The Game Is Afoot!

The Game is Afoot!!

In Search of the Eastern Bloodleaf

(Iresine rhizomatosa)

Part I 

Ouabache Trails Park

Knox County, IN

January 29, 2013

 

Lisa, Linda and I were on a hunt.  On January 29, 2013, we decided to try to solve The Mystery of the Eastern Bloodleaf.  As “professional” plant detectives for the day, we took along our magnifying lenses.

The mystery started when Lisa recalled that Lynn Wiseman had shown Mike Homoya an unusual plant growing in Ouabache Trails Park that is rare in Indiana.  Mike Homoya is Indiana's State Botonist.  Lynn Wiseman was the area expert on wildflowers until his death in 1997.  Over many years, Lynn had walked the woods, fields, roadsides and waterways of our area, photographing and listing wild plants.

First, we needed to gather clues.  What is Iresine rhizomatosa?  The Greek root of the genus name Iresine means “wooly”, referring to the wooly look of the fuzz around the seed.  The species name, rhizomatosa, refers to the rhizome-like roots (one common name is Rootstock Bloodleaf).  “Bloodleaf” refers to plants with colored leaves.  The leaves of our mystery plant are, apparently, all green, but with redness at the bases of the leaf petioles.  Another common name is Juda's Bush, and I have not yet been able to find any reason for it.

Information on this plant is not prevalent, but we did find a photo and nice description on page 25 of A Field Guide to Indiana Wildflowers by Kay Yatskievych*. It's in the Amaranth family and has clusters of small white flowers on a terminal panicle (meaning at the end of a stalk above the leaves), with smaller clusters in the upper leaf axils.  We found out from another source that it blooms in the fall.  Could we find its winter remnants?

Next, we needed to know where to look.  Linda was on the job.  She contacted Mike Homoya via email and received a gracious response, including that Lynn had “found 175 plants of it in 1984 on the lower slope of a north-facing hill on the edge of the floodplain”.  In a 254-acre park that is mostly wild land, we had a formidable task ahead of us.

Much discussion ensued as to the location of said hill and floodplain.

 

We decided upon the floodplain and north-facing hill that seemed the most likely candidates.

The Game was afoot!  To the trail, and tally ho!

We split up and searched the area.  Linda all but disappeared into the trees...

...and Lisa wandered in another mysterious direction.

We started finding dead plants.  Was this our mystery plant?  No – this was very likely Perilla frutescens (Beefsteak Plant).

How about this?  Definitely not.  The flowers were not in clusters at the end of a panicle, and this did not look like Amaranth.

And this?  Well, it had a seed-head cluster at the end of a stalk, but that 3-sided, sectioned stem did not fit with the Eastern Bloodleaf.  However, I do want to find out what this is.

No luck yet, but we did find other interesting stuff:

The leaves of Puttyroot Orchid (Aplectrum hyemale) in places where we hadn't seen it before.

Beautiful lichens! A lichen is a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an alga.  The cup-like structures are the spore-producing bodies of the fungus part.

Cool mosses!  Linda got a really close look.

Mushrooms the color of Sassafras tea.   

Cranefly Orchid! (The flower stalk will come this summer.)

And this fantastic fungi, each one almost twice the size of my hand.

This single purple plant clinging to mud and moss on a dead limb.  We'll have to come back in the spring to solve the mystery of its identity.

  We don't know this one yet, either.

And this beauty of a fungus, soft as a peach, on a fallen Beech tree.

We never did find the remains of the Eastern Bloodleaf that day.  It was not so elementary.  But, on this search we found many other things that interested us, in unusual colors, shapes, and designs.  Sometimes when you go on a treasure hunt, you don't find what you were looking for.  Instead, you uncover other treasures.

And some new mysteries.

We will look for the Eastern Bloodleaf again in the fall, when it should be in bloom.

But, this spring and summer we'll have to return to this place and solve our new mysteries.  Doubtless, we will find even more.

*Yatskievych, Kay; Field Guide to Indiana Wildflowers; 2000; Indiana University Press.