Shells

 Even though I lived on Fort Myers Beach early in my life, I've never been particularly interested in shells. That got me in trouble in the 4th grade, when we moved, and I changed schools. Miss Owens, my teacher, said something about making shell collections, which I interpreted as an optional activity.

So I didn't bother, and that bothered Miss Owens. A lot. During my public shaming before the class, I muttered something to the effect that I didn't have many shells. She wasn't having any of it, saying something like, "Here's a girl from Fort Myers Beach who claims she doesn't have a shell collection."

My defense was at least partly true. I suspect most of the stuff my siblings and I collected from the beach stayed behind when we moved. And I had been more intrigued with the highly polished stone-like shell fragments I found on the beach in Miami than the actual shells at home.

But after I got home that day my mother and I shuffled through various boxes and tin cans until we found enough shells to make an acceptable collection, and Miss Owens was placated.

Big life lesson learned: A suggestion from somebody who is ahead of you in the pecking order is never optional.

Banded Tulip 
A Subtly Beautiful, Predatory Marine Snail

Actually I owe a good bit to Miss Owens. She was a birding fanatic, and enrolled the entire class in the Junior Audubon Society. When we weren't chanting multiplication tables or reading our primers, we drew birds, we looked at pictures of birds, and learned the rudiments of identifying birds. What I know about birds, I learned mainly from Miss Owens, and I thank her for it. 

Miss Owens also discovered that I did not know how to tell time, and pointed out that scandalous fact to my mother, who passed the job to my father. With the help of a broken windup alarm clock, he taught me the basics of quarters and halves. I hate digital clocks because now I can't "see" those concepts.

 Last fall (2022) flooding from Hurricane Ian turned me and my husband into refugees. After several months with relatives we arranged to buy a small condo while we got in line for home repairs. The seller, realizing that we were in a bind, moved quickly, and probably left more things behind than she otherwise would have, among them boxes and boxes of shells. There also were glass globes filled with shells, vases filled with shells, trays filled with shells, and a smattering of shell craft. Fortunately, the local shell club was delighted to take all, but before I donated the swag, I saved a biggish box for myself.

My rationale was that they were for drawing, since I couldn't go to the devastated yard for botanical specimens. But the reality was that I got seduced by the myriad shapes, patterns and colors. And I discovered that shells are fascinating on many levels. 

They  also are hard to draw well. They are stringently symmetrical, and can't be faked very convincingly. Trying the figure out the degree of curve either by measuring or by "eyeballing" can be maddening, because it doesn't always work out. Some of my inaccurate sketches possess a certain charm, despite their lack of accuracy. But apart from a few happy accidents, wonkiness with shells doesn't cut it with me. I want my drawings to be perfect. Fat chance of that happening anytime soon!

Old Conch? Whelk? with Barnacles
Semi-Blind Contour Drawing

On some level I  "knew" that mollusks are not like hermit crabs, seeking ever larger vacant shells for shelter as they grow. But I'd never  really thought about their growth process either, until I read Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells by marine biologist Helen Scales.

It  turns out that shapes, proportions, and growth patterns of many natural things can be expressed mathematically. Indeed, these proportions and their relation to each other and the whole form the "golden mean," the backbone of ethics and esthetics in both Eastern and Western civilizations. This ratio is also sometimes called a logarithmic spiral, or the Fibonacci sequence. It is particularly obvious in pine cones and pineapples, and the cross-section of a chambered nautilus.

 Scales devotes an entire chapter of her highly readable and informative book to the astounding mathematical principles determining shell forms. You don't need to confront Blake's burning bright tiger to be overwhelmed by the "fearful symmetry" in nature. Though Blake's poem explored the dichotomy of good and evil, beauty and horror, there is still something breathtakingly awesome, even fearful, when we break through the surface and perceive order in the form of natural things. One quickly enters a realm in which esthetics, biology, mathematics and metaphysics merge.

I don't know what I thought they ate, but before I started reading about marine mollusks, I had no idea how fiercely predatory they can be. The "moon snail," or "shark eye," is a good example. This mollusk extrudes its mouth-containing foot (hence the term Gastropod) like the blob to cover its prey, often another moon snail. It then drills a perfect hole in the victim's shell with a barbed, tongue-like structure called a "radula," and starts digesting. It often preys on members of its own species. The shell on the far right shows a drill hole. They occur in browns, beiges and grays.

Shark-eye or Moon Snail

The cone snail uses its radula to inflict a painful sting to the unwary predadtor or human trying to collect it, and some species in the South Pacific  have a toxin powerful enough to kill an adult male. They like sandy bottoms in shallow waters, and several occur in the Gulf of Mexico. The alphabet cone is so named because its markings resemble hieroglyphics, and in some individuals, actual letters of the Roman alphabet. Though our local species eat mainly marine worms and other mollusks, some Pacific Ocean cones use their radula like a harpoon to catch fish (Helen Scales).

Florida Cone Snails
2nd Row: Florida Cone
Top and Bottom : Alphabet Cone
Third Row: Drill Hole in Top of Shell

Because they are so fragile, finding an intact fig shell is a rare event. They live in the Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico around SW Florida,  and Caribbean Sea. Other species occur in Indonesia and Singapore. Our fig shells are mostly a pale beige, with a cross-hatched or linen-like texture. I haven't been able to ascertain whether local fig snails are carnivores.

