Blackberry plants are native in many parts of the world, but are considered invasive in some places where they are not native, such as Australia.  Blackberry plants are also called “brambles” – which is easy to understand, given their propensity to take over an area with luxuriant, prickly growth.  Blackberries fall under the genus Rubus – which means “red” in Latin, though the berries are too dark to be red – but raspberries are also in the Rubus genus.  It can be very hard to nail down the species of a given wild blackberry plant, though.  Blackberries hybridize quite easily, and there are at least 375 recognized species (and perhaps there are many more).  Many of these species could be considered “microspecies”, varying only slightly from other blackberry species, and easily pollinating each other.

What could you use a blackberry plant for?   There are several options!

Of course you could eat the berries, and they are tasty.  Choose plants that are not near enough to a highway that they are likely to have been sprayed with herbicides.  The dark berries are extremely rich in nutritious phytochemicals, some of which are good in fighting cancer.  The seeds are nutritious, too – they contain omega-3 and omega-6 oils, among other compounds.

The leaves and root-bark can be used to treat dysentery and diarrhea, sore throats, and mouth inflammations.  The leaves  can be used to constrict blood vessels, so they are good for wound care (to control bleeding and to limit bruises).  Preparations from the leaves can be used to tighten tissues – such as skin for beauty treatments, and shrink hemorroids.  Tea made from blackberry leaves can lower blood sugar, and it can relieve fluid retention and swelling or inflammation.  Blackberry tea could be dangerous for pregnant women – it might stimulate uterine contractions.

You could control erosion on a steep bank by encouraging brambles to grow.  Blackberries will grow in a wide variety of soil conditions.

Blackberries are an important food source and habitat for wildlife.  And they have a positive relationship with bees – the bees pollinate the blackberry flowers, and the flowers yield food for the bees.  Bee populations are dangerously stressed right now.

If you need a natural dye, you can get purple and dark blue colors from blackberry.

You never know when this might come in handy: you could make strong rope or twine from the fibers of the long blackberry canes, or stems.  Various Native American peoples have known how to do this.


For information about visiting the Phinizy Swamp:
http://naturalsciencesacademy.org/

These are two different plants, and not even that closely related (note that they are not classified in the same genus).  They do grow to a similar size, the leaves have a similar arrowlike shape, and they prefer the same kind of habitat.  Both plants grow in constantly wet soil to up to about a foot of standing water. Their native territory overlaps throughout large portions of North America, so these two plants can often be seen in the same areas of a given wetland.

Arrow Arum is also called Tuckahoe (which is derived from its Algonquin Indian name) and Bog Arum, and Duck Corn.  Peltandra virginica is its scientific name.  Arrow Arum grows in wetlands all over eastern North America.  Animals such as muskrats and ducks eat the seeds (which explains why it is sometimes known as Duck Corn).  The Arrow Arum at the Phinizy Swamp has leaves that are more curly and three-dimensional than the Duck Potato plant, but other populations in other areas can have somewhat flatter leaves.  If you examine the branching patterns of the veins in the leaves, you will see that they are different from Duck Potato.  

More about Arrow Arum:

If you were trying to live off the land, it would be especially important to be able to tell Arrow Arum from Duck Potato because, although both plants have starchy tubers attached to their root systems, the tubers from Arrow Arum are poisonous unless prepared very carefully.  Various Native American peoples knew how to prepare Arrow Arum tubers for eating, usually by boiling and/or drying them for long periods to neutralize the toxin.

Duck Potato can also be called Broadleaf Arrowhead, or Indian Potato, or Wapato.  In fact, there are a number of Indian names for this plant, surely because the tubers of this plant are tasty, not at all poisonous, and easy to prepare.  The scientific name is Sagittaria latifolia.  Duck Potato was an important food source not only for Native American peoples, but also for some European colonists in North America.  Duck Potato grows in wetlands across most of North America.   

