it was already a shade over eighty degrees ( fahrenheit ) in my back yard when i got home form the campus garden about quarter to eight this morning...
after yesterday's heat and in preparation for today's i went out to soak the beds thoroughly...which i did...
looking around i found five tillered maize plants...
and some really nice support roots doing their job...
that was not the most interesting discovery of the day however...in the citizen's police academy alumni bed...along with the collards...i found the non-native and invasive perennial carolina horse nettle with all its little ( and, word of warning, vicious ) spikes...the discovery did not end there however...
when i backed up from the bed, there was one in full bloom...
and when i moved a bit farther into the lot i found four more in bloom...ready to make fruits...even if they don't succeed in going to seed they are not going anywhere...a deeply rooted perennial they will be back every year and, eventually, succeed in seeding more...clearly the original individuals which were confined to the old biology club bed have moved out to colonize the lot...i have ( often ) pointed out that these plants are well beyond their native range of the southeastern seaboard...they should not overwinter here but clearly have...a new environmental niche...and just one more line of evidence for climate change being an actual event, not some liberal or chinese conspiracy...we verge on a rant which we may reserve for a different blog...let us move on to nightshade morphology...
these are carolina horse nettle blooms...
and this is a potato blossom...aside from the color ( which varies from variety to variety of potato...i am unsure of color variation in horse nettle...i can only remember seeing them bloom in this color...however i haven't see that many ) the salient difference is that the segments of the pistil of the horse nettle are separated while those of the potato bloom are closed...not that you need that...the thorns on the horse nettle are a dead giveaway.
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