Botany – A Honey of an Anklet

Working in the herbarium: 1

Folks have sometimes commented that there are no people in my photos, and no action. So here ya go, with a little of both: the VNPS Potowmack Chapter’s “grass bunch” inspecting specimens in the botany department of the National Museum of American History, with the kind assistance of Rob Soreng.

Field marks

A comment by James on a somewhat recent Languagehat post introduced me to a term used by Duns Scotus and the Scholastic philosophers: haecceity. Haecceity can be rendered as “thisness.” By contrast, quiddity constitutes “whatness.”

Haecceity captures the characteristics that distinguish a particular individual: “Socrates” is a man “who lived in Greece.” Whereas quiddity refers to the universal qualities that a thing shares with all members of its genus: a man is a “featherless biped.”¹

As a naturalist, I am always switching focus back and forth between a bird’s (or plant’s, or…) haecceity and quiddity, either in the particular instance or in the abstract. Haecceity: what are the characters (field marks) that distinguish this species from others? Quiddity: what is its gist? if you’ve never seen one before, what does it look like?

Haecceity is captured by the textual descriptions in your field guide, as well as the “Peterson system” arrows pointing to field marks in the paintings. Quiddity is best represented by the composite photographs in Crossley or Kaufman field guides. New birders usually gravitate toward quiddity, and I’ll flip open my Peterson or Sibley to show them paintings of a bird we’re talking about (and maybe have just missed seeing).

And here’s another concept that perhaps the Scholastics didn’t grapple with: characteristics that distinguish one taxon from another in the context of a particular dichotomous key.

Maybe I should stop here before I write anything more that’s unschooled.

¹Dang, I recently read something good about dinosaurs being featherless bipeds and I can’t find it again.

Some links: 101

Casey Ruken on 1950s-era preparations for nuclear war in the capital. I’ve been collecting images of fallout shelter signs here in the DMV and elsewhere.
Guest contributor J. M. Christoph to Greater Greater Washington explains why digging new tunnels for Metro is not as simple as coloring in new lines on the map. Because geology.
I am at a loss to identify hawthorns (genus Crataegus). Turns out there’s a reason for that.
For future reference: Ian Paulson’s annotated bibliography of pre-Peterson field guides to birds, leading with Florence Merriam Bailey’s Birds through an Opera Glass (1899).

Some ink: 18

My VNPS chapter newsletter published two brief book reviews by me on topics botanical, the -pedia series from Princeton University Press and David J. Gibson’s Planting Clues.

Some ink: 17

Anna Gibbs picked up on my catchphrase for her piece in Audubon about birders becoming master naturalists.

ID corner: 3 (Putting some teeth into it)

I was out on a field trip in Rock Creek Park, and a question arose about common names for one of our nonnative viburnums, Linden Viburnum (Viburnum dilatatum) (an observation from Lake Fairfax Park). This plant is distressingly common in a couple patches along the trail leading from the Nature Center and Planetarium down to the creek.

Discussion of Linden Viburnum led to talk of Japanese Snowball (a/k/a Doublefile Viburnum) (V. plicatum), another nonnative that shares with Linden Viburnum two field marks: parallel leaf veins ending in teeth, and red fruits (maturing to blue-black in Japanese Snowball).

While it is true that Linden Viburnum is relatively more common in D.C. than Japanese Snowball, I have definitely seen both in Fairfax County, and probably Japanese Snowball in Rock Creek Park.

Which leads us to Guelder-rose Viburnum (V. opulus), which I have incorrectly identified in the past as Japanese Snowball in Reston. The leaf shape is quite different, but it’s easy to be distracted by the showy inflorescences ringed by sterile flowers, a trait common to both. It’s possible that the Reston shrubs were planted, since they’re just off blacktop paths near benches and frisbee fields.

Which is all to say that I fell into the rabbit hole of identifying tooth-leaved viburnums in the Mid-Atlantic, and as a result, I wrote up a brief comparison table: six nonnatives and five natives.

There is a native with sterile flowers, found in the mountains, Hobblebush (V. lantanoides).

A lot of what I have called V. dentatum (Arrow-wood, native) may actually be V. recognitum, recently raised to species rank. Weakley et al. write in the Flora of Virginia app:

Because [these two species]… were lumped in previous Virginia studies, the relative distributions, abundance, and habitats… are not entirely clear. It appears that their ranges are largely sympatric in the state and that specimens of intermediate morphology sometimes occur.

TL; DR: for our field trip: Linden Viburnum, pushy invasive in D.C., and the most often found.

ID corner: 2

This month we on the FCPA EDRR team are on the lookout for non-native invasive Java Water Dropwort (Oenanthe javanica). Based on information from Pennsylvania agencies, B and I thought that we had relocated some extensive populations in a creek floodplain in Herndon, and we documented as such (for example, 166611987). However, other Invader Detectives have identified our plants as Water-hemlock (Cicuta maculata), and I am tending to agree.

I reviewed the descriptions of the two plants in Flora of Virginia. Since they’re in different genera, there’s no straightforward dichotomous key for the pair.

One clue that we had the native C. maculata is that the plants were coming into flower on 10 June. The Flora has May to August for Water-hemlock and July to August for Java Water Dropwort—but that’s hardly definitive for a plant that’s just getting established in the Commonwealth and with voucher specimens for only Fairfax and Arlington Counties. There are some described differences between the two plants with regard to the inflorescence and fruit, but how do you catch the invasive before it flowers?

So we have to go back to descriptions of the stem and leaves. Here’s C. maculata:

Perennial 6-18 dm stout, erect, caulescent, branched, glabrous. Leaves 10-30 × 8-26 cm, 2 or 3 × pinnately compound, ovate in general outline; leaflets 2-12 × 0.6-3 cm, lanceolate, acute to acuminate; petioles 0.4-3 dm [4-30 cm], sheathing.

