool, for it culls badly infected individuals, which simply don't survive the trip. But migration may play other vital roles as well, in ways  we haven't discovered. 

Some organizations like the Xerces Society and the Florida Native Plant Society actively campaign against the use of tropical milkweeds. Some people, though, citing the drastic declines in the monarch population, feel that keeping the numbers up is of primary importance. 

Weaning gardeners away from tropical milkweed is going to be a monumental project, especially since it was promoted so aggressively as a solution to monarch population decline. 

Monarch on Asclepias curassavica

In and of itself, I'm not particularly heartbroken over the loss of scarlet milkweed in our yard. Due to neglect, they've sort of died out this spring anyway. It is a water hog, and the stems quickly get leggy and woody. It also is a magnet for aphids and spider mites, which would make any self-respecting female monarch look for greener pastures. 

Aphid-Infested Milkweed

Finding natives or even native seeds, is going to be a long, drawn out process. Some mail order nurseries offer native milkweed species that theoretically would grow here, but I'd have a better chance with offspring originating  much closer to home. 

Even though they might be the same species, a plant grown in the mid-Atlantic or Midwest would be quite different genetically from one that has adapted to South Florida conditions. They might not even look the same, they might not  survive, and they certainly wouldn't do anything to maintain genetic diversity. Ecologically even North Florida differs greatly from the southern part of the state.

Asclepias incarnata, "Swamp Milkweed," a Native

But there's a further complication!

Whether it comes to weather patterns, the density of bear fur, and many other things, matters often are much more complicated when it comes to the southern peninsula of Florida. It seems that there is an established, non-migratory monarch population south of Lake Okeechobee.  The most-studied migration routes don't cover us, especially on the sw coast, though we might get a few strays. I have had basically year-round monarchs since I began butterfly gardening around 1995. Over the years I have seen newly-emerged monarchs with deformed wings, but not a lot. Even without the scarlet milkweed, all of our native milkweeds might not go completely dormant during our winters, so a small population could persist theoretically without our help. The assumption has to be that the infection rate in our monarch population is close to 100%. 

So, in a way, it doesn't matter whether we keep planting Asclepias curassavica, but it goes against the grain now that I'm aware of a problem. While I don't like the plant, and getting rid of it would not stop the problem of diseased butterflies, it still seems somehow that replacing it with its cousins that "belong here" would be ethically as well as esthetically better. Now comes the hard part - actually doing it. 

Dune Sunflower - Why Draw

 Dune sunflower, Helianthus debilis, sometimes can be a victim of its own success. It's showy, tough, and flowers enthusiastically year round in frost free areas. A goodly mound of it, with its bright yellow-green leaves, and undiluted yellow ray flowers ringing purple-brown disk florets, brightens up the garden considerably. It wants no pampering. All it asks is space - and there's the rub. 

Space is an increasingly rare commodity in contemporary home sites around here. Lots generally are small, and the houses are built all the way to the 7.5' setback on the sides.( Higher floors sometimes are built all the way out to the property line, curiously reminiscent of medieval street scenes of tall buildings towering over dark, narrow passages). 

The plant is readily available, and some people, municipalities and road authorities have planted it to their chagrin. This is a plant that survives on the pure, sugar sand of Florida's beaches, buffeted by salty coastal winds, and subject to extreme drought while in full sunshine. The average yard, even unfertilized and unirrigated, can be an Eden in comparison, and granted this largesse, the plant takes off.

It doesn't grow as fast as kudzu, but over a period of months a healthy plant will overrun anything in its path, and certainly will outgrow a narrow median strip. Judicious pruning will keep it pretty for a long time. It has to be pruned along the edges, not from the middle, or center. Pruning gets trickier once the  plant has begun to mound over itself. Its long, creeping branches intertwine, so it's pretty impossible to see what belongs to what.

As the plant tumbles over itself, the higher leaves and stems shade out lower levels. A luxuriant-looking mound, may well be completely bare in the middle, with just a veneer of new growth over a scaffolding of aging, woody, leafless stems. It looks atrocious if it is hedged, which is about all most "mow-and go" yard crews know how to do.

Badly "Pruned" Dune Sunflower

This mounding habit makes it particularly attractive in large pots, from which its flowering branches can cascade around it. Eventually the bottom parts of the stem in the pots get woody and bare, which means it's time to cut back hard or pot up another plant. Dune sunflowers transplant easily if they aren't too big. They also root readily and self-sow vigorously if there isn't too much competition. (I wrote more about the dune sunflower in my blog post of Feb. 21, 2021, "January - Not the Greatest New Year.")

All From One Plant, One Pot

 The plant's energetic, uppreaching and semi-vining  habit make it an ideal subject for line drawings. I like drawing better than painting generally. Yellow is a particularly vexing hue for me, because it is so easy to "dirty" it with shading, which destroys its luminance unless you get lucky.

 1-Line Gesture Drawing; Color Study
(Yellow Is Too Light and Greenish)

Part of the definition of line, as it applies to art, is"...an identifiable path created by a point moving in space."("The Elements of Art," J. Paul Getty Museum website: www.getty.edu/for_teachers/building...lessons).

I love this definition because it also seems to denote the action of a growing plant. Attempting to follow that delightful dance of a plant's characteristic energy never fails to engage me.

Dune Sunflower, Pencil Sketch

Drawing is often frustrating and boring, and it requires hours of practice. But succeeding in capturing  movement in the sinuous curve of a stem, or the baroque undulations in a leaf's edge, be it just for an inch, makes all the failed attempts fade into insignificance. I'll never stop trying - and failing -  to get there.

Of course, a line drawing cannot capture the entire being of a plant - in this case, the sandpapery  texture of its leaves, the range of greens and yellows, its volume en masse, even its "non-fragrant" odor. That is a problem of all 2-dimensional media - it can't accomplish everything in one go. But artists and writers of all abilities attempt to capture and communicate something of the innate "truth" of an object or landscape. 

Texture- Dune Sunflower

I looked for answers on "why we draw" on the web, and all I came up with was articles on chemistry -  substances produced by the brain that make us feel pleasure and/or reward. But nothing on why one person is compelled to take pencil to paper while another is driven to put in hours learning to dance, make something, design a building, or throw a ball through a net. Apparently the chemicals are the same, and when you get down to it, they really don't tell us much. And why do some of us want to communicate so badly? It's more than what my husband calls, "teaching your grandmother to suck eggs." It's more like a toddler desperately wanting others to appreciate the wonderfulness of his latest toy. Drawing plants, for me, has something to do with joy, with sharing, with gratitude. But basically, I really can't say.