by Ann Elliott | Apr 4, 2026 | Botanical Blog, Featured, Plant Identification, Plant Science, Plant Science
By Caleb Hute, Consulting Botanist
Figure 1. Purple needlegrass (Stipa pulchra), the State Grass of California, nods in the wind in the Bowman Canyon serpentine grassland on in the Mount Burdell Preserve.
Spring has sprung, and even as the recent heat wave turns hillsides brown, wildflowers are blooming all across the county. The gorgeous wildflower displays we are lucky enough to receive fit nicely with the green background which accompanies them. Today I want to talk about the background that occurs between and around the flowers that you usually ignore: grasses.
Evolutionary Significance
You might not believe it, but grasses are actually part of the larger evolutionary clade of plants referred to as angiosperms, or flowering plants. This family is immensely successful with grasslands, which are assemblages of plants where grasses are most prevalent, being found on every continent except Antarctica. One secret of success of some grass species is C4 photosynthesis, an adaptation which allows plants to operate their photosynthetic systems more efficiently in warm climates (ex. corn). Another adaptive advantage is a lack of reliance on pollinators; grass species are wind pollinated. This is why grasses don’t appear as showy as other flowering plants – they have no need to draw in pollinators with elaborate floral displays, and over evolutionary time, have lost most of the bright colors and typical attractive morphologies we associate with spring wildflowers.
Usefulness for Humans
However, despite lacking conventional beauty, grasses still dominate human existence. Much of the world’s calories come from different species of grass, including rice, corn, oats, wheat, and barley. Bamboo, while not native to the United States, has been used as a building material within its native range for centuries. Lawns, which have become ubiquitous aspects of suburban America, rely on another of the many adaptations of grass – the ability to be cut back, and continue living and growing. This adaptation is the result of a complex evolutionary relationship with grazing herbivores. It is unsurprising then, that many grass species grow even more robustly after being nibbled. The mechanism which allows this are special growing points that allow continued growth from the middle of the leaf, even if the tip has been removed.
Flower Characteristics
Although they may seem so different, certain characters of a flower may still be recognized in grass species. Being able to recognize these characters is perhaps fun (or possibly frustrating) for the casual plant lover, and essential for botanists who are seeking to identify plants all the way to a species or subspecies level. Firstly, we must talk about the structure of an inflorescence, or the complete flowering structure of a plant (See figure 2 below). While some plants may only have one flower per inflorescence, plants in the grass family typically have more than one. These highly modified and reduced flowers are grouped into units referred to as spikelets, which are small bundles of highly modified flowers subtended by a set of modified leaves (bracts) called glumes.
Figure 2. Grass morphology as found in common, non-native grass slender wild oats (Avena barbata). An ovary, once pollinated, develops into a fruit.
Spikelets are usually attached to a single central axis without a stalk (referred to as being ‘sessile’) or attached to the axis by a branch. Each branch will have one or more spikelets. Each individual modified flower within a spikelet is referred to as a floret. Each of these florets is wrapped in two specialized bracts called the lemma and palea. At the very center of a (bisexual or pistillate) floret, you will find the giveaway of a modified flower – an ovary which develops into a fruit (botanically, not culinarily speaking). In the case of grasses, the fruit produced forms a hard, indehiscent shell around the embryo, and is referred to as a caryopsis or grain. The energy dense embryo of this fruit is what supplies the world with all the great grass derived food we rely on, from simple foods like oatmeal, to food products like corn syrup, which are found in innumerable products all across the globe.
by Ann Elliott | Dec 28, 2023 | Botanical Blog, Plant Science, Plant Science
Fig. 1 Air plants on powerlines
Growing on Air?
We know that plants and animals adapt to their habitats with survival features or behaviors that make life possible in many habitats, from deserts to the arctic. Yet, air plants (Tillandsia) are amazing flowering plants (angiosperms) that live without their roots anchored in soil!
As a tourist in Costa Rica, I kept looking upwards hoping to see a three-toed sloth hanging from a tree branch or a powerline. However, in looking for sloths, I was more likely to see air plants attached to powerlines (Fig. 1). How can a plant survive in such a habitat?
The genus Tillandsia in Bromeliaceae (Pineapple family) includes several hundred species of evergreen, perennial, flowering plants. They are epiphytes, meaning “upon a plant” in Greek. They attach to a substrate, commonly a tree or a rock and also powerlines, but derive no nutrition from the substrate (i.e. they are not parasites). Tillandsia and about half of all known orchids grow epiphytically on “perches” that give them access to light. Tillandsia species are native from the South-Eastern U.S., Mexico, Central America, Caribbean Islands to Central Argentina and are found in many habitats, including forests, mountains, and deserts.
