awkward botany

If you know anything about stinging nettle, you know not to touch it. Its stems and leaves come equipped with needle-like hairs that easily detach from the plant and pierce into bare skin. The real rub is that these needle-like hairs also act like hypodermic needles, injecting a combination of chemicals into your skin resulting in an obnoxious itching sensation that can last for hours. So why…

The reason for flowers is reproduction. Three major parts of a flower function to achieve this purpose. First, the gynoecium sits at the center. This is the ovule-producing portion. It’s where seeds are born. Its stigmas accept pollen produced by the second major flower part, the androecium. This part is made up of a whorl of stamens that generally surround the gynoecium, except when the…

The aster family has a lot to offer. It’s really no surprise considering that Asteraceae is the largest family of flowering plants in the world with as many as 33,000 species. Certainly its ecological importance is substantial. It also contains, arguably, some of the most beautiful and attractive plant species, as well as a significant selection of useful plants from a human perspective. When a…

When garden plants go weedy, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve escaped the boundaries of our yards and invaded nearby natural areas or uncultivated spaces. While this is a concern for a significant number of ornamental plants, sometimes the weediness of a garden plant is experienced within the very yard or garden it was planted in. For some of us, such a plant’s weediness can turn us off from…

Prunella vulgaris can be found all over the place. It has also been used to treat just about everything. What else would you expect from a plant known commonly as self-heal, heal-all, all-heal, and woundwort? The medicinal value of this plant has been appreciated for centuries across its expansive range, and studies evaluating its medicinal use continue today. Being such a ubiquitous species –…

In a garden setting, a successful groundcover is a plant that is durable and adaptable, spreads readily, and fills in space thouroughly. The point of planting a groundcover is to cover exposed soil and create a sort of living mulch. In fact, groundcovers provide similar benefits to mulch. They prevent erosion, help retain soil moisture, and prevent weeds. It should come as no surprise then, that…

In case I need a reminder that the horticulture industry has a history of introducing weedy plants to natural areas, I get one each time I bike to work. Riding along the Boise River Greenbelt, a trail that for much of its length is flanked by cultivated landscapes on one side and a highly modified but largely naturalized river bank on the other, I see a mixture of both native and introduced…

Happy 2025! Apparently it’s time for another year in review. As I said in last year’s review, 2024 was going to be another year of pollination, in which I would write monthly posts on the topic of pollination. Well, clearly that didn’t happen. After two posts, I dropped the ball. That’s okay though. Another Year of Pollination will continue indefinitely. As it is, I essentially stole the name,…

Box elder is a maple that doesn’t often get credit for being a maple. Moreso, it is a tree that is not thought highly of, and it may not even be welcome in certain discussions around maples. You could even say that box elder is a “rogue maple,” as Arthur Plotnick deems it in The Urban Tree Book. It should come as no surprise, but if people are going to talk about a plant this way, it’s only going…

Why has this blog been so quiet lately? There are plenty of excuses for that. It doesn’t really matter either way, but since we’re on the subject, one thing that has kept me occupied recently is being back in school. I’m working on a certificate in GIS, and I’m hoping to make some cool maps. More on that later perhaps. For now, I thought I’d share one of my final projects. I figured it was a…

When you make yourself the weeds guy, and the word gets out that you’re the guy to go to when it comes to weeds, invitations and inquiries start coming your way. Usually it’s just someone asking you to identify a weed or telling you how much they despise a particular plant for its weedy behaviors. Sometimes it’s writing a weeds-themed article or teaching a class about weeds. It can even be an…

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…