Saturday, November 21, 2009

Seed Dispersal

The weather report indicated lots of rain on Friday with high tides expected.

While this means our weekend fishing will be messed up, these are perfect conditions for beachcombing.

We enjoyed lunch at Spoonbills and headed for the beach shortly thereafter.

Sea beans are seeds that are dispersed worldwide by way of rivers and ocean currents. These local seeds are dispersed on the dunes and contribute to the vegetation which helps hold the sand in place.

We found several good beans including plams, hamburgers, purses, hearts, nickars, and a sea coconut.

The best find of the day was another thick-banded mucuna. You can see in these photos how different it is from a tpical hamburger bean.


Not only is it significantly larger in size, the hilum is much wider and is bounded by a light colored stripe. This is only the second one we have found. The other one is shown on this post.



I also picked up a large bone from a spine, a coconut shell, and a sea coconut in the husk that will soon become part of the collection at the Matagorda Bay Nature Park.

1 comment:

Steve Asbell said...

Great finds! I'm so glad to find a blog about sea beans finally... I like to polish them and make jewelry but I really need to get out to the beach more often. That thick banded mucuna is pretty awesome by the way.