Cones and hopping spores

 Horsetails. Their lifecycle is backward; other plants grow, produce leaves and flowers, which then develop the seeds to start the next generation. Horsetails grow the fertile stems first, and then later, separately, the leafy stems.

The fertile stems are unbranched, with a tall cone or strobilus, ringed with parallel rows of spore-producing structures, the sporangia. They look like tiny round flowers. These stems die soon after they release the spores.

The sterile stems are the ones with the bristly leaves. (The Latin name, Equisetum, means horse bristles.) They usually show up after the fertile ones. This year, maybe because of the long, cool spring and the sudden change to summer temperatures, in some spots they showed up together with the fertile stems.

Horsetails, Equisetum arvense, fertile and sterile stems.

Mostly cones. The brown sheaths are actually leaves. These leaves are not photosynthetic.

Reading up on horsetails on Wikipedia, I came across this, about the microscopic spores:

The spores have four elaters that act as moisture-sensitive springs, assisting spore dispersal through crawling and hopping motions after the sporangia have split open longitudinally. (Wikipedia)

"Crawling and hopping" spores! Now I'll think of all those hopping spores every time I look at the horsetails that insist on growing behind my compost bin.

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 Equisetum. Las llamadas colas de caballo; el nombre Latino significa cerdas de caballo. Su ciclo de vida es opuesto al de otras plantas, las cuales brotan, producen flores y hojas y luego las semillas. La cola de caballo produce primero el tallo fértil, y más tarde, por separado, otros tallos estériles; éstos son los que son fotosintéticos.

Los tallos fértiles no tienen ramas, y llevan en la punta un cono o estróbilo, con anillos de pequeños esporangios, que producen las esporas. Se parecen a florecitas miniaturas. Estos tallos desaparecen después de soltar las esporas.

Los tallos estériles son los que tienen las hojas verdes, y salen normalmente después de que los fértiles han muerto. Este año, tal vez porque la primavera era tan fria y de repente llegaron las temperaturas altas de verano, en algunas partes tanto los tallos fértiles como los estériles salieron juntos.

Fotos: colas de caballo, con los conos y los tallos verdes. En los tallos fértiles, los anillos de color café también son hojas, pero éstas no son fotosintéticas.

Buscando datos en Wikipedia, encontré esto:

"Las esporas tienen cuatro eláteres (células higroscópicas) que actúan como resortes sensibles a la humedad, ayudando a la dispersión de las esporas por medio de movimientos como que gatean y saltan después de que el esporangio se halla abierto longitudinalmente."

¡"Gateando y saltando"! Ahora cada que veo las colas de caballo que crecen atrás de mi depósito de compost, me voy a imaginar todas esas esporas saltarinas.

Division of labors

The horsetails outside my bedroom window are small and delicate. Along the highway north, though, they're tall and fat, covered with their tiny "flowers" with stubby petals. A different species: at home, they're field horsetails, Equisetum arvense; in the wild, they're giant horsetails, Equisetum telmateia, var. braunii.

Horsetails do not have flowers, nor do they make seeds; rather, they produce spores in little buttons, like the ferns. In the ferns, these "buttons" are on the underside of the leaves. The horsetails grow a fertile head dedicated entirely to spore production. (Called a strobilus.)

Horsetail patch. Sterile stems, spore producing stems.

The spore-producing stems show up first. As the spores ripen, the sterile stems start to grow. For now, they're about 45 cm. tall; they will grow to a couple of metres tall by mid-summer.

The fertile stems, though they have a bit of green in the stem itself, do not "feed"; they're not photosynthetic. Once the spores ripen, these stems will die. The new, green, bristly stalks will do the work of transforming sunlight into food.

Fertile stem, with sporangiophores. Not really flowers.

On this stem, the only leaves are the brown tips of the sheaths that circle the stem at intervals.

Stem with sporangiophores arranged in spiral rows..Click to zoom in and see them.

And here are the "flowers": stubby tacks with many miniature, round "petals".

A young sterile stem. The branches will spread out horizontally as the stalk grows.

