Plants that Pop! - Sarasota Manatee April Ecoquest Challenge
In a nod to the Roy Lichtenstein exhibit at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens Downtown Campus, April’s EcoQuest Challenge is Plants that Pop! We are focusing on plants that spread their seeds through ballistichory. This is the sudden rapid ejection of seed from a fruit by explosive dehiscence. Dehiscence is the process whereby a fruit naturally opens at maturity to disperse its seeds. This may happen slowly, taking hours or days, or may happen in the blink of an eye. The explosive or ballistic “shooting” out of seed gives this mechanism its name. The result of ballistichory is that seeds are flung far from the parent plant, greatly improving seed dispersal. Who will get the most observations or species? Only time will tell with this month's ecoquest as we feature this amazing mechanism in Plants that Pop!
The Beach Croton Croton punctatus is a common beach plant in Sarasota and Manatee growing as a low shrub on back dunes and using ballistichory to launch seeds helping build dunes.
Last Month Ecoquest Winners
We would like to give a big shout out to our top observers and identifiers last month's Check Your Boots Ecoquest with a very heated contest for most species found differing by only one species! Who will find the most popping plants and blow everyone away? We'll announce April's winners on May 1st!
Top Three Observers by Number included: phaynes at 223, Ceherzog at 146, and Carol418 at 57.
Top Three Observers by Species included: Ceherzog at 50, Phaynes at 49, and Carol418 at 21.
Top Three Identifiers included: Jeff 1962 at 201, Jayhorn at 106, and barbaraparris at 37.
Ready for an explosive ecoquest? Join here at Plants that Pop! and upload your dynamite pictures today!
Comentarios
Do we have to officially "join" this month's challenge or if we find a plant that fits into the category, it automatically goes in this month's project?
Hello @carol418 you don't have to join the project for each ecoquest as long as you are part of the main Sarasota Manatee EcoFlora Project as we post the results and updates there. However if you are very interested in or curious about a particular ecoquest we recommend joining! Many people do competitions and we are starting up a monthly leaderboard for number of observations and species!
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