Even in winter there is still plenty to see in the woods. These are a few of the things I’ve seen lately that didn’t fit into other posts.
I don’t know the name of this beautiful foliose lichen but I found it in a birch tree that I’ve visited many times. I thought I had examined every lichen within reach in that tree but I was obviously mistaken. My failure to see it even after so many visits helps illustrate the difference between seeing a thing and knowing it. I would have told you that I knew this birch tree like the back of my hand, but now I wonder what else I’ve missed.
Another illustration. This one shows why it’s best to wear old clothes when picking blackberries.
The tiny pink flowers of motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca) grow in circular tufts spaced up the length of the stem. Each flower produces 4 triangular brown nutlets, and in this instance the birds have eaten almost all of them. The scientific name cardiaca means “for the heart” and motherwort was once used to remedy nervousness and dizziness. Whether it has any medicinal effect on birds is anyone’s guess. The male black capped chickadees seem very excited this year so it doesn’t seem to be calming them down any.
Birds have also been after the purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) seeds. This is one reason I let plants go through their natural cycle and don’t cut them back until spring. Another reason is plain old laziness, which I’m sure the birds appreciate.
If the question is “Does a squirrel slip in the woods?” the answer has to be yes.
Wooly aphids are sap sucking insects that secrete sweet honeydew on branches and leaves of plants. The honeydew attracts a fungus called black sooty mold. Since the mold only grows on the aphid honeydew and not the plant, it doesn’t harm plants. In fact, the aphids will do far more harm. This mold feels hard and brittle when dry and soft and pliable after a rain. The example in the above photo was growing on alder, but it can also be found on beech, magnolia, maple, oak, elm, basswood, willow, walnut, white pine and hemlock.
Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) is native to Japan. In 1875 seeds imported from Russia were planted at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts. Birds helped it escape and now it has become a very invasive shrub that forms dense thickets and chokes out native plants. According to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, recently “barberry has been implicated in the spread of Lyme disease. Researchers have noted higher densities of adult deer ticks and white-footed deer mice under barberry than under native shrubs. Deer mice, the larval host, have higher levels of larval tick infestation and more of the adult ticks are infected with Lyme disease. When barberry is controlled, fewer mice and ticks are present and infection rates drop.”
I think this might be a tube lichen (Hypogymnia physodes) but I find that these gray / green lichens are one of the hardest to identify. Identification is made even more difficult by their habit of changing color between their wet and dry state. When wet the algae in some lichens (known as chlorolichens) “bloom” and turn the body of the lichen green. The algae are the photobiont part of the fungal and algal symbiotic pair that makes up a lichen, which means that the algae do all the photosynthesizing.
This common green shield lichen (Flavoparmelia caperata) lives on an old hemlock tree just outside my back door, so I know it well. The recent rain and snow have got it looking just about as good as it ever does so I thought I’d take its photo. Lichens have several ways of reproducing and one of them is vegetatively. The granular bits in the center of this lichen are called soredia, and are made up of intertwined fungi and algae granules. They will eventually fall to the ground and will be blown or carried to another place where, if all goes well, another lichen will grow.
In the book Gathering Moss author Robin Wall Kimmerer mentions an experiment that showed that many mosses spread by sticking to the bottoms of the tiny feet of chipmunks. I wouldn’t be surprised if lichens were spread in the same way.
The ground beneath an old honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) was littered with thousands of long, flat seed pods. Considering that each one of these was once a flower, this tree must have been very beautiful last June. The reason I was surprised enough by these to take a photo is because the seed pods when fresh contain sweet pulp that is loved by animals, including livestock. Native Americans used the pulp for food as well. Some say it is very sweet and tastes like the fig in a Fig Newton cookie. You do not want to just go munching on seed pods to find out though-black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) seed pods are very toxic.
Honey locust seed pods look a lot like giant flat string bean about 9-12 inches long and often curled. Some of them look like polished mahogany and others can be purple.
