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Hi Fred & All, Jan 18, 2012
Having thought this through again, in the light of the various posts, I
would have to assume an indirect effect of low oxygen, caused by smothering
under ice (that may or may not have been present at this site), that
gradually weakened the fungal association (15 of the 16 flowers that I hand
pollenated in 2009 set a capsule so the plants up to mid June must have been
reasonably healthy).
All in all, the above explanation is too iffy to carry any weight so
'unknown causes' seems the better choice. Plants come and go in the course
of secondary succession, as I have observed many times, including a CLS
stand of about 25 plants some 300 paces away that flickered out in the early
2000s. So I should not have considered this fadeout to be exceptional.
And some plant-like organisms come & go but in the same place
Nearly every year in the 1980s we had one or more feeds of Hydnum
repandum, always scattered within the same small (~4 M diam) patch of
woodland that, to my eyes, resembles the adjacent 4 acres. Then for about 2
decades I saw none there (on and beside the main road so hard to miss) so I
had written it off as lost but in 2011, a year of excessive rainfall, it
reappeared in the same place.
Nearly every year, for 45 years, Coprinus plicatus has come up on the
same small patch of lawn, neither gaining nor losing ground in all this
time.
Some organisms render their environment unsuitable and must spread or
perish. But these two seem, in these instances at least, to have survived
without expanding into fresh ground.
Yt, Dave Webster, Kentville
----- Original Message -----
From: "Frederick W. Schueler" <bckcdb@istar.ca>
To: <naturens@chebucto.ns.ca>
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 11:29 AM
Subject: Re: [NatureNS] The rise and fall of Common Lady's Slippers (long)
> On 1/15/2012 9:31 PM, David & Alison Webster wrote:
>
>> Ice at that interface would suggest melting from
>> above and subsequent freezing of percolated water when it reached cold
>> soil. It seems possible that stand loss was caused either by cold injury
>> or by direct or indirect effects of low soil oxygen.
>
> * or maybe some direct effect of the ice on the rhizomes or roots or the
> symbiotic fungi? We had a Yellow Ladyslipper that we were given because
> the wife wanted a painting of it, and she sneaked it out of the population
> her husband was monitoring, so we planted it in our back fields in 1986.
> It initially did pretty well, but by 1997 or so the Cedars had begun to
> shade it out, and I moved it to an open glade, and planted it on a mound
> of soil so it would have been above the spring inundation that kept the
> glade free of Cedars, but it never took hold, and in a few years was gone.
>
> I wonder now if it may have been something about the ice in the soil that
> may have weakened and eventually killed it.
>
> fred.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad
> Bishops Mills Natural History Centre - http://pinicola.ca/bmnhc.htm
> Mudpuppy Night in Oxford Mills - http://pinicola.ca/mudpup1.htm
> Daily Paintings - http://karstaddailypaintings.blogspot.com/
> South Nation Basin Art & Science Book
> http://pinicola.ca/books/SNR_book.htm
> RR#2 Bishops Mills, Ontario, Canada K0G 1T0
> on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44* 52'N 75* 42'W
> (613)258-3107 <bckcdb at istar.ca> http://pinicola.ca/
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
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