A note on the host blog: Agricultural Biodiversity may sound a bit dry to you, but if you follow the blog even for a short time, you’ll see that the issue is far larger than simply keeping agriculture from becoming an industry that produces only a few, almost mechanized, foods. Just skim down the list of categories – there are 46! – to get an idea of the topics covered. Plus, Jeremy’s style, as you’ll see in the BGR carnival, is lively and opinionated.

And thanks, Greg, for including The Corotú and the Gomphothere in your selection!

Nevertheless, we’ll start with two posts that each still had a foot in winter.

Justin Thomas at The Vasiculum spent some time this winter getting acquainted with mosses, and his introduction reminds me of the first time I ever looked at the moss world under a dissecting microscope. It was an entirely new universe! I’m sure you’ll enjoy Justin’s exploration of Winter Mosses.

Move now to spring-in-winter, and the fascinating flowers of Ozark witch hazel tree (Hamamelis vernalis), which Ted MacRae of Beetles in the Bush found in bloom in early March at Taum Sauk Mountain. He wonders how such a flower could be pollinated in midwinter – it generally blooms in January and February – and he watched it long enough to come up with an idea. Do you agree with his thought?

And now to the much anticipated spring wildflowers.

Dutchman’s Breeches

Post after post brought the delight of wildflowers on the forest floor or in spring meadows. A big favorite was Dutchman’s breeches, Dicentra cucullaria. Tom Arbour of The Ohio Nature Blog posted the image at the left, and three others saw them and photographed them:

- Janet Creamer of Midwest Native Plants, Gardens, and Wildlife found them at Clifton Gorge and John Brian State Park, (and while you’re there, note the sliced bloodroot root, among other wildflowers)

- Seabrooke Lecke of The Marvelous in Nature, noticing the promises of spring, found them in eastern Ontario, and

- Keith of Get Your Botany On! found a predator waiting for a prey in his Dutchman’s Breeches.

Trilliums, Trillies

Nina at Nature Remains wrote of clearing a Sunny Bank of shrubs to make room for shoots of tall trees of the forest:

Before the tall trees shade this brown bank, before the dimness of the woods becomes the home to thrush song, before the ferns and herbs emerge to drink in the shade of the summer forest, it is a place for wildflowers.

Among the wildflowers she saw was Trillium nivate, Snow Trillium, and many more “trillies” were seen this April, some by the same people that saw Dutchman’s Breeches.

• Trillium catesbaei, bashful wakerobin or rose trillum, at Niches,
• Trillium nivate, Snow Trillium, at Midwest Native Plants, Gardens, and Wildlife
• Trillium recurvatum and Trillium grandiflorum at Get Your Botany On!
• An unidentified Trillium in bud as well as, later, a red Trillium, at The Marvelous in Nature.

Orchids

Wayne at Niches has been hunting for a species of lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) ever since he first saw them in flower in a different place fifteen years ago. He’s got them this year, close enough to observe and ponder on the pollination tricks of the orchid.

Across the ocean and in a flower store, GrrlScientist at Living the Scientific Life photographed an orchid Orchidee that makes her “… think of abstract art.” When you see the image, you most likely will, too.

And Lilacs

April always brings to my mind Walt Whitman, Abraham Lincoln, and lilacs blooming in the dooryard. But lilacs are not native to the US, and are cultivated, so toward the end of the month I suspected that not a single blogger would mention lilacs. And then along came The Phytophactor, who placed lilacs in their proper, botanical family perspective, that of Olives and Ashes.

Beyond the Temperate and Subtropical Northern Hemisphere

Although Panama is technically in the Northern Hemisphere (we’re about 9 degrees north of the equator), April here is more like an autumnal season further north. We’re heading into the rainy season, which is known as invierno, or winter, and we have nothing equivalent, in this season, of spring wildflowers. But we do have some spectacular and exotic flowers and fruits, many of them also found in South America. And so, let me introduce you to the work of a Russian now living in Brazil.

