February 2008 Vol. V No. 6

Directors & Officers

Ruth Loper, Director

Lynn Sherrod, Director

Clyde McKinney, President

franclyde@peoplescom.net

903-967-3998

Ron Loper, VP-Field Trips

Marjorie Sherrod, VP-Membership

Liz Soutendijk, VP-Programs

Elizabeth Parks, Sec/Treasurer

Herb Jarrell, Newsletter Editor

herbjarrell@letu.edu

903-986-2332

FROM THE PRESIDENT

The vote is in—Posados Café won! Let’s meet there at 5:30 PM prior to the Chapter Meeting. Everyone is invited!  As you probably know, Posados Café is just a block or so west of Loop 323 at 2500 (on the north side) E Fifth St (903-597-2573).

I attended the quarterly State board meeting of NPSOT in Fredericksburg on January 19^th. Here are some to the highlights and issues that were discussed:

1) The Texas Board has added a new position of V.P. Education held jointly by Bill and Kathy Ward. There is a push for all local chapters to have a V.P. of Education. Any volunteers?

2) The 2007 symposium profit was ± $19,000 and N.P.A.T. will get 30% of it. Georgetown gave a $6,000 grant and attendance was considerably higher than usual, probably because of the central location and having an ad in the TP&W Magazine. Silent auction proceeds were $3,601 and were added to the Student Grant Fund now totaling $21,965.

3) NPSOT will attempt to redefine the definition of a “Native”. The current definition includes “grows within 50 miles of your location”. (Any suggestion for a definition?)

4) NPSOT Symposium 2008, The Big Thicket, October 16-19, 2008, will be headquartered in Beaumont. Also the April 16^th NPSOT-Texas board meeting will be held in Beaumont. I have a conflict and will probably not be able to attend – any volunteers? The location for the 2009 meeting is up for grabs. Wichita Falls was the only possibility mentioned.

5) There was a long discussion over whether we need a long-range plan and if so, whether we should hire a consultant to facilitate the process or not. The thinking is that we have achieved the original goals set forth at our founding in 1996 and it might be time to move forward and grow the organization to become a major player in Texas and the nation. We might be coming to the place where we need an executive director and a development director and we will have to raise a lot more money than we now do. NPSOT must decide what it intends to be in the future and how it intends to get there.

6) Along those lines, the NPSOT state coordinators, Mike and Jennifer McBride have found that the job has required more hours than the (combined) 40 hours they agreed to work. A major contributor is the symposium, which took over 1,000 hours of their time last year. Because of other obligations at this point in their life, they have informed us this will be the last year they will be NPSOT coordinators. They have asked their status to be converted to contract hourly employees at a rate of $12.50/hour and to limit themselves to services essential to keep NPSOT running. They will no longer be involved in the symposia. It was recommended that NPSOT investigate the possibility of hiring the services of an individual or company that specializes in event management to handle the symposia work.

7) NPSOT is forming a Volunteer Corps at the state office in Fredericksburg. Activities could include data entry, mailings, request for information such as plant i.d., and special projects like the library and the Annual Meeting. I realize our members are locationally challenged, but interested volunteers are invited to attend a meeting at the state office on February 5^th at 11 a.m., contact Jane Crone at 830-990-9823 or volcoord@npsot.org for more information or to register.

8) The 2008 budget for NPSOT is $59,075 and NPSOT’s net worth at the end of the year was $218,860. Did you know that our own Ron Loper is on the audit committee?

9) Information was presented for chapters wishing to present an award for high school or middle school science fair projects dealing with native plants. This could be a committee under the Education Committee. Any interest in this? I have more information.

10) Quarterly chapter financial reports will soon be transmitted via online entry through our internet web browsers.

11) NPSOT had a net gain of 36 members last year ending at 1,758 members. Tyler had 40 members at the year-end.

I will be available at the end of the February meeting to discuss any of this with those seeking more detailed information.

Clyde McKinney

NEW MEMBERS

Please welcome our new members to the Tyler Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Texas!

Billie Wilder—Quitman

Rex Rasberry—Whitehouse

It’s great to have you with us! If you haven’t come to one of our meetings or our field trips, you are missing out! Also, if you have recently joined our chapter and you’re not listed above, please forgive our oversight and let us know.

