So we do.
The Creek has flowed for longer than I would have thought.
The stones know nothing about droughts, though.
They've risen from out of their subterranean birthing ground tens and hundreds of tens of thousands of years in the passing. Sandstones, mudstones, shale, and limestone. Press of the weight of ocean and land, shaping and solidifying the remains of other stones themselves worn down and passing from up stream of ancient rivers. Or ocean lives passing and slowly falling to pile one on another until their bones dissolve and fuse into the stuff of our broken hillside. One way or the other, they've come to rest here, and now they fill my dreams of a new creation piling one on the other until a stone wall rises from Creek waters or arches over the stream, but then winds itself like an undulating serpent dipping down beneath the surface and then rising ten feet away to continue its curving path uphill, arching and dipping along the way.
That's the art project I imagine, anyway.
Today we played with some of the rocks in the Stonefield, still tossing the ideas of a massive project.
Someday, this pathetic little experiment of an Arch will rise in greater magnitude and uniformity of stone to become part of that rock-serpent that will make its way from Creek, around trees, behind an orchard, up to the house, through the house, and back out the other side to climb up Whitman's Rough where it disappears among cool boulders, fern, cacti, and mountain lion scat.
This morning, Richard and Harlin met me under the Oak for coffee, croissants, and talk of plants and philosophy. Part of the discussion turned to the difference between Nature perceived as a long list of "characters" or nature as a narrative in which the characters display all the richness of relationships in a story. These details about leaf vein, glume, awn, and carpel contribute to the same story in which we encounter those sedimentary stones or those desiccated pieces of hillside scat.
So here are some chapters from the story. (When time avails, we hope to include many more of the letters from Harlin.)
The plant in the two photos below looks and describes like Abutilon incanum in my field guide. I don’t think the sample I have works in the Correll key; I get to something growing in the Rio Grande valley (but there is an A. incanum listed). The Shinners’ key leads to a plant that is not in the Correll book at all – A. fruticosum. I found a reference to an article written in 1983 by someone named Joan Fryxell, and hiked over to the [University of Texas] Life Science library today. What she reports is that the plant that grows in the hill country is the same as a plant that grows in tropical and northern Africa, Arabia, southern Persia, Pakistan and northwestern India. That plant was described in 1832 and its name (A. fruticosum) has precedence. Notice in the drawing that there are more than 5 carpels in the fruit which is apparently a big deal.
Silver Dwarf Morning-Gl
The Creek has flowed for longer than I would have thought.
The stones know nothing about droughts, though.
They've risen from out of their subterranean birthing ground tens and hundreds of tens of thousands of years in the passing. Sandstones, mudstones, shale, and limestone. Press of the weight of ocean and land, shaping and solidifying the remains of other stones themselves worn down and passing from up stream of ancient rivers. Or ocean lives passing and slowly falling to pile one on another until their bones dissolve and fuse into the stuff of our broken hillside. One way or the other, they've come to rest here, and now they fill my dreams of a new creation piling one on the other until a stone wall rises from Creek waters or arches over the stream, but then winds itself like an undulating serpent dipping down beneath the surface and then rising ten feet away to continue its curving path uphill, arching and dipping along the way.
That's the art project I imagine, anyway.
Today we played with some of the rocks in the Stonefield, still tossing the ideas of a massive project.
Someday, this pathetic little experiment of an Arch will rise in greater magnitude and uniformity of stone to become part of that rock-serpent that will make its way from Creek, around trees, behind an orchard, up to the house, through the house, and back out the other side to climb up Whitman's Rough where it disappears among cool boulders, fern, cacti, and mountain lion scat.
This morning, Richard and Harlin met me under the Oak for coffee, croissants, and talk of plants and philosophy. Part of the discussion turned to the difference between Nature perceived as a long list of "characters" or nature as a narrative in which the characters display all the richness of relationships in a story. These details about leaf vein, glume, awn, and carpel contribute to the same story in which we encounter those sedimentary stones or those desiccated pieces of hillside scat.
So here are some chapters from the story. (When time avails, we hope to include many more of the letters from Harlin.)
The plant in the two photos below looks and describes like Abutilon incanum in my field guide. I don’t think the sample I have works in the Correll key; I get to something growing in the Rio Grande valley (but there is an A. incanum listed). The Shinners’ key leads to a plant that is not in the Correll book at all – A. fruticosum. I found a reference to an article written in 1983 by someone named Joan Fryxell, and hiked over to the [University of Texas] Life Science library today. What she reports is that the plant that grows in the hill country is the same as a plant that grows in tropical and northern Africa, Arabia, southern Persia, Pakistan and northwestern India. That plant was described in 1832 and its name (A. fruticosum) has precedence. Notice in the drawing that there are more than 5 carpels in the fruit which is apparently a big deal.
