Earth and Space News: Smooth Cordgrass Announces Crime Scenes on Elementary's Under My Skin

Summary: Smooth cordgrass on boot treads allow a consulting detective to apprehend the killer of three drug mules on Elementary's Under My Skin April 23, 2015.

Smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) displays autumnal browning; Gilsland Farm Audubon Center, Waites Landing, Falmouth, Cumberland County, southwestern Maine; Nov. 12, 2009: InAweofGod'sCreation, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Smooth cordgrass alerts a consulting detective to a drug smuggling ring between São Paulo, Brazil, and New York City in Elementary procedural drama television series episode Under My Skin April 23, 2015.

Director Aaron Lipstadt and writer Jeffrey Paul King bring closure in the third season's 21st episode to three unwitting drug mules' families and friends by backtracking from smooth cordgrass on boot treads. The third season's 21st episode, as the series' 69th overall, casts Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) into crime-solving United States citizens who consider cheaper surgeries southward. Sherlock discovers Maggie Halpern (Sarah Bolt) dead from non-surgically slashed throat and surgically removed gall bladder, intestinal section and right kidney, not from gastric bypass surgery.

Smooth cordgrass on Wallace Turk's (Jerry Serpico) boot treads and surgical expertise of two medical school ex-roommates expose execution sites and executioners in intertidal salt marshes.

Wallace's sister Connie fits into São Paulo society as wife of Bruno Escanso, University of Manhattan roommate of Wallace's future employer, furtive Marty Ward (Fisher Stevens).

Smooth cordgrass grows less frequently from germinated seeds than from horizontal underground stems that generate clumped colonies in brackish (from Middle Dutch brac, "slightly salty") waters. The scientific name Spartina alterniflora (from Greek σπαρτίνη, "cord" and Latin alterna, "alternate" and flora, "flower") honors Spanish broom-like (Spartium junceum) cordage and stems flowering single-sidedly. Smooth cordgrass initiates inconspicuous inflorescences (from Latin inflōrēscentia, "flower cluster") June through October northward and April through November southward and inconsequential seeding on one stem side.

Spring through fall temperatures southward and summer temperatures northward respectively below and above 65 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit (18.33 to 35 degrees Celsius) jeopardize seed germination.

Smooth cordgrass keeps on one side of every stem five to thirteen 1.97- to 7.87-inch- (5- to 20-centimeter-) long, spring-yellowed, winter-browned racemes (from Latin racēmus, "cluster").

Racemes lodge pollen-producing 0.19- to 0.24-inch- (5- to 6-millimeter-) long anthers; 0.32- to 0.47-inch (8- to 12-millimeter) florets; and 0.39- to 4.13-inch (10- to 105-millimeter) spikelets. Fringed 0.039- to inch- (1- to 1.8-millimeter-) long ligules (from Latin ligula, "strap") marks the blade-sheath mergers of 3.94- to 35.43-inch- (10- to 90-centimeter-) long leaves. Smooth-surfaced, 0.019- to 0.079-inch- (0.5- to 2-millimeter-) wide leaves nestle into 1.64- to 9.84-foot- (0.5- to 3-meter-) tall, 0.039-inch (1-millimeter) diameter above-ground, green, hollow-stemmed, winter-browned culms.

Smooth cordgrass, observed scientifically by Jean Louis Auguste Loiseleur-Deslongchamps (March 24, 1774-May 8, 1849), offers downward-rooting, outward-spreading, upward-shooting rhizomes (from Greek ῥίζα, "root" and σῶμα, "body").

Atlantic and Gulf coastal North America possesses smooth cordgrass from Newfoundland, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and Maine through Florida and from Florida through Texas.

Smooth cordgrass qualifies as everglade, mangrove (Rhizophora) and prairie cover amid inundated grassland Distichlis, Juncus and Phragmites and marshland cypress (Taxodium), gum (Liquidambar) and oak (Quercus). Needle rush (Juncus roemerianus), Olney three-square (Scirpus americanus), saltgrass (Distichlis spicata) and saltmeadow cordgrass (Spartina patens) require saltmeadow rush (Juncus gerardii) landward and smooth cordgrass seaward. Smooth cordgrass survives soil pHs 3.7 to 7.9, 46.85- to 59.06-inch (1,190- to 1,500-millimeter) annual rainfall and 20-hour inundations in salinities of 60 parts per thousand.

Turning intertidal salt marshes into drug-mule watery graves turns up organic nutrient levels, turns away smooth cordgrass and turns up common reed (Phragmites australis) and saltgrass.

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Alfredo Llamosa (Ato Essandoh) in Morland Holmes' Brooklyn brownstone in CBS Elementary's Under My Skin (season 3 episode 21): Elementary @ElementaryCBS via Facebook April 22, 2015, @ https://www.facebook.com/ElementaryCBS/posts/427727554019028

For further information:

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Loiseleur-Deslongchamps, J.L.A. [Jean Louis Auguste]. 12 April 1807. "2. Spartina Alterniflora. N." Flora Gallica, Seu Enumeratio Plantarum in Gallia Sponte Nascentium Pars Secunda. Cum Tabulis Æneis XXI. II: 719. Paris, France: Matthæi Migneret.
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Earth and Space News

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Smooth Cordgrass Announces Crime Scenes on Elementary's Under My Skin

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