The First Spring Wildflowers Appear

The biggest surprise this week was finding beautiful spring beauty flowers in bloom a full two weeks ahead of the earliest date I had ever seen them, which was April first. The most beautiful things in nature are almost always right there in plain sight but to find them we have to look carefully, and we have to see. Spring beauty blossoms are about the size of an aspirin and can be very hard to see when they first appear. Later on though, when the forest floor is carpeted with them it will be an unforgettable sight. They are usually the first true ephemeral wildflowers to appear in the forest in this area, so nothing says spring quite like they do.

I had to stop when I saw this dandelion blossom shining like a miniature sun. It was twice as big as all the others in the area and so very bright and beautiful more light shined out of it than on it. It was producing pollen and the bees were rejoicing. I joined them as I knelt to take its photo, so happy that spring was here once again. The Taraxacon part of the scientific name comes from the Greek taraxos, meaning disorder, and akos, meaning remedy. Dandelions have been used as both food and medicine for thousands of years and there was even a time when grass was torn up to make more room for them. A weed is an opinion, nothing more.

Signs that spring is here are everywhere now. Female American hazelnut blossoms are about as big and numerous as they ever get.

The brownish, triangular, manta ray like bud scales have opened on many of the American hazelnut catkins. Under each bud scale are three to five tiny yellowish male flowers, so there can be hundreds of flowers per catkin, wound in a spiral formation around a central stalk. Just a touch and this bush released clouds of pollen.

Female red and silver maple flowers look much like the female hazelnut flowers; just single forked threads called stigma or stigmas. Though I’ve seen many insects they don’t rely on them; they’re sticky so they can catch the pollen that the male flowers release to the wind.

Pollen production is now in full swing on male red and silver maple flowers. Some were producing pollen before they had even grown out of the bud.

Like the American hazelnut catkins, alder catkins have also started opening. Alder catkins have beautiful deep purple bud scales which contrast nicely with the tiny yellowish flowers. These flowers weren’t quite fully opened yet and weren’t releasing pollen but you can see how the buds spiral down the central stalk. Nature uses spirals almost everywhere, from spiral galaxies billions of light years across to the tiny spiral cochlea in our inner ear. That’s because the spiral, it is said, is the most efficient way for something to grow. More can be packed into a spiral than into other shapes and one of the easiest ways to see and understand this is to look at a sunflower that has gone to seed. If you look closely you see that much of nature is all about spirals.

As I poked around looking at this and that one day I had the feeling that I was being watched and I was, by a robin. This was the first one to get close to me this year. They’re very inquisitive birds and I usually have one or two land very near me each spring. One spring I was looking at maple flowers and a robin landed right beside me and began kicking up leaves, making all kinds of noise. They want to see you and they want to be seen by you.

I think this one might have been working on a nest because it didn’t seem to want to leave this spot. I didn’t want to upset it so I took a quick shot or two and let it be. This shot would have been okay one if I hadn’t cut its tail off.

Speaking of birds, in that last post I showed what I thought was a purple finch but this week I was walking through the campus of the local college and heard that wonderful song again. This time I used the Merlin bird identification app on my phone and it said “house finch.” I was quite far away from where I heard it the first time but what are the chances of both a house finch and purple finch being on the same campus? I can’t answer that but it may be that Susan’s thought that it was a house finch last week had been correct. When I was just a boy I decided I would never be able to be a “bird person” because of colorblindness, so any uncommon bird name you find on this blog should be taken with a grain of salt. I try hard not to misinform but I certainly don’t know all the bird names. Really the whole point of the story of that bird was me hoping you would want to go and hear its song online. I still hope that, because you’ll hear one of the most beautiful sounds that nature has to offer. It is like spring being presented in song.

I looked at lilac buds and noticed that the bud scales were relaxing and starting to open. I’ve been fascinated by the way buds open in spring since I was a small boy. Lilacs were the first ones I watched because they were everywhere and easy to get to.

I saw something entirely different on these lilac buds; squirrel hair blowing in the breeze.

The lilac with squirrel hair was on the grounds of the local college, and so was this squirrel. This must have been an educated squirrel because as I watched it looked both ways before crossing the road. Squirrels that live on the college campus have an easy life. Not only are there millions of acorns falling from the huge old oaks; there are also hickory, black walnut, hazelnut, butternut, and other nut bearing trees growing there. Even a blind squirrel could find nuts there.

