During a walk on Thanksgiving around an Everett estuary in Washington state, I spotted a Black Phoebe making its characteristic forays after insects. The bird was far north of its usual range in the Southwest. The last time I had seen one was by a creek in the mountains south of Tucson when I lived in the area.
The sighting recalled an unexpected encounter years earlier with a different bird. My husband and I were driving along a highway near Tucson when I noticed a movement on a nearby abandoned road. We drove over to investigate and were astonished to discover a Common Loon stranded on the broken macadam. Perhaps it had mistaken the gleam of the road for a stretch of water, but it was now marooned. Draping a towel over the bird's head to shield us from its beak until we could get inside our VW bus, we put it in the back and removed its hood. As we drove, the loon protested intermittently until I closed the curtains against the desert sun and then it was quiet. A nearby state park gave us the address of a wildlife rehabilitator. The loon gave a heartrending cry when the rehabilitator put it in a cage, but she said it was not seriously injured and that she would feed it and then release it in a couple of days. Afterwards I spotted a report in the local Audubon newsletter of a sighting of a Common Loon on a lake that was near her house. Later research revealed that loons from Mexico sometimes migrate over the desert.
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For flowering plants, fibrous roots and taproots are the two main types of roots. Branching fibrous roots spread throughout the soil extracting moisture and nutrients. Taproots usually have one main root with much smaller auxiliary roots, enabling plants to obtain water and nutrients from much deeper in the soil.
Roots anchor plants in the ground, but bulbs can pull themselves deeper into the earth with contractile roots, allowing the bulb to escape the colder surface temperatures of winter or the drying effects of the sun in summer. The bulb is also less likely to be eaten by an animal. Epiphytic plants in the canopy employ aerial roots to secure themselves to their host trees. Rain, mist, and fog supply the necessary moisture to the plant. The American edition of Smithsonian Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants was published by DK Publishing in 2018. Seeds can successfully disperse in many ways. Forgotten seeds hidden by birds and squirrels can germinate, but a seed covered by fruit is a more reliable strategy for plants. Elephants are particularly suited for spreading a large variety of seeds over great distances.
Over eighty families of plants depend on ants for seed dispersal. Although they do not travel very far, the ants move the seeds underground where they are safe from fire and rodents. Barbed plants use mechanical means that enable the seed to travel further away from the parent plant. Fresh water or seawater can also move seeds great distances. Besides heavy rains and proximity to rivers, seeds can be carried by watercraft, beavers, fish, and turtles. Coconuts are often ferried by ocean currents, but few seeds can tolerate saltwater. (In one of the enjoyable sidebars in her book Seeds, Carolyn Fry recounts how bath toys dumped by a ship travelling between Hong Kong and Tacoma during a storm vividly illustrate the power of ocean currents. The toys washed ashore in Japan, North America, Hawaii, Australia, Indonesia, and South America, while some were found frozen in Arctic ice.) Some seeds depend on self-propulsion or gravity. It is a method better suited to small plants. Wind-blown seeds are often able to colonize open areas with inadequate soils and harsh conditions such as deserts, sand dunes, and the boundaries of riverbanks and forests. The first species of plants to colonize the altered terrain of Mount St. Helens after its eruption were most likely from seeds carried by the wind. Winged seeds and gyrating seeds provide two methods of flight. Tumbleweeds are another example of wind dispersal. Seeds by Carolyn Fry was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2016. |
AuthorI am a Northwest artist making collages from mulberry papers stamped by hand from original images that I have carved. Archives
April 2024
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