Forest forensics quiz time!: can you spot the invasive, earthworm-hunting, flatworm bipalium kewense (arrowhead flatworm) amongst the other stuff on the ground in the pic below?

Your earthworms are begging you to eliminate these jerks who can regrow a whole new guy from even a small piece of this one! But you can't put it in the salt watery slug jar if you can't see it. (Hint: they like to come out on moist mornings after it's been dry for a while...mornings just like this one!)

Tiny see-through friends found at the shore!

The second friend had started to become silvery, but only made it halfway - the back half was still see-thru!

There were big rains last week in that area, so I guess that's when these friends got washed up.

Pic 3 shows the shoreline area where I encountered them.

#ForestForensics

As I was pulling weeds the other day, I pulled up this rhizome that past-me had planted.

Can you tell what it is from the images below?

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ANSWER:

It is turmeric (olena, as it's called locally)!

The rhizome pieces are smaller than ginger, and break off much easier. In pic 2, you can see the bright orange/yellow interior. I also smelled the rhizome and it smells like other turmeric I've grown. The rhizomes of zingiberaceae often have unique and specific smells that can aid in identification, so I always try to smell them. My favorite so far is cardamom rhizome, which is just heavenly (galangal is my least favorite. Sorry galangal-lovers! )

Pic 3 shows a new shoot, but it's not big enough to aid in identification between say, an edible ginger and cardamom (at least not to me). When the shoots & leaves are larger, it's pretty easy to tell the difference.

Plants that live up in trees (like tree orchids or staghorn ferns) spend their lives moving up and down the vertical space of the canopy.

"Down" makes sense: you're an orchid growing on a branch up in a tree, and the branch breaks and falls. You have now moved down. But it's likely that there are other things suspended in a tangle below that, so you don't go all the way down (see pic 3).

"Up" also happens! The most basic way is that the tree you're on grows, and so you rise with it.

But you can also be picked up by a curious primate (me) and put back up in a tree (because the primate has seen your type of plant in trees, so it knows you prefer it up high)(See pic 1).

Or, if you're on a branch that's broken and suspended in the canopy, maybe a tree falls and lifts your entire branch up. Now you're back up!

"Up" also happens as orchids put out new bulbs that spread up a tree trunk (for example, see pic 2).

And "up" also happens intergenerationally. Plants like orchids have tiny seeds that can flow up on the wind (see pic 4, showing the seeds in just one seedpod of a spathoglottis plicata orchid). If they land higher in the canopy in the crook of a tree (best if the crook has accumulated some fallen leaves and moss), they can start life higher in the canopy than their parent.

Anyway, the best conditions for a tree-based plant are not necessarily at the highest or the lowest point - it's all about the overall right conditions of shade, sun, access to rain, protection from wind, safety from interfering animals, and the right amount of air for their roots.

Today's #ForestForensics

Pic 1: a tiny nest that fell out of an 'ohi'a tree (I think). I've seen this kind of nest before, but I don't know who builds it. We have many types of songbirds, so I don't know.

Pic 2: shed gecko tail skin. Given that the main type of gecko we have is the gold dust day gecko, probably one of them. If you look on the right side of the tail, you can see that this gecko had a regrown tail (there's a sharp vertical line about 2/3 of the way along the tail, on the right side. and the color to the right of that line is slightly different too).

The fascination never ends on the forest floor!

#ForestForensics #plants #pests #tropical #TropicalAg @plants
i found this part of a leaf on my trail and immediately thought "uh oh!".

why did i think that? what did i see that made me concerned?

hint: it's part of a banana leaf

@bomengidsnl i guessed that it was some kind of citrus, but i wasn't sure which one. very cool!

btw, i use the tag #ForestForensics to post various nature ID quizzes. you're welcome to use it as well :}