Call it creeping Charlie or gill over the ground or ground ivy; no matter what you want to call it is one of the most common “weeds” in these parts, and it’s in full bloom. This plant grew at both may father’s and grandmother’s houses so it was one of the first plants I ever paid any real attention to. As far back as memory can take me, it’s there. It is in the mint family and is related to henbit. It has a powerful and unusual odor when it is mowed, with the kind of odor that gets in the back of your throat and stays there for a while. I think that’s what I remember most about it; that strange scent.

Speaking of henbit, here it is now. This plant’s name comes from the way chickens peck at it. Like ground ivy it is in the mint family and I’ve heard that all parts of it are edible. I like its tiny cartoonish flowers that always look surprised. Surprised that spring is here? Surprised by their own existence? I can’t say.

I haven’t seen any willow flowers yet but poplar catkins have appeared. Poplar trees are in the willow family but the catkins are usually two or three times as big as those on willows. Instead of bright yellow flowers the male poplar flowers will be a beautiful chocolate brown. The shiny brown bud scales are also bigger than willow bud scales and since those bud scales weren’t sticky I know this tree was an aspen, which like cottonwood is just another variety of poplar.

One of my favorite spring garden flowers is this beautiful crocus, called the vernal crocus. Some call them “Tommys” due to their scientific name, which is Crocus tommasinianus. I like the delicate shading inside.

I think the person who planned this bed at the local college might have miscalculated the bloom times of the crocuses because the yellow flowers always bloom two weeks before the purple, so by the time the purples show themselves the yellows are passing on. Of course that might have been the plan but in my opinion it is the contrasting colors that make the show. But that’s just another opinion.

I watched the bees fly quickly from purple to purple flower, not stopping to sample them at all. Clearly, they prefer the yellow flowers, for whatever reason. It can’t be pollen because I saw a few purple flowers that had pollen spilled on their petals.

The daffodils are promising to be beautiful this year as long as we don’t get a cold snap.

The scilla at the college are fully out in places but in other places there isn’t a sign of them. Mine aren’t showing at all yet.

More reticulated iris have come along. I love the color of these flowers but the foliage grows quite fast to twice the height of the flowers and gets in the way, especially if you’re trying to photograph them.

This beautiful reticulated iris suddenly appeared in my yard recently and there are quite a few more on the way. They came from Maryland, from my blogging friend Ginny, so once again I’ll say thanks Ginny! Your flowery gift just keeps on giving and I’m very happy to have them. Nobody I used to garden for ever grew reticulated iris.

I went to the swamp where skunk cabbages grow to see how they were doing and I took a step backward and heard a crunching sound. I knew what that meant and sure enough when I turned around I saw that I had accidentally stepped on one of the plants. Though the damage might look severe I only damaged the outer spathe, so none of the actual flowers were harmed. The flowers are the tiny white bits that spiral around the spadix, which is the thing that looks sort of like a brain. These flowers are special though, because they are the female flowers of the skunk cabbage, and you’ve never seen them before on this blog.

In all the years I’ve been doing this blog each spring I’ve shown you skunk cabbage flowers, and in all those years not once did I find female flowers. Every spring they’ve been male flowers like those seen in this photo. So what are the odds of seeing female flowers only once in 13 years? Quite high, apparently. The odd thing is, not once did I tell myself that I really should show you the female flowers. That I think, is because I’m always so relieved to have gotten a photo at all. To get photos of skunk cabbage flowers you are in a swamp, usually standing or kneeling in mud and/or water, trying to train your lens through an opening that might be two inches wide if you’re lucky. It’s a bit like shining a flashlight into a cave and It gets more challenging each year, so I’m usually happy to leave the swamp.

With the weekly rains we’ve been having the rivers are running quite high, so I thought I’d go and see if I could catch a wave. Here it is.

I hope you are having good weather and are seeing plenty of signs of spring, wherever you are.

If you listen to the birds, every day will have a song in it. ~Kyo Maclear

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Early April Flowers

Since violets don’t usually bloom here until the end of April, I was surprised to find them so early. I was doubly surprised to see that they were white wood violets (Viola sororia albiflora) because I see maybe one white one for every hundred blue / purple ones. I’ve read that the American Violet Society says that the white ones are just white versions of the common blue violet (Viola sororia.) A kind of natural hybrid, I suppose. They’re prettier in my opinion, with their dark guide lines that help insects find the prize.

That ancient plant the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) has bloomed. They are members of the dogwood family but you would never know it by the tiny flowers, each one about an eighth of an inch across. The entire flower cluster seen here is barely an inch across. Though I’ve never seen it they say that each flower will become a small red fruit.

