Early June Flowers

Ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) have just started to bloom. They were originally introduced from Europe as an ornamental in the 1800s. It quickly escaped cultivation and has now spread to each of the lower 48 states and most of Canada so in fact it is considered invasive, but nobody but cattle ranchers seem to mind. The ranchers don’t like it because the cattle don’t eat it, and that gives the daisy a chance to take over the entire pasture. That means fewer plants that the cattle do eat.

Georgia O’Keefe said “If you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for a moment.” Why not try it and see?

Our beautiful native black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) trees have also just come into bloom. Each tree is filled with white, very fragrant blooms that remind me of wisteria in shape. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well. They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

Blue bead lilies (Clintonia borealis) have had a disappointing showing this year. In fact I went to a large colony I know of and found that every plant was gone. Since it takes more than 12 years for new plants to produce flowers, their loss is hard to take. I’m guessing that last year’s drought and heat had something to do with it but not all plants disappeared; I found this small colony under a pine tree.

A close look at the flower shows why blue bead lily is in the lily family; each one looks like a miniature garden lily. Each flower will become a single electric blue berry, which is toxic. One Native American legend says that, when a grass snake eats a poisonous toad, it slithers in rapid circles around a shoot of blue-bead lily to transfer the poison to the plant.

Though fringe trees (Chionanthus virginicus) might seem like an exotic import from China or another Asian country but they are actually native to the east coast right here in the U.S. It’s a beautiful and fragrant tree that you rarely see anywhere, and I always wonder why it’s so under used. It is said to be tougher than dogwood, more dependable than saucer magnolia, longer-lived than cherry, and smells much better than Bradford pears.

Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is in full bloom now and is a plant held in high regard for its hard to find clear blue color. This is another tough native plant that bees love. People love it too, and it is now sold in nurseries. The black seed pods full of loose, rattling, seeds that follow the flowers were once used as rattles by children. Not surprisingly, other common names include rattle weed and rattle bush. Native Americans made a blue dye from this native plant that was a substitute for true indigo.

I’ll remember this year for the irises, which are blooming Like I’ve never seen. This bearded iris was big and very beautiful. On a bearded Iris a fringe or “beard” runs down the center of each of the three petals that fall or hang down.

This shot is for those who’ve never looked into an iris. They’re beautiful no matter how you look at them.

The lemon daylily (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus) is a very old species brought to America in colonial days and originally from China and Europe. It has a wonderful spicy citrus fragrance and everyone I know who grows it has always called it the lemon lily. The Greek Hemerocallis means “beautiful for a day,” and that’s how long each flower lasts. It’s a shame that many of today’s daylilies, bred for larger and more colorful flowers, have lost their ancient fragrance.

Each strap shaped, yellow “petal” on a yellow hawkweed flower head (Hieracium caespitosum) is actually a single, complete flower. The buds, stem, and leaves of the plant are all very hairy and the rosette of oval leaves at the base of the stem often turns deep purple in winter. The Ancient Greeks believed that hawks drank the sap of this plant to keep their eyesight sharp and so they named it hierax, which means hawk.

Mountain maple trees (Acer spicatum) are flowering now but I doubt many have noticed, even though these trees flower like no other maple. All other maple trees have flowers that hang down but mountain maple’s flower clusters stand upright, above the leaves. At a glance the big leaves look much like striped maple leaves (Acer pensylvanicum) and I think that’s why many people never notice them. The shrub like tree is a good indicator of moist soil which leans toward the alkaline side of neutral. Native Americans made an infusion of the pith of the young twigs to use as eye drops to soothe eyes irritated by campfire smoke, and the large leaves were packed around apples and root crops to help preserve them.

A first for this blog is pale beardtongue (Penstemon pallidus.) This plant likes dry, sandy or rocky soil and that’s what I found it growing in. All parts, it is said, are covered with soft downy hairs. The tubular 3/4 inch long flowers are quite pretty and reminded me of small foxglove blossoms. Though native this was the first time I had seen it. It grew in a local pollinator garden.

Cow vetch (Vicia cracca) is a native of Europe and Asia that loves it here and has spread far and wide. According to the Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States the vining plant is present in every U.S. state. Cow vetch can have a taproot nearly a foot long and drops large numbers of seeds, so it is hard to eradicate. It is very similar to hairy vetch, but that plant has hairy stems. Such a lowly weed, but I like its beautiful color and it’s nice to see it sprinkled here and there among the tall grasses along roadsides.

Showy yellow goat’s beard (Tragopogon pratensis,) also known as meadow salsify, has the odd habit of closing its flowers at around noontime each day, so I can only see it on weekends and holidays. Aids in identification are how the large, 2 inch flowers follow the sun so that they are always facing it, and petals that have 5 notches on their outer edges. Also, the seed heads look like a large dandelion seed head and a white latex sap will ooze from the stems if they are broken. This plant is originally from Europe.

Another first for this blog is the Kentucky yellowwood tree (Cladrastis kentukea,) which has long, pendulous flower heads full of very beautiful fragrant white flowers. This is a southern tree and its hardiness is questionable this far north but this and 4 or 5 other trees grow near a mass of brick at the local college. Bricks in such a massive wall absorb a lot of warmth from the sun during the day and then release it slowly at night, keeping it warm enough to grow southern trees like yellowwood and sweet gum. The northernmost range of this tree is actually North Carolina, so the old landscape designer’s trick does indeed work.

Bittersweet Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara) is a climbing vine in the potato family that can grow to 10 feet long and can be seen growing on trees and shrubs. One of the more noticeable things about this plant is its unusual odor when it is bruised; it’s hard to describe but it isn’t pleasant. The plant is from Europe and Asia and is considered an invasive weed. All parts of this plant are considered toxic. Other names for bittersweet nightshade are bittersweet, bitter nightshade, blue bindweed, blue nightshade, climbing nightshade, dwale, dulcamara, European bittersweet, fellenwort, fevertwig, morel, nightshade, poisonberry, poison flower, pushion-berry, scarlet berry, skawcoo, snakeberry, tether-devil, violet-bloom, wolf grape, and woody nightshade.

I love the color of the flowers. This one seems to have one misshapen petal but that doesn’t matter; it’s still beautiful. The flowers will become bright red berries that look like miniature Roma tomatoes in the fall.

Our rhododendrons are blossoming and the eastern swallowtail butterflies couldn’t be happier.

Blackberries seem to be having a good year; they’re covered in blossoms.

Raspberries too, are doing well. I’m going to have to start walking along rail trails so I can sample them. When I was a boy I used to eat the wild berries along the railroad tracks all day long. There were very few people walking the tracks back then so the birds and I had most of the berries all to ourselves. The taste of ripe raspberries or blackberries on a hot summer day is something you never forget.

Another plant that grew along the railroad tracks when I was a boy was tradescantia, and I loved the strange triangular blue flowers they had each spring. My father also walked the railroad tracks to get to work and he saw these sprawling, ungainly plants as weeds that nobody wanted, so he wasn’t thrilled when I started digging them up and bringing them home to plant in the yard. He didn’t stop me but he did wonder why I kept dragging home those “dammed old weeds” and that is why, to this day, every time I see a tradescantia I think of him.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one taken with the unusual beauty of tradescantia flowers because now there are purple ones. When I first saw them I assumed that plant breeders had been at work on them and I just found out that is true.

