Cooksonia: A Birthday Tribute

First off Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin. In honor of the giant of biology I thought about a short post to talk about a really cool plant.

Cooksonia sp. 

This early land plant was probably one of the first land plants. Growing sometime between the late Silurian and the early Devonian (about 430 mya!), it would mark the eventual colonization and dominance of land plants in our terrestrial ecosystems.

Cooksonia looks more like a lichen than it does current extant plants, and it lacked a vascular system and seeds or flowers (all of which came much much later).


Happy Birthday Mr. Darwin.


 

Hieracium murorum

We live in a time of great change. No longer do mountains and oceans limit the march of species across the globe. Humans have become a driver of plant range expansion (and retreat) more so than any other force on earth.

Hieracium mororum 

 Specimen: From Wetmore Landing, on a cobble shore near Lake Superior. North Central Marquette County North of Marquette. Date: 6.12.12.  Collected by Michael Rotter

Hieracium is a horribly difficult genus. This primarily European group is a far way from being resolved (if ever). The recent invasion to North America have complicated the picture of this group. Inbreeding, genetic bottle necks, and founder effects in North America make this a very difficult group. Even comparing our specimens to European ones are not always clear cut. H. mororum can be identified by the hairy basal leaves, yellow heads 5-8, and usually only 1 small cauline leaf. With any of the hawkweeds it is important to look at the local specimens and not strictly try to put it in a group. This specimen above is the first Marquette County collection of this European native.

Winter Botany Project 2013!

One of the hall marks of the North is the winter doldrums.  Any botanist up here has secret thoughts of leaving and not coming back around this time every year, and I am no exception. One thing we can comfort ourselves in is data entry and indoor plant ID.

So to make this winter a little better my goal until I see a violet blooming is to ID one plant a day. Most of these will come from my back log of pressed plants (The UP and also some Texas plants) but occasionally some specimens might come up from some of my friends throughout the country and the world!

So to kick it off here is the first plant of the year, appropriately a Viola! 

Viola cucullata 

Specimen from the Huron Mountain Club. Northwest Marquette County MI. In a moist hardwood stand. Date collected: 4/29/12. Collected by Dennis Riege.

This plant came to me from a researcher in the Huron Mountain Club who is studying vegetation changes in Northern forests. Anyhow since Northern Michigan is the local herbarium (Support your local herbarium!) he was kind enough to use us as the depository of his specimens. In exchange our herbarium assistant and myself are helping him with any plant ID. Violets are always tricky and its important to make a good collection if you are going to take it home. Roots, habit , mature and young leaves, well pressed flower are all really important for future ID. Luckily, when this specimen arrived it was in this condition.  

Marsh Violet is one of our common violets in moist hardwood forests (the only nice thing violets do to help you in their ID is they tend to sort themselves into habitats and not overlap that much). The ID is straight forward. The combination of large flowers, flowers that are above the leaves, habitat in hardwood forests, and the serrate edging on the leaves allow for a good place to start. Be careful there is albino flowers in this species, but they are rare. Also a strongly cordate leaf will distinguish this interesting beauty.

-Michen