Atlantic Fig Snail

So far I've only scratched the surface when it comes to drawing the contents of my shell box. Scallops, whelks, conchs, murexes, and others still tempt me. In spite of my less-than-stellar beginnings, I'm just as hooked on drawing them as I am on botanical subjects. I don't know that I'll ever master nature drawing to my satisfaction. But that is why this blog is about a sketchbook, not a gallery.

Some Sources:

Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum. shellmuseum.org. Click on "Shells & Science" tab.

"Central and South Florida Gastropod Seashell Identification Guide." libguides.nova.edu.

 Helen Scales. Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells. Bloomsbury Sigma. 2015. 

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.

Mistletoe Cactus

When it comes to mistletoe cactus, Rhipsalis baccifera, there's not much "there" there, to steal a phrase from Gertrude Stein. It certainly is not a show-stopping plant. It doesn't even look like a cactus. Its white berries and slender stalks give it a very superficial resemblance to mistletoe, but mistletoe has leaves and is a parasite, and not even distantly related to cacti.

Pendant Stems of Mistletoe Cactus

Rhipsalis baccifera is an epiphyte that has adapted to the extremes of sea-level mangrove swamps and the high altitudes of the cloud forest, and everything in between. The general assumption among botanists is that cacti are exclusively New World plants, and have evolved relatively recently. Mistletoe cactus fits that theory, being native to 2 counties in southern Florida, the Caribbean, eastern Mexico, Central America and throughout much of tropical South America. But it also is widespread, and considered native in tropical Africa, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Madagascar, and parts of India. How it got there  has had scientists scratching their heads for generations.

  Rhipsalis the largest genus of epiphytic cacti, and Rhipsalis baccifera has numerous subspecies. The classification probably needs cleaning up, but the fact remains that the species is highly polymorphic (appears in many different forms). The vast differences in geography and habitat would account for these differences. It even varies on the cellular level, with most New World species being diploid, while Old World species are commonly tetraploid. 

 Like other so-called "airplants," it uses its roots mainly for anchoring and stabilizing rather than for absorbing water and nutrients. It sometimes also grows on rocks. Trailing stems of my plants have rooted in the upper layers of potted plants standing lower on my shelves, which makes me think that it would creep happily in a layer of humus or porous light soil at ground level. Rhipsalis baccifera, subsp. baccifera is the form found in Florida and much of the New World tropics.

The stems of the Florida native are about the diameter of cooked spahgetti, hence its second common name, "spaghetti cactus." Stems of other subspecies may be thicker, angular, or flattened. The stems can grow up to 9 meters long, though they generally are shorter. My plants have stems only about 2-one-half feet long, but that is because I haven't found a good place for them, and they don't grow as lushly as they should.

The stems hang downward and may branch into multiple stems, which also branch. They are tender and succulent, though become somewhat woody at the base. The main feature that distinguishes cacti from other spiny species is the presence of an areole, a generally raised, cushion-like structure from which the spines arise. The stems of mistletoe cactus have only rudimentary areoles, which tend to disappear with age. With a hand lens you can see a few hairs emanating from these very basic structures. New growth is reddish, and quite spiny/hairy. 

Areoles on Opuntia (Prickley Pear  Cactus)

In all the years I've had my plants, I've never managed to catch them in bloom. That's mainly because I've just left them under a tree or bush and forgotten about them. In fact, I'd forgotten I even had them until  Hurricane Irma in 2017 exposed one clinging for life in a crotch of a defoliated 7-year apple (Genipa clusiifolia). By all accounts the flowers are small and insignificant, though with the aid of a hand lens, "insignificance" sometimes can spring into beauty. Translucent whitish berries are borne directly on the stems or on a very short stalk. Birds eat the berries, helping to disperse the species. 

Adventitions Roots, New Growth, Rudimentary Areoles

In fact, the plant is so unassuming, yet vexing in its variability, that a specialist named Ken Friedman wrote, "So many species are named R. baccifera that it is almost impossible to tell an original. Four or five  growing in my greenhouse  have different vegetation although the flowers are similarly inconsequential. If anything, they are large weeds that take up more room than they are worth." 

So how did this modest plant colonize such a large portion of the globe? The theories that exist are not exactly convincing on their own. 

The least likely theory is that the  plant was spread by the shipping trade in the 15th century and onward. But the plant is widespread into interior regions of the Old World, and not limited to the port areas. That kind of spread normally wouldn't occur in a matter of hundreds of years. Even more problematical is the fact that Old World subspecies differ significantly from the "ur-type," R. baccifera, and such evolution normally requires eons, not centuries to occcur. The plant also is prominent in Ayurvedic medicine, which some believed began as early as the Bronze Age. It is possible that it was a later addition, but it still takes a long time for something to become entrenched in regional  medical lore.