And then there is this, which in my opinion is the most beautiful tradescantia blossom of all. I think even my father would have been happy to see this one. I looked online for it and I found that there are all kinds of tradescantia cultivars out there, so if you like these little flowers as much as I do you can easily have them in your own garden.

Every child is born a naturalist. His eyes are, by nature, open to the glories of the stars, the beauty of the flowers, and the mystery of life.  ~Anonymous

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More Mid June Flowers

Our locust trees are now in bloom. The one shown here is a bristly locust (Robinia hispida,) which is more shrub than tree, though it can reach 8 feet. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs. Bristly locust is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use. The beautiful pinkish purple bristly locust flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I find one in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees, which makes getting photos a challenge.

Black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) are also blooming and are loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains. You can just see some of them unfolding in this photo.

If you don’t know this flower then you don’t know beans. Or peas, or lupines, or chickpeas, or soybeans, or peanuts, or any other of the more than 18,000 species in the legume (Fabaceae) family. Most have flowers much like the black locust example shown here but some tropical species can resemble orchids. Only the orchid and sunflower families have a larger presence in the plant kingdom. The huge legume family is made up of shrubs, trees, vines, and herbs which grow all over the world and feed its populations. Many plants in the family like clover have nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their roots that convert inert atmospheric nitrogen into a form which is useable to other plants. That’s part of the reason Native Americans planted beans, squash and corn together. Legumes have fed mankind for thousands of years and this world would be a very different place without them.

You can see the same type of flower as the locust has on the puffy little bird’s foot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus.) It is also in the legume family and grows about a foot tall, and is a common sight along roadsides and waste areas. It gets its common name from its clusters of brown, 1 inch long seed pods, which someone thought looked like a bird’s foot. The plant has 3 leaflets much like clover and was introduced from Europe as livestock feed, but has escaped and is now considered invasive in many areas. It can form large mats that choke out natives.

If you Google “Herb Robert” (Geranium robertianum) you find two very interesting things. First is how it is named for a French monk who lived in 1000 AD and cured many people’s diseases with it, and that leads to another common name: Saint Robert’s Herb.

Second is that many people, scientists included according to an article in The Healing Journal, have discovered that it grows most abundantly in areas that have high levels of radiation and is said to absorb radiation from the soil in powerline corridors. It is thought to absorb the radiation from the soil, break it down and disperse it. Obviously I can’t confirm that but it’s a story that I first heard years ago and which persists; I just heard about it again the radio the other day.

I’m sure everyone has seen a buttercup (Ranunculus) but I wonder how many have seen their shine? The waxy shine on the petals is caused by a layer of mirror-flat cells that have an air gap just below them, and just below the air gap is a smooth layer of brilliant white starch. All of these layers act together to reflect yellow light while blue-green light is absorbed. Capturing the shine in a photo is a challenge I’m glad I only face once each year because it means taking many photos before I get it right.

This yellow daylily (Hemerocallis) is very early, blooming just after the Siberian irises bloom. This plant was given to me many years ago by a friend who has since passed on and I have divided it many times for family and friends. Two things make this plant special: the early bloom time and the heavenly fragrance that smells of citrus and spices. I have a feeling this is a Lemon daylily (Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus) which is a very old species brought to America in colonial days and originally from China and Europe.  The Greek word Hemerocallis means “beautiful for a day,” and that’s how long each flower lasts. It’s a shame that many of today’s daylilies, bred for larger and more colorful flowers, have lost their ancient fragrance.

There are two times when our wild grapevines tickle my nose; once in the fall when their ripening fruit makes the woods smell like grape jelly, and once in the spring when their tiny flowers emit a huge fragrance that can be detected from many yards away. These flowers are so small that I really can’t come up with an accurate way to describe their size. When you smell them your first thought will probably be “no, that fragrance can’t be coming from these tiny things,” but it is.

Fringe tree (Chionanthus virginicus) is a beautiful native tree that few people grow. It’s one of the last to leaf out in late spring and its fragrant hanging white flowers give it the name old man’s beard.  Male flowered trees are showier but then you don’t get the purple berries that female flowered trees bear. Birds love the fruit and if I had room I’d grow both.

Here’s a closer look at the male fringe tree flowers. I’ve read that these trees are very easy to grow and are pollution tolerant as well.

I felt bad when I accidentally knocked a columbine (Aquilegia) flower off while mowing near it but once I got down on my knees to get a photo I felt nothing but joy, because by then I was lost inside its beauty. Evolution yes; flowers have evolved to be appealing to the birds, bats and insects they want to attract, but that doesn’t explain their beauty. Or maybe it does; do birds and insects see it as we do?  If not then why are they so beautiful? It’s easy to think that maybe all that beauty is there just to please humanity, but that might be too crooked a path to follow.

When I was a boy I read books like Ivan Sanderson’s Book of Great Jungles, and I dreamed that one day I’d go to those jungles as a plant explorer and I’d bring back plants with flowers so beautiful they would make the people of the world weep with joy. The plant shown here wasn’t quite as beautiful as all that and it might make you weep for different reasons, but my sharp intake of breath and quickening heart rate told me that I had discovered something I’d never seen before.

After some searching I found that these small white flowers belong to a plant called flowered cancer root, also called naked broomrape (Orobanche uniflora.)  The naked part of the name comes from its lack of leaves. It doesn’t need them because it is parasitic on the plants that surround it, in this case mostly raspberry, from what I could see. It pierces the roots of other plants and slowly sucks the nutrition from them, weakening them, so it isn’t as innocent as it might appear. The small flowers are white and fuzzy with a yellow center and tiny purple hairs around the outside that make it appear to have an aura in the right light.

According to a New York Times article by Dave Taft, there are records of medieval medical uses of the plant as an astringent healer of “old green wounds.” It is said that Native Americans used the plant to treat skin infections but little seems to be known about how they used it. According to Wildflowers of the United States, the broomrape name comes from the way a European cousin of the plant parasitizes certain species of broom, an old world name for vetch, and the orobanche part of the scientific name means “vetch-strangler.” According to Wikipedia this plant is considered rare or vulnerable in 17 states. In New Hampshire it is simply listed as “present” but since I’ve seen it exactly once in 60+ years its presence isn’t common. It is listed as rare in the Midwest.

It’s finally clematis time here in New Hampshire, and here is Ramona to prove it. She starts off with dark flowers…

…and then the flowers lighten as they age.

Orange is a hard color to find in wildflowers here in New Hampshire so luckily we have orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca.) I see thousands of examples of yellow hawkweed for every one orange hawkweed and I’m not sure why that is. The plant might be from Europe but it’s far from invasive. Maybe their scarcity is due to the color orange being virtually invisible to bees. They do reflect ultraviolet light though, so that means that some insects must find them. The only other orange wildflower I can think of is jewelweed (Impatiens capensis.)