Marjorie Sherrod

FEBRUARY PROGRAM

Lady Bird Naturally

by PBS affiliate KLRN of San Antonio

Our scheduled speaker had to cancel with regret.  In his absence, we will feature a documentary on Lady Bird Johnson which focuses on her many environmental efforts and accomplishments.  The documentary looks at her accomplishments through the eyes of her friends and those who helped her realize her ambitious goals to restore the beauty of this country's roadsides, open spaces and parks.  Something definitely worth continuing.  Looking forward to seeing you all there, please bring a friend.  Also, the video is guaranteed not to talk longer than 45 minutes!

Liz Soutendijk

FIELD TRIPS

We have tentatively set the following field trips:  to Athens Arboretum on February 23, and to Ivy's Preserve in April.  These sites and dates are not completely finalized, so if anyone has other suggestions for times and places, please let me know.  If anyone has a thought for where we could go in March, please speak up.

Ron Loper

OTHER ANNOUNCEMENTS AND UPCOMING EVENTS

Native Plant Spring Symposium—Habitat Conservation, Citizen by Citizen
Saturday, February 23, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Hosted by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center & the Native Plant Society of Texas.  See:  http://www.wildflower.org/springsymposium/

Saturday, March 29th will be the 2nd anniversary of the opening of the Mineola Nature Preserve.  They are going to have lots of events on that day and have invited us to man a table with our literature, etc.

The Lone Star Regional Native Plant Conference will be held in Nacogdoches on May 28—June 1, 2008. Mark your calendars. They always have good speakers and good field trips.

PONDERERINGS

ASTERACEAE (COMPOSITAE)

The Sunflower family

Written by Lynn Sherrod; modified & embellished with his permission.

composite (radiate) head of the common sunflower –Helianthus annuus

This family of mainly herbs in NE Texas enjoys a variety of common names (the aster family, the daisy family, the sunflower family) which reflect the familiar genera (Aster, Erigeron, Helianthus, respectively) that are, for the most part, worldwide in distribution. Indeed, ornamentals are so common to this family that many of them are commonly known by their scientific genus names—Aster, Calendula (marigold), Chrysanthemum, Coreopsis, Cosmos, Dahlia, Helianthus, Senecio, Spaghenticola, Tagetes (French marigold), Zinnia, etc. Its previous scientific name (Compositae) provides yet another common name—the composite family—which reflects the fact that the “flowers” of this family are not single flowers at all but are each a composite of a large number of individual flowers (florets). Therefore, for example, when you look at the sunflower at your right, you are really looking at hundreds of individual flowers grouped together in very tight arrangements known as heads or multiple inflorescences which simulate the appearance of true flowers (solitary inflorescences). Also notice that these inflorescences are

indeterminate—the flowers are maturing (opening) from the

outside-in (centripetally) and the number of flowers are therefore

not yet necessarily determined.

The size of this family is huge. Although its number of species (23,600)* is similar to that of the orchid family (21,950)*, the number of genera (1620)* is about twice that of the Orchidaceae (880)*! Fully 13% of Texas plant species are members of this family! Similar to the reptile class of vertebrates, the Asteraceae family of plants are found in every habitat on earth except Antarctica. But, surprisingly for such a large family that contains so many ornamental species, it is relatively poorly represented among the flora of tropical rain forests.

Due to its size, taxonomists originally divided the family three ways—into the Barnadesioideae, Cichorioideae (chicory), and Asteroideae (aster) subfamilies—and these, in turn, into a number of tribes (1, 6, and 10, respectively). However, recent genetic studies have identified eight additional subfamilies.* The most notable of these is the thistle subfamily (Carduoideae), formerly a tribe of the chicory subfamily. In fact, only four tribes now comprise the chicory subfamily and only eight tribes now comprise the aster subfamily. The current subfamilies* of Asteraceae are greatly simplified if one knows that seven of the new ones are practically limited to areas outside the North American continent and constitute only 1052* (4.4 %) of all Asteraceae species! Indeed, our own North Central Texas (NCT) flora includes only one species from the sunbonnet (Mutisioideae) subfamily of these groups.

In spite of all the changes, then all other NCT species of Asteraceae are members of still only three subfamilies. Seventeen are from the thistle subfamily—the third largest subfamily which contains 2780* (11.8 %) of Asteraceae species worldwide.* The second largest—the chicory subfamily—is left with 3600 (15 %) of the species worldwide*, but only thirty-three reside in NC Texas. Thus, the bottom line is that the great majority of Asteraceae species belong to the final (aster) subfamily with 16,860* (69 %) species worldwide and including 210 (84 %) of the Asteraceae catalogued in The Flora of North Central Texas.

