Some of "my" plants

Over the past few days I've been going through the plants I've collected over the past couple of years. When I say collected, I mean digging up a plant, with some roots in tact and placing it in my plant press. A plant press is essentially a multi-layered cardboard and newspaper sandwich with two pieces of wood as the "bread". The dimensions of the contraption are 11.5 inches x 17.5 inches; the same as a sheet of herbarium paper. The pressing is achieved by straps. I've used cinder blocks, but found they decrease portability.

After the plants have been placed in the press (in newspaper, cardboard and wood, in that order) they are allowed to dry, which preserves leaf and flowers color in the process. Sometimes. I have a fair share of plants that dried black or have discolored in the process. In fact, sometimes drying quality can be an identification character in some dichotomous keys. One common plant that dries black is Monotropa uniflora, or Idianpipe. Recently I learned that these plants are not simply parasitic on the roots of forest trees. Instead, they obtain nutrients from mycorrhizae, an association of fungal hyphae and plant roots, that earn them their name as a mycotroph. Observing the extremely fine roots of Monotropa it is easy to imagine them penetrating delicate mycorrhizae.

I've only collected about 230 specimens so far, which isn't that much considering some folks collect thousands in their lifetime, for example botanist Awlyn Gentry collected around 80,000 plants in his lifetime (which was cut short). Of those plants that I've identified and mounted on herbarium paper two stand out, mostly because of their cool flowers: Mitella diphylla and Lithophragma parviflora. Both are small herbaceous plants in the Saxifragaceae family. A good description and distribution of the family can be found on this website. Scroll down to read about some of the pollination and seeds dispersal mechanisms! So cool! Check out the "Main Tree" too. Look for Saxifragales. Apparently it is basal to the rosids, which surprises me because they share so many characters. Specifically, they share leaves with stipules, 4-5 sepals and petals, a hypanthium and stamens 1x-2x petal number. Those are a limited number of characters, but would normally lead you to the rosids clade. I guess not in this case. There are many other morphological factors to consider, not to mention chemical and genetic identifiers.

Mitella diphylla has very small, but beautiful feather-like petals with 10 stamens hiding inside the hypathium. Lithophragma parviflora's petals have three lobes that give the illusion of more petals than actually exist with palmately lobed leaves to match. Click on the links to see what they look like.

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