The maiden pink (Dianthus deltoids) in the above photo was found at the edge of a meadow. It might look like its cousin the Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria,) but that flower doesn’t have the jagged red ring around its center like this one does. Maiden pinks are originally from Europe and have escaped cultivation but aren’t terribly invasive. They seem to prefer the edges of open lawns and meadows but they will also grow in abandoned lots and other waste areas. I see them by the hundreds.

Orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata) has just started flowering. Orchard grass seed heads are composed of spikelets that bear two to eight flowers which dangle from thin filaments (pedicels) and shimmer in the breeze. According to the book Grasses: An Identification Guide by Lauren Brown, George Washington loved orchard grass so much so that he wrote “Orchard grass of all others is in my opinion the best mixture with clover; it blooms precisely at the same time, rises quick again after cutting, stands thick, yields well, and both cattle and horses are fond of it green or in hay.”

It’s already time to say goodbye to one of our most beautiful native orchids, the pink lady’s slipper. As can be seen here New Hampshire’s state wildflower had a good year.

Humans have used common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) in various ways for thousands of years. It is mentioned in the Chinese I Ching, which is said to pre date recorded history, and yarrow has also been found in an excavation of a Neanderthal grave site. Yarrow was known as the soldier’s woundwort and herbe militaris for centuries, and was used to stop the flow of blood. Yarrow was a valuable healing herb, one of the nine “holy herbs,” and was traded throughout the world since before recorded time, and that is believed to be the reason for the plant being found in nearly every country on earth today. Native Americans used it for everything from snake bites to deodorant.

If there is a sweeter name for a flower than fawn’s breath, I haven’t heard it. It comes from the way the flowers, which sit at the ends of long thin stems (pedicels,) will move and dance even in the gentle breath of a fawn. Since I’ve never seen a fawn near one I can’t confirm that but I do know that even the slightest breeze will set them all dancing. Of course that’s a flower photographer’s worst scenario but while I wait for the flowers to stop dancing I can admire their beauty.

Asymmetrical is what the flowers are, with petals that look like they were glued on by a chubby fingered toddler, but it gives the plant a certain charm I think. It makes me search the plant for that one flower that must be perfectly symmetrical, but of course I never find it. The plant is also called Bowman’s root (Gillenia trifoliata.) It is a native wildflower but it only grows in two New England Sates as far as I can tell; Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which seems odd but explains why I’ve never seen one in the wild. The dried and powdered root of this plant was used by Native Americans as a laxative, so another common name is American ipecac. 

Flowers have an expression of countenance as much as men and animals. Some seem to smile; some have a sad expression; some are pensive and diffident; others again are plain, honest and upright, like the broad-faced sunflower and the hollyhock. ~Henry Ward Beecher

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Early June Flowers

More and more flowers are appearing each day now and the roadsides are beginning to bloom, as these ox-eye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare) show. This is just a small piece of what was miles of daisies along this road.

Ox eye daisies will always say June to me. I was married in June and because we couldn’t afford flowers from the florist we picked hundreds of Ox eye daisies. They wilted quickly and looked much better in the meadow than in a vase, so I don’t think I’ve ever picked one since. This is a much loved flower so it is easy to forget that it was originally introduced from Europe as an ornamental in the 1800s. It quickly escaped cultivation and has now spread to each of the lower 48 states and most of Canada. Since cattle won’t eat it, it can spread at will through pastures and that means that it is not well loved by ranchers. A vigorous daisy can produce 26,000 seeds per plant and tests have shown that 82% of the buried seeds remained viable after six years underground. I always like to see their spiraled centers.

Blue flag irises (Iris versicolor) are another flower that says June to me. The name “flag” comes from the Middle English flagge, which means rush or reed and which I assume applies to the plant’s cattail like leaves. In this instance they were growing right in the water of a pond, so they don’t mind wet roots.

Though Native Americans used blue flag irises medicinally its roots are considered dangerously toxic and people who dig cattail roots to eat have to be very careful that there are no irises growing among them, because the two plants often grow side by side. Natives showed early settlers how to use small amounts of the dried root safely as a cathartic and diuretic, but unless one is absolutely sure of what they’re doing its best to just admire this one. It’s an easy thing to admire.

Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis) is also called creeping dogwood and bunchberry dogwood. Just like the dogwood tree flower the large (relatively) white bracts of bunchberry surround the actual flowers, which are greenish and very small. The entire flower cluster with bracts and all is often no bigger than an inch and a half across. Later on the flowers will become a bunch of bright red berries, which give it its common name. Even the plant’s leaves show the same veining as the dogwood tree. Native Americans used the berries as food and made a tea from the ground root to treat colic in infants. The Cree tribe called the berry “kawiskowimin,” meaning “itchy chin berry” because rubbing the berries against your skin can cause a reaction that will make you itch. Bunchberry is often found growing on and through tree trunks, stumps, and fallen logs but exactly why isn’t fully understood. It’s thought that it must get nutrients from the decaying wood, and because of its association with wood it’s a very difficult plant to establish in a garden. Native plants that are dug up will soon die off unless the natural growing conditions can be accurately reproduced, so it’s best to just admire it and let it be.

Dogwood (Cornus) blossoms have 4 large white bracts surrounding the actual small greenish flowers in the center, just like bunchberries. They have just come into bloom.

Every time I look closely at blue eyed grass (Sisyrinchium angustifolium) I wonder why they didn’t call it yellow eyed grass, but that’s not all that’s wrong with the name because the plant isn’t a grass at all; it’s in the iris family. Its light blue green leaves do resemble grass leaves though. The beautiful little flowers are often not much bigger than a common aspirin but their color and clumping habit makes them fairly easy to find. I think they must be sun lovers because they’re a little late this year. Some plants liked the cool damp weather, but this wasn’t one of them.

I find goat’s beard (Tragopogon pratensis) growing in a meadow in full sun and that single spot is the only place I find them. Goat’s beard flowers close up shop at around noon and for this reason some call it “Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon,” but I saw these still blooming at around 1 PM. A kind of bubble gum can be made from the plant’s milky latex sap and its spring buds are said to be good in salads. Another name for goat’s bead is meadow salsify. It is native to Europe but doesn’t seem to be at all invasive here. In fact I often have trouble finding it.

Maiden pinks (Dianthus deltoids) have just started blooming and I found the one in the above photo  at the edge of a meadow. It might look like its cousin the Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria,) but that flower doesn’t have the jagged red ring around its center like this one does and it blooms later, usually in July. Maiden pinks are originally from Europe and have escaped cultivation but aren’t terribly invasive. They seem to prefer the edges of open lawns and meadows. Their colors can vary from almost white to deep magenta. I have volunteers growing in my lawn and I mow around them. They’re too beautiful to just cut down.

Red sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) never looks red to me; it always looks purple. But whatever the color it always looks beautiful to me. When I can see it anyway. Red sandspurry was originally introduced from Europe in the 1800s but it could hardly be called invasive. It is such a tiny plant that it would take many hundreds of them just to fill your shoe.

