One morning during the first April we lived here, we saw a huge display of red berries outside the kitchen window.
The leaves were striking as well – large and glossy on the top side, somewhat folded, with 3 strong veins running lengthwise as well as smaller veins running horizontally across the leaves.
But with so many plants to learn, so many things to do, it was some time before I got around to looking closely at this particular interesting tree.
Back in March when the Cojoba tree was in bloom, I was eager to see the beans. Panamanians call the tree coralillo, meaning “coral snake,” and it’s the beans that have two of the three coral snake colors – red and black (yellow is the third coral snake color). Further, the colors are bright, just like the colors of the coral snake.
Now the beans are here. They started appearing a few weeks back, but there was one bean here, another way over there in another tree. Now there are several beans in each tree, but still the beans are scattered lightly and are not as strikingly visible from a distance as you might think from their colors.
Look at how the beans are still attached to the pod, even though they’re not within the pod itself. This appearance might be a way of luring birds to the tree to disperse the seeds (Zuchowski) although few birds seem to be attracted to these beans. All members of the bean family have complex seed coats, but the coats of these beans are actually simpler in anatomy than that in other beans. They are called “overgrown” or “overgrown-like” beans and the value or function of this feature is not yet known (Maumont).
If you click on the left image below, you’ll see some more dangling beans, whereas the pod has not yet opened in the image on the right.
Family: Fabaceae (bean family – alternate compound leaves)
Subfamily: Mimosoideae (mimosa subfamily – the flowers have many stamens)
Tribe: Ingeae (from Inga, the ice cream bean)
Genus: Cojoba (the Taino Indian word for the leaves)
Species: rufescens (becoming red)
More on this tree at the original post.
Update:
Our gardener found a young coral snake in the weeds along the fence. He killed it with his machete and then brought the decapitated corpse for to us to see. It doesn’t have any yellow on it at all – its colors are simply red and black, as in the Cojoba bean. I don’t know what species this snake is – wikipedia lists three genera and many, many species for coral snakes. But here it is for your viewing pleasure:
PS – The species is probably Micrurus multifasciatus, a coral snake of two colors and the most common in Panama. Information from Panamá: Puente Biológio [Panama: Biological Bridge], by Stanley Heckadon-Moreno.
On a recent morning walk to a corner of the orchard I had not visited recently, I nearly stumbled over a small white flower.
The morning sunlight shone through the hood, making a glow like candle-light.
Hoping it might be easy to identify, I ran to my borrowed copy of the Flora of Panama Checklist and Index and looked up Arum – the jack-in-the-pulpit genus – and found four species. It did not take long to discover that this plant was none of the four species listed. So, being impatient and eager to get on with the ID, I turned to friend Carla, who did a little research and then turned to her friend Marianne, and behold we had a name – Xanthosoma mexicanum, previously known as Xanthosoma pilosa.
Sometimes (maybe I should say often) plant identification is just a matter of knowing who to turn to for help!
What you see on the left are a stand of what we call soil orchids, some of which have been beaten to the ground by heavy rains, and on the right a stand of robust Curcuma (locally, resurrection plant) leaves. The orchids have been straining toward the light for some time – we had no idea the Curcuma would cast so much shade when we planted it there – and the rains just helped them plunge on down to the ground.
The orchid stems can grow to 3 meters tall, and the flowers are at the very top, so their gradual leaning over the past week or so gave me the chance to take some images of the lovely flowers.
Panama is home to no doubt hundreds of species of native orchids, and Potrerillos has a particularly fine climate for them, but the first orchid I decide to write about, this one, was introduced from Asia! My excuse is that this orchid is highly conspicuous, being very popular as a cultivated plant. It’s been introduced to Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Panama, according to wikipedia, for this purpose. I had to wonder what the chances were that it would become an invasive plant.
If you don’t live in our neighborhood, and you’ve seen these orchids, you may very well know them as “bamboo orchids.” They are reminiscent of bamboo, with their reedy stems, formation of large clumps, and fairly tall size. Their scientific name is Arundina gramnifolia.
So let’s take a closer look at these reedy stems and grass-like leaves. Read more »