The next theory involves continental drift. This theory holds that the plant was well-established before the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana. The fly in the ointment here is that Gondwana probably began to break up around 180 million years ago. If cacti as a group didn't evolve until some 30 million years ago, as is generally accepted, that leaves a huge gap. In that case Rhipsalis would have to be an atypical, extremely ancient genus. Since cacti leave few, if any, fossil records, nobody really knows when Rhipsalis evolved, but it probably was well after Gondwana's destruction.

That leaves us with birds, which we know are frequent vectors of plant dissemination. It certainly makes sense for the distribution within the New World. Many of Florida's native plants were brought by birds  from the Caribbean and the Bahamas. A problem with this theory is that most birds migrate north to south or the reverse. I'm not aware of any seed-eating birds that currently migrate over the Atlantic from the Americas  to Africa and beyond. That would be a vast distance for a seed-eating bird to traverse, and also a vast distance for a seed-eating bird not to poop. We don't yet have any fossil record of any ancient bird prototype that would have been up to the trip either.

The "answer," if there is one, is probably a combination of continental drift and the birds. The breakup of Gondwana didn't exactly occur overnight, but over the course of millions of  years. In fact, we are still moving. What eventually became Africa and South America would have been much closer at varioius points in geological history than they are today, and there most likely would have been islands and mountaintops that are now submerged or destroyed. Then island-hopping by birds would make sense.

Personally, I rather like the "space aliens" theory put forward by "Laidback Gardener" Larry Hodgson, who suggests that, "millions of years ago, space aliens moved the plant around, just to mess with scientists trying to understand how R. baccifera got around." Why not?

Further Reading:

“The Cactus That Traveled the Globe.”Larry Hodgson. Http:/laidbackgardener.blog/2018/12/03/the-cactus.://

Rhipsalis baccifera (JS Meuller) Stern. In Cactus Journal (Croyden) 7:107 (1939). With comments and photographs by Ken Friedman. www.Rhipsalis.com/species/baccifera.

“I Havana a Clue How I Got Here; Cactus Goes for a Drink in Cuba, Wakes Up in Cape Town.” Jan. 27, 2014 by alieyres. http://blogs.reading.ac.uk/2014/01/rhipping-yarns.

 

 

Greenbacked Heron Guests

 Three greenbacked herons have been visisting our backyard lately. Since they basically are solitary birds, my guess is that it is a pair with last-year's offspring still hanging around, but who knows? I see a single bird more often than the group, but they are incredibly good at blending in with the shadows and foliage. This particular one likes to perch on the rim of a lotus pot that is more out in the open. 

Greenbacked Heron - On Right Has Raised Crest

The birds are about the size of a small crow. Their coloration and habit of sitting very still for long periods,  (in bird time, at least), make them hard to pick out within the  dappled light of low branches. I observe them from inside a screened porch, which makes them even harder to spot. 

Despite their common names - greenbacked, little green, green heron - they appear mostly slate blue or a murky teal on their backs, upper wing backs, and crests. It is only in certain light that a green iridiscence is visible. The breast and neck of "our" birds are a rich chestnut with a few white streaks, and the bird's underparts are grayish. Juveniles are browner, and have a white breast streaked with chestnut. The legs are supposed to be yellow, but through the screen, the legs of my visitor seem to be pinkish-beige. Breeding males sport bright orange legs. Another common name is "shietpoke," apparently in reference to its habit of letting fly when flushed, and "skeow," because of its call.

Perching, Colored Pencil

With their often squat posture, the bird's size can be a little hard to judge, because it can "telescope" its long neck in and out. The extended neck is about the length of the bird's body. The greenbacks's hunching posture results from retracting the neck. That posture along with the size is enough to id a greenbacked heron in this area. A former neighbor who often saw the bird fishing from a sagging docking line interpreted this pose as aggressive, and called the bird "Mr. Ugly." Mr. Ugly did have the unlovely habit of chasing away any other birds trying to infringe on his fishing grounds, but as far as I have observed, the behavior is typical of most birds. 

Postures
(The Neck is Longer in Relation to the Body than Shown)

Their legs are short for herons, so they stick mostly to the shallows when they feed by wading. Some have been reported to dive. I've never seen that behavior with greenbacks, but I have watched a great blue egret dive from a dock into about 3-4 feet of water to hunt for fish attracted by a snook light. This went on night after night. The little greens here like to hunt from low-hanging docking lines, and a conduit leading from the seawall to our dock. (The conduit runs under the dock, so the bird is well-hidden). At low tide they will perch on oysters that have accumulated on the seawall. In nature, they hunt from exposed roots and low branches.

Little greens also know how to fish, dropping small bits of sticks, straw and prey into the water to attract minnows. They also deliberately stir up prey from  the bottom when wading.

Their diet consists of minnows, crustaceans, insects and mollusks. An avid birdwatching acquaintance observed little greens coughing up bits of shell and bones. Maybe it was clearing its craw?

The most common calls are a metallic, repeated "kuk-kuk-kuk," and an explosive, rather high-pitched "skeow." I hear both, and sometimes either duets or duels of the "skeow" cry. Some of my bird books say that the "yuk-kuk" is an alarm call, while others give the "skeow" cry that purpose. I often hear both calls without seeing the birds at all.

My solitary visitor likes to drink from the lotus pot, and also spends a lot of time staring at the water. It's early days for tadpoles, but I won't be surprised if I see it fishing for them this summer.

