11/4/2014 4:38 AM
Lomatium gormanii, salt and pepper, poor Richard; Apiaceae,
carrot family
This plant is probably 2 inches high.
010
I identify 5 plants in Drumheller springs park as Apiaceae
family, two other Lomatium genus, one Perideridia, [yampah], and a carrot. The
carrot is introduced. The others are native and in some respect edible.
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L. gormanii is the first plant to bloom in Drumheller Springs
Park
I saw Ranunculus glaberrimus, sagebrush butter cup in bloom
February 8, 2010, January 15, 2011, and not till March 14, 2012.
In 2010 I found 5 native plants, blooming in March.
Olsynium douglasii, grass widow
Fritillaria pudica, yellow bell
Lomatium triternatum, 9 leaf biscuitroot
Phlox caespitosa, tufted phlox
Erigeron compositus, cutleaf fleabane
In 2011 I found only O. douglasii in bloom in March, I
didn’t see the others till April
In 2012 I didn’t see any of the five till April.
I specify that ‘I found …’ because diligence is a problem. I
never go out every day. I never walk the whole park. However, I seem to find
the early plants in the same area every year.
I have not recorded the weather and that needs to be done. I
know that one year I saw R. glaberrimus buds early but snow and cold came late.
They were apparently killed and I didn’t see it bloom till quite late. I
suppose that was 2012.
The snow and cold don’t seem to effect L. gormanii.
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L. gormanii of Drumheller
Springs Park
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Lomatium gormanii rises from a thickened taproot. My
resources characterize it as globular. It’s round like a bulb but, apparently
it is not a bulb or a tuber. It is a root.
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L. gormanii may have single flower-stalk [peduncle] rise
from the root as in the flowers above or it may have several flower-stalks from
the same root as in the photo below.
Notice in the two photos above that there are no leaves on
the flower-stalk. Because they have no leaves they are scapes. The plant is
scapos. If there were leaves on the flower-stalks the leaves would be called
cauline leaves. The leaves of L. gormanii are basal leaves. They attach to the
flower-stalk at or below the ground.
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Gerald Carr has an excellent photo of a plant with four
flower-stalks complete with its root.
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I suppose the photo below is of a rather new plant. My
resources say of other Lomatium that it takes several years for them to bear
fruit. I suppose it takes years for them to develop their thickened roots.
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This must be a plant with a developed root. Flowers seem to
be emerging from the ground with the leaves. There’s plenty of reserve energy
for everybody.
Notice the sheath enclosing the base of the leaves and flower-stalks.
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No flower-stalks evident here. The sheath is prominent.
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The leaves are not characterized as basal leaves by my
resources but they are said to be attached to the flower stalk at or below the
ground.
The leaves are compound, there are leaflets off a main stem.
These are referred to as ternate, having three leaflets but L. gormanii leaves
are diverse.
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These leaves look rather fleshy
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Hard to see three leaflets here
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The next two photos
are front and back.
Notice the sheathing at the base of the petiole [the leaf
stem].
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In a photo above, 050, it seemed that flowers and leaves
were rising from the ground at the same time.
In the photos below the leaves are well developed and it
seems that the buds are rising from their axils. The enclosing sheaths
apparently serve the protection function provided by a calyx of sepals in other
flowers.
We will see similar sheathing when we look at the two
Allium, the onions.
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The leaves of L. gormanii are compound and the inflorescence
is compound. Its inflorescence is said to be a compound umbel. It is a lopsided
compound umbel. It has one long ray.
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You can see, here, that the umbel is very small, the
umbelets are smaller and the florets on the umbelets are very, very small.
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A flower-stalk thickens at the top. The thickened, sometimes
flattened, sometimes cupped region at the top of the flower-stalk is called the
receptacle. If an inflorescence has a solitary flower, the flower sits on the
receptacle. If the inflorescence is an umbel, several rays rise from the
receptacle, the rays thicken at the tip and provide a receptacle for a flower
to sit on. If the inflorescence is a compound umbel, another set of rays with
flowers rise from the second receptacle thicken at the tip and have a flower
sitting on the receptacle.
Diagrams – umbel, compound umbel
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The circle of bracts on the receptacle of the flower-stalk [The
bracts in this location are called phyllaries, the collection of bracts is
called the involucre.] will not be present on L. gormanii or any of the other Lomatium.
Lomatium will have the circle of bracts on the secondary rays [The collected
bracts at this point is called the involucel. If there is a special name for
the bracts of an involucel I don’t know it.].
