#species complex

[scottpartridge]

A new species complex for @birdgenoscape project, the Dark-Eyed Junco, in Slate-Colored, Oregon, Grey-Headed, Red-Backed, Pink-Sided, and White-Winged forms. Does anyone know why it has diversified into so many morphologically distinct groups? 

[chlorophyll-and-chitin]

Favolaschia calocera complex (Favolaschia claudopus)

25-JUL-2025

Lysterfield Park, Melbourne, Vic

[rjalker]

Muwaha. Now have to wait for it to flower to see which of two species it is: Aztec, or Hooded.

[ID: A photo of a fresh dug up Arrowhead or Katniss plant, in a plastic bag of mud. It has a single small leaf with a rounded front and long points ends, like rabbit ears or an arrow head. End ID.]

Real species is a social construct species lol

Public domain photo.

[cedar-glade]

A hairy star chickweed with multiple flowers and stems with cauline petiolate foliage arises out of a choss pocket with rich mesic mineral soil.

An ode’ to Stellaria spp. a brand new group of interest to me.

I want to talk about this I do, These are from last year, here we have a case of me learning that I was just accepting these as just starry chickweed and realizing that I never learned to ID past that point.  This is S. pubera but, why and how, usually I associate this plant with mesic woods only but in truth we see “it” as a complex everywhere, there are only a few legit Identifiers for this. These won’t show you good examples of this issue of ID or the complex but I took plenty of photos this year that I haven't uploaded on my cpu yet. The S. pubera complex seems to revolve more around site, height, morphology, and range restrictions, the flowers are the same in the complex and tend to be large, the issue with some minor distinctions are clumping populations with multiple stems and single stems individuals with one flower only per plant, the leafs tend to either be cauline entirely sessile or having lower petioles that are cauline with almost near clasping sessile leaves t’word the top. The interesting thing is I can still make a claim that it is S. pubera and not S. corei due to a few minor differences, It definitely helps to have a well backed range map too but these are somewhat incomplete due to mis-ID and un-updated herbarium specimens.

Two key characters Ive focused on are length of sepals being much longer on Core’s and the petals being almost fully dissected down to it’s attachment point.

Its more clear to see this S. pubera, the sepals are not longer than the petals and you can clearly see the 5 dissected petals that are bifidate instead of core’s which really looks like 10 petals at first glance. So, with that said, I can only ID these when they are in bloom. Most Key texts/ flora’s are also only up to par with this ID limit. 

Stellaria corei, Tenessee chickweed, a cool species for sure now that I know it correlates with ecotone in many cases.

Stellaria corei, an interesting common name for something who’s core is the Ohio River Valley, Its one of those common gripes you learn to deal with because you have to accept a described from location as common name instead of just calling it Core’s starweed or chickweed. Ecotone rich mesic alkaline hill to dry alkaline species. Really a generalist but does occur more often in these specific woodland ecotones.

Stellaria fontinalis, I literally went to TN and was at Mays prairie, I was distracted and I feel really dumb too many distracting endemics imo, At the same time, I was very distracted by snowy orchids, blue rattlesnake master, 10 species of st. johns worts, Silphium mohrii and many other cool species. This is a wet karst species that I managed to overlook :/ learned about it this year, rather 2 months ago in prep with plant walks.

Stellaria pubera, starry as a complex, common chickweed, Coastal, Great Plains, Pacific, Atlantic, Upper Midwest, Rocky, and Mesic, SIngle flowered sessile, Cauline petioled multiflower are still all deciding factors.

Stellaria longifolia, narrow long leaf species, might as well look like it should be angustifolia or longifolia or linaris would of also been good names for it. 

[wasppilled]

species "complex"? i find it quite simple, re- oh wait oh god nevermind you're right. i take it back

[cedar-glade]

Denizens of the Marl,

My main focus was to introduce an early blooming species that I don’t know if I talked about ever. I usually miss my window to see this plant and for some reason I’ve never gotten close enough to photograph it properly, you can kinda see a gleam of light on the glandular hairs but not well enough to show structure.

Triantha glutinosa, blooms in early June in Ohio but can last till late June and in other states occurs in bogs in warm water conditions and blooms much later which is strange to me. I think this must be an adaptive phenotypical thing but you would expect it to be opposite and light blooming also seems to not be the culprit so I don’t know.  False Asphodel is another common name but I honestly prefer calling it sticky or glutinous false ashpodel. As a plant living in these nutrient poor super leached marl flats this plant is a carnivor, protease excretor glandular hair trap specifically, but strangely only on it’s flowering stem and not on it’s minute basal rosette. Opposite of most species that are carnivores most species try to keep traps as far from the flowers as possible which makes sense evolutionary. Glandular traps near an inflorescence seems strange for successful pollination. As it turns out this may be a seldomly pollinated species where most individuals in populations are ancient clones that have formed from rhizome spread overtime in these glacial refugium. The other thing that seems notable is many people studying these false ashpodels (Triantha spp.) run into the same morphology and phenology problems that I have, and have even come to contempt and discourse over specific populations and are evaluating them as part of a biological species complex. I agree on the T. occidentalis western split on all accounts but some of the minor disjunct probable splits seem more complex overall (Central Appalachian mountain populations (TN, VA, SC, GA)