How Air Plants Got Their Generic Name
Erik Tillander (1640-1693) was born in Sweden about 70 years before Linnaeus. He studied botany and medicine at the University of Uppsala, Sweden and the Academy of Turku, Finland. He got his doctorate in Holland in 1670 and shortly thereafter became Professor of Medicine in the Academy of Turku. When Tillander was a student, he got so seasick in a violent storm on a voyage from Turku to Uppsala that he never traveled by boat again. He returned to Turku by walking around the Gulf of Bothnia (northern part of the Baltic Sea), a distance of about 1000 miles. It has been said that he changed his name to Elias Tillandz (‘till lands’ means ‘by land’ in Swedish).
Many decades later, Linnaeus honored the memory of his fellow Uppsala alumni by naming a large genus of American plants capable of growing away from water Tilllandsia after Professor Tillandz because of his fear of water. Linnaeus was known for naming plants to celebrate botanists as well as to insult those that he had quarreled with.
Fig. 2 Cardinal air plant (Tillandsia fasciculata) with broad leaf bases By Usien
Some Morphology, Anatomy and Physiology
Air plants have no true roots, but rather a “holdfast” allowing the plant to hold on to a substrate. Water and nutrients must come from the surrounding air, rain, or fog and are absorbed by the leaves instead of through a root system. Some species have a compressed stem axis so that the rosettes of leaves are close together. The bases of the leaves are often flared, overlapping with each other, and forming a funnel or cup that collects and holds rainwater (Fig. 2). The leaves of other air plants hang loosely from their aerial perches (Figs. 3a & 3b).
Scale-like trichomes, minute outgrowths of the epidermis on the leaves, absorb water that is used by the plant in various processes, including photosynthesis. Nutrients in the form of dust are also taken into the leaf by trichomes. Decomposed debris from the surrounding air can accumulate around leaf bases, where it is absorbed by these minute epidermal outgrowths.
Recent studies have shown that in many epiphytic species, bacteria play a great role in fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Tillandsia recurvata (Fig. 3a), a widespread species in North and South America, has been shown to have its leaf surfaces covered by nitrogen-fixing bacteria. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria in root-nodules that produce ammonia and nitrates used by the host plants is common in Fabaceae (the Pea family which includes beans, peas, lupines, and brooms).
Fig. 3a Small ballmoss (Tillandsia recurvata) By Juan Carlos Fonseca Mata Wikipedia
Fig. 3b Tillandsia sp. By Eva Buxton
Fig. 4 Blushing bride (Tillandsia ionantha) in bloom with reddish foliage By Mokkie
The flowers are showy in some Tillandsia species (Fig. 4) and inconspicuous in others. The foliage can vary from green to a white, silvery color, and in some species changes to a bright color when the plant is blooming, helping to attract pollinators such as moths and hummingbirds. The seeds have hair-like appendages, so they can be blown away by the wind. Air plants also reproduce vegetatively by growing offsets called “pups” at the base of the plant.
Fig. 5 Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) Wikipedia
Spanish Moss
The lacy-looking, grey “stuff” hanging off trees and shrubs in Marin County and often erroneously referred to as Spanish moss is a lichen in the genus Usnea. (A lichen consists of a fungus and an alga in a symbiotic relationship.) Spanish moss (neither from Spain, nor a moss) is an air plant in the genus Tillandsia. Its specific epithet is usneoides (oides means “look like”) because it resembles the lichen Usnea. My first encounter with Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) (Fig. 5) was in Jacksonville, FL, where it was hanging from the most magnificent oak I have ever seen, a Southern live oak (Quercus virginiana).
Santa gave me a Tillandsia juncea with a flowering stalk. I can’t wait for it to bloom!
Send comments to evabuxton@sbcglobal.net
by Ann Elliott | Dec 6, 2023 | Botanical Blog, Plant Science, Plant Science
Fig 1. Tulips with Christmas Tree
Fig. 2 Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima)
When you leave your homeland, you don’t just leave family, friends, language, familiar places behind – you also leave traditions and trappings associated with them. For me, one such thing is a planter with 5-6-inch-tall red tulips set in reindeer moss (Cladonia, a lichen) (Fig.1) or moss, perhaps decorated with some small pinecones and a couple of fly agarics (Amanita muscaria) made of papier-mâché. For the first few decades in this country, I looked for bulbs of short, red tulips year-round, but there were none to be found. All tulips were – and still are too tall!
Nowadays, like most Americans, I associate Poinsettia (Fig. 2) with Christmas and so do people in Sweden and other countries around the world. At least in California, the plant floods nurseries and box stores even before Thanksgiving. Poinsettia for most people symbolizes good cheer and wishes for mirth and celebration at Christmas time. In religious communities, the shape of the red parts of the plants may symbolize the Star of Bethlehem and the red color the blood of Christ.
