Back in the early days of "safer at home" at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I found myself spending a lot of time on iNaturalist. iNaturalist is a online citizen science or public participation website. It collects nature observations from around the world.
It quickly became obvious that Eaton Canyon needed it's own project on the citizen scientist website. An so it began.
Within the scope of the project, I discovered that over 10 thousand observations had already been made in Eaton Canyon over the last 12 years.
It became obvious that a large number were inaccurate or just needed identifying. I was going to need a lot of help with this project to get it cleaned up.
One day I noticed Mickey Long, Eaton Canyon's retired Park Superintendent was adding some identifications to observations in the canyon's observations.
I reached out to him, asking for his assistance in his free time, promising him...”No Heavy Lifting”.
For 2 ½ months we worked an average of 3-4 hours a day each and here we are, presenting our project.
Fast forward to March 2022. Here we are two year's later and the project has allowed us to have opportunities to collaborate with numerous experts. John Trader, the Huntington Garden's Desert Collection curator, Chris Wagner lichenologist, and Alan Rockefeller fungus expert to name a few who helped the project.
The community continues to embrace iNaturalist and Eaton Canyon. The number of observations have nearly doubled to over 17,000.
We have done outreach to local schools, offering suggestions for their students to get the most out of their field curriculum.
We have been able to identify and remove numerous invasive spices from the canyon.
Photo by Chris Wagner
Welcome to my Caster Bean wormhole!
Ricinus communis
Well I think I solved my mystery about the little odd growths on the castor bean plants. I collected some samples and looked at them under the scope in the lab. Rather than galls, I have determined that the little growths are actually extra-floral (meaning outside of the flower) nectaries. I also found them in pairs on the base of the blade (the broad leafy part) on the petiole (the "stem" to the leaf). I did not get a picture of the pairs, but some of the pairs had red centers, like a thumbprint cookie filled with raspberry jam, complete with teeny tiny mites.
Looking further into it, I found a paper from 1923 about the nectaries.
"EXTRA-FLORAL NECTAR GLANDS OF RICINUS
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE HULL BOTANICAL LABORATORY 310
E. L. REED
(WITH TWELVE FIGURES)
On the castor-oil plant there are two distinct types of extra-
floral nectar glands. One type is large, stalked, and distinctly
visible to the naked eye, found on the petioles, the stems at the
base of the petioles, and the blossom spike. The other type is
scarcely discernible without the aid of a hand lens, sessile, found
sparingly on the lower side of the leaf blade about I cm. from the
margin (but with no regularity), and on the tips of each tooth of
the margin."
I will be looking for those tiny ones on the leaf margins with a hand lens next time I am in the field.
Just as weird as euphorbias and spurges (castor bean's lineage) are, I find it just as weird how many papers have been written about ricinus communis extrafloral nectaries. There are ones devoted to the chemical makeup of the nectarie's secretions.
Time to crawl back out of the wormhole.