Comments: Stems often mottled below with purple. [emphasis added]

And here’s O. javanica:

Perennial with fibrous roots. Stems 3-12 dm, decumbent [reclining on the ground but with an erect or ascending tip], rooting at lower nodes. Leaves alternate, sometimes basal with petioles 5-10 cm, blades 3-20 cm long, ovate to triangular, 1 or 2 × pinnately compound, reduced upward, ultimately becoming sessile on expanded sheaths; leaflets 10-50 × 5-20 mm wide, ovate or rhombic-ovate, rounded, narrowed or tapered at base, serrate.

In other words, they’re both pretty typical members of the Carrot Family. Overall, the Water-hemlock is taller, with larger leaves, but there’s a lot of overlap.

Two things that we overlooked in our survey of the Herndon site:

O. javanica stems are decumbent, whereas the plants in our observations are erect.
“Brittle stems of java waterdropwort are jointed and hollow and can easily break off and take root.” I don’t believe that we checked our specimens for this character.

Since O. javanica is reported to be edible (it has common names like Water Celery and Vietnamese Parsley), it’s a good thing that we didn’t give our plants a taste!

Field trip and workshop resources in the DMV

Here’s a roundup, somewhat Northern Virginia-inflected, of some organizations that run field trips in the mid-Atlantic.

Nature Forward is our standard-bearer. Workshops and camps for kiddos and families, walks focused on birds/geology/botany/etc., CEU-credited courses in lichens/spring wildflowers/conservation history/etc., overseas travel—something for everyone at nearly every level of expertise. NF is also an important advocate for protection of natural areas in the DC metro.

Some outfits mostly interested in birds:

Audubon Society of Northern Virginia and DC Audubon Society* are chapters of the National Audubon Society, and there are several chapters in Maryland.*
Northern Virginia Bird Club’s name tells you what they’re about. In addition to maintaining a calendar of field trips and directory of Christmas Bird Counts, NVBC holds regularly scheduled meetings.

Are you ready for some botany?

Virginia Native Plant Society is organized into regional chapters. Our local chapter, the largest in the commonwealth, is the Potowmack chapter. Farther outside the Beltway, check out the Prince William Wildflower Society and the Piedmont chapter.
Maryland Native Plant Society also has a chapter for DC.

Maybe something a little more niche is your interest.

The Mycological Association of Washington, D.C.,* for fungi enthusiasts, has been recommended to me. Hey, I just joined up!

Or you’re looking for something more fast-paced than the naturalist’s shuffle.

Some time back, I did one or two hikes with DC Metropolitan Hikers, a Meetup group. And Capital Hiking Club has made the transition from paper newsletters and phone trees to the electronic age.
Wanderbirds Hiking Club hikes were too fast for me, even when I was young and in good shape.

The Washington metro is a mosaic of publicly-accessible, natural areas under several different jurisdictions. Check out individual parks and recreational areas for scheduled workshops, camps, and events.

Parks and trails managed by the National Park Service (in Maryland, the District, and Virginia) are more than just Rock Creek Park and Shenandoah National Park.
The District’s Department of Parks and Recreation manages hundreds of parks.
Outside DC, parks managed at the county level include those in Arlington County, Fairfax County (including Huntley Meadows Park, which the Mason & Bailey Club visited), and Montgomery County (including Rachel Carson Conservation Park, also visited by the Club).
Prince George’s County parks fall under the regional Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC).
The well-loved hike-bike-commute Washington and Old Dominion Trail is part of the regional Nova Parks.
Zooming out again, consider state parks in Maryland and Virginia. Virginia has gamified visiting as many state parks as you can. I’m working on my 10-park badge.
And don’t forget privately-held, but open to the public, sites like The Nature Conservancy’s Fraser Preserve and Stronghold’s Sugarloaf Mountain.

*I know these organizations only by referral/search, not by firsthand field trip experience.

Who blue?

Lantana strigocamara, sometimes cultivated as a street planting, is only the sixth plant known to produce blue fruits through structural color, rather than pigment.

A reserve in Killarney

Rory Hodd looks at liverworts.

ID corner

I was on a discussion thread at iNaturalist for an observation of Aralia species in Catonsville, Md. The non-native Japanese Angelica Tree (A. elata) has been escaping from cultivation and is reported in several Maryland counties.

How to distinguish A. elata from the native Devil’s Walkingstick (A. spinosa) in winter? David Sibley’s guide says that A. elata is “less spiny,” but that doesn’t help very much.

Fortunately, Maraea Harris of Meadowlark Botanical Gardens pointed out for me (we were on an invasives removal work day) a cultivated example of A. elata, specifically the variety “Silver Umbrella” with variegated leaves (in the growing season, of course).

You can see that the younger stems (at left) are lightly armored, but the older trunks show only vestiges of their spines. This observation squares with a horticultural blog post from Milan Havlis.

Also of note: cultivars are grafted, and can revert to the wild type. I wonder how many of our escapes are from cultivars.

Yes, I know about the spots

Look what popped up in a bare patch in my weedy back yard: two sprigs of Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata).

Some links: 87

Trees and the three-lettered insects that munch on them:

To protect Eastern Hemlock (Tsuga candensis) from the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid (Adelges tsugae) (HWA), researchers are exploring natural genetic resistance, biological controls, and forestry techniques: Gabriel Popkin.
Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis) (EAB) is clobbering native ashes (Fraxinus spp.) in the eastern U.S. Could doomed trees be turned into commercially useful building materials? Yes, say Sasa Zivkovic and Leslie Lok.