I have been following the work of Alex Popovkin on Flickr for some time. He’s doing remarkable work documenting the plants of the Atlantic Forest in Bahia, Brazil. I’ve seen his photos at CalPhotos and they almost inevitably turn up when I’m doing an image search for a tropical plant I’ve just identified. Now he has a website, Atlantic Forest, Bahia, Brazil, and I’d like to point to a post that exemplifies some of the exotic plants that he lives among. It’s a fruit in the bean family called Swartzia polita (R.S.Cowan) Torke, and the fleshy arils of its seeds are beloved by bats. I hope you enjoy meeting him as well as the fruit.

Next Berry Go Round

So ends this edition of Berry Go Round. While we have some hosts lined up for later in the year, we’re still looking someone to host the May edition, Berry Go Round #28. Please feel free to volunteer by sending a message from my Contact page, even if you’ve never hosted before. It’s fun, and you’ll get to read lots of interesting posts on plants while you’re at it.

Update: Greg Laden will be hosting Berry Go Round #28 at his blog, Greg Laden’s Blog. You may submit your posts through the Blog Carnival submission form or, if you prefer, you may send an email to berrygoround AT gmail DOT com containing the URL of your post  or of one that you would like to recommend. Meantime, do consider volunteering in the future, for all the reasons already mentioned.

Here are two overdue announcements.

1. Sally at Foothills Fancy has a put up a great collection of plant posts for Berry Go Round #18. I enjoyed reading her “potluck,” as she called it, awhile back, but today I’ve had the time to follow some of the links and read the originals to which she refers. Do make a visit. It’s an excellent selection.
2. More than a year ago I began a project in which I did some online digging about some specimens that Darwin collected and which had been newly re-discovered. The names were completely unfamiliar to me, so I decided to find out what they were and to see whether I could find any mention of each of them in his Voyage of the Beagle. I’m afraid that during this frenzied time I let the domain name for that project – The Accidental Botanist – expire. My plan is to rescue the posts and take them over to WordPress, and when I do so, I’ll announce it here.

So for now, do enjoy your visit at Berry Go Round #18 and leave a comment for Sally.

While the a broad swath of the US experiences storms and flash flooding, the dry season still has a firm grip on our part of Panama. We now have a weather report for April 2009 based on data from our relatively new weather station, put into some context by looking at the 16-year rainfall record of Ricardo Espinosa from Potrerillos Arriba.

Spring is Here

The signs of spring differ in different parts of the country as well as different parts of the world, of course. In Indiania in early March, Skunk Cabbage burst through the ground and was captured by Get Your Botany On! in Araceae: Symplocarpus foetidus.

In Texas, a sign of spring was the appearance of yellow composites along the side of the road. Rick Hammer at Flora of the Texas Rolling Plains shows his appreciation of the sight, as well as his understanding of the botany of it, in Engelmann’s Daisy in full bloom. (The key to the flowers of the Asteraceae family in the image at left is given here.)

Sally at Foothills Fancy has some sharp observations about what Colorado’s Crazy spring… is doing to the plant life. While you’re there, don’t miss the story of her rescue of a discarded catcus in Tree Cholla: Plant of the Week. To look at this cactus is to love it, well, at least you learn to love it through Sally’s excellent description of the plant and its history.

Ever wonder about those ferns on the forest floor after the snow melts, and how they’re already green? Emily looks into them in Evergreen Ferns at No Seeds…

Spring or Not

There’s something wonderful about seeing flowers bloom at the surface of a pond. Botanically inclined sorts may wonder whether these plants have special pollination strategies. Christopher Taylor of Catalogue of Organisms reports on these monocots in Flowers in the Water (Taxon of the Week: Hydrocharitaceae) and you may be surprised at what he reveals about their pollination.

