Mountain lady's slipper is another native of western North America, with its range extending east as far as south central Montana and north central Wyoming. Curiously, despite its main range extending as far north as central British Columbia in the interior and only to a small portion of southwestern British Columbia along the coast, it can also be found in the Alaska Panhandle -- a discontinuous distribution with a minimum gap of 750km.

The Flora of North America lists Cypripedium montanum as having a habitat of "mesic to dry (rarely wet) coniferous, deciduous, and broadleaf evergreen forests, openings, and thickets, around shrubs on open slopes". Today's photographs were taken along the exposed banks of a roadside, and all of the half-dozen or so plants I observed on this trip were covered in gravel-dust. More photographs of this species are available from the Burke Museum: Cypripedium montanum.

In Daniel Moerman's exhaustive Native American Ethnobotany, only one reference is made to a First Nations use of this species. Members of the Okanagan-Colville Nation purportedly used an infusion of the leaves and stalks as a reproductive aid (the infusion was "taken by a pregnant woman to have a small baby"). Source reference for this was a 1980 report by Nancy Turner and colleagues of the Royal British Columbia Museum, "Ethnobotany of the Okanagan-Colville Indians of British Columbia and Washington. As an incidental aside, Dr. Turner worked as a summer student at UBC Botanical Garden sometime in the 1970s.

Lastly, another note for local readers. I'll be presenting on Monday night (number five of at least seven this month), this time on the topic of "Plants of Southern Interior British Columbia" to the Langley Garden Club. If you'd like to attend, the meeting begins at 7:30pm in Murrayville Hall at 21667 48th Avenue (there will likely be a small guest fee to attend).

This is a plant that is at its best in tough environments--as long as it has good drainage! Commonly known as hairy manzanita, Arctostaphylos columbiana is found along the Coast-Cascade Ranges from Sonoma County, California, north to Vancouver Island and southwest coastal mainland British Columbia, with the largest population in southwestern Oregon. It is found primarily in evergreen forests and requires fire to break seed dormancy and maximize germination.

Hairy manzanita hybridizes with Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (kinnikinnick) to produce Arctostaphylos × media. It also hybridizes with Arctostaphylos nevadensis (pinemat manzanita ) in the Mount Hood region of Oregon, where ranges of the two species overlap. Manzanita is Spanish for "little apples" alluding to the appearance of the small, brown fruits. Some native people reputedly ate the berries, although they are said to cause severe constipation.

A note for local readers by Daniel: Speaking of southwest Oregon, I'll be presenting tonight (late notice, I know) at the Native Plant Society of British Columbia South Coast meeting, held at VanDusen Botanical Garden. The topic is "A Botanical Journey through the Siskiyou Mountains", and I'll be presenting with (occasional BPotD contributor) Ron Long and Virginia Skilton. Meeting starts at 7pm, hope to see you there!

Thank you to Eric in SF@Flickr (also of Orchid Photos.org) for submitting today's photograph (original image | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool).

Native to Mexico and northern South America, Crataegus mexicana is one of 135-280 species of hawthorns (the wide range is indicative of an ongoing taxonomic argument). The species pictured here, commonly called Mexican hawthorn, can often be found under the scientific name Crataegus pubescens, but that name has since been rejected in favour of Crataegus mexicana.

Mexicans often call this species tejocote. Many food products, like concentrated pulp, jam, jellies, and marmalades can be processed from this fruit, making it of economical importance. Some of the largest plantations of Crataegus mexicana flourish in Mexico, where upwards of 24 000 tons/year are produced. Cultivated forms of the tree can be nearly thornless and large-fruited, whereas the wild species is generally thorny and small-fruited.

Thank you to Stephen Buchan@Flickr for supplying today's photograph (original image | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool) and the following summary of the plant community in the image:

"Tall, straight Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) forming an open canopy with birch (Betula sp.). The luxuriant ground flora includes bracken (Pteridium aquilinum), blaeberry (Vaccinium myrtillus) and heather (Calluna vulgaris), not to mention abundant mosses and lichens."

Abernethy Forest is located on the southern fringe of the Spey Valley to the north of the Cairngorms in the eastern highlands of Scotland. It is a remnant of the ancient Caledonian Forest, which constituted the westernmost outpost of the boreal forest in Europe. Believed to have formed at the end of the last ice age, the Caledonian Forest is estimated to have covered 15,000 square kilometers. Today, approximately 1% remains spread throughout a handful of isolated locations.

