MyPlant #1: Why did you pick this species? Tell us something interesting about it.
I
picked Tofieldia pusilla because it is a small, beautiful tundra
plant that is
not noticed by most people. I have been working on plants in subarctic
tundra and saltmarsh on the Cape
Churchill Peninsula (near Churchill, Manitoba) for the past couple of
years, and this is one of my favourites.
(It's the little white guys - in bud form).
It is unusual in that it is a monocot that is not a graminoid, but it grows in a habitat where almost all monocots are graminoids. Right now I am also a little frustrated with this plant because I can't figure out whether the leaves overwinter or not - is it a "wintergreen forb"? I think it might be because early in the season the leaves already look pretty ratty.
You can find out a bit more on it here:
Montana field guide entry for T. pusilla
Please provide taxonomic information: Phylum, class, order, family. Are there any controversies with respect to it's classification? What is / are it's common name(s) (if any)?Who is the authority (the person who named the plant, usually provided as an abbreviation)?.
Tofieldia pusilla is in the phylum Anthophyta, class Monocotyledonae, order Alismatales. The family is unclear. According to the Flora of North America (www.efloras.com) it is Liliaceae, but according to the Flora of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (http://nature.ca/aaflora/) it is Tofieldiaceae. The iplant Taxonomic Name Resolution site (http://tnrs.iplantcollaborative.org/TNRSapp.html) settles on Tofieldiaceae as well. Wikipedia gives a description of the history of placement of this genus in families; it sounds like it is still in flux. Common names are small tofieldia, bog asphodel, false asphodel, Scottish asphodel, or fingerling (from the three sources listed above + Wildflowers of Churchill and the Hudson Bay Region, by Karen L. Johnson, Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature, 1987).
This plant was originally named by Michaux, then renamed by Persoon :
Tofieldia pusilla (Michaux) Persoon.
The plant I was looking at, Sedum rhodiola, has a similar taxonomic problem. USDA plants database lists it in the order Rosales, but Flora of North America puts it in the order Saxifragales.
ReplyDeleteOne other thing I thought of do you think you could look at an individual of one of our local populations in the fall and mark it, to revisit it in the winter? I think there is a local population in the tundra on top of Murphy Dome.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good idea! There is indeed a population on top of Murphy Dome - our local bit of tundra - but finding plants under the snow would be a challenge. Marking them and then looking for them in late fall or early spring would work.
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