Sprouting acorns—who knew?

I’ve been stalling on this post for quite a while, wanting to give it special attention, because I was so struck by these. Couldn’t decide which images to use, in what order--real hand-wringing!

I was wandering around in the woods as usual, in mid-April, looking for things (mushrooms, if possible), and I noticed all these RED things on the ground, deep red spots all over the place. At first I just thought it was some leftover pieces of acorns, I don’t know, changing colors like a piece of fading fruit, until I got my face down closer, and found yet another whole new thing going on.

These look innocent enough, except for that startling red…

       

               
I don’t know what I thought about how acorns sprouted in the woods, but it certainly wasn’t this! I guess I thought a bunch of nice pale brown acorns fell, most were eaten, and a few sprouted like any other run-of-the-mill seed. What surprised me were the colors (many), and the shapes (as usual). Also, there were a lot of them. Every several inches there was another one! I took precisely one million pictures, then kicked myself later (only a little) for not taking more, and for not spending just a little more time getting better shots…tricky to get everything in focus with shoots up there and acorn down there…       



I wonder what those tiny white spots are (above). Nice touch!

Then I started to run into stuff like this:


Okay, here is when I began to realize things were getting a little out of hand. Which is the shoot and where is the root, and what are those sea-slug-like-like ruffles? And everything’s all tangled up and wild colors!



The wiggly red things are not the first leaves! They’re connected to the cotyledons. The shoot with the first true leaves is between the two flat wiggly things.

Why is everything red?



I actually had to stop and look at this for a while. If that’s the leaf/shoot sticking straight up, then what’s all that other stuff? I had to discuss it with a friend, who helped me untangle the structure.



This one (above) is waving one cotyledon in the air.

As near as I can figure, with acorns (at least this model) everything happens at once. Maybe since it’s got so much food available from the big fat nut meat (and it needs to move fast before someone eats it), it puts out a root and shoot with true leaves at the same time, ready to go, all the while taking sustenance from the big acorn nut (the cotyledon, which is like a placenta, really), so it’s all just *blam!*, get everything going all at once! It’s pretty much like any other seed sprouting, but the cotyledons are extra large, and they seem to not have to leave the shell for everything to work out.

The term “cotyledon” was coined by 17th-century physician Marcello Malphigi (“bad piggy”).

But, the operating words here are “as near as I can figure.” I don’t know any acorn experts yet.

A few more:



See, the shoot is already up, and those red arms are attached to the cotyledons, still in the shell.

Lastly:



Take that, Georgia O’Keeffe! Kids, go ask your parents what that means.

So you walk around thinking you have a basic idea of what’s going on out there, until you look closer. Well, good luck with that! Look where that got me.

More forest offerings, spring 2011 (almost everything up to late April)

After these there’s still a few more installments coming, of things that deserve their own posts, before I’m current. In the meantime here’s even more of the late leftovers. I can’t help it if there’s so much going on out there!

Here’s this year’s Virginia bluebell buds:

I tell you, I can’t stand it. The buds are this other-worldly opal/purple color, in that great unexpected shape, and then the flowers open very nonchalantly in a completely different color. But it’s the bud shapes that really get me.

Here’s some Goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis). First time I’ve seen it. Then, of course, I started to see it everywhere.


Oh, and check this out:

Blooming even before the leaves are unfurled!

Here is a Gray Tree frog (Hyla versicolor).

Or it could be Cope’s Gray tree frog, H. chrysoscelis, but you can’t tell them apart in the field (well, their calls are a little different), but H. versicolor has an extra set of chromosomes! So they sometimes call it Tetraploid Tree frog! But never mind that, they can camouflage themselves, like chameleons (but slower)! I’d like to see that, but I think I was pretty lucky to get this close at all.

From a little distance I thought it was a lump of woody polypore or something, on a dead tree. I walked up to see it and it was a frog instead. I actually got this close (this isn’t a zoom shot), through sneaking.
He finally broke, and jumped away, which is when I discovered the yellow on his hind legs:

Yet another thing I had no idea about.

Here’s a tiny little snake I also sneaked up on:


No, I mean tiny, he was barely as thick as a pencil--

Storeria dekayi

He saw me first, and started to go away (made noise in leaves, gave himself away) but then slowed and stopped, so I began my sneaking. I don’t know why he let me get this close.
Its common name is "brown snake." Just "brown snake." Or "Midland brown snake," or "Dekay's brown snake." They don't get much longer than 12", and they eat mostly worms, and slugs, snails and soft-bodied insects. I know from his round pupils that he is not venomous (at least, that rule works in Missouri, barring someone's venomous pet snake having escaped). Here I confess that I did not know until recently that there are several tiny Missouri snakes, just because they're small doesn't mean they're babies.

One last thing. I keep finding may apples that have grown through a hole in a dead leaf as they emerge in spring, and they get pretty tall with this leaf stuck around them:


And yes, of course I free them by taking the leaf off, but not before I take a look at this:



 Cameras with macro-settings are the best thing in the whole world.

Young Mayapple leaf surprises

Once again, I am struck by how much I missed in all my earlier days in the forest, before I got completely consumed with macro photography and started to see things differently. "Oh, look, there's a mayapple," I'd say, having what turned out to be a sort of vague vision of them. I had seen the emerging young leaves before, when they were still twisted around the stem like a little rod ("candling"), but I had never noticed that sometimes there is one leaf, and sometimes there are two.

A single "candling" mayapple leaf, cool in and of itself

 But the double-leaved ones are pretty awesome:

Podopyllum peltatum, two leaves.

Double-leafed mayapple, with fuzzy leaf edges.

 

Don't know what to caption this, I am tongue-tied.

Here's a thing I read somewhere: "On plants with a single leaf, the petiole joins the leaf blade in the middle, creating an umbrella-like appearance; on plants with a pair of leaves, the petioles join the leaf blades toward the inner margin of each leaf blah blah blah blah blah." Well, that just says that sometimes there is one leaf and sometimes there are two, sorry. There was more info from the U. of Arkansas Agriculture Extension Service: "During the first several years, the mayapple leaf is round and unbranched, too juvenile to flower. When adulthood is reached, the stem...terminates in a "Y"-shaped fork with two leaves." So it has to do with how old the plant is. Now I know.

There's some other cool stuff about their lives on that site--mayapples don't just germinate, show up in spring and *poof* there's a flower and then fruit...it's a bit more complicated. I'll just say that they can count to four.