It is the fruit of the Cornelian cherry that is the reason it has been used since ancient times. Man has had a relationship with this now little-known shrub for about 7000 years, and we know that from finding remains of meals from the early Neolithic period that included cornelian cherry fruit. They usually bloom at about the same time Forsythias do, but they are seen in the form of small trees rather than the shrubby form of Forsythias. From a distance it might be easy to mistake one for a dwarf crab apple when it wasn’t in bloom.

So far, I’ve seen just two magnolia blossoms, this one and a white one that had been nipped by frost. So far it seems like spring is moving very slowly because of the still cool nights. Days are running in the high 50s F. lately and showery to partly sunny for the most part.

Hyacinths have come along now, and they always seem to me to mark the midway point of the flowering bulb season. They’re very beautiful and one of the most fragrant of all the spring flowering bulbs.

All of the sudden there are daffodils everywhere. In the last flower post I did I showed some that had been hurt by frost but these were untouched. According to the National Trust in the U.K. the daffodil’s drooping flowers are said to recall the story of Narcissus bending over to catch his image in a pool of water.

The local college has some very early tulips. They stay small but after a while will have yellow along with the red in the blossoms, if I remember correctly.

Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica.) is a scilla size flower that is one of my very favorite spring flowering bulbs. I tried to find them years ago and had a hard time of it but I just looked again and they now can be easily found through most spring bulb catalogs. Still, even though they’re easy to find now I never see them. I know of only this one place to find them and they are very old, coming up in the lawn of a local park. Though the catalogs will tell you that the blue stripes are found only on the inside of the blossom they actually go through each petal and show on the outside as well. I think they’re very beautiful.

Johnny jump ups (Viola) are blooming by the hundreds now. I chose this as my favorite on this day.

The cool weather is being good to the coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) plants. I see more and more blossoms but not a single seed head yet.

This dandelion blossom was just waking up, and I put it here so those of you who don’t know could see the difference between it and the coltsfoot blossom in the previous photo. In truth the only thing they have in common is the color. Size, shape and growth habit are different but the easiest way to tell the two apart is to look at the flower’s stem. Coltsfoot stems are scaly and dandelion stems are smooth.  

Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) are growing about an inch per day when the sun shines, and if you look closely, you can see tiny flower buds all ready to get started. These are the tall, old fashioned bleeding hearts that die back in the heat of summer.

Raindrops were being cradled lovingly by the new growth.

Skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) are looking more cabbage like each day, but you wouldn’t want to eat them.

I’ve been looking for some moss spore capsules to try out my new camera on and apple moss (Bartramia pomiformis) obliged with its tiny round capsules, fresh out for spring. Reproduction actually begins in the late fall for this moss and immature spore capsules (sporophytes) appear by late winter. When the warmer rains of spring arrive the straight, toothpick like sporophytes swell at their tips and form tiny green globes, so their appearance is a good sign of spring.

Each spore capsule is about 1/16 of an inch in diameter. Tiny, but after a few failed tries the new camera was able to do the job. The pointed part seen is the calyptra, which is a hood or cap which covers the lid-like operculum. The calyptra falls off first as time passes and the spores ripen, and finally when the spores are mature the operculum comes off and the spores are released to the wind.

Here is an apple moss spore capsule against a U.S. nickel. I tried to find the height of the date text on a nickel but had no luck. It is safe to say that it’s very small.

Though the male catkins are looking a bit tired the female flowers of American Hazelnuts (Corylus americana) are still going strong.

Hobblebush buds (Viburnum lantanoides) are opening but you’d never know it unless you had watched the hard mass that was there in winter slowly soften and begin to expand. Still, even at this stage it isn’t much to look at, and it might be hard to believe that in about a month it will be one of our most beautiful native wildflowers.

It is indeed hard to believe that the unshapen mass in the previous photo will become something as beautiful as this, but come mid May the woods will be full of wonderful blossoms like this one. Hobblebush flower heads are large-often 6 or more inches across, and are made up of small, fertile flowers in the center and larger, sterile flowers around the outer edge. All are pure white. I can’t think of a better reason to walk through the woods in spring.

I haven’t seen any of the feathery female flowers of the elms (Ulmus americana) yet but I’ve seen plenty of the male flowers like those shown here. Male flowers have 7 to 9 stamens with dark reddish anthers. Each male flower is about 1/8 of an inch across and dangles at the end of a long flower stalk (Pedicel.)

