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Black Bugbane & The Blues: Interactions Between Our Wildflower Of The Year And The Insect World, W. John Hayden Apr 2017

Black Bugbane & The Blues: Interactions Between Our Wildflower Of The Year And The Insect World, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

No, this article has nothing to do with American Roots music. Black Bugbane is one of several common names for the 2017 VNPS Wildflower of the Year, Actaea racemosa. And Blues refers to a subfamily of lycaenid butterflies, commonly referred to as Blues or Azures. The interactions between Black Bugbane, a.k.a., Black Cohosh, Appalachian Azure butterflies (Celastrina neglectamajor), and ants was recently summarized by VNPS charter member and past president Nicky Staunton (2015). In brief, Black Bugbane is the sole food source for caterpillars of Appalachian Azure butterflies, a situation that, superficially, might seem like any other caterpillar and host …


Actaea Racemosa: The Slender Wands Of Flowering Common Black Cohosh Beckon Us To Explore Woodlands, W. John Hayden Jan 2017

Actaea Racemosa: The Slender Wands Of Flowering Common Black Cohosh Beckon Us To Explore Woodlands, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

Common Black Cohosh is a perennial rhizomatous forest herb. Its horizontal rhizomes bear numerous adventitious roots on the underside and aerial stems of annual duration on the upper side, along with knobby scars left from aerial stems of previous years. Leaves are alternate, twice or thrice compound in ternate or pinnate patterns, and large—up to 1 m long. Individual leaflet size and shape vary with position in the large compound leaves, with position of a leaf on the stem, and from population to population. Most often leaflets are coarsely serrate, lobed to deeply incised, with a truncate to cuneate base …


Sepals And Petals And Stamens—Oh, My! Or, A Brief Discourse On Putative Homologies Of Perianth Elements Of Common Black Cohosh, W. John Hayden Jan 2017

Sepals And Petals And Stamens—Oh, My! Or, A Brief Discourse On Putative Homologies Of Perianth Elements Of Common Black Cohosh, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

I encountered some contradictory information while preparing to write the 2017 Wildflower of the Year brochure: some sources describe flowers of Actaea racemosa, Common Black Cohosh, as having petals, while others say petals are absent. How can that be? How could there be such uncertainty about this common plant, one known to science since before the time of Linnaeus? After a little research, I decided to describe Black Cohosh flowers as having a series of organs interpretable either as staminodes (nonfunctional stamens) or as petals located between its sepals and stamens (Figure 1). Frankly, I waffled on the petal issue, …


On The Complexity Of Simples, Pharmacognosy, And Actaea Racemosa, W. John Hayden Jan 2017

On The Complexity Of Simples, Pharmacognosy, And Actaea Racemosa, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

Pharmacognosy, a discipline at the intersection of botany and medicine, deals with knowledge about medicines derived from plants (Youngken 1950). A central goal of pharmacognosy is the accurate and consistent taxonomic identification of medicinal plants and medicinal plant products. Unlike drugstore pill bottles, medicinal plants in nature do not come with labels. One aspect of pharmacognosy, then, is the identification of whole plants found in nature. Much as in field botany and plant systematics, this aspect of pharmacognosy involves learning to recognize species by overall appearance (gestalt), or by dichotomous keys, or both.


Jewels Of The Orchidaceae, W. John Hayden Apr 2016

Jewels Of The Orchidaceae, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

To temperate-zone plant enthusiasts, the orchid family seems more than a little strange. On the one hand, native orchids grow wild without assistance from people, they are rooted in the soil, and they survive freezing cold winter temperatures. On the other hand, the tropical orchids that we encounter are ornamental plants, pampered by their human caregivers, cultured indoors in pots filled with fir bark or other media designed to mimic the plants’ natural epiphytic habit, and, as a group, these ornamental tropical orchids have essentially zero tolerance to frost. Of course, their flowers, fruits, and seeds define them all as …


The Vascular Flora Of Powhatan County, Virginia, Michael Austin Terry Jan 2005

The Vascular Flora Of Powhatan County, Virginia, Michael Austin Terry

Master's Theses

The project was undertaken with three main goals in mind: to provide as current and complete an account as possible of the flora of Powhatan County in the form of an annotated checklist; to integrate the information obtained from the inventory into phytogeographical and ecological generalizations currently being developed for the state of Virginia; and, to report any significant or anomalous discoveries. There is no previous county-wide inventory of plant diversity for Powhatan County. However, Corcoran (1981) published a list of plants from the Jones and Mill Creek watershed located in the Fine Creek Mills area of northeastern Powhatan.


Amanoa, W. John Hayden Jan 1999

Amanoa, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

Monoecious or dioecious trees or shrubs, latex absent. Leaves alternate, distichous, evergreen, simple, coriaceous, glabrous; stipules intrapetiolar, paired, or confluent across the leaf axil; margins entire; venation pinnate. Inflorescence axillary and/or terminal, of densely bracteate clusters (reduced cymules), in the axils of ordinary foliage leaves, in nonleafy pseudoterminal aggregates that revert to vegetative growth, or (in neotropical species) in the axils of alternate, reduced, crescentiform stipular bracts of determinate deciduous spiciform axes borne in groups of 1-several per branch apex; axes straight or sinuous; floral bracts minute, deltate, with abaxially pubescent midribs. Staminate flowers sessile or pedicellate, regular; perianth biseriate; …


Seedling Development In Species Of Chamaesyce (Euphorbiaceae) With Erect Growth Habits, W. John Hayden, Olga Troyanskaya Jan 1998

Seedling Development In Species Of Chamaesyce (Euphorbiaceae) With Erect Growth Habits, W. John Hayden, Olga Troyanskaya