This species was the most preferred Equisetum species of coastal native peoples as an important springtime vegetable. The young fertile and vegetative shoots were picked, de-sheathed and eaten raw. However, this genus has been known to be poisonous to livestock and humans if eaten in large quantities. Some native peoples also picked the tops of these plants, boiled them, and drank a glassful of the liquid to cure a urinary ailment. E. telmateia was one of the many Equisetum species used as medicine to treat burns; the stems were burned and the ashes applied to the wound. The silicon dioxide crystals make Equisetum species great scouring tools. Native peoples used them extensively for smoothing and polishing wood and soapstone. In fact, modern-day hunters and outdoors people still use them as scouring utensils for cleaning pots and pans. (Joseph Maser, Indiana U.)

I can't imagine eating these! They're scratchy, even to hold.

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Hay varias especies de cola de caballo (Equisetum sp.). Junto a mi casa, son pequeñas; son Equisetum arvense, la cola de caballo campestre. Al lado de la carretera hacia el norte, son grandes, gordas, fuertes: Equisetum telmateia, la cola de caballo gigante.

La cola de caballo no produce flores. Como los helechos, se propagan por medio de esporas que se hallan en "botones"; en los helechos estos se encuentran en la parte inferior de la hoja. La cola de caballo lleva una cabeza (llamada estrobilo) llena de estos esporangióforos.

Hay dos tipos de tallos: primero aparecen los tallos fértiles, con sus esporangióforos. Estos, aunque tienen un poco de verde, no llevan a cabo el fotosíntesis; su única función es producir las esporas. Una vez maduras, el tallo se muere.

Luego surgen los tallos verdes, no fértiles, que trabajan produciendo los azúcares que necesita la planta.

(División de labores. ¡Sin quejas!)

Partes de la cola de caballo: las hojas son las puntas cafés de las envolturas que se ven a lo largo del tallo. Las "agujas" verdes no son hojas: son ramas. Los "botones" o "tachuelas" (esporangióforos) no son flores, y los "pétalos" no son pétalos. Aquí se producen las esporas.

La última foto es un tallo no fértil, todavía sin abrir sus ramas.

(De la cita:) Los nativos comían estas plantas en la primavera; se pelaban los tallos y se comían crudos. Sin embargo, este género es nocivo, comido en grandes cantidades. Algunos nativos hervían las puntas y se tomaban el líquido para curarse de males del tracto urinario. También se usaba para curar quemaduras.

Debido a los cristales de dióxido de silica, se usan estas plantas como papel de lija o trapos de fregar, tanto para pulir madera y esteatita, como para lavar trastes.

¡No me imagino como se come esta planta! Se sienten bien rasposas al primer tacto.

Soggy

I can't resist stepping on ripe puffballs. Doing my part to help with spore dispersal, I say, to excuse my childishness. But this week in the Tyee Spit puffball patch, the puffballs wouldn't puff; they squished and oozed instead.

Cave full of powder, too damp to fly.

Call them oozeballs this year.

The puffball has a unique spore dispersal strategy.  Within the spongy interior, the spores are produced by the trillions.  Eventually, the puffball dries and hardens to the point where it is a papery sac filled with trillions of spores.  When an animal comes along and steps on or bites into the puffball the spores are ejected forcibly.  For small puffballs this can even be accomplished by the impact of falling raindrops. (Field notes)

Anything that grows in the Pacific Northwest has to be able to cope with rain, and puffballs can use it even to get their flying spores airborne. Here's a gif of raindrops causing puffballs to puff.

Once spores are caught by the wind they can be carried very long distances. Spores of a wheat rust have been reported to have been dispersed 1,243 miles (2000 km) by the wind. (Fun Facts about Fungi)

But there can be too much of a good thing. This year's spores aren't going to go far from home.

A mouthful of centipedes

Rows of spores on a hart's-tongue fern in Laurie's shade garden.

Asplenium scolopendrium, I think.

A cluster of spores makes up a sorus, from the ancient Greek for "pile, heap". In the hart's-tongue, the sori are long rows; in our common native ferns, they're round dots. These long sori reminded somebody of a centipede, so the fern was named, in Latin, for a centipede: "scolopendrium".

(They look more like caterpillars to me, but according to the naming conventions, the first person to describe a plant or critter gets to name it.)

Here's the whole fern. And the fronds are supposed to look like deer's tongues. With centipedes on the underside.

The imagination boggles.