Male (staminate) box elder flowers (Acer negundo) are just showing in the recently opened buds. Once they begin to show like this things happen fast, so I’ll have to watch them.

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) buds are showing color, so it won’t be too long before I can smell their wonderful fragrance again. It was my grandmother’s favorite wildflower because of that scent. Several Native American tribes considered the plant so valuable it was said to have divine origins, and I think she must have thought so too.

Trout lilies are up but so far leaves are all I’ve seen. The leaves always appear before the small yellow, lily like blooms. It won’t be long.

I was lying on my stomach at the edge of the woods trying to get this photo, just a few yards from one of the busiest highways in Keene, when I heard “Sir, is everything all right?” I looked up and found a young Keene Police officer looking down at me. I assured him everything was fine, thanked him for his concern, showed him the first spring beauty blossoms he had ever seen, and off he went. I thought afterwards that he had closed his car door, walked down an embankment full of crunchy oak leaves and stood right there beside me, and I hadn’t heard a thing. This, I thought, is a good example of becoming lost in a flower. I could imagine by his look of genuine concern what must have been going through that young officer’s mind. It can’t be every day that a policeman sees someone lying motionless in the weeds beside the road. At least, I hope not.

If you are lost inside the beauties of nature, do not try to be found. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

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More March Flowers

Red maple season (Acer rubrum) is in full swing now, and the hillside are starting to take on that reddish haze that is so common to this area in spring. It’s beautiful but so far in my experience, impossible to capture with a camera. Maybe I’ll do another climb and try again.

The female flowers, tiny scarlet stigmas, have appeared right on schedule and the male flowers continue to bloom. They might not look like much but to me they are as beautiful as any other flower, especially because they tell me that spring has arrived.

The male flowers cover the whole spectrum of blooming. Some have shed their pollen and are dying off while others are justs starting to open, as these were. Sugar maple flowers haven’t opened yet but it shouldn’t be too much longer. Once they open that will be the end of the maple sugaring season. I’ve heard it was a good year, though shortened because of the early warmth. I’m sure it was welcome after a terrible year last year.

One morning I went to one of the spots where I know coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) grows and saw nothing at all. Then that afternoon, after a day in the 50s F., there they were.

Coltsfoot isn’t native but it is still welcomed as one of our earliest blooming wildflowers. It won’t be too long before the plant’s leaves apper, and that will mean the end of their season. I was happy to see them; they helped push winter a little further back into my memory.

I know where to go to find almost all of the spring flowers that appear in these posts, but little chickweed is always a surprise. I never know when or where it will pop up. I’m not sure which one it was but it was pretty.

American hazelnuts (Corylus cornuta) continue their spring journey with the male catkins just starting to release pollen. I was happy to get this shot because it shows the transition from what the catkins look like in winter, there on the right, to what they look like in spring, on the left. As can be seen, the catkins lengthen by quite a lot and turn golden.

But that isn’t all that happens to the catkins. If you think of a catkin as a spring, when the spring gets pulled the coils are pulled apart, and that’s essentially what happens to a catkin. Each of the tiny manta ray like parts are bud scales. They have a white fringe and a blackish “tail.” As the central stalk of the catkin lengthens in spring the spirally arranged buds slowly pull apart, and under each tiny bud scale the actual flowers are revealed. The hundreds of flowers are the very small, roundish golden bits under each bud scale; maybe 3 to 5 per scale. To me all of this is simply a miracle. I can’t think of any other way to describe it.

And there were the tiny, sticky female flowers, already dusted with pollen grains.

Just after the hazelnuts start taking care of their spring business the alders (Alnus) begin, so as soon as I see golden hazelnut catkins blowing in the wind I start checking the alders. The two plants aren’t that different really, as far as strategy goes. It’s easy to see the way alder buds are arranged in spirals just like the hazelnuts, even in catkins that haven’t opened. Spirals are nature’s way of packing the most life into any given space and you see them used in everything from galaxies to our own inner ear.

I think alder catkins are more attractive than hazelnut catkins because of the contrasting purple and yellow colors. The brown and purple scales on the catkin are on short stalks and there are three yellow/ green flowers beneath each scale, each with a lobed calyx cup and three to five stamens with anthers, which are usually covered in yellow pollen. This was the only bush I found with open catkins and it was very early, I thought. Soon though, all the bushes that line pond edges will look like they’ve been strung with jewels.