My photos show the flower-stalk with no bracts at the
receptacle [no involucre, no phyllaries]. They do not show bracts on every
umbelet. There are long narrow bracts on the long ray in the photo below. They
don’t circle the stem [pedicel]. Most of the umbelets seem to have no involucel
bracts. None of my photos show complete involucels.
The Carr brothers photos do have photos of complete involucels.
Gerald Carr has a photo of an umbelet with complete ring of
bracts fused at the base:
Robert Carr has a close-up photo of an umbel in which most
of the umbelets have a complete involucel.
The cluster of flowers at the top of the secondary ray is an
umbellule or an umbellulate
or an umbelet. Umbellule is my favorite of the choices to say but
umbelet is the easiest to type.
The umbelet in the photo below is held in ordinary tweezers.
It is small.
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The florets are very, very small
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The petals are incurved and remain incurved till they fall
away.
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I see no sign of an outer perianth, a calyx with sepals. So
I suppose we should use the term tepals. But the botanists use the term petals
for L. gormanii.
The ovary is inferior, it is below the petals, not enclosed
by them. A superior ovary would be enclosed by the petals. [And there would
usually be protective sepals, a calyx.]
The inferior ovary is enclosed by the receptacle. The
enclosure is called an hypanthium. It’s a nice word but it seems like
unnecessary vocabulary. It’s just a receptacle with a cup shape.
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The two transparent styles indicate a pistil [female
reproductive organ] made up of two carpels.
In these two photos the pistil seems to be maturing before
the stamen, if so, the female reproductive organ is receptive to pollen before
the male reproductive organ is producing pollen. It is ready for cross
fertilization, fertilization from another plant.
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There should be five stamen. A stamen, the male reproductive
organs, have two parts, a column holding up a pod. The column is called a
filament, the pod, divided in two, is the anther. The floret on the right seems
to have four stamen with anthers covered in pollen, one anther still looks
black [my sources call them purple]. I don’t know how the pollen gets out of
the anther but I think some anthers split open and some are porous. If that’s
true, these anthers must be porous.
The anthers are reaching as high as or higher than the
stigma on the styles. [Stigma, the device at the top of the style for capturing
pollen, often merely sticky.]
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Digression on cross fertilization
It’s a little strange to speak of plants having a
preference, to personify them but why not? And who’s in charge, here, anyway?
Plants seem to prefer cross fertilization as if they believed
that greater genetic diversity was a good thing. Species that only practiced self-fertilization
and other reproductive functions that reproduce a replica of the plant have
less chance of survival when subjected to environmental change because the offspring
are less diverse.
One way to improve the chance that a plant will be cross-fertilized
rather than self-fertilized is to have the female organs mature first. Pollen
from the plant will not be available to the mature female reproductive organ.
In an inflorescence, such at the compound umbel of L.
gormanii, there are three opportunities to be fertilized, cross-fertilization,
pollen from another plant, fertilization from a different flower on the same
plant and self-fertilization by pollen from the same flower.
Fertilization by a different flower of the same plant
provides less genetic diversity than fertilization from a different plant but
there is some.
L. gormanii seems to be a plant with a good chance that it
might bloom so early in the year that no pollinators are available, at least
some years. So it is a good thing that self-fertilization is available, if all
else fails.
And it seems that the reproductive maturity is timed and the
organs are arranged so self-fertilization is only a last resort.
L. gormanii produces both hermaphroditic flowers, flowers
containing both reproductive organs and male [staminate] flowers. One of the
subtle instances of timing is, my resources say, that L. gormanii plants early
in the year produce a higher proportion of male flowers. Damn. I’m depending on
my memory, big mistake. It seems logical that the proportion of hermaphroditic
flowers should be greater early in the year when self-fertilization is more
likely to be necessary.
The photo below seems to be a photo of a male floret. The
five stamen are there, but there does not seem to be two styles rising through
the crack in the stylopodium. You never heard of a stylopodium? How strange.
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You probably never heard of a nectary, either.
Some, but not all, flowering plants produce nectar to
attract insects, birde or bats so they will bump into their anthers and get
pollen on their body and so they will bump into the stigma on their styles and
pollen from other plants will stick to the stigma, germinate, grow down the
style and fertilize the ovum.
In many flowers the nectary is just a little pond surrounding
the ovary at the bottom of the cup of the flower.
In the plants of the Apiaceae family, the nectary, the
stylopodium, is the wrinkled, purple thing, divided into two lobes, sitting on
top of the ovary. I think only Apiaceae family plants use the stylopodium but
I’m not sure of that.
The two styles connecting the stigmas to the two ovaries
stick up through the crack between the two lobes.
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The hypanthium, the coat covering and protecting the two
ovaries looks strongly ribbed in the photos above.