Biology Faculty Publications

Seedling development is described for Chamaesyce hirta, C. hypericifolia, and C. mesembrianthemifolia as discerned by light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. Although these species ultimately develop erect to ascending growth habits, epicotyl development is limited to the production of a single pair ofleaves located immediately superjacent to and decussate with the cotyledons. The shoot system develops from one or more buds located in the axils of the cotyledons. In all respects, seedling ontogeny is very similar to that of previously studied prostrate species of Chamaesyce. Evidence from seedling ontogeny thus contradicts a hypothesis concerning homologies of plant …


Revision Of The Cerrado Hemicryptophytic Chamaesyce Of Boissier's "Pleiadeniae" (Euphorbiaceae), Mark P. Simmons, W. John Hayden Apr 1997

Revision Of The Cerrado Hemicryptophytic Chamaesyce Of Boissier's "Pleiadeniae" (Euphorbiaceae), Mark P. Simmons, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

The species of Chamaesyce classified by Boissier as the "Pleiadeniae'" are revised in light of presently available collections. Six species are accepted and new combinations are proposed for C. nana, C. setosa, C. tamanduana, and C. viscoides. Although these herbaceous perennials of cerrado vegetation of Brazil, northern Argentina, and adjacent countries are distinctive ecologically and geographically, cladistic analysis does not support their recognition as a monophyletic group.


Systematic Anatomy Of Euphorbiaceae Subfamily Oldfieldioideae I. Overview, W. John Hayden Jan 1994

Systematic Anatomy Of Euphorbiaceae Subfamily Oldfieldioideae I. Overview, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

The biovulate subfamily Oldfieldioideae of Euphorbiaceae, characterized by spiny pollen, is an otherwise apparently diverse assemblage of mostly Southern Hemisphere trees and shrubs that traditionally have been allied with genera of Phyllanthoideae and Porantheroideae sensu Pax and Hoffmann. Although fairly diverse anatomically, the following structures characterize the subfamily with only a few exceptions: pinnate brochidodromous venation with generally randomly organized tertiary and higher order venation; foliar and petiolar glands absent; unicellular or unbranched uniseriate trichomes; latex absent; mucilaginous epidermis or hypodermis; brachyparacytic stomata; vessel elements with simple perforation plates and alternate, often very small, intervascular pits; thick-walled nonseptate imperforate tracheary …


Notes On Neotropical Amanoa (Euphorbiaceae), W. John Hayden Oct 1990

Notes On Neotropical Amanoa (Euphorbiaceae), W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

Lectotypes are designated for Amanoa caribaea Krug & Urban and A. guianensis Aublet; presumed syntypes of the latter taxon are shown to be heterogeneous by inclusion of a previously unrecognized species. Four new species of Amanoa are described: A. congesta from French Guiana and northeastern Brazil; A. gracillima from Manaus, Brazil; A. nanayensis from Amazonian Peru and adjacent Colombia and Brazil; and A. neglecta from French Guiana and Surinam. Amanoa sinuosa is proposed as a new name for the later homonym A. robusta Leal. A key to the 13 neotropical species is presented.


Eryngium Prostratum In Central Virginia, W. John Hayden Dec 1985

Eryngium Prostratum In Central Virginia, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

While visiting Pocahontas State Park in Chesterfield County, Virginia during the fall of 1984, an unfamiliar blue-flowered plant was observed growing near the upper reaches of Swift Creek Lake. This proved to be Eryngium prostratum Nuttall ex DC., a species common near bodies of water in the southeast U.S. While several standard floras include Virginia in the distribution of this plant (Fernald 1950, Gleason 1952, Gleason & Cronquist 1963, Radford et al 1968, Godfrey & Wooten 1981), the only counties for which it is recorded in Harvill et al (1981) are along the extreme southern border of the state, i.e., …


Wood Anatomy And Relationships Of Neowawraea (Euphorbiaceae), W. John Hayden, Dorthe S. Brandt Oct 1984

Wood Anatomy And Relationships Of Neowawraea (Euphorbiaceae), W. John Hayden, Dorthe S. Brandt

Biology Faculty Publications

Wood anatomy of three specimens of Neowawraea phyllanthoides Rock, a rare and endangered member of Euphorbiaceae endemic to the Hawaiian Islands, is described and compared with woods of other genera of subfamily Phyllanthoideae. Neowawraea has often been associated or synonymized with Drypetes Vahl. Wood of Neowawraea is diffuse porous, perforation plates are simple, imperforate tracheary elements are thin-walled septate fiber-tracheids, rays are heterocellular and crystalliferous, and axial xylem parenchyma is restricted to a few scanty paratracheal and terminal cells. In several respects these results differ from earlier published descriptions of the wood of this taxon; these earlier descriptions are shown …


Comparative Anatomy And Systematics Of Picrodendron, Genus Incertae Sedis, W. John Hayden Jan 1977

Comparative Anatomy And Systematics Of Picrodendron, Genus Incertae Sedis, W. John Hayden

Biology Faculty Publications

This study of the vegetative anatomy of Picrodendron and some of its putative relatives has been undertaken in order better to understand its natural relationships. Despite the number of anatomical studies in the literature (Jadin, 1901; Solereder, 1908; Boas, 1913; Webber, 1936; Heimsch, 1942; Record & Hess, 1943; Metcalfe & Chalk, 1950), our information on the anatomy of Picrodendron is still incomplete· for example, nodal and petiolar anatomy has apparently never been described. Furthermore, with the exception of Record and Hess (1943), who discussed Picrodendron in a family by itself, other anatomists have compared Picrodendron only with members of Simaroubaceae, …