This photo of a red sandspurry blossom over a penny that I took two years ago will give you an idea of just how tiny they are. Each one could easily hide behind a pea with room to spare. For those who don’t know, a penny is .75 inches [19.05 mm] across. I’m guessing you could fit 8-10 blossoms on one.

Our locust trees are blooming. The one shown here is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains.

Locusts are in the same family as peas and beans and the flowers show the connection. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well .They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

Bristly locust (Robinia hispida) is more shrub than tree, but it can reach 8 feet. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs. Bristly locust is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use. The beautiful pinkish purple bristly locust flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I find one in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees, which makes getting photos a challenge.

In 2015 the highway department replaced a bridge over the Ashuelot River and widened the road leading to and from it. They put what I thought was grass seed down on the roadsides once the bridge was finished, but it was wildflower / grass seed mix containing lupines (Lupinus.) For a couple of years they were growing all along the sides of the road but this year I counted only three small clumps. That could be because they are an aphid magnet and I saw many in this colony covered with the sucking insects. I’ve always loved lupines and I’m always happy to see them come into bloom, but it doesn’t seem like they’ll survive much longer in this spot.

Bowman’s root (Gillenia trifoliata) is a native wildflower but it only grows in two New England Sates as far as I can tell; Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which seems odd but explains why I’ve never seen one in the wild. This example grows in a local park. The dried and powdered root of this plant was used by Native Americans as a laxative, so another common name is American ipecac. Nobody seems to know the origin of the name bowman’s root or whether it refers to the bow of a boat or the bow part of the bow and arrow. The white flower petals of bowman’s root are asymmetrical and always look like they were glued on by a chubby fingered toddler. But they are beautiful nonetheless, and dance at the end of long stems. And they do dance in the slightest movement of air. Some say that all it takes is the gentle breath of a fawn to set them dancing, and because of that another of their common names is fawn’s breath. I can’t think of a more beautiful name for a flower.

Blue false indigo (Baptisia australis) is in full bloom now and is a plant held in high regard for its hard to find clear blue color. This is another tough native plant that bees love. People love it too, and it is now sold in nurseries. The black seed pods full of loose, rattling, seeds that follow the flowers were once used as rattles by children. Not surprisingly, other common names include rattle weed and rattle bush. Native Americans made a blue dye from this native plant that was a substitute for true indigo.

When I was just a young boy living with my father I decided that our yard needed a facelift. We had a beautiful cabbage rose hedge and a white lilac, and a Lorelai bearded iris that my mother planted before she died but I wanted more. I used to walk the Boston and Main railroad tracks to get to my grandmother’s house and I’d see these beautiful blue flowers growing along the tracks, so one day I dug one up and planted it in the yard. My father was quiet until I had planted 3 or 4 of them, and then he finally asked me why I was bringing home those “dammed old weeds.” He also walked the tracks to get to work and back, so he saw the tradescantia (Tradescantia virginiana) plants just as often as I did. Though I thought they were lost and needed to be rescued, he thought somebody threw them away and wished they’d have thrown them just a little farther. We had blue flowers in the yard for a while though, and today every time I see this plant I think of my father.  I know I tell this story every year at this time and longtime readers are probably bored with it but there aren’t many flower memories I can associate with my father, so I like to remember him through this one. It’s a beautiful flower that I wish he’d looked at a little more closely.

Plant breeders have been working on tradescantia; I find this purple flowered one in a local park. Interesting but I like the blue that I grew up with best. Bees, especially bumblebees, seem to like this one best though. Why that is, I don’t know.

Star of Bethlehem (Ornithogalum umbellatum), though beautiful, can overrun a garden. These flowers grow from a bulb and are native to southern Europe and Africa. The bulbs contain toxic alkaloids and have killed livestock, so they are now listed as an invasive species.

To just sit with a fragrant white waterlily (Nymphaea odorata) admiring its beauty for a while is enough for me sometimes, depending on the day. They’ve just started blooming and they dot the surface of ponds and slow flowing rivers throughout the region. They are such beautiful things with that golden flame burning in the center of each one. And fragrant too; they are said to smell like ripe cantaloupe. I was surprised to see that the new camera actually caught some of the submerged stems and even a round flower bud. I guess I’ll have to take back some of the bad thoughts I’ve had about it because I’ve never gotten a photo of these features before.

Live this life in wonder, in wonder of the beauty, the magic, the true magnificence that surrounds you It is all so beautiful, so wonderful. Let yourself wonder. ~Avina Celeste

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Early June Flowers

It’s a flower that is hated as much as it is loved. The humble little orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca) is from Europe and is considered an invasive weed in places, especially by ranchers, but I searched for quite a while to find one.  Why would I? Count all the orange wildflowers you know and I’d guess that you’ll count them all on the fingers of one hand if you live in this part of New Hampshire. That’s why I like to see them. Orange seems to be a rare color in nature, possibly because it’s a color that is nearly invisible to bees. Orange hawkweed does reflect ultra violet light, so it is thought that some insects must find them.

Orange hawkweed starts out very red when it just comes out of the bud and it looks a bit like a paintbrush, so it is also called Indian paintbrush and / or Devil’s paintbrush. I think the latter name probably came from farmers or ranchers.

The queen of the aquatics, fragrant white waterlily has just started blooming, and they dot the surface of ponds and slow flowing rivers. They are such beautiful things with that golden flame burning in the center of each one. And fragrant too; they are said to smell like ripe cantaloupe. I watched a teen on a boardwalk once lean out to smell one and he couldn’t decide exactly what it smelled like, but he said it was very pleasant. This is a flower I could sit with all day long, even if I couldn’t smell them.

Red sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) never looks red to me. It always looks purple, but it is a deeper purple than the tiny blossom in this photo is wearing. This one was taken by the sky so it seems lighter than it actually is. Red sandspurry was originally introduced from Europe in the 1800s but it could hardly be called invasive. It is such a tiny plant that it would take many hundreds of them just to fill your shoe.

This photo of a red sandspurry blossom over a penny that I took last year will give you an idea of just how tiny they are. Each one could easily hide behind a pea with room to spare. For those who don’t know, a penny is .75 inches [19.05 mm] across. I’m guessing you could fit 8-10 blossoms on one.

We go from the tiny sandspurry blossom to the huge (relatively) blossom of goat’s beard (Tragopogon pratensis.) Like red sandspurry this one likes to grow in waste areas and roadsides in full sun. I have to get to them in the morning though, because goat’s beard flowers close up shop at around noon and for this reason some call it “Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon.” A kind of bubble gum can be made from the plant’s milky latex sap and its spring buds are said to be good in salads. Another name for goat’s bead is meadow salsify. It is native to Europe but doesn’t seem to be at all invasive here. In fact I usually have trouble finding it.

Our locust trees are blooming. The one shown here is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains.

Locusts are in the same family as peas and beans and the flowers show the connection. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well .They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

Bristly locust (Robinia hispida) is more shrub than tree, but it can reach 8 feet. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs. Bristly locust is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use.

The beautiful pinkish purple bristly locust flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I find one in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees, which makes getting photos a challenge.