Both sexes work to build the nest, and both feed the baby birds by regurgitating. The baby birds quickly become adept at climbing.

Front Cover

When I started this blog I vowed not to be a perfectionist when it came to my sketches. I've certainly fulfilled that pledge with my attempts to portray birds. My summer project will be making my way through John Muir Laws' book, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds. (Audubon, 2012).  A lot of this information is included in his Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, which I can't recommend highly enough. It was published in 2016. John Muir Laws offers many instructional videos and tips on his site, johnmuirlaws.com.

Front Cover

This book is one of the best on nature drawing and journaling I have read. It combines plenty of detailed instruction - not just exhortations to "do this," - and plenty of inspiration. If you don't want to buy  2 books, this one contains the gist of Laws's book on bird drawing. 

Fall Behind

 Looking out the dining-room window, my frequent perch, I see an abundance of color in the front yard. The bougainvillea has burst into another flush of bright magenta bracts, with their tiny, enclosed white flowers. Scarlet sage, Salvia coccinea, is blazing with impossibly red flowers. 

I tried to establish this plant unsuccessfully for years. A while back, though, one of my sisters gave me a pot of something else with a Salvia straggler, and it has spread itself throughout the back yard as well as in front. When it gets leggy and unsightly, which it does,  I either cut it back to the last green leaf, or just break off the now-brittle stems.

Scarlet Sage, Salvia coccinea

Blue-gray Eliott's love grass has peaked.Now it's drying, and its multiple seed-laden inflorescences are brittle enough to break off in the wind. They also like to work their way up your pant leg.  Pink muhly blooms later, and is also now past its prime. Its multitudinous inflorescences are somewhere between pink, purple and magenta. A clump of muhley grass by itself is a grand specimen, and it is really stunning in a mass planting, especially when there is just hint of breeze. Mounds of it billow and blow in a highway median a few miles away. 

Goldenrod, Solidago sp., has been blooming since June. Mine was a pass-along plant from a now-deceased friend in the local native plant society, who warned me, "once you have goldenrod, you'll always have goldenrod." Every time I root out another clump of suckers - goldenrod has expansionist tendencies - I remember Freda and her down-to-earth wit. Right now it is growing intermixed with a large, spreading mauve lantana, and the color combination works. I didn't plan it that way, but the goldenrod moved in on the lantana, and the 2 seem to coexist reasonably well, perhaps because the lantana stays low and the goldenrod reaches for the heights.

Florida has  19 species of goldenrod, and apart from the few that don't occur down here, I'll be damned if I can identify mine. I'm probably overthinking the process, but every time I think I am keying it out successfully I find a characteristic that nullifies it. Besides, I think they hybridize fairly promiscuously. 

"My" Goldenrod from Freda

Even though it blooms all summer here, goldenrod still seems to symbolize fall like pumpkins, asters, and fresh apples. Its numerous bright, saturated yellow-gold heads are intensely attractive to insects. Butterflies do use it in our yard, but they are far outnumbered by the wasps and bees that find it irresistible. 

In the photo above, a leaf cutter bee, Megachile sp., gathers pollen. The photo doesn't show it, but these medium-size bees collect pollen on their abdomen. I don't think the megachile in our yard is native, but I can't see that it does any harm. This species builds cylindrical egg champers in underground tunnels. It also will use holes for oarlocks and unused garden hoses. It cuts uniform oval shapes for the sides, and perfect circles to close off the egg chambers. Each compartment is about an inch long and a quarter-inch in diameter. The bee will make several chambers in each nest. It doesn't matter if the entry hole gets covered, either by shifting sand or waterborne debris. I extracted a cylinder once and kept it in a plastic dish at my workspace. All the cylinders produced an adult bee within minutes of one another. I liberated the bees after they hatched. 

Paper wasps, Polistes sp., also love the flowers. In my experience, most bees and wasps aren't particular aggressive when they are feeding. Once, though, a big bumblebee traveled from at least 6 feet away just to sting me, so I don't know what its problem was. This wasp is in no peril, but its perch reminds me of times I've had one foot on the dock and the other one on a boat that was inexorably moving away. (There is no end of entertainment watching boats come and go at a boat ramp or dock. As long as nothing tragic happens, you can laugh, but you have to remember that sooner or later it will be your turn to look stupid). 

Goldenrod flowers and leaves have been used medicinally for centuries. In fact, the genus name, Solidago, means something like "to heal or make whole." It also is a traditional dye plant. I can't speak for all species, but this one is extremely forgiving of sandy pseudo-soil and drought. Its tall spikes could be staked, but I sort of like to let it sprawl and flop. It gets beaten flat by a hard rain, but usually more or less recovers. 

Alas! All my wonderful color is in danger of being obscured by rampant weeds and overgrowth of natives I have allowed to self-sow. Now that the weather isn't quite as hot, I need to get busy  before Code Enforcement shows up. Cleaning up the yard will be a great antidote to stress from COVID and politics. The Presidential race seems decided, but the country remains as bitterly divided as ever. We all need to chill out a little and go plant something.