In summary, the differences between only four subfamilies are relevant to us in identifying species in NC Texas, and “tribal” differences are relevant to only two of them—the Cichorioideae and the Asteroideae. But even the differences that do exist between these subfamilies and their tribes are not particularly definitive and familiarity with them is not required to identify most of our common species. Every species does, however, have the composite-type inflorescence and this makes family identification generally very easy.

ray florets from common dandelion—Taraxacum officinale

Because of the unique structure of the composite type of inflorescence, a special set of terms has been developed to describe the floral morphology. Individual flowers are called florets. These may be of two types. Ray florets are usually found arrayed near the outer circumference of the base of the inflorescence (the receptacle) and each one has one large, strap-shaped petal which extends radially (a ligule—see at right). This limb of the corolla is often 5-toothed. Thus ray corollas are extremely irregular and, at best, retain only bilateral symmetry. These florets usually lack stamens and may lack a functional pistil, although an inferior

ovary is always present and buried in the receptacle.

The function of ray (peripheral and sterile or just female)

florets, then, is to attract pollinators to the other (centrally located and usually bisexual) type of florets (not to set and develop fruit themselves).

disk florets from the sunflower—Helianthus augustifolius

The other type of floret is a disk floret (see at right). These are arranged together in a disk within the head, are radially symmetrical with tubular, usually 5-lobed corollas and found in the center of the inflorescence. They typically have five stamens with anthers fused around the styles and alternating between the lobes of the corollas. Each stigma has two branches. The single inferior ovary is also embedded in the receptacle. The typical function of disk florets is to set and develop fruit. The fruit is an achene, which has a single seed with little or no nuclear

endosperm and a fibrous pericarp attached at only

one point (think of an unshelled sunflower “seed”).

Both types of florets have petals but in place of sepals, a series of hairs, scales, or bristles exists (a pappus). Only by removing some florets and examining them with a hand lens can these structures be observed. Most composites have both ray and disk florets in which only the inner surface of the style branches are stigmatic (receptive to pollen). However, the flowers of 26 of the 33 NC Texas species of the chicory subfamily have only ray florets and are therefore referred to as ligulate heads (see below, left). These species were originally known as the Lactuceae (dandelion or lettuce) tribe of this subfamily. On the other hand, essentially all species of the Carduoideae (thistle) subfamily and of our remaining

ligulate heads from Hieracium aurantiacum—note 5-part tips of ligules

discoid heads of Kansas gayfeather—Liatris pycnostachya

(Vernonieae or ironweed) “tribe” of the originally circumscribed “Cichorioideae” subfamily have flowers with only disk florets (and therefore referred to as discoid heads—see above, right) in which only the margins of the style branches are stigmatic. Likewise, several of the “tribes” of the originally circumscribed “Asteroideae” subfamily have only discoid heads as you now see on the right. Notice how few florets you might have in discoid heads.

The entire inflorescence of Asteraceae species is surrounded (subtended) by a group of modified leaves known as phyllaries as you see around the base of the discoid heads. These are really bracts. The morphology of the pappus and phyllaries is used to distinguish subfamilies, tribes, genera, and sometimes species. Terminology to describe phyllaries follows that used to describe leaves (e.g., tip, margin, base, etc.). The presence of either the pappus or phyllaries usually functions to promote seed dispersal by wind and/or adhesion to animals. Examples of much larger discoid heads and rather elaborate systems of phyllaries are provided by members of the Carduoidieae subfamily as can be seen at the right in bull thistle—Cirsium horridulum.

Although this is one of the largest families of flowering plants and is cosmopolitan in distribution, there are relatively few species with economic importance. Lettuce (Lactuca sativa), endive (Cichorium endiva), artichoke (Cynara scolymus—a member of the thistle subfamily!), and Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) are examples of vegetables in this family. Important crops for oilseed production are sunflower (Helianthus annus) and safflower (Carthamus baeticus). The roots of chicory (Cichorium intybus) are used as a coffee substitute—not to be confused with the greatest coffee substitute in North America: Galium aparine or catchweed bedstraw of the Rubuaceae (coffee) family (for you Cajuns!). The foliage of Artemesia drancunculus (tarragon) is used as a culinary herb. Still another Artemesia was used to extract an addictive and toxic substance known as wormwood, which was added to other ingredients to make absinthe. Indeed, the rich diversity of complex chemicals (polyacetylenes and terpenoid aromatic oils) found in Asteraceae species suggests one explanation for its dominance among the families of plants in many habitats: a diverse arsenal for chemical defenses!

