Dodder
More from the grasslands…
Two-leaf Senna (Senna roemeriana)!
Easy to recognize because its leaflets are in pairs!
Bladderpod seeds (Physaria engelmannii)!
Don’t you love this spiraling grass seed burrowing into the ground.
Texas Wintergrass, Texas Speargrass, or Wintergrass (Nassella leucotricha) are all names for this grass! It is a known characteristics of this grass. Thanks Jeanne for the ID!
Update: Read Suzanne comment to tell how it works!
The head on this plaintain (Plantago wrightiana) has such delicate flowers.
Dodder (Cuscuta) is parasitic on other plants. This is the orange stringy stuff. It has no chlorophyll and some species of it are plant specific on which plant they like.
Closer view. It really wraps itself around the host plant! I think it is a cool plant, but most people are not fond of it. I did find a paper on it from India. It said Cuscuta reflexa (which is not in our area) has medicinal properties used in traditional medicines. In Western herbalism I found the species was used to treat the liver, spleen, mild diuretic to name a few ailments.
We got .74″ today and the sun came out too! More grasslands photos tomorrow. We saw a lot of good stuff 🙂
Never seen grass seed spiral into ground. Thats just super cool. Thanks.
Judy, Tis neato!
Texas winter grass has a long awn attached to the seed. As the awn dries out, it contracts and twists the seed into the ground to plant itself. Awesome.
Suzannne, Thanks for sharing that. Real cool the way nature works. I will update the blog to tell folks to read your comments.