A Legend
fig. 3 The Legend
According to legend, Poinsettia as the Christmas flower started several centuries ago on Christmas Eve in a small Mexican village. A little girl named Pepita had no gift to present to the Christ child at the Christmas Eve service. As Pepita walked slowly to the chapel with her cousin Pedro, her heart was filled with sadness rather than joy. Pedro tried to console her, telling her that even the humblest gift, if given in love, would be acceptable in His eyes. Not knowing what else to do, Pepita knelt by the roadside and gathered a handful of common weeds and fashioned them into a small bouquet. Looking at the scraggly bunch of weeds, she felt more saddened and embarrassed than ever by the humbleness of her offering. She fought back tears as she entered the small chapel. As she approached the alter, she remembered Pedro’s words: “Even the humblest gift, if given in love, will be acceptable
in His eyes.” She felt her spirit lift as she knelt to lay the bouquet at the foot of the nativity scene. Suddenly, the bouquet of weeds burst into blooms of brilliant red, and all who saw the flowers were certain they had witnessed a Christmas miracle. Thomas Anthony “Tomie” dePaola, an American writer and illustrator, offers a retelling of the timeless legend in his children’s book The Legend of the Poinsettia, published in Spanish and English in 2008 (Fig. 3).
Classification, Habitat and Morphology
Poinsettia – also called Christmas star, Lobster plant, Mexican flame-leaf, et al. in English (Julstjӓrna in Swedish!) – is in Euphorbiaceae (Spurge family), one of the largest plant families in the world. The genus Euphorbia to which Poinsettia belongs (see below) consists of about 2000 species, making it one of the largest genera of flowering plants. (Euphorbia antiquorum (Malayan tree spurge) is the type species for the genus Euphorbia, described by Linnaeus in 1753.) Euphorbia members all share the feature of having a latex-like sap, more or less poisonous depending on the species.
Poinsettia is a perennial plant, native to southern Mexico and Central America, where it grows as a shrub in mid-elevational, deciduous, tropical forests. Most populations are reported to grow on west-facing slopes in steep canyons.
If the subject of Poinsettia comes up in a conversation, many people immediately declare – “the red parts are not petals but leaves,” which is correct; what surrounds the small flowers in the middle of the plant are large, red bracts, which are modified leaves. The knoblike flowers in the middle of the red bracts are cyathia, the floral characteristic that puts Poinsettia in the genus Euphorbia. A cyathium in Euphorbia consists of unisexual flowers, both staminate (male) and pistilllate (female) flowers without sepals and petals, borne within a campanulate involucre, a ring of small bracts around the flower cluster.
Some History
Fig. 4 Joel R. Poinsett (1779-1851) Wikipedia
I will admit that until I started researching the topic of this article, I thought Poinsettia was a generic (genus) name. The ending “ia” is not uncommon in generic plant names, for example, Begonia, Forsythia, and Magnolia. Now I know that a German scientist, J.F. Klotzsch, described the plant as a new species in 1834 (Euphorbia pulcherrima) (specific epithet meaning ‘most beautiful’), and that the plant’s common English name is derived from Joel R. Poinsett (1779-1851) (Fig. 4), a physician, diplomat, botanist, the first appointed U.S. Ambassador (Minister) to Mexico, and a U.S. Secretary of War. Poinsett had found the plant in Taxco in the 1820s, became enchanted by the red “blooms” and sent some cuttings to his home in Greenville, South Carolina, where he later began growing them. Now there are more than a hundred varieties of Poinsettia, grown in every State in the U.S., with “blooms” in shades of pink, white, yellow, purple, or multicolored. The red variety is, however, the most popular.
Poinsettia, called Cuetlaxochitl by the Aztecs, was a symbol of purity and cultivated by them long before the European colonization of the Americas. The red pigment was used as a dye and the milky sap as a medicine to “control fevers.” After the Spanish conquest during the 17th century, Franciscan friars named the plant with the “bright red flowers” Flores de Noche Buena (Flowers of the Holy Night or Christmas Eve flower), because it bloomed each year during the Christmas season.
A Quandary?
You may be aware that the American Ornithological Society has announced that it will rename all birds currently named for human beings. The new names will reflect the species’ appearance or habitat, i.e., some trait associated with the actual bird and not with the “colonial explorer” who first identified it. The Ornithological Society maintains that some of the birds (not all) were named for people who held views considered “repugnant” today. For example, John James Audubon, the naturalist for whom the Audubon’s shearwater is named, was “an unrepentant slaveholder who opposed emancipation” and Winfield Scott, for whom the Scott’s oriole is named, “led the forced eviction of the Cherokee along what is now known as the Trail of Tears.”
Would American plant societies do the same or are there just too many plants? Many botanists agree that scientific plant names (the specific epithet) should be descriptive and not include people’s name. Does a common name (what birders use) or a scientific name of a plant associated with something or someone we consider “repugnant” today warrant change? Should the genus Claytonia, named in honor of John Clayton, be changed, because he owned slaves to work his tobacco plantation? (Should Sir Francis Drake Boulevard be changed to the Coastal Miwok Trail?) Do we no longer want to call the plant we associate with Christmas ‘Poinsettia,’ because Joel R. Poinsett was a proponent of slavery and owned slaves himself; as Secretary of War oversaw the Trail of Tears; and presided over the continuing suppression and relocation of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, et al.?
Would ‘Christmas Star’ (Swedish translation) ever catch on?
Comments: evabuxton@sbcglobal.net