I wanted to see what the plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea) was doing. It looked fine but it was too early for it to be flowering. It is one of the earliest though, so it shouldn’t be too long.

The other day I saw a Forsythia trying to bloom.

And the next day it had bloomed with two or three blossoms showing, but the day after that it got cold again, with a low of 15 degrees at night, so I’ll have to go see how it’s doing. Many of the plants that grow here have built in cold resistance but since Forsythia isn’t native it might have suffered.

Scilla have started blooming as well. I love the color of these small blossoms. I once worked for some people who had a large drift of scilla, thousands of them, under some old oaks, and it was beautiful.

There was no wind but this one looked as if it was in a gale. It was also beautiful.

Reticulated irises have finally appeared. This is a strange plant, because some years it blooms before crocuses and other years after, so I’ve learned not to count on it doing anything that I expect it to.

This was my favorite iris, but there was only one. I’ve heard that they will kind of fade over the years so that what was once twenty can become just one or two.

Snowdrops have fully opened.

This little crocus is one of my favorites, but more for its beautiful outside than its plain white inside. My blogging friend Ginny tells me small crocuses like these are called snow crocuses, which I guess nobody I gardened for years ago ever grew or wanted, because I had never heard of them. They’re very pretty little things.

Hyacinths are up and showing color.

And magnolia bud scales are starting to split open, because the flowers inside are now growing. It won’t be long before they show themselves.

Daffodils, the last time I saw them, were heavily budded and I expect by now many have opened. I hope to be able to show them to you in the next flower post if the cold didn’t get them.

It’s hard to say when the hellebores will open but they were showing some fine looking big red buds. Though the buds are red, the flowers on these plants will be a kind of not very exciting light, greenish color.

I’ve met many people who didn’t think spring was anything special, and some who have even said they didn’t like it at all. I have to say that I felt sorry for them because I’ve never understood how anyone couldn’t become excited by the promise and hope of the season, and why the beautiful miracle of the earth awakening once again didn’t make them want to sing. I’ve loved spring forever; since I was a very small boy, and it still just blows my heart open and makes me want to run and play and see and smell every flower that blooms and see every new leaf unfold. While I was taking some of these photos I heard the loud quacking of wood frogs, and then the next day I heard spring peepers. The grass is starting to show green in places and all of the birds are singing their beautiful songs of spring, and how could you not love it? If you don’t love it, I hope you can at least put up with it because I’ll be showing a lot more of it in future posts.

Free your heart from your mind. Embrace wonder for one moment without the need to consider how that wonder came to be, without the need to justify if it be real or not. ~Charles de Lint

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Nature Study 101

I had plans for last Friday; I took the day off from work to use up vacation time before I retire, and I was going to spend the whole day in the woods taking photos of interesting things for you to see, but nature had other plans. It started snowing at about 5 that morning and the roads were treacherous. I went out once (above) but quickly came home again, glad I didn’t have to drive for an hour. On Saturday I went to Beaver Brook and on Sunday we had pouring down freezing rain almost all day. So since I wasn’t able to get enough time outside, for the first time in almost 11 years I’m going to repost something I did a couple of years ago. It was quite a popular post then and I hope new readers will enjoy it. I also hope that regular readers won’t be bored by the repeat. I called it Nature Study 101.

Over the nearly nine years I’ve been doing this blog the question I’ve been asked more than any other is “How do you find these things?” So this post will be about how I find them; I’ll tell you all the secrets, starting with the jelly baby mushrooms above. Do you see how small they are? They’re growing in an acorn cap. The first time I saw them I was feeling winded and when I sat on a rock to rest, I looked down and there was a tiny clump of jelly babies, just like this one. That day a side of nature that I never knew existed was revealed and from then on, I started seeing smaller and smaller things everywhere I went. 

You have to learn to see small by seeking out small things and training your eyes, and your brain somewhat, to see them. It also helps to know your subject. For instance I know that slime molds like the many headed slime mold above appear most often in summer when it’s hot and humid, and usually a day or two after a good rain. They don’t like sunshine so they’re almost always found in the shade. I’ve learned all of this from the slime molds themselves; by finding one and, not knowing what it was, looking it up to find out. I’ve learned most of what I know about nature in much the same way. If you want to truly study nature you have to be willing to do the legwork and research what you see.

