Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area tray 12/10

 

A few new seedlings of various spp. exited dormancy and germinated, but nothing detectably interesting happened. The leaves of all the plants got bigger, and some jelly dot algae (domeshaped as oppposed to spherical, probably Nostocales) showed up, but that's about it.

Also, remember the "long cotyledon" plant from that other post? It looks like this now. Note the suspicious resemblance of the mature cotyledons to the mature true leaves.

I'm now highly confident it's the suncup Camissoniopsis bistorta. Google Scholar indicates that nothing has been written on the adaptive function of that genus's cotyledon longness, but I suspect it has something to do with competition and/or resource limitation.

If things work the way I suspect they do, then "make its preexisting photosynthetic organs longer" is a way less resource-intensive strategy than "rapidly kill them off and grow new ones" and/or allows it to grow hastily-but-sloppily during a part of its life cycle where haste is more important than quality. Perhaps they help it race against the clock to grow a deep taproot before the ground dries up? After all, it (and micrantha) seem to be far more tolerant of poorly-water-holding habitats than most other native microflowers in my area.

Also note one of the hairless Riccia I transplanted from Bonelli Park making a cameo (I really ought to create a blog label for the marchantiophyte).