The pond lilies are blooming ...
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| Yellow pond lily, Nuphar polysepala. |
This flower's scientific name, N. polysepala, references the outer yellow cup; those aren't petals, but sepals, modified leaves. The tiny petals inside are hidden by the circle of red or purple stamens, visible here where one of the sepals has dropped.
Besides the flower here, look at the side of the stem. There's a pale brown critter there. It looks like a dragonfly nymph, drab, with a segmented body, wing buds, and 6 legs. This is the time of year for them to leave the water and shed their skin to emerge as an adult.
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| Going to be a dragonfly? |
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| The pond in mid-May. |
It's a good crop of pond lilies this year. The beavers will be happy; this is one of their favourite foods and they eat (and propagate) the whole plant: from the flowers they harvest the ripe seeds, digest the outer coating, and excrete the still-viable seeds, which germinate in the mud plowed by the beavers as they harvested the tubers and rhizomes. They roll up the leaves like tacos to eat them.
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Los nenúfares están en flor.
Fotos
- Nenúfar amarillo, Nuphar polysepala. El nombre científico, polysepala, se refiere a la envoltura amarilla de la flor; no son pétalos, sino sépalos. Los pétalos, insignificantes, están escondidos tras los estambres rojizos o morados, visibles en la foto donde uno de los sépalos se aflojó.
- Al lado del tallo, se ve un insecto. Parece ser la ninfa de una libélula; de color claro, con ojos grandes, cuerpo segmentado y los principios de alas. Es la temporada cuando estas ninfas salen del agua y se transforman en adultos.
- La laguna en el mes de mayo.
Habrá una buena cosecha de nenúnfares este año, lo que hará muy felices los castores. Estos son unos de sus alimentos favoritos. Comen la planta entera, desde las semillas, de donde digieren la corteza nutritivea y excretan las semillas, ya listas para germinar en el lodo preparado por los mismos castores al cosechar las raices y los tubérculos. Se comen las hojas, también, enrollándolas como si fueran tacos.
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