Another secret of nature study is walking slowly. Find yourself a toddler, maybe a grandchild or a friend with one, or maybe you’re lucky enough to have one yourself. No older than two years though; they start to run after that and they’re hard to keep up with. Anyhow, watch a two-year-old on a trail and see how slowly they walk. See how they wander from thing to thing. They do that because everything is new and they need to see and experience it. You need to be the same way to study nature; become a toddler. Slowly cross and crisscross your line of progress. See, rather than look. Why is that group of leaves humped up higher than all the others? Is there something under them making them do that? Move them and see. You might find some beautiful orange mycena mushrooms like these under them.

So you need to train yourself to see small, to toddle and think like a toddler, and then you need to know your subject. All that comes together in something like this female American hazelnut blossom. I first saw them when I had toddled over to a bush to see the hanging male catkins, which are very beautiful, and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of red.

But all I could see was a flash of color because female hazelnut blossoms are almost microscopic. That’s a paperclip behind these blossoms. Even with eye problems I can find them though, because I know they’re tiny. I know they bloom in mid-April and I know they’re red and I know what shape the buds they grow out of are. All I need do is find one and the camera does the rest, allowing me to see its Lilliputian beauty.

That’s how I start the growing season each spring; by re-training my eyes to see small again. Most of what I see in winter is big so I need to get used to small again. Spring beauties like those above are as small as an aspirin, so they’re a good subject to start with. They’re also very beautiful and a forest floor carpeted with them is something you don’t soon forget.

Sometimes I’ll see something like this larch flower in a book or on another blog and I’ll want to see it in person. That’s what happened when I first found one, and I was surprised by how small they were. This is another example of my being able to only see a flash of color and then having to see with a camera. They’re just too small for me to see with my eyes but they’re beautiful and worth the extra effort it takes to get a photo of them.

I spend a lot of time looking at tree branches, especially in spring when the buds break. I’ve learned what time of month each tree usually blossoms and I make sure I’m there to see it happen. This photo shows male red maple flowers. Each flower cluster is full of pollen and the wind will be sure the pollen finds the female blossoms. When you see tulips and magnolias blooming it’s time to look at red maples. One of the extraordinary things about these blossoms was their scent. I smelled them long before I saw them.

Lichens aren’t easy to identify but there are easy to find because they grow virtually everywhere; on soil, on trees, on stone, even on buildings. But most are quite small, so walking slowly and looking closely are what it takes to find them. This mealy firedot lichen was growing on wet stone and that’s why the background looks like it does. You could spend a lifetime studying just lichens alone but it would be worth it; many are very beautiful.

Countless insects make galls for their young to grow in and the size and shape of them is beyond my ability to show or explain, so I’ll just say that I always make a point of looking for them because they’re endlessly fascinating, and you can match the gall to the insect with a little research. This one looked like a tiny fist coming up out of a leaf. Something else I like about them is that you don’t have to kneel down to see them. That isn’t getting any easier as time goes on. 

When young the female spore capsule (sporangium) of juniper haircap moss is covered by a cap called a calyptra, which protects the spore capsule and the spores within. It is very hairy, and this is what gives this moss part of its common name. Eventually, as the capsule ages it moves from a semi vertical to a more horizontal position before the calyptra falls off.  The spore capsule continues to ripen and when the time is right it will open and release the spores. When it’s time to release the spores the end cap (operculum) of the now reddish brown, 4 cornered but not square spore capsule will fall off and the spores will be borne on the wind. I learned all of that by studying the moss and reading about what I saw going on, and you can too. And you can do it with virtually anything you find in nature. To me, that is exciting.

A good memory isn’t strictly necessary for nature study but it can come in handy if you wish to see a plant in all stages of its life cycle. I knew where some rare dwarf ginseng plants grew in this area and I knew when they blossomed but I had never seen their seedpods, so I had to remember to go back to see what you see here. It might not look like much but it’s a rare sight and I doubt more than just a few have seen it. I often can’t remember my own phone number or where I parked my car but I can lead you right to the exact spot where this plant grows, so I seem to have two memories; one for every day and one for just nature. The one for nature works much better than the everyday one.

Develop an eye for beauty. Give yourself time to simply stand and look, and before long you’ll find that you don’t just see beauty, you feel it as well, all through your being. This is just tree pollen on water; something I’ve seen a thousand times, but not like this. On this day it was different; it usually looks like dust on the surface but this pollen had formed strings that rode on the current. I wasn’t looking for it; I just happened upon it, and that shows that a lot of what you see on this blog is just dumb luck. But I wouldn’t happen upon it if I wasn’t out there. That’s another secret; you have to be out there to see it. You’ll never see it by staring at a phone or television.

