Big Thicket

A Year of Going Solo

~ shoreacres ~ 69 Comments
The Solo Tract 

Often described as the biological crossroads of North America, the Big Thicket Natural Preserve in east Texas offers visitors a fascinating mixture of swamps, forests, grasslands, and sandhills. Since its establishment in 1974, it’s grown to 113,000 acres; its nine units contain nine (or ten) distinct ecosystems, ranging from baygalls and cypress sloughs to pine savannah wetlands and palmetto-hardwood flats.

The Turkey Creek unit alone contains seven ecosystems; more than seventy species of trees and nearly five hundred species of herbaceous plants can be found there. A favorite attraction in the unit, the Pitcher Plant Trail, leads to one of America’s largest displays of carnivorous plants.

Also tucked into the Turkey Creek Unit is a less well-known area called the Solo Tract: a longleaf pine upland purchased from a logging company. Because longleaf pines are resistant to fire, occasional prescribed burns, combined with other forms of clearing, are helping to reestablish the area as a healthy longleaf grassland: the sort of area some describe as ‘a prairie with trees.’

The Solo Tract ~ Longleaf Pines with Little Bluestem

No trails exist in the Solo tract, but wandering is encouraged, and that’s what I intend to do in the coming year. I enjoyed witnessing changes at Walden West from month to month, but was eager for something different. The Big Thicket certainly differs from my usual haunts, so ‘going Solo’ it will be.

The first thing I learned after my January visit was how little I know about pine trees. Both longleaf pines (Pinus palustris) and loblolly pines (Pinus taeda) grow in the Solo tract, and sorting them out can be a challenge. Bark color and texture vary widely, both between and within the two species. Loblolly bark is said to be “divided by shallow fissures into wide, rectangular blocks,” while longleaf bark is described as being “fissured into irregular, somewhat wavy plates;” to my untrained eye, that’s a distinction without much of a difference.

That said, and despite the bark of mature loblolly pines being described as “topped by scaly plates or rounded ridges that are reddish-brown, gray-brown, or gray-black,” my hunch is that this one qualifies as a longleaf.

Certainly Pinus, and probably palustris

The leaves of pine trees — their needles — also help with identification. Longleaf pine needles can attain a length of fourteen inches or more, while those of  loblollies typically range from four to nine inches. The needles of both species are bundled together in groups called fascicles; longleaf bundles generally contain three needles, while the loblolly bundles may hold two, three, or four.

Despite similarities between mature longleaf and loblolly pines, juvenile trees are easy to distinguish. After longleaf seedlings sprout, they spend several years remaining close to the ground, looking much like a clump of grass.

During this time they develop a deep taproot, while clustered needles protect their buds from fire. Once they begin growing, they attain height relatively quickly, but branching doesn’t begin until they’re about ten feet tall.

Up, up and away ~ longleaf pine style

Not only do loblolly pines seed and grow in sandy soils where water is close to the surface (‘loblolly’ is an interesting early American term applied to the trees), they begin branching much earlier, and grow more quickly than the longleafs: as much as two feet per year.

A loblolly pine, branching out

Despite a late winter absence of colorful flowers, other hints of color caught my eye as I sauntered down the road shown in the top photo. Stopping to look at a relatively large branch that had fallen into the brush, I realized I’d never seen anything like the bits of purple, yellow, and lavender it contained. Eventually I learned that, despite differences in common terminology, I’d found both male and female cones.

In common with other gymnosperms, pine trees have no flower or fruit. Instead, they produce cones and seeds; the term ‘gymnosperm’ literally means ‘naked seed.’ Unlike angiosperms, or flowering plants, the seeds of pines are not encased within an ovary, and the trees are not pollinated by insects.

Instead, individual trees are monoecious, containing  both pollen-bearing male cones and female seed-bearing cones. Pollen produced by male cones (properly termed ‘microsporangiate strobili’) is carried by the wind to fertilize the immature female cones (‘megasporangiate strobili’) which eventually will produce seeds. After maturing, the female cones open and release their seed; eventually, they fall to the ground, becoming the familiar pine cones we collect.

Had a single branch not fallen from one of the tall trees lining the road, who knows how long it would have taken for me to learn these things?

Colorful and intricately patterned male cones

A tiny female cone

Thanks to previous visits to the Solo tract and other Big Thicket sites, not everything seemed so unfamiliar. In time, the purer whites of the Pepperbush and Pipewort; the tall, bright gold of the Miller’s Maid, the purple Liatris, and the delicate shine of the Yellow-eyed Grass will appear. When that happens, I’ll be there to celebrate their new season. 

Sweet pepperbush ~ Clethra alnifolia
Ten angled pipewort ~ Eriocaulon decangulare
Golden miller’s maid ~ Aletris aureaPrairie blazing star ~ Liatris pycnostachyaYellow-eyed grass ~ Xyris ambigua

 

Comments always are welcome.

Buttoning Up Summer

~ shoreacres ~ 63 Comments

Grassleaf Barbara’s Buttons (Marshallia graminifolia) bloom from late summer through early fall in the wet flatwoods and prairies, seeps, and bogs of east Texas’s Big Thicket. Here, the warm hues of a pitcher plant flower provide a glowing background for the emerging disk florets of this small, button-like flower.