However, the forest is being extended southwards by both natural regeneration and restorative reforestation, a growing movement in Scotland. During my time as a tree planter in British Columbia, I remember when tree planting in Scotland would become a hot topic in planting camps; many planters set out overseas to reforest the rolling hills of Scotland.

Botany resource link (added by Daniel): Eva Johansson, of West Kootenay Plants, sent along the following link to my attention, and I think it's very worthwhile of sharing: Fritillaria imperialis (aka imperial crown) via Poemas del río Wang.

Thanks to Lotus Johnson aka ngawangchodron@Flickr for submitting today's photo (original image | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool).

Prominently featured in this photograph are the cyathia (single: cyathium) of woodspurge. The cyathium is a kind of "false flower" consisting of a cup-shaped involucre bearing several minute stamens (male flowers) and a pistillate flower consisting of an ovary on a long stalk (pedicel). These features are characteristic of every inflorescence in the genus Euphorbia (and its closest relatives), and are found nowhere else in the plant kingdom.

Researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew have studied the origins of the cyathium and concluded that it evolved from a more open grouping of flowers called a thyrse. In the thyrse of Euphorbia's ancestors, the terminal female flower was surrounded by cymes of male flowers. With this kind of precursor, researchers presume that the cyathia were eventually formed by a strong condensation of the inflorescence. One of the conclusions derived from this study was that the cyathium is neither a flower nor an inflorescence, but rather a "hybrid" in which regulatory genes that normally control features of individual flowers have overlapped into control of the inflorescence.

Thank you to Brent Miller aka foliosus@Flickr who submitted today's photograph and inspired today's Hallowe'en entry (original image | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool)!.

Historically, Hallowe'en is thought to have its origins in Samhain, a Celtic festival marking the end of the "lighter half" & the beginning of the "darker half" in the Gaulish calendar. What better to mark the arrival of the "darker half" of the year than this haunting beauty, Tacca chantrieri. Native to southeast Asia, Tacca chantrieri carries the mischievous common names of bat or devil flower. Bat flower is a reference to the dark bracts with prominent venation, while devil flower refers to the filaments that can grow to 70cm, terminating in a "forked tail".

A menacing reputation follows this captivating, and somewhat unsettling, flower. Some people believe that the strange "eyes" appear to follow you around the room. Superstitions in southeast Asia include a belief that it is unlucky to look into the eyes of Tacca chantrieri and / or a belief that it brings death close to oneself and one's family.

For more photographs, see Tacca chantrieri at the Wikimedia Commons.

Daniel adds: I wanted to let you know that the garden's web site will be unavailable on Monday, November 2 beginning at ~9am PST. We are upgrading the server. I hope the outage is short, but it's impossible to predict what we may need to troubleshoot to get everything up and running again.

If anyone is wondering what the term gregarious means in a mycological context, Daniel's photographs today do a fairly good job of illustrating it. Macrotyphula juncea is a relatively widespread, yet under-reported fungus, documented across both hemispheres at diverse longitudinal gradients. According to David Aurora's Mushrooms Demystified, it is typically found on decaying leaf litter. Here in the garden, we found it atop maple leaves in late October.

This genus falls within the fungal phylum Basidiomycota, better known as the mushrooms. While Macrotyphula juncea does not look like a typical mushroom, what you are seeing in the corresponding photographs are above-ground "fruiting bodies" that bear the same characteristic spore-bearing structures (basidia) as all members of the phylum. The solitary, thread-like fruiting bodies of this species are less than a millimeter in diameter and are observed in our massive population to approach 10 centimeters in height. While their surfaces appear remarkably smooth to the naked eye, under the microscope, you can see that it is entirely covered by spore-bearing basidia.

Can you eat it? In David Aurora's infamous Mushrooms Demystified, the edibility of Macrotyphula juncea is described by the author as "utterly irrelevant--a couple hundred would be needed for a mouthful!".

Thank you to my fellow classmate Nell Gasiewicz for snapping these pictures on our weekly plant walk.

Commonly known as burning bush or winged euonymus for its corky "wings", Euonymus alatus was introduced to the US from Asia around 1860 for use as an ornamental shrub. In fact, people were so taken by its striking autumn colour that highway departments and parkway planters across the northeastern United States used Euonymus alatus as a divider in hedges and as foundation plantings. By the 1960s, burning bush had escaped cultivation and is now considered an invasive species in some of these areas, crowding out and outcompeting native species in the woodlands of New Hampshire, Connecticut and Virginia, along with parts of Pennsylvania and Illinois.

