@awkwardbotany / awkwardbotany.tumblr.com
Boise’s summers are decidedly hot and dry. Months can pass without any measurable precipitation, meanwhile temperatures regularly peak in the 90’s. In the heat of the summer, multiple days in a row above 100 degrees Fahrenheit is not unheard of. Under these conditions, irrigation is a must if you intend to keep plants alive, particularly plants not adapted to our climate. Skipping out on watering…
If it isn’t clear by now from my Weeds of Boise series and countless other posts, I happen to be interested in the flora and fauna of urban areas. Urban ecology is a fascinating field of study, and I’m not sure that it gets the attention it deserves. Nature is not some far away place, and you shouldn’t have to leave city limits to go in search of it. Remarkably, nature exists right outside your…
Flowers in the aster family have one of the most recognizable shapes in botany – a circle with a series of petals surrounding it. If you were asked to draw a flower, there is a good chance your drawing would look something like a sunflower, a daisy, a cosmos, or an aster. It’s one of the most basic flower shapes, and yet it isn’t a single flower; it’s a pseudanthium – a false flower. This is…
While we’re on the subject of pollen-gluing mechanisms, there is another material apart from pollenkitt that a limited number of flowering plant families use to link their pollen grains together. It functions, much like pollenkitt, by aiding in the attachment of pollen to visiting animals. However, unlike pollenkitt, it isn’t sticky, oily, or viscous, and is instead more like a series of threads.…
Pollination in flowering plants is the process of moving pollen grains, which carry sperm cells, from the anthers to the stigmas of either the same flower or a separate flower. If things go well from there, sperm cells will be transported via pollen tubes into the ovaries where fertilization with egg cells can take place and seeds can form. Pollen grain development occurs within the anthers, and…
Sweetgum is a distinctive tree at any time of year. It stands out among most other deciduous trees with its excurrent growth habit, which gives it a narrowly conical or pyramidal shape. Only in its advanced age does it begin to develop a more rounded and irregular form. Its leaves are star-shaped with either five or seven lobes and span between four and seven inches. Their glossy green color…
Things were pretty quiet on the blog in 2023, and I apologize for that. I have no excuses really. It’s just life. Fewer posts doesn’t mean I’m any less committed to writing and sharing about plants since the day I started this project, it’s more about quality over quantity. I would never want this to become a half-hearted affair, so even if months go by without hearing from me, just know that…
In part one of this two part series, I introduced you to the Boise State University campus, located in the heart of Boise, Idaho. I’ve been spending the past year walking the campus and cataloging the weeds that I find there. Boise has a fairly mild climate compared to the rest of Idaho, so weeds are generally easy to find just about any time of year. What weeds are present depends on what time…
lf you’ve seen one fireweed, you’ve probably seen several. As an early successional species, growing in large numbers across a vast amount of space is kind of its thing. Any disturbance that leaves bare ground in its wake, such as a wildfire or a windstorm, gives fireweed the opportunity to colonize. It grows quickly and spreads via rhizomes, producing thousands of airborne seeds in the process,…
If you live in a major city (or even a minor one), there is a good chance it is home to a college or university (perhaps several). Universities tend to take up a lot of space, which means there is often a plethora of landscaping accompanying their buildings, hardscaping, and other impervious surfaces. Among all the turf, flower beds, tree wells, and other greenspaces, there is bound to be a fair…
Have you ever tried to identify a grass? Most of us who like to look at plants and learn their names will probably admit that we often give up on grasses pretty quickly, or just ignore them entirely. They aren’t the easiest plants to identify to species, and there are so many of them. Without close inspection, they can all look pretty similar. Their flowers aren’t particularly showy, and their…
To understand the current state of rangeland wildfires in the Intermountain West, you must first familiarize yourself with a plant commonly referred to as cheatgrass. This annual grass moved into the region over a century ago, and its spread has had a massive impact on the environment, as well as the economy and our way of life. Just the very mention of cheatgrass in the West will get some…
As soon as I learned that the Western Society of Weed Science‘s annual meeting was going to be held in Boise in 2023, I began making plans to attend. I had attended the annual meeting in 2018 when it was held in Garden Grove, California and had been thinking about it ever since. It’s not every year that a meeting like this comes to your hometown, so it was an opportunity I knew I couldn’t miss.…
Just because it’s winter doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of plants to look at. Deciduous trees and shrubs become particularly interesting during the winter months with their exposed branches and their growth habits made more obvious. The beauty of a tree’s “skeletal” structure is revealed when it’s stripped of its leaves and set against a winter sky. Winter is also a great time to prune certain…
Learning to identify Kentucky coffeetree in the winter brings you one step closer to making a coffee-like (albeit caffeine-free) beverage from its seeds. Humans have a long history of occasionally using the “beans” of Gymnocladus dioicus to make this tisane, which explains common names like coffeetree, American coffee berry, and coffeenut. The process is a bit time consuming, and the end result…
A few years ago, I was on the hunt for a Kentucky coffeetree. I was aware that a few could be found in some of the parks around Boise, but not being familiar with them, I wasn’t sure where exactly to find one or what I was even looking for. One winter while riding my bike to work, I noticed a tree at the edge of a golf course. No doubt I had passed this tree hundreds (if not thousands) of times.…
Urban areas are increasingly being studied for their potential to help conserve biodiversity and provide habitat for numerous plants and animals. Despite the harsh conditions of the built environment, organisms of all kinds are able to survive in our cities, and as we find ways to make these spaces more hospitable for them, cities actually have great potential for species conservation, even for…