More about Duck Potato:

 In the Phinizy Swamp, the populations of Duck Potato have flatter leaves than Arrow Arum.  But a surer way to tell the difference is to look at the veining patterns on the leaves.  Duck Potato leaves have veins that branch from a central point, in a starlike pattern, as compared to the branching veins of Arrow Arum.  Ducks readily eat the seeds, but do they actually eat the starchy tubers?  Sources disagree.  However, beavers, porcupines, and muskrats eat the entire plant.  Ducks certainly eat the seeds.

In the photo are left, I really like how all the Duck Potato leaves are pointing up in the sunlight, like shovel heads.



For information about visiting the Phinizy Swamp: http://naturalsciencesacademy.org/

I came upon this turtle while walking around at Phinizy Swamp.   It’s a box turtle, Terrapene carolina carolina.  It turns out that, although the color patterns on the turtle’s shell are recognizable as belonging with its subspecies group, the details of the pattern are unique to the individual.  It’s kind of like a fingerprint.  A scientist can take a photo of this turtle’s shell pattern and identify this individual turtle again in the field later, without having attached a tag to the animal.

I came across this turtle in just the kind of place that a box turtle likes – between the swamp and the forest.  Box turtles live in both locations.  They eat just about anything they come across – small animals (insects, snails, worms), carrion (dead animals), plant parts, and more.  Possibly young turtles are more carnivorous while they’re growing the most, and older turtles are more herbivorous.  When threatened, box turtles draw their heads and limbs inside their shells – and this kind of turtle can even close its belly plate (called a plastron) up tight, completely sealing off all entrances to the shell.  Larger predators find they can’t bite their way through the shell of a fully closed-up, mature box turtle.

It takes a box turtle 5 to 10 years to reach sexual maturity.  A male box turtle will have a concave (indented) area on his plastron – this enables him to balance himself against and on top of a female’s shell while they are mating.  A female turtle’s plastron is smooth in shape.  Females can store fertilized eggs inside their bodies for several years before laying them.   Males usually have reddish eyes, and females’ are brown.  Box turtles can live for 100 years or more.

Box turtles have a homing instinct.  Interestingly, not much seems to be known yet about how the homing instinct works.  But if you pick up a box turtle and move it farther than maybe a quarter mile, it will probably search endlessly for its way home – and never find it.   Sometimes people find a turtle and try to relocate it to another location in the wild, not realizing they are dooming it to a near certain death.  It’s also a bad idea to take a wild turtle home as a pet.  They are hard to care for, and they won’t be happy because they will keep wanting to return home.

If you find a box turtle that is crossing a busy road where it could easily get run over, you could help it out by taking it to the other side of the road – if it is really clear which direction it was trying to go.  At the Phinizy Swamp, it’s best to just look at the turtle without touching it.

Box turtles reproduce themselves very slowly.  Each female box turtle may end up having only 2 or 3 offspring who survive to adulthood.   Although box turtles are very successful at defending themselves against would-be predators, their greatest current danger is from humans.


For more information on visiting the Phinizy Swamp, see the site for the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy:
http://naturalsciencesacademy.org/

I'm beginning a project with the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy at the Phinizy Swamp, in which I take walks around the swamp and draw things that I notice.  Each drawing will be posted somewhere in the swamp for a short while, and you can get a free copy of the drawing at the visitors' center.

This is a Bald Cypress, Taxodium distichum.  It’s called “bald” because it loses its leaves in winter.  

I’m looking at the widened base of the tree – called the “buttress”.  Buttresses in architecture stabilize wall structures by providing extra width and mass at needed points.  Botanists tend to think that the buttress of a cypress tree provides extra stability to keep the tree up in the mucky ground of a swamp – and also in high winds.  Generally, the buttresses of these trees are higher and wider in wetlands that have higher flood levels. 

 My drawing of the buttress is a little abstracted.  I really like the flare of the buttress as well as its fluted quality – the way the base of the tree waves in and out as it gets wider. 

Here you can see a photo of the tree I was looking at.

And here's a link to the Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy:
http://naturalsciencesacademy.org/

You can find information on their programs, and on how to get to the swamp.