The good news for some locations, however, is that Euonymus alatus is not considered invasive in an urban context or in wet climates where the seeds are likely to rot before germinating.

Wallonia, and especially the Liège province, includes among its botanical highlights a rare endemic plant, "Joubarbe d'Aywaille". The taxon is known from a single locality, the Heid des Gattes in Aywaille, in the Amblève valley between Soa and Sougné-Remouchamps.

Dr A. L. S. Lejeune (1779-1858), from Verviers, was the first to mention the taxon in 1813 in the Supplément de la Flore de Spa (p. 310), where one can read: Sempervivum montanum minus Decand. "Se trouve sur les rochers près de Sougné". Between 1825 and 1830, Lejeune and Courtois edited the Choix de plantes de la Belgique. In the 15th issue published in 1829; this endemic plant from Aywaille appears under the name Sempervivum montanum L.

The status of the taxon remained unchanged until 1873 when, following a meeting of the Botanical Society of France held in Belgium, Edouard Morren (1833-1886), a professor at University of Liège famous for his works on the Bromeliaceae, publishes a note about the botanical history in the Liège area and the Aywaille Sempervivum. In 1873, he also publishes (in the journal La Belgique Horticole), a second note including two colour figures (today's illustrations), wherein he describes the taxon as new variety of Sempervivum funckii, that is, Sempervivium funckii var. aqualiense.

Bibliography:

• Morren E., 1873. - Note sur la joubarbe d'Aywaille. Sempervivum funckii Br. var. aqualiense. La Belgique Horticole 23:161-166
• Lambinon J., 1985. - n° 11280 - Sempervivum funckii F. Braun ex Koch var. aqualiense E. Morren. Soc. Ech. Pl. Vasc. Eur. Bass. Médit., Bull. 20:46-47 (Notes brèves sur certaines centuries distribuées dans le fascicule 20)
• Beaujean J., 1997. - La joubarbe d'Aywaille. Une plante protégée par la loi ... menacée de destruction volontaire. Revue Verviétoise d'Histoire Naturelle. Printemps 1997: 7-12
• Lambinon J., Delvosalle L., Duvigneaud J. & coll., 2004. - Nouvelle Flore de la Belgique, du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, du Nord de la France et des Régions voisines (Ptéridophytes et Spermatophytes), 5ème éd. Meise, Ed. Patr. Jard. Bot. Nat. Belg., CXXX + 1167 p. (cf. 208-309).

Thank you to Marianne aka marcella2@Flickr for submitting today's photo (original image | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool)!

Since Daniel has already highlighted self-digestion previously on Botany Photo of the Day with respect to Coprinus comatus, I thought I would expand on the scandal caused by a little thing mycologists call autodeliquescence.

Coprinus was once thought to be one of the easiest mushroom genera to identify for its defining feature of self-digestion, until a graduate student at Duke University sequenced a gene in 1994. This placed former members of Coprinus into 4 different genera. Imagine the controversy at the Mycological Society of America meeting! The proposal to split up the genus was met with such outrage that it was not published until 8 years later. The majority of the species of Coprinus were subsequently reclassified in the genera Coprinellus, Coprinopsis, and Parasola. Coprinus and its former members still retain a superficial grouping, however, and are collectively referred to as coprinoid fungi. Consequently, the ring found on the stipe and the string-like strand of fibers inside the stem's hollow cavity (not shown) are better identifiers of Coprinus than the deliquescing gills.

Botany resource link (added by Daniel): "Mushroom Poisoning : The Role of Careless Identifications", recently published in the Botanical Electronic News. There is also additional discussion about this article on the UBC BG forums.

Thank you to Wayne Weber@Flickr for capturing and submitting this lovely beacon of autumn (original image | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool)

Red-osier dogwood is a common shrub found wild throughout North America, in addition to being a popular ornamental (particularly for winter interest). In many older texts, you will find Cornus sericea referred to as Cornus stolonifera.

Recent studies have raised the profile of this riparian species with respect to its use in land reclamation. Researchers from the Department of Renewable resources at the University of Alberta in conjunction with the Botany Department at the University of Manitoba, conducted an investigation on sodium chloride and sodium sulfate uptake in tailing waters produced as a result of surface mining (see: Renault et al. 2001. Effects of NaCl and Na₂SO₄ on red-osier dogwood (Cornus stolonifera Michx) seedlings. Plant and Soil. 233(2):261-268 doi:10.1023/A:1010512021353 ). In this study, red-osier dogwood seedlings were demonstrated to be relatively resistant to the high salinity tailings waters produced by the oil sands industry.