This post is woefully late. Sometimes life just happens. Eta scared us, but gave us a miss, though we had winds strong enough to flatten the goldenrod, coreopsis, and Elliott's asters. Most are now trying to straighten out, but I probably will have to cut the coreopsis back because its stems are so incredibly thin it's hard to imagine that they hold up a whole flower  head even in the best of circumstances.

I haven't figured out how to make links in the new Blogger format, but for more information you can refer to the posts listed below.

Native Grasses: "Yes, Florida Has Seasons." Nov.14, 2017.

Leaf  Cutter Bees: "Leaf Cutter Bees." Oct. 30, 2018.

Elliott's Aster: "Elliott's Aster." Jan. 23, 2019.

Simpson's Stopper

 Simpson's stopper, Myrcianthes fragrans, generally grows as a shrub or small tree up to 25 feet tall.  It is vary variable in form, and also can be pruned into any shape desired. It's formally pruned in many parking lot hedges, which is kind of too bad, since the constant whacking back vastly reduces flowering and fruiting. So even though many people in South Florida see it regularly, they don't notice it. On the other hand, the resulting dense growth produces a good nesting place for mockingbirds. 

 The Simpson's stopper in the front yard could be healthier, which is worrisome.  It's one of my very favorite plants, and it plays a vital ecological and esthetic role in our yard. Anchoring the front landscape design (such as it is), is not the least of its virtues. If it goes, it will leave a big hole. 

It started out as a multi-trunked containerized plant. I liked the outward spread of the trunks, so I left them. As it grew, I removed lower branches, partly because they were intruding on the path. The open, tiered canopy that developed is one of the plant's charms now. I just wish it were a bit fuller. "Limbing" it up also reveals the gorgeous bark, sometimes a perfectly smooth pale tan, as though it were sanded, and at other times turning reddish and peeling, a little like a crepe myrtle. The smooth bark phase is likely the source of one common name, "naked-wood."

Removing lower limbs also keeps the landscape more open and less-congested. It makes a nice screen between us and our neighbors to the left, but it isn't so dense that I can't see through it to their magnificent large Opuntias or the houses across the street.  No matter what your viewpoint is, you can see through and beyond the plant, so you are tempted to explore further. One of these days I am going to relocate one of my waterlilly pots so that birds can flit down for a drink or bath, and then retreat into the protective shade of the stopper.

The plant is evergreen, with opposite, mostly ovate leaves about 1 to 8 cm long,  and 1 to 4 cm wide. They are tough and leathery, with slightly underturned margins to reduce water loss. Depending on sun exposure, the leaves range from bright yellow-green to dark olive. The underside is a paler green. The leaves are covered with small glands, which appear as bumps on the upper side and as black or green dots on the underside.  I've never noticed any fragrance emanating from the leaves like it does from firs or spruces. Crushing the leaves, though, releases a fresh minty aroma something like eucalyptus oil. That's not surprising, since both are members of the Myrtle family, Myrtaceae.

In contrast with the leaves, the flowers really live up to their species epithet,  fragrans.  The plant blooms and fruits several times a year, depending on rainfall and temperature. When Simpson's stopper is in flower the air around it is filled with a spicy sweetness somewhere between the heavy, almost cloying odor of gardenias and the light, fleeting sweetness of citrus. When it is flowering I visit it several times a day, especially in late afternoon or early evening, just to breath deeply, as though I somehow could capture an olfactory  memory. Who needs mind-altering drugs when it is possible to wallow in pure sensation just by standing near a fragrant shrub and inhaling?

The all-white flowers grow in clusters on stalks that arise in the angle between leaf and stem. I think normally there are 5 tiny petals, though the one in my sketch above has 4. The numerous fine white stamens provide the main attraction, though. They practically obscure the petals, and a Simpson's stopper in full bloom looks like  the fairy godmother has waved her sparkle-trailing magic wand over it. The flowers are constantly humming with various pollinators, including beetles. Butterflies don't seem particularly fond of them, though. 

Flowers give way to rounded or somewhat pear-shaped fruits, often borne in pairs  - hence another common name, "twinberry stopper." They eventually reach a size somewhere between a blueberry and small olive, starting out green, then passing through yellow and orange stages before their final bright red. Mockingbirds gorge on the fruits, and if they happen to be frequenting the yard at the time, bluejays and cardinals also gobble the berries. The fruits are edible, somewhat sweet and not too dry, but for me leave an unpleasant bitter aftertaste. Volunteers pop up around the yard, evidence of the bird's activities. The plant also suckers, and probably could be propagated by severing them, too.

Apart from its other virtues, the Simpson's stopper functions as a kind of activity center in the yard. Even when they aren't feeding, birds like to perch on its branches. One July morning I made notes of what was going on around me while I sketched the fruits. I sat quietly enough that a mockingbird that had been flushed by my initial setup returned to the opposite side of the plant to continue eating. A shiny June beetle had its head stuck into a fruit, so intent on gorging that it let me manipulate foliage around it to make a photo. You can see a bit of my finger at the top of the photo.

Small bees and wasps buzzed amid the foliage and remaining flowers. Two other species of beetles were devouring fruits. Two strange insects that I couldn't ID were mating in the shrub's interior. A green darner dragonfly reconnoitered in search of prey or just patrolling its territory.  

