Hypericum hypericoides: An In Depth Review
Hypericum hypericoides commonly called St. Andrew's Cross
Relevant Information from: Flora of the Southeastern United States, Vascular Plants of NC, and Wikipedia
This plant is a long time bloomer, starting in May, through August, and into September depending on the weather.
H. Hypericoides can be found in dry locations. Notably, dry forests and woodlands, such as 'pine/scrub oak sandhills, pine-oak forests in the Piedmont, as well as in savannas, clearings, fields, and woodland borders'.
According to VPONC, it can be found in moist places, and is not often found in deep sandy or overly rocky sites. Since it can be found throughout most of the eastern United States it is expected that it can tolerate a variety of soils and conditions.
It has been noted though, that it occurs very rarely in the Appalachian mountains, and only slightly more-so in the foothills. It can be found as far north as New Jersey and as far south as southern Florida.
It is found as far west as Oklahoma and as far east as the Coastal Plains of North Carolina.
This plant is Native to North Carolina
This plant can be very variable, with some species having smaller and narrower leaves with a more blue color. There are, according to some classifications, 2 subspecies, hypericoides and multicaule. However, the latter of these is usually classified as a separate species, Hypericum stragulum.
VPONC describes H. Hypericoides as a 'slender' deciduous shrub growing to roughly 3 feet tall. As the plant ages, old bark is described as 'shreddy'. The leaves are narrow, oblanceolate, with rounded tips, roughly 1 inch (or less) long. The leave bases are wedge-shaped and sessile. H. Hypericoides is described as an, 'erect to slightly leaning and frail-looking shrub', that can be identified by its leaves and overall look. I agree with this statement, once you have come across it, it is hard to mistake.
VPONC mentions that the 'odd flowers' are a 'give-away', with 'four yellow petals' that grow in an 'X-shape, rather than the standard + shape (equally spaced); the flowers tend to grow singly at the tips of branches, and thus the plant is never full of flowers'. According to VPONC, 'most biologists encounter this species daily in field work in the eastern 3/4th of the state, and the only identification trouble can be with young individuals that might resemble the decumbent H. stragulum.'
Information from Not A Botanist
I think this is an overlooked species.
For one, this plant blooms for such a good amount of time (May-Aug). Like I said, once you have seen it, it is hard not to recognize when you come across it.
I have mostly seen it growing on the sides of roads or in woods that have not been entirely destroyed of diversity. It seems to me to be an extremely drought tolerant plant. In opposition to VPONC, I have mostly found it in sandy soils, some on rocky hillsides, juxtaposing VPONC. Currently,
I have not seen a 'large' or 'mature' one, all specimen I have seen have been rather small, pretty low to the ground, not very shrub like.
Since this is a rather widespread plant that does well in absolute full sun with little access to water, I dug one up from a friends house who didn't mind me trying to plant it at my house. After planting it, and watering it, it appeared to die, ie, I do not think it tolerates being moved very well, at the very least, not during the peak of summer.
I will keep an eye on that specimen and will note whether or not it comes back the following year.
Fortunately I discovered that this plant is growing behind my office. Upon inspection I noticed that one of the specimen had a large number of seed pods attached to a dead branch. Promptly, I grabbed a baggie and carefully pulled off the seed pods, putting them in the baggie. I took the opportunity to crunch the seed pods around in the baggie to see if it would expose any seeds, which it did. To the naked eye, the seeds were miniscule. When I got back to my office I put the seed pods and seeds under a microscope and below are some images of what I found.
Cont.
As you can see, the seeds are very tiny.
The seeds range from a dark brown hue, to a lighter brown. Additionally they are almost what appears to be uniformly 'cratered', essentially small pockets across the entire surface of the seed. A really great way to describe the seeds, is that they look like Ips beetles, commonly known as Pine Bark Beetles. The color, texture, and shape is extremely similar, and if I were to describe the seeds in the simplest way possible, I would say they look like Ips beetles!
I found the fastest and easiest way to separate the seeds from the chaf was to simply rub the seed pods between my thumb and my index finger. The chaf essentially disintegrated into very fine dust and then the seeds fell from my fingers. This got me to a point where I had seeds and dust left. I thought about winnowing the seeds but decided not to as the seeds were so small to begin with, I was afraid they would blow away along with the dust. I then tested a small portion of the seeds and dust by putting them in a glass of water. The thought behind this was, maybe the chaf would separate from the seeds, though this did not happen as the lighter chaf floated while the heavier chaf sank, the seeds floated as well.
To give myself the cleanest product of seeds possible, I used a fine mesh sieve to separate the larger particles, the seeds and fine particles fell through. Given how dry the seeds and chaf were, I thought this was good enough.
This upcoming winter I will cold moist stratify these seeds and will update this post with the germination results.
Insect Interest
I was going to mention how I have not seen very much insect activity with this plant, however, one day when I went out to take a sample for more images under a microscope I noticed there was an insect hovering around the flowers.
I am no entomologist by any means, but one of my friends is.
I reached out to them and asked them about this insect and they told me it was a species of hoverfly, most likely Baccha elongata. According to Wikipedia, 'they mainly feed on pollen and nectar of Compositae, Rosaceae , Apiaceae and Hedera species', none of which H. Hypericoides fits under.
Baccha elongata
Hoverfly is indeed a great description of this insect. Upon noticing this fly, I ran inside to grab my camera (rookie mistake). When I came back the fly was still hovering around the flower (thank goodness). The way this insect was moving from flower to flower was rather unusual to me and is something I think worth noting.
Typically when I watch insects flitter from flower to flower, it almost seems like a frenzy is going on, the insect frantically going flower to flower collecting nectar. This insect behaved in a much different way. It would hover around a singular flower for maybe 5 seconds, and then would eventually decide to land. I kept trying to get closer and closer to get a good image of it and of course my abrupt movements and massive black camera likely scared the fly a bit and it would hop off the flower and hover around it. The interesting thing to me though was that it only was checking out two flowers, and when it went to the other flower it looked to me like it glanced at the flower and it wasn't good enough so it went back to the original flower.