Things I’ve Seen

The phantom crane fly (Bittacomorpha occidentalis) is a beautiful thing and gets its common name from the way it appears and disappears as it floats through light and shadows. They can float on breezes and air currents with minimal use of their wings because each lower leg is hollow, inflated, and sac like.

I’ve always liked blue and yellow together and this blue bottle fly and yellow milkweed aphids were eye catching.

I think this is some kind of leaf hopper. He was very triangular.

NOTE: Amelia at the A French Garden blog has identified this creature as a tree hopper called Stictocephala bisonia. It can cause a world of problems for grape growers, as Amelia can attest. If you’d like to read her blog post about it, just click here. Thanks Amelia!

Usually when you find dog lichens, in this case membranous dog lichen (Peltigera membranacea,) they are growing with moss. That’s because lichens like plenty of moisture and mosses soak it up like a sponge and release it slowly back to the surrounding vegetation. You can tell that the one in the photo has had plenty of moisture by its color. They turn a light ashy gray when dry. I like its frosted edges.

I never noticed this liverwort, called greater whipwort (Bazzania trilobata,) until last year but now I’m seeing it everywhere I go. It likes to grow in large colonies on damp stones usually near streams, and is very small and easily mistaken for a moss when you’ve never seen it. Each “leaf” is only about 1/8 inch wide and ends in 3 lobes or notches. That’s how it comes by the trilobata part of its scientific name. It’s another one of those beautiful things found in nature that often go unnoticed.

 

And speaking of beautiful things that go unnoticed; I love seeing the little purple “flowers” on the back of pokeweed berries (Phytolacca americana.) They are actually the flowers’ five lobed calyx, but mimic the flower perfectly. People do eat its new shoots in the spring but all parts of this plant are considered toxic, so it’s wise to know exactly what you’re doing if you choose to try it. Native Americans used the plant medicinally and also used the red juice from its berries to decorate their horses.

Ripe bittersweet nightshade berries (Solanum dulcamara) dangle like tiny Roma tomatoes, but eating them wouldn’t be good because they are very toxic. The plant can be especially dangerous around small children, who might be attracted to the bright red berries. Native to northern native to Africa, Europe and Asia, it has spread throughout much of the world thanks to migrating birds that are immune to its poisons.

I liked the netting on this savoy cabbage that I saw in a friend’s garden.

A different kind of netting is found on wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata,) and once the seed pods dry the netting found inside them is even more interesting. A man wrote to me once and told me that he decorated pens that he makes with that same netting. For me these plants are like a time machine that always takes me back to my boyhood, when we used to throw the soft spined fruits at each other.

Wild grapes are showing signs of ripening. The ones pictured also show a good example of bloom, the powdery, waxy white coating found on grapes and other soft fruits like plums and blueberries which protects them from moisture loss and decay.

Many other plants like the first year black raspberry cane (Rubus occidentalis) pictured here use the same waxy white bloom as a form of protection. On plants like black raspberries, blue stemmed goldenrod, and smoky eye boulder lichens the bloom can appear to be very blue in the right kind of light. Finding such a beautiful color in nature is always an unexpected pleasure.

Silky dogwood berries (Cornus amomum) start out white and then turn blue. Somewhere in between they look like Chinese porcelain. In fact, I’ve wondered if the idea for their blue and white decorated porcelain didn’t originally come from these berries. Ideas always come from somewhere, and nature would be the most obvious source of inspiration.

No plant can live without light and nature always provides enough, even if that means being spotlighted by a sunbeam for only an hour each day like this spinulose wood fern (Dryopteris carthusiana.)

I first became attracted to long-leaved pondweed (Potamogeton nodosus) earlier this summer when I paddled my kayak through a large colony of it. They are unlike many of our more common aquatics and I like the leaf shape and the way they float on the water. The floating leaves are only half the story though, because the plant also has quite a crop of submerged leave floating just under the surface. The submerged leaves have the longest leaf stem (petiole) of any pond weed. It can reach 5 or more inches in length.

In my opinion one of the most beautiful things in the forest at this time of year is the maple leaf viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium.) Its leaves go through several color changes and In addition to the deep maroon seen in the photo they can become red, yellow, orange, deep pink, and often a combination of two or three colors at once. Finally, just before they fall, they turn a pastel pink so light it is almost white.

He who has experienced the mystery of nature is full of life, full of love, full of joy. Radiance emanates from the whole existence itself; it does not know the meaning of holding back. ~ Maitreya Rudrabhayananda

Thanks for coming by.