PLANTS | ANIMALS | ECOLOGY | FUNGI | GEOLOGY | GARDENING | TOOLS
MEXICAN PLANTS & ANIMALS HOME
Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the July 20, 2007 Newsletter issued from Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, QUERÉTARO, MÉXICO
HIERBA DEL BURRO
Last weekend's most spectacular wildflower grew atop a high ridge in a pasture at the edge of a woods. Known as Hierba del Burro (Burro Herb) and Sangre de Toro (Bull Blood), it was SPIGELIA LONGIFLORA, to be seen below:
What's so spectacular about this plant is its large cluster of brightly red flowers, which are nearly three inches long, crowning the soft-green, big-leafed plant. Southeast North America's Indian Pink is in the same genus and looks a lot like the above, except that Indian Pink's red flowers are yellow inside.
I found only one small community of the plants and this cluster grew inside a group of ancient, collapsed, indigenous ruins. Often I've noted unusual plants existing only around ancient ruins, and I believe that this confirms that changes we humans make in soil structure and chemistry can affect local ecology for centuries and millennia to come.