This is another rarity that I just happened upon; a mushroom releasing its spores. Mushroom spores are carried by the wind so it is unusual to see them dropping to the forest floor like they have in this photo. I’ve only seen this happen three times and twice it was on a still, hot, humid day. Once it was on a cooler but still humid day, without a hint of a breeze to blow the spores away. This is why it’s so important to walk slowly and look carefully. You could easily pass this without seeing it.

Something else that is rare to see is a mushroom with another fungus feeding on it, like this bolete with a mycoparasite called Syzygites megalocarpus growing on its cap. A mycoparasite is essentially a fungus that feeds on other fungi. This one has been found on over 65 species of mushroom. It can appear overnight if heat and humidity levels are just right, and that’s exactly what this one did. You can’t plan to see something like this, you simply have to be there when it happens.

Do you know how many puddles there are with ice on them in winter? I don’t either, but I do take the time to look at them and I almost always see something interesting when I do. I’ve never seen another one like this.

Sometimes if you just sit quietly unusual things will happen. I was on my hands and knees looking at something one day and I looked up and there was a fly, sitting on a leaf. I slowly brought my camera up and this is the result. By the way, much of what I see comes about because I spend a lot of time on my hands and knees. If you want to see the very small, you have to. And before I get back on my feet, I always try to look around to see if there’s anything interesting that I’ve missed.

I was crawling around the forest floor looking for I don’t remember what one day and saw something jump right in front of me. It was a little spring peeper. It sat for a minute and let me take a few photos and then hopped off. Another secret of nature study is to expect the unexpected. If you want to document what you see always have your camera ready. I have one around my neck, one on my belt and another in my pocket, and I still miss a lot.

I was in a meadow in Walpole climbing the High Blue trail when I saw a blackish something moving through the grass on the other side. Apparently, it saw me because it turned and came straight for me. When it got close I could see that it was a cute porcupine. I thought it must have poor eyesight and would run away when it got close enough but then it did something I never would have expected; it came up to me and sat right at my feet. I took quite a few photos and then walked on after telling it goodbye. I still wonder what it was all about and what the animal might have wanted. I’ve never forgotten how we seemed to know one another. It’s another example of why you have to expect the unexpected in nature. You just never know.

Sometimes all you need to do is look up. When was the last time you saw mare’s tails in the sky? There’s a lot of beauty out there for you to see, and you don’t really have to study anything.

So, what you’ve read here isn’t the only way to study nature. It’s simply my way; what I’ve learned by doing. I had no one to guide me, so this is what and how I’ve learned on my own. I thought that it might help you in your own study of nature, or you might find your own way. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re out there having fun and enjoying this beautiful world we live in. I’ll leave you with a simple summary that I hope will help:

1. To see small think small. There is an entire tiny world right there in plain sight but there’s a good chance you haven’t seen it. Nothing is hidden from the person who truly sees.
2. Don’t just look, see; and not just with your eyes. Use all your senses. I’ve smelled certain plants and fungi before I’ve seen them many times. I also feel almost everything I find.
3. Walk at a toddler’s pace. Cross and crisscross your path.
4. Know your subject. You probably won’t find what you hope to unless you know when and where it grows, or its habits. When you see something you’ve never seen if you want to know more about it research it.
5. Be interested in everything. If you’re convinced that you’ve seen it all then you’ll see nothing new. Run your eye down a branch. Roll over a log. Study the ice on a puddle.
6. Expect the unexpected. I’ve heard trees fall in the forest but I’ve never seen it happen. Tomorrow may be the day.
7. Develop an eye for beauty; it’s truly everywhere you look. Allow yourself to see and feel it. Appreciate it and be grateful for it and before long you too will see it everywhere you go.  
8. Let nature lead. Nature will teach you far more than you’ve ever imagined. It will also heal you if you let it, but none of this can happen if you spend all your time indoors.
9. None of the things you’ve read here are really secrets. Nature is there for everyone and you can study it and take pleasure in it just as easily as I can.
10. Have fun and enjoy nature and you’ll be surprised how quickly your cares melt away. Problems that once might have seemed insurmountable will suddenly seem much easier to solve.

To look at any thing,
If you would know that thing,
You must look at it long. 
~John Moffitt

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More Spring Flowers

We’ve had a week of record breaking warmth and things are happening fast now. The willows are starting to bloom even though when I checked three days prior to this photo there was no sign of them.