People who are drawn to any aspect of the natural world rarely fit into a neat cubbyhole. Case in point – Ted MacRae, the beetle pro of Beetles in the Bush, knows more about plants than you can imagine. Just see how you fare with his Winter botany quiz #2 (with answers here).

Tropics and the Southern Hemisphere

Whether you’re interested in tropical botany or not, I highly recommend the post Costa Rica Part 3: Palms, Epiphytes, Figs and Wasps at Watching the World Wake Up. Watcher covers some of the most fascinating tropical nature observations in a way that links them all back to the temperate climate, specifically Utah. As you can tell from the title, there are several parts to the Costa Rican posts, all worth reading. Further, there’s a 6-part series entitled In Search of the Blue Piñon, a “Mexican-Tree-Adventure story.”

I’m bending one of the guidelines for Berry Go Round with this next recommendation. We don’t feature gardening posts on BGR – there are gardening carnivals for that purpose – but this post from a gardening blog, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow in My Garden, is about a native Australian tree with amazing, handkerchief-like blooms, the Blue Quandong, Elaecarpus angustifolius. It’s well worth the look.

Evolution and Extinction

It is still the 200th anniversary year of Darwin’s birth and I for one can’t get enough of the blog posts that continue to feature Darwin. Back in the 1970s I visited Darwin’s home in Downe, England, and walked along the path he strode while thinking over his work. So naturally I was really, really interested in the post on Darwin’s garden by Talking Plants. The post is about Darwin’s twin botanical loves, orchids and carnivorous plants, and how he studied them in his own garden. A slide show for the talk on the garden is posted here.

Laurent, too, has been taking a close look at orchids at his Seeds Aside blog. In the first one, Be orchids! he describes just how these orchids are able to self-pollinate when necessary and also how they prevent sunburn! This concept inevitably led to another post on sunburn protection in plants: More plant sunburns protection…. Then it was back to orchids with How to tell orchid males from females? which includes a neat movie of bees pollinating plants from the one genus of orchids that actually have male and female flowers.

Anyone reading Berry Go Round is fully aware that extinction rates in the natural world are appalling. Sarcozona at Gravity’s Rainbow has been running a series that highlights specific plants that have gone extinct. The series is “What We Killed This Thursday,” and if you can bear the sadness of it, it’s worth reading through the entire series. The most recent entry, Tout Disparaître, features the island of Mauritius, home of the dodo and other well-known extinctions.

Just recently I tried to wrap my mind around the concept of gnetophytes (for a post on an Ephedra frustillata specimen gathered by Darwin). Where do they fit in the evolutionary scheme of things, anyway? Within days, The Phytophactor spelled it all out at Gneater (neater) than all get out.

Research

Sometimes those memes that go around the blogging world seem like cute ways to waste time. But Sarcozona made the best of the one that arrived on her desk (What do you know?) and ran with 7 research papers – and one personal philosophy statement – that range from water transport in junipers and pines to fruit flies in the Sonoran Desert.

Perhaps it’s not legitimate to include a post on diatom research in a plant blog carnival – they’re single-celled algae and are grouped in a different kingdom from plants, after all – but I choose to cheat and to include them because 1) they contain chlorophyll, and 2) I liked Greg Landon‘s post Diatoms Large and Small. Just guessing, would you say that freshwater or marine diatoms would tend to be larger? Why? Oh, and what are diatoms, anyway? Greg’s post explains all.

Food
Rice is an incredibly important staple food for a large part of the world’s population (wikipedia), and learning where and how it was domesticated sheds light on the what kind of culture and society was needed to grow rice effectively. When and where was rice domesticated? at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog not only answers the question of its title, but also clearly explains the difference between “domestication” and “cultivation.” A distinction that was heretofore way too fuzzy in my own mind.
  

This concludes Berry Go Round #15. Berry Go Round #16 will be hosted by a relatively new blog Quiche Moraine. The blog, however, is maintained by some old pros, so expect an excellent issue of the carnival from them! If you would like to submit an item, you may use this convenient submission form.