Compared to some speedwells with flowers that are one step above microscopic I find that the germander speedwell (Veronica chamaedrys) seems gigantic in comparison because of its 3/16 to 1/4 inch flowers. It’s also called bird’s eye speedwell and is another plant introduced from Europe and Asia. It has the strange habit of wilting almost as soon as it is picked, so it isn’t any good for floral arrangements. Like all the speedwells I’ve seen it has one lower petal smaller than the other three. Speedwell is very common in lawns but I know of only one place to find this one.

Common speedwell (Veronica officinalis) has been blooming for about a month and it has taken me almost that long to get a useable photo of its flowers. The flowers are very small and hard to get a good photo of but they’re also very pretty and worth the effort. This plant is a European native and its leaves were once used as a substitute for tea there. It has also been used medicinally for centuries.

Wood sorrel (Oxalis montana) is a ground hugger that is easily hidden by taller plants. I can’t speak for its rarity but I know of only two places to find it. It is considered a climax species, which are plants that grow only in mature forests, so that could be why I rarely see it. It likes to grow where it’s cool and moist and the humidity is high, and I’ve always found it near water. Though the word Montana appears in its scientific name it doesn’t grow west of the Mississippi. It’s a pretty little flower that is worth searching for.

The waxy shine on the petals of a buttercup (Ranunculus) is caused by a layer of mirror flat cells that have an air gap just below them, and just below the air gap is a smooth layer of brilliant white starch. These layers act together to reflect yellow light, while blue green light is absorbed. Though the shine is easy to see it’s quite hard to capture with a camera. I had to try several times.

Friends of mine grow alliums in their garden and every time I see them I wonder why I never grew them. It wasn’t just me though; nobody I gardened for grew them either. It’s another one of those plants like hellebore that people didn’t seem to want, but I like them both and I’m happy to see more of them these days.

This is the first appearance of native blunt leaf sandwort (Moehringia laterifolia) on this blog, probably because I’ve walked right by it in the past thinking it was another stitchwort, chickweed, or even sweet woodruff, which at a quick glance it might be thought to resemble.  It is considered rare in some places though, so maybe it is here as well. Clusters of small (1/3”) white 5 petaled flowers dance at the end of long weak stalks that often need the support of other plants. The stalks are covered with fine hairs and each flower has 10 stamens and 3 styles. The plant’s common name comes from its preference for growing in sand and gravel.

How can you not love the five heart shaped petals on a sulfur cinquefoil (Potentilla recta) blossom? They fade from bright to pale yellow and have veins that point the way directly to the center of the blossom where there are 30 stamens and many pistils. This is a very rough looking, hairy plant that was originally introduced from Europe. It grows in unused pastures and along roadsides but it is considered a noxious weed in some areas because it out competes grasses. Here in this area it could hardly be called invasive; I usually have to hunt to find it. This beautiful example grew in an unmown field.

At one time I thought fringe trees (Chionanthus virginicus) were an exotic import from China or another Asian country but as it turns out they’re native to the east coast right here in the U.S. It’s a beautiful and fragrant tree that you rarely see anywhere, and I wonder why it’s so under used. It is said to be tougher than dogwood, more dependable than saucer magnolia, longer-lived than cherry, and smells better than Bradford pears. So why don’t more of us use it?

When it comes to small yellow flowers in my opinion one lifetime isn’t enough time to identify them all. I usually admire them and leave them alone but its silvery leaf backs make silver leaved cinquefoil (Potentilla argentea) easy to identify. It comes from Europe and is considered invasive but though they are easily found they don’t choke out other plants. I like the way they often line sunny roadsides.

We humans have used common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) in various ways for thousands of years. It is mentioned in the Chinese I Ching, which is said to pre date recorded history, and yarrow has also been found in an excavation of a Neanderthal grave site. Yarrow was known as the soldier’s woundwort and herbe militaris for centuries, and was used to stop the flow of blood from a soldier’s wounds. Closer to home, Native Americans used it for everything from snake bites to deodorant. Yarrow was a valuable healing herb, one of the nine “holy herbs,” and was traded throughout the world since before recorded time, and that is believed to be the reason for the plant being found in nearly every country on earth today.

Some of you seem to enjoy hearing about the memories that are attached to the flowers I know, so here’s one about a lowly weed that helped me see things differently: There was a time when all red clover (Trifolium pretense) plants meant to me was more hard work. I didn’t like having to weed it out of lawns and garden beds but it was so unsightly with its long, weak flower stems and sprawling, weedy habit. And then one evening a single ray of sunshine came through the clouds and fell directly on a red clover plant at the edge of a meadow, and when I knelt in front of it to take its photo for the first time I saw how beautiful it really was. I saw that it had an inner light; what I think of as the light of creation, shining brightly out at me. I’ve loved it ever since, and since that day I don’t think I’ve ever truly thought of another flower, no matter how lowly, as a weed.

Who would have thought it possible that a tiny little flower could preoccupy a person so completely that there simply wasn’t room for any other thought?
~Sophie Scholl

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Early June Flowers

I saw this view along one of our roads recently. Lupines and Ox eye daisies seemed to go on forever. There were a few white lupines but most were blue / purple. It’s a hint of what will come; soon our meadows will explode with color.

Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) is an introduced plant that came from Europe in the 1600s but it doesn’t seem very invasive; the few colonies that I know of hardly seem to spread at all, and that’s possibly because they are biennials. This plant is in the mustard family, Brassicaceae. The young leaves of dame’s rocket are rich in vitamin C and oil pressed from its seed is used in perfumes.

Dame’s rocket flowers are sometimes mistaken for phlox, but phlox has 5 petals rather than the 4 petals seen on dame’s rocket. Phlox also has opposite leaves and those on dame’s rocket are alternate. The flowers are very fragrant in the evening and are said to smell like a mixture of cloves and violets.

When I was growing up we had a hedge of rugosa roses and I’ll never forget their wonderful scent. This rose reminded me of them because it too had that same scent. I think it was in the rugosa rose family but it wasn’t the exact one we had. The Latin word “rugosa” means “wrinkled,” as in the wrinkled petals  this one had.  They are a shrub rose that come along just after lilacs so if you’re looking for an extended period of fragrance in the garden I can’t think of anything better to extend it with. Rosa rugosa has been cultivated in Japan and China for about a thousand years but it has only been in this country since 1845. After its introduction it immediately escaped cultivation and can now be found just about anywhere on the coast of New England.

Pliny the Elder said chewing the root of greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) would relieve a toothache, but modern science has found that every part of it contains a range of isoquinoline alkaloids that makes it toxic if used in large amounts. When used in the correct dosage the plant’s yellow sap can be used against warts and moles.  If used at all, all of the latex sap should be washed from the hands because it can cause irritation if rubbed into the eyes. Greater celandine is native to Europe and Asia but early settlers brought it with them to use medicinally, and it has found its way into all but 19 states in the U.S.

All the books will tell you that the flowers of greater celandine have four yellow petals but nature doesn’t know the words always and never, so you have to use a little common sense when identifying plants. Things like leaf shape, where it grows, flower size and color, and the yellow sap all have to be considered when identifying this one.

