Sandpaper Vine Project
At least two species of plants in our area are called the sandpaper plant – one is a tree, Curatella americana, and the other is a vine, a species of Davilla. Last year in January I wrote about seeing insects swarm on the flowers of a Davilla. This year, at the suggestion of Robin Foster of The Field Museum, I’m going to try to get more details on the swarms – maybe, with luck, even get an identification of the insect.
Because I had seen the swarm last year on January 23, I decided to start keeping close tabs on the plant in early January. This morning, the first day of January, I found the plants already budding, and I frantically started taking notes and pictures. [Click on any image for an enlargement, or click on the "hi-res" link (when present) to see the original size at Flickr.]
Some of the buds were even showing some yellow where the petals would soon appear.
I had no idea just how soon, though. I took the above picture at 6:49 AM. After uploading it into the computer and seeing the cobweb – which I hadn’t noticed when I was out there – I went back to examine the cobweb more closely. By then, at 10:21 AM, the petals were out.
The two images are not exactly at the same angle, but they’re certainly of the same flower cluster. Here’s a different cluster, giving you a better sense of the flowers. I did see one flying insect land on the stamens and crawl around for awhile, but naturally I couldn’t get its picture.
By early afternoon, the wind had come up and the petals were gone, leaving only the stamens. A petal life of about 4 hours? How do the pollinators find them in such a short time frame? Or do the pollinators still work after the petals are gone? Oh, and what was that cobweb? There’s another cobweb in the last picture as well, stringing down from a petal to the leaf.
This is going to be an intriguing experience.
UPDATE: 2 January 2009. I checked on the petal opening again this morning – this time I went out there right after breakfast, and, lo, where there had been buds at 6:30 AM there were flowers with petals at 8:30 AM. It looks like I’m just going to have to pull up a chair some morning and watch.
Meantime, Festival of Trees edition #31 is already up at Rock Paper Lizard - and has been since December 31, 2008! I’m just about half-way through it, but there’s lots of good reading, as usual.
UPDATE: 21 January 2009. There have been no blooms on any of the Davilla plants since that second day of January. But there are now hundreds of buds on this plant, so it is quite possible that when they start to bloom, they will bloom all at once – or in a couple of waves of blooms. Last year’s burst of flowers came on 23 January 2008 – so it’s very close to time, but the buds are small and tight. Does it know it’s supposed to bloom soon?
UPDATE: 30 January 2009. Massive bloom today – with bees and weevils and more! I’ll write it up this weekend.
It’s incredible how quickly those flowers opened! I can’t wait to read more!
Hi Sarcozona,
I think it’s incredible, too, but I’m still new at this, so who knows how unusual this is. As you see in the update note, I think one day soon I’m just going to stay and watch the grass grow, I mean, the flowers open!
Mary
[...] to the Davilla plant mentioned in the last post is a guava plant whose species I do not know. It’s in flower [...]
[...] swarm all over its flowers, as they did last year and 2) how quickly will the flowers lose their petals? I’ve been watching it now for an entire month and was beginning to wonder whether it would [...]