I prefer the description of an hypanthium that says it is
the receptacle grown up around the ovary. But some sources say an hypanthium is
the fused lobes of a calyx, fused sepals. The ribbed look of the hypanthium in
these photos gives that description credence. However, if the calyx is just an
extension the the receptacle it seems like nit picking to say one description
is right and the other is wrong.
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I wonder if these were male florets. There is a large
stylopodium to attract pollinators to their anthers, if there were any, but
there doesn’t seem to be a viable ovary. I suppose they could be merely stunted
flowers.
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The fruit of L. gormanii is a schizocarp. [Hoped you were
done with hard words? Sorry.]
A schizocarp is made up of two or more fused mericarps. L.
gormanii has two mericarps.
This seems to me to be another unnecessary proliferation of
vocabulary. Schizocarp is, in effect, another word for pistil, the female
reproductive system, after it has matured and dried. Mericarp is another word
for carpel, mature, dry … with only one seed.
The description of what happens to the schizocarp is a
little difficult for me to understand:
Start with these definitions:
Mericarp: An individual carpel of a schizocarp. Contains one seed.
Schizocarp: A fruit made up of 2 or more carpels. The carpels
split apart at maturity but are indehiscent [Indehiscent fruit
do not open exposing seeds on maturity. Dehiscent fruit open on maturity.]. The carpels contain one seed. The carpels
are called ‘mericarps’.
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From the on-line Dictionary of Botany:
schizocarp
|
A dry fruit that is derived from two
or more one-seeded carpels that divide into one-seeded units at maturity. The
one-seeded units may be achenes, berries, follicles, mericarps, nutlets, or
samaras. This form of fruit is intermediate between the dehiscent and
indehiscent types. See also cremocarp.
|
cremocarp
|
A type of *schizocarp,
derived from two fused carpels, that divides into two one-seeded units at
maturity. It is typical of the Umbelliferae [An older term for the Apiaceae
family.].
|
mericarp
|
We must be looking at schizocarps, here.
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And these must be schizocarps
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This might be one schizocarp and one mericarp. These are
about 1/8th inch in length. They are large ones. Even so, they are
far too small for me to manipulate … to experiment with.
I don’t know if or how they come apart. I can’t get at the
seed.
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Jepson Herbarium doesn’t treat Lomatium gormanii but they do
treat the Apiaceae family and the Lomatium genus.
They say of the fruit of Lomatium: “… compressed front to
back; … oil tubes 1-several per rib-interval; fruit axis divided to base.”
I can’t substantiate any of this with my photographs of L.
gormanii. It would be interesting to know more about the oil tubes.
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Some online collections
of photos of L. Gormanii and other research resources:
Paul Slichter
Photos, text
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Robert Carr
Photos only
*
Gerald Carr
Photos only
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The Carr brothers provide two levels of enlargement. Click
on a photo, click again.
*
University of
Washington’s Burke Herbarium has a larger collection of L. gormanii
photos and a textual plant description. It takes a little doing to get to the
photos.
Go to Browse Plants
Click on plant scientific names
Click on L for Lomatium
Scroll down to Lomatium
Click on Lomatium Gormanii
Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
2 levels of enlargement, click on the thumbnail once, click
again.
To get back to the collection of thumbnail photos, use the
back arrow.
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Calphotos, UC Berkeley does have a few bad photos of L.
gormanii. They may be a better resource for other plants.
No text. But see Jepson Herbarium, UC Berkeley.
*
L. gormanii was not
treated by any other of my resources.
Below is a short discussion of other resources for plant
research:
However, one thing to remember is that they always have a
nice drawing of plants they do treat. Sometimes their drawings are more useful
than photographs.
The drawings are not adequately labeled.
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Jepson Herbarium, UC Berkeley
Does not treat L. gormanii but they do treat the Apiaceae
Family the Lomatium genus extensively.
When you search a species you always get information about
the family and the genus.
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Flora of North America
Flora of North America does not treat L. gormanii. They are
sometimes the best source for information on a species but their language is
jargon at its worst. I sometimes suspect they don’t even use their jargon
accurately. It’s possible that my on-line dictionaries are not adequate to the
task.
*
Does not treat L. Gormanii.
They want you to buy a CD with more information than they
provide online. They are a good recourse for information about Native American
use of plants for food, medicine etc.
I don’t have the current CD. My CD is clumsy and hard to use
and I have to use it on an old laptop … so it doesn’t get used.
*
None of the following resources treat L. Gormanii but I
always check them for information:
http://www.swcoloradowildflowers.com/search_by_common%20name.htm#Top
of page
Wisconsin Master Gardener
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