I am wearing out the phrase, "superlative native plant," but that is because so many Florida native plants are, indeed, superlative. From its undemanding nature, repeated flowering and fruiting, glossy evergreen foliage, wildlife and landscaping value, Simpson's stopper certainly qualifies. It needs little water or fertilizer after it is established, and ours has survived major hurricanes Wilma and Irma with minimal damage. Though it gets pretty well defoliated by the salt-laden wind, it recovers quickly. 

It is named in honor of Charles Torrey Simpson (1846-1932), a noted South Florida plant explorer, snail expert, naturalist and nature writer. True stoppers are in the genus Eugenia, which also is in the Myrtle family. Simpson's stopper resembles them superficially, hence the most common common name.

Polydamas Swallotail

The Polydamas Swallowtail, Battus polydamas, is named after both historical and mythological figures from Greek history. Battus I founded the colony of Cyrenaica and its capital Cyrene on the coast of present-day Libya around 630 BC. Impressive ruins are all that is left. 

Polydamas figures in the Illiad as an advisor and friend of Hector. Polydamas of Skotoussa, who won the Olympiad in 408 BC, was an athlete of prodigious strength. Some of his feats appear on Greek pottery. The subspecies that occurs in Florida is Battus polydamas lucayous. I haven't been able to find a reference for "lucayous." 

The polydamas is the only swallowtail in the U.S. that doesn't have tails. This butterfly is sometimes called the gold-rimmed swallowtail as well for the row of yellow patches on the edges of its wings. Their larval food are pipevines, species of Aristolochia. In our yard they feed on the exotic Giant Aristolochia, and this year pretty well denuded the massive vine.

One year, when I didn't have any caterpillars I "imported" a batch from a friend about 25 miles north of me whose polydamas larvae were on the point of starvation after completely stripping  her Aristolochia plants.

 (The pipevine swallowtail, which also feeds on Aristolochia species, looks quite different. It has short tails, and it's deep black wings are brushed with bright blue iridescence. It has creamy patches near the margins on the upper wings, and large, bright orange patches on the undersides. It does not make it quite as far south as Collier County).

The polydamas is a strong, vigorous flyer, with a rapid, almost "nervous" wingbeat. I never have seen one basking. Even when nectaring, they keep up their fluttering, and I wonder whether they may actually feed on the wing like hummingbirds now and then. The ones in our yard fly about 5-10 feet off the ground when patrolling, swooping down mainly to lay eggs or take a sip of nectar.

Polydamas Checking Out Pipevine
Notice Yellow-Jacket Patrolling lower left

This is the best year for polydamas swallowtails in our yard for a long time. The last few years a few adults have showed up, some even laying eggs. But predators seemed to clean out the caterpillars, and repeat appearances by adults were rare.

This year I noticed the first polydamas in early May, and they pretty much stayed with us through mid- July. After about a week of no sightings, I see a brand new adult as we near the end of the month. Some of the adults who emerge probably stay here, but timing of appearance suggests that I also have had some visits by newcomers.

 I have seen polydamas swallowtails here as early as late February and as late as mid-November. They range up to north-central Florida, but may stray farther north. A subspecies occurs in coastal south Texas. Otherwise, they inhabit the Bahamas, Carribean Islands, southern coastal Mexico, Central America, and south to Argentina in South America. There are many sub-species.

Polydamas Swallowtail

The above quick and dirty, and not neurotically accurate color pencil drawings were made from a battered dead specimen I picked up years ago. I'm  not at all happy with the brown undersides. I tried layering different colors, but still did not pick up the elusive, reflective warm brown/black coloration.

The female lays a cluster of orange-yellow eggs on tendrils and tender young leaves. At first the caterpillars stay close together. There must be some evolutionary advantage in this behavior, but it also makes them very vulnerable to predators. A wasp can wipe out a brood in a matter of minutes. When they get about 3/8 to 1/2 inches long they go their separate ways.

Ovipositing Female

Young caterpillars are orangish tan to brown, with many bristles. The older caterpillar looks like a fat brown slug with orange tubercules protruding from its body. The larvae absorb toxins from the aristolochia, so they are distasteful to birds and lizards. But nothing saves them from hornets.

Too many times, I have watched a yellow-jacket methodically hunting the larvae amid the leaves and devouring them one after the other. All that is left is a little puddle. I'm lucky if even one or two individuals in some broods make it to adulthood. I  have had 3 sets of egg-laying so far this years, and apart from the first brood, the yellow-jacket has been there every day looking for prey. I'm hoping it  missed one here and there, but a successful brood may depend on timing with the emergence of adult  wasps. I just don't know. The interrelationships in the natural world are so complex. And we may be getting a distorted view of it on our tiny 60x110-foot plot.

The caterpillars are sort of dumb, even for creatures that low on the intellectual ladder. I've seen more than one start eating the stem between it and the plant, and then plop down to the ground once it has severed the connection. It doesn't seem fatal, though.