A member of the Asteraceae, or sunflower family, the plant’s dome-shaped flower heads sway atop slender stems as much as sixteen inches tall. Like its family-mate the Basket-flower, Barbara’s Buttons have disk flowers but no rays: a characteristic that increases their resemblance to one another in shape, if not in size.

The genus name Marshallia honors Humphry Marshall (1722-1801) and his nephew Moses Marshall (1758-1813), American botanists active in and around Pennsylvania during the Colonial period. The specific epithet graminifolia refers to the plant’s grasslike leaves.

Although every species in the genus is known as Barbara’s Buttons, the identity of ‘Barbara’ remains unclear.  It seems the name first appeared in print in botanist John Kunkel Small’s 1933 book, Flora of the Southeastern United States.

Whatever the source of the flower’s common name, it’s quite attractive to late-season pollinators like butterflies, beetles, and bees, and a lovely bit of lingering color as the season begins to change.

 

Comments always are welcome.

Eryngo, Too

~ shoreacres ~ 48 Comments
Blueflower Eryngo ~ Eryngium integrifolium

Despite obvious similarities to the Hooker’s Eryngo currently blooming in my friend’s pasture, the Blueflower Eryngo I occasionally find in east Texas displays narrower bracts, a less-spiny apperance, and smaller, more rounded flowers. Also known as simple leaf eryngo, the plant sometimes is called  blue-flower coyote-thistle, although several other eryngos are known by the name coyote-thistle, including Eryngium vaseyi: a plant endemic to California.

Members of the carrot family, a few Eryngium species host larvae of the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly, but blueflower eryngo isn’t one; other members of the genus are better choices for a butterfly garden.

That said, it’s an exceptionally pretty plant that thrives in a moist environment. Found in late summer to early fall in wet pinelands, savannahs, damp woods, and bogs, it’s said to prefer the same areas as pitcher plants and grass pink orchids. In fact, that’s where I found these: in the Big Thicket area of east Texas.

 

Comments always are welcome.

Curls of Christmas Color

~ shoreacres ~ 58 Comments

Green fir and pine boughs; red holly berries; green and red yaupon and poinsettia: all display the traditional colors of Christmas. Since red and green abound in nature, plants bearing them often become part of human decorations. In east Texas, pale pitcher plants (Sarracenia alata) probably don’t adorn any dining tables, but they decorate their bogs with an interesting variation on seasonal colors.

One of four carnivorous species found in East Texas, pitcher plants prefer hillside seepage bogs in longleaf pine savannas. Named for the covered pitchers they resemble, they first collect water, then combine that water with enzymes designed to digest any curious insects which become trapped within the plant.

There’s more than water to tempt those insects to explore. Nectar droplets form from glands inside the leaf’s hood, and the brightly colored pitcher lip can be as inviting as a flower. The combination of nectar and color often lead unsuspecting insects to explore the tube, which is easy to descend but nearly impossible to escape because of downward-pointing hairs. Below the hairs, the tube is slick and covered with glands that exude digestive fluids instead of nectar; any insect that lands in that pool is about to have a very bad day.

That said, the colorful transformation of the plants is quite attractive. Some turn a uniform red, as shown in the first photo, while others remain somewhat mottled, like the single plant below.

Especially interesting is the tendency of some pitcher plants to curl as they age. In the summer of 2019, I found this one: a sweet green curve in the midst of a Big Thicket bog.

Last month, this red-and-green curl caught my eye. With luck, one day I’ll find a perfectly red version to complete my set.

 

Comments always are welcome.

The Tree With the Lights In It

~ shoreacres ~ 79 Comments
Loblolly and Light

After spending a few hours on the Big Thicket’s Pitcher Plant and Turkey Creek trails last Sunday,  I nearly had regained the trailhead when I looked up, searching for bits of autumn color in the still mostly green trees.

Instead of color, a vision of what I first imagined to be an enormous orb-weaver’s web stopped me in my tracks. There was no larger-than-life spider lurking, of course. There was only a loblolly pine, and the sun, and a phenomenon I’d never before seen. Despite their apparently random distribution, the pine needles had transformed the light into a beautifully circular pattern; it was nature, not my camera, that had created the effect.

At the time, I didn’t think anything at all; I only stood, and wondered at the sight. Later, I remembered a favorite passage from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, and realized I’d been granted my own vision of a tree with the lights in it.

One day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it.  I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame.  I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed.  It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.  The lights of the fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. 
Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared.  I was still ringing.  I had my whole life been a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.  I have since only rarely seen the tree with the lights in it.  The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.

 

Comments always are welcome.
NOTE: I consulted Jim Ruebush, who taught physics for years, and here’s what he had to say about the effect: ““In the fully enlarged image, the pine needles radiate out in all directions. But, the only ones that reflect brightly to the camera direction are aligned circumfully (if that is not a word, it is now) to the sun. Their surfaces act like long narrow mirrors. Needles aligned any other way don’t reflect brightly to the camera.” Or, to the human eye!