Poplars too are blooming, and their fuzzy catkins are getting longer quickly.

If you look closely you can see, in this case, the reddish brown male anthers on a poplar catkin. Once pollinated the female flowers will release their cottony seeds into the air and they will settle on everything. If you leave your car windows open near one you’ll have a fuzzy surprise inside. Male catkins will simply fall from the trees. By the thousands.

The alders seemed to have bloomed overnight. One day the catkins had no color and the next day, this beauty. One of my favorite sights in spring is seeing alder catkins dangling from the bushes like jewels.

Each stalked reddish-purple bud scale on a male speckled alder catkin (Alnus incana) opens in spring to reveal three male flowers beneath, each with a lobed calyx cup and three to five stamens with anthers covered in yellow pollen. The flower parts are clearly visible in this photo but they are tiny.

The female alder flowers were showing as well. Each of what look like tiny hairs poking out of the catkin is a single female flower. They will become the alder’s cones (strobiles) that I think most of us are familiar with. The whitish material is the “glue” the plant produces to seal each shingle like bud scale against the wet and cold winter weather. If water got under the bud scale and froze it would kill the female blossoms.

When I see this happening on American hazelnuts (Corylus americana); their male catkins hanging golden in the low evening sunlight, I know that it’s time to start looking for the tiny female flowers.

And there they were. I’m surprised that the male and female blooming period have happened together this year. Last year the female hazelnut flowers bloomed for weeks before the male catkins released their pollen. For those who don’t know, the bud that the scarlet stigmas come out of is usually about the same diameter as a piece of cooked spaghetti. I have to look for a hint of red and led the camera do the rest, because they’re too small to see.

Female red maple (Acer rubrum) flowers are also ready to accept pollen. What you see here are sticky, petal-less stigmas. Though it’s hard to tell with so many blooming at once each one is Y shaped, and each upper leg of the Y will become one of a pair of seeds. Once they ripen they will helicopter their way to earth by the millions, if not billions.

The female red maple blossoms might be ready for spring but the male blossoms are still sleeping; just barely poking their anthers out of the buds. I could almost imagine them asking is it spring already?

Yes, it’s time to wake up.

I was quite surprised to find elm flowers already. This tree had a tag on it that identified it as a Liberty American Elm, which was developed by the Elm Research Institute here in Keene. I once worked in the greenhouses there, almost 40 years ago I’d guess, when they were in Harrisville. My job was to take rooted cuttings and repot them into larger pots. The Liberty elm is resistant to Dutch elm disease, which wiped out most of the trees here in what was once known as “The Elm City.”

I saw lots of henbit flowers over the weekend but no ground ivy yet.

I’m seeing lots of dandelion blossoms now too.

How incredibly beautiful a lowly weed can be.

I saw the first snowdrops of the season up in Hancock, which is quite a lot cooler than Keene.

This is the first daffodil I saw. There were many more coming along. It’s odd to see them in March. I hope we don’t get a cold snap now.

The Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas) seem to be blooming early this year as well. This shrub is in the dogwood family and gets its common name from its red fruit. Man has had a relationship with this now little known shrub for about 7000 years; in northern Greece early Neolithic people left behind remains of meals that included cornelian cherry fruit. Cornelian cherry often blooms at just about the same time as forsythias do but it has beaten them this year. Its yellow flowers are very small; the bud they come out of is about the size of a pea, but there are enough of them to put on a good show.

I saw my first scillas of the season as well. They are one of my favorite spring flowering bulbs.

I saw the first bleeding heart shoots up out of the ground. They’re as pretty at this stage as when they’re flowering, I think. I also saw hellebore shoots and buds ready to go.

We’re supposed to have cooler temps this week but just in case I thought I’d show the flowers of a vernal witch hazel once more. I don’t know how long they or any of the spring flowering bulbs will tolerate the early heat.

Reticulated iris are finally going strong and I’m seeing more of them now. They are also called “netted iris” due to the net like formations on the rhizomes.

I’m seeing large drifts of crocuses but I’ve also seen quite a few wilted ones, so they’re going by quickly in the heat.

For those who are interested, the Google Lens app I discovered on my new phone correctly identified all of the spring flowers I tried it on. It tripped up on lichens and fungi a bit but so far it has done well on flowers. I’ve read that it’s a stand-alone app, which means that anyone can get it for their phone, whether Apple or Android. And plants aren’t all it will identify; I’ve heard you can use it on just about anything.

The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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