Many composites are familiar and beautiful ornamentals. These include Aster, Bidens, Cosmos, Dahlia, Gazania, Helianthus, Tagetes (marigold) , and Zinnia. Others are well known wildflowers. These include bachelor buttons (Centaurea cyanus—another member of the thistle subfamily), Coreopsis, Gaillardia (indian blanket) and Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan).

Still others are considered noxious weeds. Examples are Cirsium horridulum (bull thistle), C. texanum (Texas thistle), Sonchus spp. (sow thistle) and Xanthium spp. (cockleburs). One of our most common spring weeds in East Texas is ragwort (Senecio ampullaceus). This genus is widespread around the world. In the high altitude cloud forests of Africa, Senecio grows into a tree up to 50 ft. tall. In addition to its medicinally important species touched on above, Artemesia is the genus of several species of sagebrush which dominant the high altitude deserts of the Great Basin as well as the prairies of the American West.

No discussion of this family would be complete without mentioning ragweed (Ambrosia spp.). In East Texas, we have two species, the giant and small ragweeds, both of which are described as potent producers of allergenic pollen. Ragweed blooms in the early fall about the same time as goldenrod (Solidago spp.). Goldenrod produces bright yellow masses of flowers but ragweed blooms are much less conspicuous. Since they bloom about the same time and since goldenrod is the more obvious, many people have mistakenly concluded that their allergies are caused by goldenrod.

The genus name, Solidago, means, “to make whole”. It has a long history of uses. During the Crusades, poultices of goldenrod were used to dress cuts and wounds. The Patriots brewed “Liberty tea” from goldenrod after the Boston Tea party. Native Americans used it to treat boils, ulcers, kidney diseases, colds, pain, nausea, and etc. Its roots were chewed to relieve sore throat and toothache and perfume oil could be extracted from the leaves. The milky sap can be distilled into rubber. Henry Ford was reported to have tires on his personal Model A made from goldenrod rubber.

Other composites that have historic uses include:

Aster – Native Americans boiled and ate the young leaves and made a tea from the stems to ease rheumatism or to use as a blood tonic.

Erigeron (daisy fleabane) – used to treat fleas on dogs and to keep insects out of houses. Poultices of this were used to treat swellings and bruises.

Taraxacum (dandelion) – used as a diuretic and as a treatment for bacterial infections. Also used to treat spleen problems, as a laxative or “spring” tonic (a purgative).

A disclaimer: The state of plant taxonomy is in active flux today. Old, familiar names have been changed to conform to new information about genetic relationships. After all, the purpose of classification and naming is to reflect actual hereditary relationships. This means that some of the scientific names I use may not be the most up-to-date names, according to the most recent evidence. However, most of the sources that our members use have the older names and I am more familiar with these names, so I may have used names which may no longer be the most valid, according to current thinking among professional taxonomists.

*Names and numbers of plant groups on a worldwide basis are taken from the continuously updated Angiosperm Phylogeny website which is maintained by P. F. Stevens of the University of Missouri (St. Louis) at the Missouri Botanical Museum—http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/. One should usually assume that any group with more than a few dozen members constantly changes and usually rises, especially if group members have a heavy concentration in third world countries (where most yet-to-be-discovered members exist).

Contributions to the Newsletter

This newsletter is normally published monthly, September through May. Members are especially encouraged to submit articles for publication in this newsletter. Contributions will be considered on the basis of interest, suitability, and available space. Grammar and spelling corrections will be made at the discretion of the editor. Email your articles, announcements, etc. to the editor at herbjarrell@letu.edu.

If you have never attended one of our meetings, and you are interested in learning more about native plants and their habitats, we invite you to give us a visit. Our meetings are held at the Fairwood United Methodist Church in Tyler on the first Monday of each month, September through May. Fairwood United Methodist Church is located just east of the East Loop (route 323) and south of Fifth Street (Highway 64) at 1712 Old Omen Road.

Please note: if you want to forward this newsletter to someone via snail-mail, simply fold it with another blank sheet of paper so that the blank page is available for addresses and postage, and staple or tape the two sides and the bottom together.