I love the beautiful colors and shapes found in the perennial bachelor’s button blossom(Centaurea). They make excellent low maintenance, almost indestructible additions to the perennial garden. I found this one growing in a friend’s garden.

Each strap shaped, yellow “petal” on a yellow hawkweed flower head (Hieracium caespitosum) is actually a single, complete flower and each forms its own seed. The buds, stem, and leaves of the plant are all very hairy and the rosette of oval, overlapping leaves at the base of the stem often turn deep purple in winter. The Ancient Greeks believed that hawks drank the sap of this plant to keep their eyesight sharp and so they named it hierax, which means hawk. It is an introduced invasive and names like “yellow devil” and “devil’s paintbrush” show what ranchers think of it.

This beautiful clematis was spotted in the garden of friends of mine. Its blossoms are large, probably 6 inches across. I think its name is “Nelly Moser.” Though we do have native clematis most clematis cultivars have a Chinese or Japanese lineage. According to Wikipedia the wild clematis species native to China made their way into Japanese gardens by the 17th century, and in the 18th century Japanese garden selections were the first exotic clematises to reach European gardens. From there came our first “exotic” clematis, an old favorite called Jackmanii, which is still grown today.

Fringe trees (Chionanthus virginicus) might look like another exotic import from China or Japan but they’re native to the east coast of the U.S. It’s a beautiful and fragrant tree that you rarely see anywhere, and I wonder why it’s so under used. It is said to be tougher than dogwood, more dependable than saucer magnolia, longer-lived than cherry, and smells better than Bradford pears. So why don’t more of us use it?

When seen alone the fringe tree’s blossoms don’t seem like much to get excited about but when they get together in lacy, drooping clusters at the ends of the branches they are quite beautiful. Fringe trees are one of the last to show new leaves in spring and they can look dead until the leaves and flowers appear.

I’m guessing that there’s a good chance that most people have never seen the pipe shaped flowers of a Dutchman’s pipe vine (Aristolochia durior) because you have to move the vine’s large leaves aside and peek into the center of the plant to see them. Dutchman’s pipe is native to some south eastern hardwood forests and has been cultivated in other parts of the country and Canada since the 1700s.

The old fashioned Dutchman’s pipe vine has very large, heart shaped leaves and has historically been used as a privacy screen or for shade on porches and arbors. You can still see it used that way today, but most don’t see these small flowers. They’re mottled yellowish-green and brownish purple with a long yellow tube, and are visited by the pipevine swallowtail butterfly and other insects. The plant contains a compound called aristolochic acid which can cause permanent kidney failure, so it should never be taken internally.

The round white flower heads of wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) hide beneath its leaves and quite often you can’t see them from above.  Compared to the ping pong ball size flower heads the leaves are huge and act like an umbrella, which might keep rain from washing away their pollen. Each sarsaparilla flower is very small but as a group they’re easy to see. Dark purple berries will replace the flowers if pollination is successful, and it’s usually very successful. This is one of the most common wildflowers I know of and I see them virtually everywhere I go, including in my own yard. The roots of the plant were once used to make root beer but the drink that was called sarsaparilla contained no part of the plant. It was made from birch oil and sassafras root.

Our locust trees are blooming. The one shown here is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains. Its hanging flower heads remind me of wisteria.

Locusts are in the same family as peas and beans and the flowers show the connection. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well. They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

Bristly locust (Robinia hispida) is more shrub than tree, but it can reach 8 feet. The beautiful pinkish purple flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I find one in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees, which makes getting photos a challenge. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs. Bristly locust is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use.

The beautiful little flowers of red sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) are hard for me to see because they’re so small, so I take photos of them so I can see them better. This plant was originally introduced from Europe in the 1800s and it has reached many states on the east and west coasts but doesn’t appear in any state along the Mississippi river except Minnesota. It must have been introduced on both coasts rather than first appearing in New England and then crossing the country like so many other invasive plants have.  I find them growing in dry, sandy waste areas. I’m not sure what the web or plant fibers surrounding this flower were all about.

I was bending down the stem of a sandspurry with one hand and taking its photo with the other so the penny is out of focus, but at least you can see how tiny this beautiful little flower really is, and that’s what’s important. I think you could fit about 8-10 of them on a penny.

Maybe, beauty, true beauty, is so overwhelming it goes straight to our hearts. Maybe it makes us feel emotions that are locked away inside. ~James Patterson

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Update on Logging in Edgewood Forest

Logging operations at the Keene Dillant Hopkins airport in Swanzey began on February 2nd. The trees being cut are very near Edgewood, one of Keene’s oldest neighborhoods, and residents there filed a court injunction to stop the cutting of trees on a 12.4 acre parcel that’s a small part of a 34 acre parcel called Edgewood Forest. In 1969 the Edgewood Civic Association transferred the 12.4 acres to the city with some restrictions, including that the land basically stay as it was. For residents who don’t want the trees cut it’s more about property values and quality of life than anything else. Though the city hasn’t logged that particular parcel they’re logging around it. I wasn’t surprised the day I saw the skidder in the above photo.

A log skidder gets its name from the way it drags logs out of a forest, or in this case several white pine trees. It can do this by winch and cable but this one had a large claw.

White pines can reach over 180 feet tall and are our tallest native tree. I’ve read that the tallest among them will be cut. They’re being cut because the Federal Aviation Administration ordered Keene to improve visibility and safety for pilots landing their planes on the airport’s main runway. Apparently pilots coming in from certain directions can’t see the runway until they’re very close to it because of the tall trees. That probably doesn’t give them much time for making critical decisions.

I paced off this log pile and it was about 210 feet long and looked to be about 12 feet high at its tallest points.  There were other piles like it.

Very near where the logs are piled in the previous photo native black locusts (Robinia pseudoacacia) grow. They bloom beautifully in June with long pendulous heads of white pea like blossoms. They are extremely fragrant and I love walking through here when they’re in bloom.

Locusts are in the same family as peas and beans and the flowers show the connection. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well .They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

I worry about the locust trees being damaged because the only beauty bush I’ve ever found in the wild grew right about where that piece of logging equipment is parked. It’s gone now; I couldn’t even find a stump.

Beauty bush (Kolkwitzia amabilis) originally came from China and is popular as an ornamental, but it has escaped cultivation in this area. I’ve only seen this one outside of a garden so I wouldn’t call it invasive. It gets quite tall-sometimes-8 feet or more-and can get as wide. The one that was cut was young and only about 4 feet tall.

I didn’t take the time to count growth rings on the logs but some were quite big.

They aren’t just cutting trees. They’re cutting everything, including the understory  shrubs. In places it looks like they’re even plowing up grasses and other plants, but since I haven’t seen it happen I can’t claim that this is what is being done. All I know is; the ground here is now bare dirt with a stump here and there.

Or if it isn’t bare it’s covered with wood chips. The plants, shrubs, and trees will all grow back but people my age won’t be here to see it.

This trail winds through the 12.4 acre parcel that the Edgewood resident are trying to protect. This isn’t an old growth forest but it is home to many plants that I don’t see often. There are many threatened species of plants, birds, mammals and amphibians living in the wetlands, which are unseen off to the left in this photo.