Salinity can reduce plant growth by both osmotic and ionic effects. An accumulation of ions in plant tissues can affect membrane selective permeability, altering the uptake of ions and possibly resulting in nutrient deficiency or toxicity. Photosynthetic activity is also limited in a saline environment because of a decrease in stomatal conductance, restricting gas exchange between the plant and the atmosphere. In many plants, salt resistance depends on the ability of the root system to restrict Na+ and Cl-transport to the shoots. Within a certain range of concentration, the roots of Cornus sericea are able to selectively restrict transport of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate to the leaves making them an ideal pioneering species for use in land reclamation.

Botany / photography resource link (added by Daniel): Thank you to Adolf Ceska for sending this link along: botany.cz. It's like Botany Photo of the Day, but with sometimes 4 or 5 entries in a day (it helps to have 30 contributors). And it's in Czech. If you're like me, you'll still enjoy visiting for the photographs.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, I was able to go home to the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island where the fall colour of the Rhus typhina was at its peak in the slightly cooler climate. The amber colour was spectacular against its elegant branching.

A native of eastern USA and southern Canada, staghorn sumac favours dry sites and poor soil -- it will often grow where other plants would be unable to survive. Sometimes seen as a "weedy" species because of its spreading rhizomes, Rhus typhina can remain quite manageable if left undisturbed. Unlike other members of Anacardiaceae, no parts of Rhus typhina are poisonous. It was used to make a kind of "sumac-ade" by First Nations, and also apparently makes a nice wine.

Thank you to long-time BPotD commenter Phillip Lacock for submitting this picture of abundance (original photo | Botany Photo of the Day Flickr Pool)!

As you might guess, the Concord grape hails from Concord, Massachusetts, where it was developed by Ephraim Wales Bull. Bull started experimenting in the 1830s for a variety that would thrive in the cold New England climate, and tasted 'Concord' for the first time in 1849. Through 1850 to 1853, the plant was propagated to make it available commercially on a small-scale. By 1854, the fruits of Bull's labour were for sale, and Bull made $3200 by selling vines for $5 each in the first year. Little money was made in succeeding years, though, as competing commercial nurseries propagated the vines in quantity and paid no royalties to Bull.

Concord grapes are often used as table grapes by home-growers. Commercially, products like Smucker's Jam and Welch's Grape Juice use this cultivar. In fact, Thomas Bramwell Welch discovered the pasteurization process using Concord grapes.

Bull's epitaph in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts reads "The Originator of the Concord Grape, He Sowed; Others Reaped". For an extensive article about Vitis labrusca 'Concord', read the Edmund Schofield article published in Arnoldia, entitled "He Sowed; Others Reaped": Ephraim Wales Bull and the Origins of the 'Concord' Grape (PDF).

As an aside, if you have horticultural or gardening questions about grapes, UBC Botanical Garden has a forum to discuss them: Grapes and Grape Vines.

Biology resource link (added by Daniel): I want to point out a thread on the forums for those of you who are fans of interesting organisms. In a discussion about identification of a slime mold, one of the forum members, forestlover, posted an extensive set of links about slime molds that are well-worth investigating.

You might not guess from its delicate appearance but Urginea undulata has earned a reputation as one tough geophyte. Native to the Negev Desert in Israel as well as parts of North Africa, this bulb is active twice throughout the year. Flowering, as shown in today's photographs, corresponds to the onset of the rainy season. This is quickly followed by a dormant period that is eventually broken with the production of stunning foliage in February. The bulb then again goes dormant throughout the following dry summer season.

Throughout its dry season dormancy, Urginea undulata is able to survive with very little, if any, water and sustain extreme ground temperatures because of a protective layer of dead tissues that keep it from drying out or overheating. The bulbs are a food source for animals; not only will the bulbs tolerate disturbance, but the remaining bulbs in the colony actually benefit from frequent 'cultivation' of the soil.

To see the diversity of flower form in Calochortus subalpinus, see: Calochortus subalpinus via Calphotos. To read more about the plant, see Calochortus: Mariposa lilies & their relatives: Calochortus subalpinus.