Polydamas Caterpillar

One year I got fed up with the yellow-jacket's gluttony and brought several caterpillars onto the screened patio. I cut new Aristolochia leaves and stems for them faithfully, but something went terribly wrong. None were able to form a complete chrysalis, and one never got beyond the J-stage. I don't know whether I deprived my larvae of some vital nutrient by feeding them cuttings, or whether they contracted some kind of disease. Now, even though the predation distresses me, I just leave nature to take its course. Besides, the yellow-jacket feeds its larvae with liquified caterpillars, and there's a place for them, too.

Butterflies usually leave the host plant to pupate, but I have found a lot of chrysalides tucked in along the vine. They resemble twisted leaves, dead or alive - some are green and some are brown with orange markings. They are very "architectural," and remind me of miniature sets of armor. The brown chrysalis in the sketch below has been parasitized. The spot that looks like an eye is the hole from which the parasite emerged. The chrysalis may hang vertically or horizontally.

Polydamas adults are particularly fond of the weedy Madagascar Periwinkle(Catharanthus roseus) that has been in south Florida most likely for centuries. It flowers at the end of the stems, and doesn't start blooming before it is pretty tall. The stems quickly get 3 feet tall or more, and it takes no time at all for them to lose a lot of leaves along the way, and look leggy, scraggly and bare. That's when I cut them all the way back. By the way they show up in the yard, they produce plenty of viable seeds. I also have a pinkish-magenta form, which the polydamas likes too. The center of the white ones usually is dark rose-magenta, but also can be green-yellow. The center of the pink ones is a dark rose.

A member of the dogbane family, Apocnyaceae, Madagascar periwinkle is quite poisonous. It is a prime exhibit for the argument of preserving plants, for potent anti-cancer drugs have been developed from its sap. While it is a ubiquitous escape in Florida, it hasn't been classified as invasive. I hope it doesn't reach that status because many kinds of butterflies love it, and it provides clumps of cheerful, clear whites and pinks all through the year. It actually is endangered in Madagascar, its place of origin.

White Madagascar Periwinkles

When I was taking high school biology I laughed at the naivety - even stupidity - of the early theory of "spontaneous generation" to explain how animals originated. But when it comes to establishing a pollinator garden in the world of tidy, chemically-coddled suburban lawns, the possibility doesn't seem that far-fetched. Just plant some flowers, preferably natives, get some larval host plants established, and the butterflies, bees, flies and wasps show up. How they found and find me still seems pretty magical. Sadly, in the 26 years we've lived here, the sheer numbers and the number of species have declined, but I'm not giving up just yet.

Good Sources of Information:

Emmel & Kinney. Florida's Fabulous Butterflies. World Publications. 1997.

Gerberg & Arnett. Florida Butterflies. Natural Science Publications. 1989.

Glassberg, Minno & Calhoun. Butterflies Through Binoculars: Florida. Oxford University Press. 2000.

Hall. Polydamas. entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/bfly/polydamas. This article is particularly informative. I tried to create a link, but had no success. You can find the article just by searching "polydamas" and scrolling to it.

Minno & Minno. Florida Butterfly Gardening. University Press of Florida. 1999.

The Comfort of "Exceptional Images"

It's been a while.

I have been coping (not very well) with serious health issues in my family for a couple of months. We seem to have turned a corner now, though we're not out of the woods yet.

While the crisis was building I felt utterly helpless. I was drawing frantically - somehow drawing was one of the few things I could do. Otherwise I felt as if I were walking in deep sludge. Even the most basic activities seemed to take enormous effort.

A Dead Dragonfly (Saddlebag)?
My husband found it and brought it to me to draw.

Drawing was a way of blocking out feelings, a way of mitigating, if only temporarily, the desperation and frantic torpor that threatened to overwhelm me. But once I put the pencils down, the anxiety returned with a vengeance.

Then I read the post Art and Nature are My Healers by Elizabeth Smith. She described her path to reconciliation after her mother's death, and it seemed as though she had written it for me. She quoted a passage from Clare Walker Leslie's Drawn to Nature, in which Leslie recounted losing her own mother, and the solace she gained from drawing: "Every day, while my mother's illness progressed, I would find one image outdoors that I could hold onto, like a marble in my pocket that I rubbed for nourishment and balance. This looking out at the world helped my looking in, towards my own pain."

Shell and Horseshoe Crab Molt 

In her post Elizabeth detailed her search for, and sketch of a "daily exceptional image," and how it is helping her to deal with her own grief. When I read it something fell into place, and I realized what I was missing.

I needed to stop blocking, and start opening myself to the wonder of what I saw, even if it left me more vulnerable to fear and anxiety. Strangely enough, the process has been comforting. The weather then wasn't conducive to outside exploration, so instead, I searched my sketchbooks for drawings that had meaning for me, and finding them gave me a glimpse of happiness again. I have sprinkled some of them throughout this post.

Elizabeth's blog reminded me of the first peaceful day I remember after my mother's death, which was devastating.  I sat outside in the shade and drew Gaillardias. It took a long time to make this very simple line drawing. I  meant to color it in later, but decided it was better as it was. My mother was not one for frippery or fuss. She had a clean, simple esthetic. She loved a handful of flowers in a jar much more than a florist's arrangement. Drawing these cheerful flowers became an act of devotion, a simple moment of celebration of all my mother had meant and forever will mean to me.