I’ve seen two red jelly fungi in my life and this is one of them. I should say red-ish, my color finding software sees salmon pink, dark salmon, rose, orange, rosy brown, and chocolate brown. I think it might be a purple jelly disc (Ascocoryne sarcoides) but I’m not completely sure. Whatever it is, it is rare here.
Here is a question to ponder: How does the wind sculpt a perfectly circular feature in the snow? Wouldn’t it have to blow from every direction at once to do so?
The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery. ~ Anaïs Nin
Thanks for stopping in.
Nice photography, you are really good! stay away from those thorns! 🙂
Thank you Michael. I try to stay away from all thorns but when they’re hidden by leaves I’m not always successful!
Hey there. Lemony [http://lemonygregghead.wordpress.com/] suggested that you were the ‘go to guy’ when it came to the identification of lichens. When you have a moment, perhaps you could do me the favor of looking at this common one [http://wp.me/p1yRFa-3Y9] and tell me what you think. i am a zoologist and there was little hope of my getting the name of this one correct even to genus. We do have a mycologist in the department here but I figured that getting in touch with you would be a nice way to meet a fellow blogger with a thing for photography, the out of doors, and New England in particular. I’m originally from Boston, currently in Pennsylvania, and my wife and I are looking to relocate … we’ve got a daughter in Meredith right now and that part of the world is looking pretty good to us. Let me know what you think of my lichen when you’ve got a moment. And, many thanks in advance. D
I’m glad Lemony has such faith in my identification abilities!
I think your example might be one of the Physcia lichens. Possibly the black eyed rosette (Physcia phaea) or the slender rosette (Physcia subtilis) or the powder back rosette (Physcia caesia) The problem with lichens that look like your example is, there are a lot of them that look very similar, so identification can be difficult. That’s why you don’t see many of them on my blog. If you do get a positive ID I’d be interested in hearing about it.
New Hampshire is a fine place to live but it can get a bit cold up here!
Some great finds, Allen! Love that macro shot of the Blackberry thorns. Ouch! The jelly fungus is beautiful!
Thank you Melanie. Everyone seems to like the thorns. Who knew? I like that jelly fungus too. I wish I’d see more of them that color.
Is there a plan underway to eradicate the barberry? I leave my seeds heads, too, but put out so much seed the birds only go after them when I forget to refill the feeders. I scatter the extra seeds in the garden come spring and share the seedlings with friends. It’s a win-win.I read that the presence of lichen is an indicator of good air quality. Do you know if that’s true?
I don’t know of any plan to rid this area of Japanese barberry but I wish there was. It’s getting harder to get through some areas because of it.
I don’t feed the birds because of the bears, which don’t always sleep all winter.
Yes, lichens are very sensitive to pollution and will generally refuse to grow where the air isn’t clean. In a famous study in London, children mapped the air quality of that city by noting where lichens grew and where they didn’t.
I think the snow cone was sculpted by a vortex of wind. We might even be tempted to call it a Polar Vortex, but… that’s not what that means.
I think you’re probably right. The wind had to have been spinning as it would in a vortex, I would think. That would explain the circle, but the cone is still a head scratcher. If I had better software I might try to re-create it.
The thorn picture was very striking.
Thank you. I’m interested in thorns of all kinds.
I love that Echinacea – it looks like it has a punk hairdo.
That’s what I thought!
That first beautiful pale green foliose lichen at the very top resembles Lobaria (Lungwort Lichen), but I couldn’t find a good match.
I agree. I thought of lungwort too, but I think it’s just a foliose lichen. I was wodering if the color was caused by algae. It was quite wet that day.
It is definitely a foliose lichen (but the common name for Lobaria is “lungwort or lung lichen.” (Another good example of where common names cause confusion.)
I agree, That’s why I always include the scientific name.
So you are saying that there is are lungworts and then there is a lungwort lichen? That I didn’t know.
Exactly. I know you know MUCH better than me that lungwort can refer to a genus of flowering plants. That is not what we are looking at here.
