Our mystery seeds for this week are from a fascinating plant from the desert Southwest.
Do you know the name of the plant? Be sure to leave a comment if you have an idea.
The answer is now posted.
Month: January 2013 (Page 4 of 5)
Last week’s mystery seeds belong to a plant that is commonly called Eastern red cedar, although it is actually a juniper, Juniperus virginiana.
Eastern red cedars are small, cone-shaped evergreen trees. They often grow in areas throughout eastern North America where fires or agriculture have removed the dominant forests and created clearings.
The older leaves are over-lapping scales. The new growth is spiky.
The mature scales have an almost braided appearance.
The under bark and wood are reddish-brown, hence the “red” part of the common name.The wood is rot-resistant and is used for fence posts and specialty furniture.
What are often called berries are actually blue seed cones, because junipers are a type of conifer. These “fruit” are used as food by cedar waxwing birds in the winter.
Apparently this species is close enough to the mountain cedar (Juniperus ashei) found in Texas, that people who are allergic to the pollen of one are often also allergic to the pollen of the other. Many of the conifers are wind pollinated and shed a lot of pollen.
Junipers are useful as well, because they catch and hold a lot of the snow in the winter, thus acting as natural snow fences and aiding local watersheds.
What kind of junipers grow where you live? Are they called cedars or junipers?
“What is it?” the woman asked, and handed me this creature. “Cool,” I said, which is probably not what most people would say :-).
It turns out I knew exactly what it was. This fearsome-looking invertebrate has a number of common names, such as sunspider, windscorpion, camel spider, solfugid or solpugid. It belongs to the order Solifugae, which contains approximately 12 families.
Sunspiders are unique to deserts. They are not true spiders nor scorpions, but they are arachnids. They have eight legs, plus a pair of leg-like appendages in the front called pedipalps. The pedipalps have sensory functions, like the antennae of insects, and also hold and manipulate food items.
The features that catch most people’s attention, however, are the large jaws or chelicerae. They use the chelicerae to catch insects and other small animals.
Can you see the dark spots in the middle of the head behind the chelicerae? Those are the eyes.
Sunspiders hunt at night, like most other arachnids. They can move very quickly to grab prey. They are also thought to be scavengers, eating dead insects as well as live ones.
The good news is that sunspiders are not venomous and most of the small ones are pretty much harmless to humans. They are likely to run away if startled. In fact, little is known about these shy desert inhabitants.
Have you ever seen a sunspider?
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To find out more about camel spiders, see National Geographic.
Author Sandra Markle has a new children’s picture book, with the slightly misleading title:Â Wind Scorpions: Killer Jaws (Arachnid World). (I guess they are killer jaws if you are a cricket.)
Library Binding: 48 pages
Publisher: Lerner Publications (February 1, 2012)
ISBN-10: 0761350489
ISBN-13: 978-0761350484
Disclosures: The book was from our local library. Also, I am an affiliate for Amazon. If you click through the linked titles or ads and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no extra charge to you. Proceeds will be used to maintain this self-hosted blog.
For more information, see Roberta Gibson Writes.