One of the plants I’d hate to see disturbed is fan clubmoss (Lycopodium digitatum.) It was once over collected to make Christmas wreaths and for a long time you couldn’t find it anywhere.  It’s finally making a comeback and there is a small colony that lives in these woods.  I’m hoping that it’s too close to the wetland for logging.

Striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) is another plant that grows here that I don’t see too often. Though I’ve heard from readers who say there are large colonies of it in places like Connecticut it doesn’t seem very robust here. I know of three or four small colonies that haven’t grown much in the time I’ve been watching them. I’ve read that they don’t like disturbed ground so logging probably wouldn’t help them any.

In some areas if it wasn’t for the trails winding through the forest most people would have thought that man had hardly touched it, because there was never any trash to be seen. On this day however I saw three or four of these coffee cups near the trail I was on. I’m not saying that the loggers are doing this; I’m just noting the change.

I’m not sure what this was about but it was new too. Just over that rise in the background is a wetland, probably full of ducks right about now.

The loggers seem to have been more selective in this area and have left many trees standing, but notice the lack of understory growth. Why they would spend so much time and effort cutting all the undergrowth is a mystery.

What is bothersome about the previous photo for me is how close the tree cutting is to the place where skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) grow. I can see the now open forest from where I took this photo. Skunk cabbage is a tough plant and I doubt that even a logging skidder running over them would kill them, but if the ground they grow in was all torn up that might finish them. Skidders typically make very deep ruts in soft muddy ground.

Something else that bothered me was seeing that one of two native azaleas (that I know of) that grow here had been cut. The reason it bothers me is because there was no need to cut it. It grew in a spot where there were no trees; nothing but a few understory shrubs grew there. I’m sure that simple ignorance motivated the cutting of it but knowing that isn’t a very soothing balm. From what I see ignorance, apathy, and greed are behind most of the destruction of natural habitats.

The crux of the whole argument about tree cutting in the Edgewood Forest hinges on whether or not a 1983 amendment to the original deed, which said that trees on the property “may be cut or topped in order that they will not constitute an obstruction to air navigation,” is legal and binding. Residents say it isn’t because the parties involved lacked the authority to make such an agreement, and because the Edgewood Civic Association was dissolved in 1977. Though the association’s president signed the amendment in 1983 along with the Keene city manager, residents say that he didn’t have the authority to do so and they had no say in the decision. In the end it will be up to the courts to decide and if nothing else, at least when that happens this ongoing battle will end. No matter the outcome I think most of us will be glad it’s over. I know that I will, because it has been going on for about as long as I can remember.

Note: if you’d like a little historical background on how all of this came about you might take a look at the first post I did on the subject, which you can find by clicking HERE.

Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life. ~George Monbiot

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Experimenting

I’ve been taking photos with my phone off and on since I got it but not seriously. Once in a while I’d snap a landscape because of the phone camera’s wider, almost panoramic format. Then recently I took a close photo of a mushroom and was surprised that it did so well, so I decided to put it through its paces and really see what it could do. This post is made up entirely of photos that I took with the phone, starting off with a foggy, rainy view of Half-Moon Pond in Hancock. The phone camera did about what I’d expect in such gloomy conditions; the scene looks like it was shot in black and white.

This was taken with the phone camera on another rainy day but the colors of the crowded parchment fungi (Stereum complicatum) still came through. One of my mushroom books describes them as orange fading to cream, or cinnamon buff. These are definitely orange fading to cream. Sometimes crowded parchment fungi grow so close together that their edges fuse together, even though there seems to be more than enough room on the branch for all. This fungus grows on fallen deciduous tree branches; usually oak.

The phone camera seems to handle color and high contrast quite well, as the yellow lemon drop fungi (Bisporella citrina) on a dark log show.

Lemon drops are very small but even when cropped the phone photo still holds plenty of detail.  The smaller examples in this shot are about the size of a period made by a pencil on paper. These tiny disc shaped sac fungi actually have a stalk but it’s too small to be seen by me.

Milk white toothed polypore (Irpex lacteus) is a crust fungus with “teeth” that are actually tubes or pores in the spore bearing surface which break apart with age and become tooth-like as the above photo shows. As they age these “teeth” turn brown as they have here. I wasn’t sure if the phone camera could pick them out but it did a fairly good job of it. This crust fungus is common on the undersides of fallen branches and rotting logs.

I’m not sure what happened to make the hill lit by the rising sun in this photo so red / brown. Since I didn’t look at the photo until a few days after I took it I can’t say if the colors were enhanced by the phone or not, but do know that I’ve seen the early morning sun do some very strange things here at Half-Moon Pond in Hancock.

The phone camera has a macro function so of course I had to try it, but I ended up not liking it. Either I was doing something wrong or it has trouble focusing in macro mode. When I zoom in on the photo of the bud on this black raspberry cane (Rubus occidentalis) I can see that it isn’t in sharp focus at all. It seems like the camera actually does better with close up shots when it’s in normal shooting mode.

It did okay with these black locust thorns (Robinia pseudoacacia) as far as focus goes but there is kind of a garish look to this photo, as if it was done in high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) that wasn’t set quite right.

The phone camera picked up the pucker on these oriental bittersweet berries (Celastrus orbiculatus) with no problems and also did well on the color. Red can be a tough color for some cameras, especially in bright sunlight as these examples were.

The strangest thing about witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) to me is how its leaves always seem more colorful after their fall color has left them. They turn yellow in the fall but it isn’t the blazing yellow of beech and maple. It isn’t that it’s a drab color; it’s just not very exciting. Then the leaves go from yellow to brown, but it isn’t just any old brown. It’s a beautiful, vibrant and rich orange-brown that always makes me stop for a closer look, and sometimes a photo or two. I think the phone camera did a good job with the color. Even though I’m colorblind I can still see certain colors, and I can see that this one is very different from the pink brown of an oak leaf, or the red brown of iron oxide on stone. This brown is warm and alive, and on a cold winter day it can warm your perspective.

Now that I see these phone photos I wish I had also taken the same photo with a different camera so I could compare the two. I’m fairly certain that either one of my other cameras would have seen the brightness of the quartz in this scene and darkened the shot considerably to compensate. But the cell phone didn’t and I really didn’t have to fiddle around much with this shot. The broom moss (Dicranum scoparium) looks more alive than just about any other photo of moss that I’ve taken, and it’s very beautiful against the milky white of the quartz.

The spore bearing apothecial disks of the smoky eye boulder lichens (Porpidia albocaerulescens) look blue in the right light. They have a waxy coating that reflects light much like the whitish bloom on blueberries and that makes them appear blue. The black border on each disk makes them really stand out from the body of the lichen which can be brown or the grayish white color seen here. They’re very small and I was surprised that the phone camera picked them out so well.

I wanted to see how the phone camera did on stop action shots and what could be a better subject for that than a feather blowing in the wind? The camera failed miserably but I think that’s because I didn’t have the settings adjusted the way they should have been. I really don’t use it enough to know what’s best.