I feel like I can’t stress the importance of this limestone marl and the unique opportunity of getting this close to these plants without any special camera. Though I do wish I had one to display the features properly. Most of the time if you are traversing a fen you have to find and identify petrified marl shelfs or surface travertines, or you are walking on old and ancient tussock clumps from what is usually Carex stricta. Im walking on a displaced gravel shelf with petrified marl and wouldn’t dare to walk off of it and disturb the easily motile banks of loose marl or the suspended marl sediment floating like quick sand. The plants here are fragile and the habitat is equally fragile with many state listed species that cant take damage. Everywhere in the high exposure areas of marl flats are these Drosera rotundifolia and the smooth rounded/heartshaped leaves of grass of parnassas, which is in bloom as I type. Parnassia glauca is so beautiful with it’s unique floral venation and Ill post more pics once again when I get to it. The farther you get from the flats the less exposure and with it comes the sedge meadow with Arnoglossum plantagineum, also known as fen plantain leaved indian plantain. The last few shots are associated with the fully scabrid moderate sized var. ,not species, Silphium terebinthinaceum var. pinnatifidum, which we only see in fens in Ohio and the Ice scoured dwarf willow, Salix myricoides, in all of it’s new leaf glory. Still not looking blue with white pubescent undersides just yet.

Personal note:

Its been really weird doing this lagged posting because these are not matched to the time I was there. Right now, I feel like I should be posting about white bottle gentian, prairie gentian ,fringed gentian or ,andrews bottle gentian and here I am mid June posts. Heck it’s also Spiranthes spp. season and paw paw shaking season rn, most people are smelling sulfur shelves and foraging chicken of the woods(same thing). Trying to catch up and doing documentation and having a place to post personal thoughts on this stuff.

[cedar-glade]

Rudbeckia fulgida var.... growing with Symphyotrichum drummondii and other woodland asters.

While Rudbeckia fulgida complex is probably the worst for finding literature on isolating var. I wanted to give this one a try. Growing on calcareous mineral soil at the upper ridge of Clifton Gorge, not directly in water nor extremely cold permanent water. It was also growing in a section of woods that received dappled shade. 

My first thought was it can’t be var. sullvantii due to fen obligation and true wetland obligate status.  The second thought was the basal leaves were not dark enough or elongate enough to be var. umbrosia, the appalachian Rudbeckia fulgida, and also it’s difficult to consider that var. for range reasons. Var. umbrosia is also considered to be glabrous(smooth) and glossy. Var. Deamii is a prairie obligate in situ, at one point only occurring in one section of the prairie peninsula from Illinois barrens into Darby Plains and Sandusky Plains Ohio; now the only state that seems to have the tightly clumped surface to subsurface stolon to rhizome multi branched, hairy, clump colony forming var. is Indiana. Var. speciosa is an absolute unit, there for this can’t be it. 

In fact i’ve heard a lot of jive about the ploidy of var. speciosa being something crazy enough to separate out of R. fulgida. Polyploid separation is nothing new in evolution and is constantly noted and var. speciosa has some huge leaves, capitulescence stypes, ligules , and leaves. 

Other species from glade regions are frequently up for the idea of new species based on localized morphological var. or ecotypic non-plasticity. 

https://www.friendsofeloisebutler.org/pdfdocs/rudbeckia_fulgida_abstract.pdf

^this abstract is one such paper that discusses potential separations. 

I wanted to show y’all this because this paper immediately mentions a few things to the reader. 

Paleae (poeaceae, asteraceae, proteaceae, goodeniaceae) goupings of florets and specifically those bracts that separates each floret from the base of the receptacle. 

Unfortunately my camera wasn’t working right in macro mode that day but I tried to take a naked photo of these with the closest one to a successful shot being the blurry one with my hand. The outer floret bracts that greet the ligules are slightly ciliate, the inner bracts non ciliate. These plants did not occur in tight clusters from rhizome(below ground stem used for asexual colony formation or nutrient seeking cloning) or stolon(above ground stem used for asexual colony formation or nutrient seeking cloning). Instead, spread out colonies with single sections of inflorescence sparsely branching from top of the capitulescence(the stype that holds the capitulum and cauline leaves in asteraceae) with one- 3 capitulum rarely (aster family flower cluster) per individual per. plant. The involucre(the bractoid lads at the base of the receptacle) were sparsely pubescent(hairy) and cauline leaves scabrid (rough) and pubescent(almost stiff/hispid) while basal leaves were pubescent/ ciliate at the margins. 

According to a few records true var. fulgida is range restricted, clump forming, and stoloniferous/ rhyzome clump forming. Paleae ciliate. 

The plant does not seem to fit perfectly for R. fulgida var. truncata nor any other taxa mentioned therefor I give up until there is more evidence from the area. 

For now it might as well be it’s own Rudibeckia fulgida var. 

BTW seriously use that complex paper, its really good for help on var. that may one day be considered species(soon... probably. ) 

also stype can be used interchangeably with capitulaphore, literally means stalk in botanical jarble jargin for asteraceae. 

[drhoz]

#1866 - Psilosticha pristis - Little Brown Bark Moth

Formerly Ectropis pristis. 

From out at the Dryandra Woodlands, east of Perth. 

A small Geometrid found over much of Australia, but since it’s actually a species complex it’s entirely possible the actual species are geographically limited. I don’t have any information on foodplants.