Lobaria is a genus of lichen and can go by a common name of Lungwort Lichen or Lung Lichen. As soon as I saw your awesome foliose lichen, I thought it was a Lobaria sp., and I tried to identify it from your photo. I somewhat thought it might be Lobaria scrobiculata. (I am prepared to be wrong on this of course.)
Anyway, I love your blog photos and how you comment on them. I often spend time looking up things you have mentioned.
My ongoing photostream has about 4000 images logically organized by taxa into 95 sets or albums: – – http://www.flickr.com/photos/rbinv/sets/ – –
My aim is mainly to remember what I have seen and to help me to continue to advance in my study of the flora and fauna. (I am a hiker and backpacker also.) I range from the Gulf of Mexico to the mountains of North Georgia. The higher elevations of North Georgia have many of the same species as further up north, as in your neck of the woods.
Good travels.
Thanks Roy, I’m glad you’re getting something out of this blog and I hope you’ll let me know if you see any mistakes. I do my best with identifications but I’m sure you know how that goes. I think I need a microscope.
I wonder if this lichen is Lobaria scrobiculata. One of the things that attracted me to it was its large lobes, which were much larger than the other lichens on that tree. I’ll have to go back and take another look if it ever warms up.
Yes, I know of lungworts like pulminaria, which is a perennial, but I also thought there were lungworts that looked a lot like lichens but weren’t lichens. Clearly I need to study up on lungworts. I’ve never seen one in person so that’s why I’m not very familiar with them.
I’ve seen some of your photos and I wish you had a blog so more people could find them. They really are excellent. Do you have any kind of a website besides flickr?
Quite interesting and educational. Now you have me thinking about the inverted snow … cone.
Thanks! I know what you mean-I can’t figure out how the wind made that snow cone either.
Lovely shots and interesting spot on Lyme I have tons of ticks but none of these in my yard. 🙂 Lots of Deer and Mice though 🙂
Thanks! I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many ticks as I saw last summer. I hope this cold fixes that problem.
I am with you I hate all the poison we must place on the pets and us 😦
Me too.
🙂
Thank you for my weekly lesson about some of the smaller things in nature and in macro photography. The shot of the thorns is exceptional! I know that you say that you have any books to help you ID lichens, mosses, etc. but it must take you some time to look them up to share with the rest of us.
Thanks! Always glad to help, Jerry. Yes, it does take quite a lot of time to look things up in guide books but after you’ve looked something up 2 or 3 times you get to know it well enough so you don’t have to look it up anymore. i find when I walk through the woods now I remember the names of more and more things without having to look them up.
Oh come on. If you do something intentionally, it’s not laziness, right? At least that’s what I tell myself. I love watching the gold finches eat the coneflower and rudebekia seeds out of the dried flower heads in winter and I’m sure they appreciate it being there. 😉 The phlox on the other hand, I cut that stuff down. It spreads too aggressively. Sorry birds.
I like your take on laziness. I think I’ll adopt it as a new way to look at things. I’m not sure about phlox-I wonder if birds even eat it.
I love the idea of leaving the plants for the birds in the fall. I clean out my garden out front but leave the back to go to seed and sure enough that is where the birds hang out. Guess I will save myself some time next fall.
Your information about the Japanese barberry is fascinating. I had no idea it was responsible in part for the increase in lyme disease. Makes sense.
Thanks, as always for educating in a fun way.
You’re welcome Martha.
I’d never heard that about the barberry either. Now I know why I saw so many ticks on me last summer. Barberry is taking over the woods here.
I’m sure the birds are grateful for your laziness. I love the blackberry thorn picture…stunning in its simplicity! Interesting background about the barberry. I would never have thought to try and link a plant with lyme disease.
I was surprised about the barberry / Lyme disease link too but it makes sense. Barberry is so prickly that no predator in its right mind would follow a mouse into one.
Some more great photos and interesting information. I prefer to leave thing be in the garden. Often the seed heads are almost as nice as the flowers. Then again, I might just be lazy.
I like seeing the seed heads too, so laziness pays off!