Gaillardias - for me and my Mother

Anxiety and grief never really go away. But drawing with an open heart, not drawing to block out reality, is grounding. The drawings don't have to be perfect; they don't even have to be good, but the very act of recording something that has impressed us with its beauty, its form, its simplicity, whatever it may be - can give us the serenity to keep going. As Elizabeth wrote, "I could be mindful about something exceptional that did not cause pain, but instead promised something more." Thank you, Elizabeth and Clare.

June Beetle

Two of my favorite books by Clare Walker Leslie :

Nature Drawing: A Tool for Learning. Prentice-Hall. 1980. Revised Printing, Kendall/Hunt. 1995. - This is one of my favorite books, period. I often go to it when I feel like I am in a slump, or need an infusion of energy and enthusiasm.

The Art of Field Sketching. Prentice-Hall. 1984. Revised Printing, Kendall/Hunt. Another great book to get you motivated, up and outside.

Clare Walker Leslie's books are available at Amazon, and probably other vendors.

Oaks - It's Always Much More Complicated

I spent most of the 3nd week of September in North Florida, on a tract of land bordered by the Suwannee River. Though I have known this place for 40-some years, I never had looked really hard at the plants - apart from a few wildflowers.

It take far more focus and memory than I possess to see something thoroughly without drawing it. On this visit I decided I would try to figure out what some of the hardwoods are. I'm weak in hardwoods when it comes to my own neck of the woods, so this was a real challenge, especially when it came to oaks.

The German philosopher Ludwig Marcuse kept the framed motto "Es ist immer alles viel komplizierter" (It is always much more complicated) above his desk. It is a good motto for the amateur botanist - and it certainly proved true when it came to my identifying oaks.

I made  mistakes. An axiom the late botanist Robert Reed emphasized when he was teaching plant identification was, "Plants vary." I didn't follow his advice - didn't look at enough leaf samples from different parts of the tree, so what I had might or might not have been representative. I didn't label specimens, so later on I had no idea whether similar but slightly different leaves had come from the same plant. I didn't study the bark, and too late, I found out that bark can matter. I didn't study the habit and stature of the trees hard enough. The trees I was trying to id were growing in relatively crowded conditions. Still, I could have made useful observations about relative sizes and gotten some idea of the overall shape of the crown. I did not have a useful loupe. That's on my "to buy" list now, because I really needed one to study the undersides of the leaves.

I didn't get to all the oaks on the property - only 3 as a matter of fact. My ids are tentative. There were no acorns visible, and no flowers. Acorns, especially, would have helped a lot.

When I started sketching the trees  below I first thought it was just one tree. Soon enough I realized my mistake. Then I thought I had 2 oaks. Later I discovered that the smaller tree was an American elm.

Oak with American Elm
WC, Niji brushes, Aquabee Mixed Media 9x9, 93 lb

I'm used to drawing fine details, so trying for an entire tree was a real challenge, and I obviously need to get more practice, especially when it comes to getting the underlying structure. You can't just glob in a lot of green and hope a tree emerges. These trees were growing so close together it was very difficult to see which branches belonged to which trunk, but I was trying mainly for a general impression. The oak might be a live oak, Quercus virginiana. Though it doesn't show the massive horizontal branches typical of the species, the short, divided trunk  is typical of the species.

Who Am I?
same paper, ink, wc

This specimen, from the tree above, shows leaves of various shapes, but they more-or-less fit the profile for live oak. On the other hand, they are smooth on the underside, which rules out live oaks, which are quite hairy underneath. But perhaps I didn't look at enough leaves. The plant could be a Darlington oak, Quercus hemisphaerica. Then again, it could be something else. Nelson writes that Darlington oak sometimes is confused with the live oak. (p.209). I'll have to wait until I can get back to the site before I can go any farther.

Quercus nigra, Water Oak

I think I am on slightly firmer ground with what I am calling the water oak, Quercus nigra. The general shape of the leaf and the presence of fine hairs at the vein axils on the underside of the leaf argue for this identification.There is a slight problem, though. Gil Nelson doesn't mention any bristles on the leaf tips, but Richard Wunderlin includes it as a distinguishing characteristic. Guess what?

Water Oak? with Bristle-Tipped Leaves

Here's a specimen that clearly has bristles at the tips of some leaves. If I'd kept a record of which samples came from which trees, I'd have a much better case for arguing that both the drawing and the photo represent the same species. I think they probably do, but again, I won't know for sure until I can look again.

My final oak sums up my dilemma - total confusion. It has fine hairs in the vein axils like turkey oak and water oak, but it really doesn't look like any of the illustrations in my field guides. For now I am just calling it my "mystery oak."

Who Am I?

On top of everything else, oaks hybridize to some extent.  Marcuse was right. It's always much more complicated.


My references: Gil Nelson. The Trees of Florida. 2nd Edition. Pineapple Press. 2011. pp. 201-218.

Richard Wunderlin. Guide to the Vascular Plants of Florida. University Press of Florida. 1998. pp. 256-260.

Hermann Kurtz & Robert K. Godfrey. Trees of Northern Florida. University Press of Florida. 1962.