Observaciones de danaleeling

A photo taken for inclusion on a calcium oxalate containing plants in Araceae. After a day of clearing this aggressive invasive washing oneself down with vinegar seems to help fend off next day itchiness.

This non-diagnostic photo was taken only to capture the prickles on the stem. Botanically speaking, these appear to be prickles that arise from the epidermis and not true thorns that usually arise from an axillary bud and contain vascular tissue. I use iNaturalist in part as a way to find and display botanic features in my SC 250 Botany course. This way I can search my own observations for particular plants or plant that I know have a particular feature for use in my course. Perhaps a suboptimal photo filing system, and certainly not a design intent of iNaturalist, but I try to tend to my own observation and their identifications. My images are all CCO public domain so anyone else can also use them.

I think this might be P. ponapense. My students were less certain. They were more certain that this is not Piper betel. I don't think they have seen P. ponapense bloom so prolifically, but we are in the early stages of an El Niño driven drought. Plants are already water stressed. I haven't seen the reddish inflorescences before, but perhaps that is also due to conditions?