So, yet another example of how nature is something that is fully appreciated only in the mind. I have seen Indian Mallow for decades including in my back yard and yet now I will see more than before. I will see a distribution map in my mind and that map will show this plant growing in all those places on that unlikely list (Texas, Africa, Persia). Mysterious geography is a source of wonder at all the accidents and luck that leads up to the present.
Speaking of which, the cousin to this plant is A. incanum which apparently doesn’t actually grow in Texas at all. It grows in “dry hills and arroyos from Arizona and Baja California to Sinaloa, and (pink phase only) in Hawaii”. The author of the article notes that the seeds float and the currents are the likely source of this particular Indian Mallow finding its way to Hawaii. HH
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| Indian Mallow (Abutilon fruticosum) |
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I think that the people who make a living looking at dry flattened plants have a way to moisten them before working on them. No doubt that cuts down on the number of tiny hard seeds that are ejected into earth orbit when a hard metal object is pressed against them. It might also allow delicate parts to be bent. In the case of this plant, the dried version just about tuned to dust when I tried to see what it was made of. Thus some of the key following was me trying to remember what it looked like before disintegrating. Still, there were a number of extant bits of evidence which led me to the name Evolvulus sericeus.
As you can see from the photograph below, I just wasn’t having much luck. Even the photograph was trying to self-destruct. But you just might be able to make out that one of the styles makes a “Y” shape. There are two of these “Y’s” and therefore there are 4 endpoints.
This is another one which we can look for next spring and double check the evidence. HH
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Silver Dwarf Morning-Gl
There were two large clumps of grass growing close to your bird blind [Harlin's term for the privy we once constructed on the quick and have used since with frequency] on July 2nd which had inflorescences. I feel that large objects do require a bit more attention than small objects since one is more likely to trip over the large ones and since it is more likely that they will be the center of a conversation. So, I tried to find out a little something about both of them. As I was taking a closer look at this one I got that déjà vu feeling, and it seems this grass is in the category of “same but different” with respect to an earlier grass I found at the creek. Below are comparison photos: Elymus canadensis and Elymus-virginicus. Both have large 3-dimensional glumes and the pairs of spikelets alternate in zigzag fashion up the axis of the inflorescence. However the glumes of the Virginia wildrye curve out more and there are more ribs on them.
In the fourth picture below are two spikelets from the inside and if you were to pull the spikelets apart you would see 3 or 4 florets in zigzag fashion along the rachis of the spikelet. So, in the spikelet there is the usual zigzag axis with a floret at each angle, and in the inflorescence there is a zigzag axis with two spikelets at each angle. Of course, in the spikelet the zigzag is flattened out pretty much.
The second picture below shows the flower head on July 2nd, but the examples on the internet show inflorescences which look longer and most seem to emerge more from the top sheath. Here is an example: http://www.kswildflower.org/
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| Canada Wildrye (Elymus canadensis) |
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| Virginia Wildrye (Elymus virginicus) |
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| Virginia Wildrye (Elymus virginicus) |
This is the other large grass close to the bird blind. The first picture below shows the edge of the bird blind in the background and gives a somewhat recognizable view of this grass. Here is web photo showing about the same view of a Panicum coloratum --http://plants.usda.gov/java/
However, up close we see that which is well-represented at the creek: the familiar look of the grass tribe Paniceae (third photo below). The floret on the right shows the upper floret’s hard lemma curved around the flat lid-like palea. On the left is the whole spikelet with the (lower) staminate floret on the left and the (upper) floret with the seed on the right between the short 1st glume and the longer 2nd glume. This link has a photograph of some upper florets: http://www.oardc.ohio-state.
The second photo shows spikelets on their pedicels.
In my “virtual” nature watching, I guess you could say the pattern is (1) find It, (2) name it, and then (3) find a story about it. In this case I found a journal article about grasses in the Serengeti Plains of Africa from where this grass was imported. The story is that a grass being munched on causes it to incorporate more rock-hard silica in its leaves which discourages herbivores from eating it, which in turn does the natural selection number on animal stomachs, etc. Here is an excerpt that invokes the image of your grass in Marble Falls out there with the lions and giraffes in Africa.
From “SILICA AS A DEFENSE AGAINST HERBIVORY AND A GROWTH PROMOTOR IN AFRICAN GRASSES” by McNaughton, et. al.
“A laboratory experiment was done to determine patterns of silica accumulation under defined conditions. It was 24 factorial of the following design: (1) Origin: plants were from the heavily grazed short grasslands of the southeastern Serengeti Plains and a comparatively lightly grazed medium-height grasslands near Seronera, in the center of the Serengeti region. (2) Species: Eustachys paspaloides (Vahl) Lanza Mattei from both locations, Andropogon greenwayi Napper from the short grasslands, and Panicum coloratum L. from the mid-grass site.”
So, next time you’re taking your time in the bird blind you can look out on a scene from the Serengeti Plains of Africa. HH
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Kleingrass (Panicum coloratum) |
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Kleingrass (Panicum coloratum) |
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Kleingrass (Panicum coloratum) |
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