This simple shot of water plants on a foggy morning is my favorite shot to come out of the phone because it speaks of serenity, solitude and bliss; all things that I find regularly in these New Hampshire woods.

What I hope this post shows is that you don’t need anything more than a phone camera to record what you see in nature, and I hope it will inspire more people to get out there and give it a go. As I’ve said here before, if you photograph what you love that love will burn brightly in your photos and it will be very apparent to others. I don’t think the brand of camera you use matters as much as how you feel when you use it. If the subject and the photo please you they will please others as well. If you’d like to see a daily blog done solely with a cellphone you should take a peek at Marie’s blog, called I Walk Alone. She’s been writing a blog for several years now and uses nothing more than a phone camera, and her photos are often stunning.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself. ~Annie Leibovitz

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Early June Flowers

How to tell a maiden pink (Dianthus deltoids) from a Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria)? Just look for the dark ring near the center of the flower. Deptford pinks don’t have the ring and are smaller flowers. Both plants were introduced from Europe and have naturalized here.  It is another flower that people mow around much like fleabane, because it is so beautiful.

Dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) is another introduced plant that came from Europe in the 1600s but it doesn’t seem very invasive; the colonies that I know of hardly seem to spread at all, and that’s possibly because they are biennials. This plant is in the mustard family, Brassicaceae but is sometimes mistaken for phlox, which has 5 petals rather than the 4 petals seen on dame’s rocket. Phlox also has opposite leaves and those on dame’s rocket are alternate. The young leaves of dame’s rocket are rich in vitamin C and oil pressed from its seed is used in perfumes.

At one time I thought fringe trees (Chionanthus virginicus) were an exotic import from China or another Asian country but as it turns out they’re native to the east coast right here in the U.S. It’s a beautiful and fragrant tree that you rarely see anywhere, and I wonder why it’s so under used. It is said to be tougher than dogwood, more dependable than saucer magnolia, longer-lived than cherry, and smells better than Bradford pears. So why don’t more of us use it?

I found a few of these very beautiful lupines growing on the banks of the Ashuelot but not as many as in years past, so I wonder if our harsh winter finished some of them off. These lupines are thought to be a cross between our native western lupine (Lupinus polyphyllos) and various European varieties, so they are not native to New Hampshire. Our native lupine is the sundial lupine (Lupinus perennis,) which is host to the endangered Karner blue butterfly. Next week our annual lupine festival kicks off in the northern part of the state and fields full of them will attract thousands of people to the Sugar Hill area.

 

This tiny blue toadflax blossom (Nuttallanthus canadensis) had an even tinier tear in its petal. Last year I found a field of these plants along a roadside and this year they are all gone, and that’s probably because are biennials which flower and dies in their second year. Toadflax flowers have an upper lip that is divided into 2 rounded lobes, and a lower lip which is divided into 3 lobes that are rounded and spreading. Toadflax likes sandy soil and waste areas to grow in. It doesn’t last long but the cheery blue flowers are always a welcome sight.

Raspberries are blooming and it looks like it’s going to be a good year for them, so the bears won’t be going hungry. Thanks to plant breeders raspberries come in purple and yellow as well as red and black, but I don’t think the bears really care what color they are.

I think of swamp dewberry (Rubus hispidus) as a trailing raspberry because its fruit looks like a black raspberry and its stems are every bit as prickly, but it also looks a lot like a strawberry when it’s in bloom because of its strawberry like leaves. Its fruit is said to be sour and is said to be the reason it isn’t cultivated. Native Americans had many medicinal uses for this plant, including treating coughs, fever and consumption. Swamp dewberry, as its name implies, is a good indicator of a wetland or moist soil that doesn’t dry out.

I spotted this gorgeous clematis growing in a friend’s garden one recent evening.

Our locust trees are blooming. The one shown here is a black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) loaded with white, very fragrant blooms. One way to identify the tree is by the pair of short spines at the base of each leaf. Like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains.

Locusts are in the same family as peas and beans and the flowers show the connection. Black locusts were prized by colonial Americans for their tough, rot resistant wood. In 1610 colonists found black locust trees planted beside Native American dwellings and thought the Natives were using the tree as an ornamental, so they decided to use it that way as well .They also used the wood for ship building, forts and fence posts while the Natives used it to make bows and blow darts. It was once said to be the toughest wood in all the world and was one of the first North American trees exported to Europe.

Bristly locust (Robinia hispida) is more shrub than tree, but it can reach 8 feet. The beautiful pinkish purple flowers are very fragrant and bees really love them. Every time I find one in bloom it is absolutely covered with bees, which makes getting photos a challenge. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems. Even its seedpods are covered by hairs. Bristly locust is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to all but 7 of the lower 48 states, with a lot of help from nurseries selling it for ornamental use.

We humans have used common yarrow (Achillea millefolium) in various ways for thousands of years. It is mentioned in the Chinese I Ching, which is said to pre date recorded history, and yarrow has also been found in an excavation of a Neanderthal grave site. Yarrow was known as the soldier’s woundwort and herbe militaris for centuries, and was used to stop the flow of blood from a soldier’s wounds. Closer to home, Native Americans used it for everything from snake bites to deodorant. Yarrow was a valuable healing herb, one of the nine “holy herbs,” and was traded throughout the world since before recorded time, and that is believed to be the reason for the plant being found in nearly every country on earth today.

The club shaped flower heads of white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) have appeared but they have many fewer blossoms than they had last year. That of course means fewer of the white berries that have a single black dot and are called doll’s eyes. Fewer of those might not be a bad thing because I find these plants growing at a local park where many children play and the berries are very toxic. Luckily they are also very bitter so the chances that anyone would eat one are fairly slim.

 

Bowman’s root (Gillenia trifoliata) is a native wildflower but only grows in two New England Sates as far as I can tell; Massachusetts and Rhode Island, which seems odd but that explains why I’ve never seen one in the wild. This photo shows a fine, 2 foot tall specimen that grows in a local park. Other names are Indian physic or American ipecac because Native Americans would dry the root and use it as an emetic and laxative. It would make a beautiful addition to a shaded perennial garden.

An unusual feature of bowman’s root is how the five petals on the white, star shaped flowers are never symmetrical. Another common name for this plant is fawn’s breath and it is appropriate, because these flowers dance and sway in the gentlest hint of a breeze. From a distance it looks like a swarm of beautiful white butterflies are paying it a visit.

When I think of June I think of irises and here’s a Siberian Iris (Iris sibirica.) I had to move fast this year to get a shot of one of these beauties. It was so hot when they bloomed they said “hey wait a minute; this isn’t Siberia,” and shriveled up into crinkly blue blobs after 2 days. Siberian iris has been known at least since before the 1500s. It was first collected by monks in Siberia in the Middle Ages and grown in monasteries, and later was distributed around Europe. It has been cultivated in England since 1596, so it’s an old, old favorite. This one was given to me by a friend many years ago and I’ve never done a thing to it except hack it to pieces with a hatchet when it gets too big. It’s just about the toughest plant I’ve ever met.

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day. ~Samuel Beckett

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Things I’ve Seen

I tugged on what I thought was a black locust twig (Robinia pseudoacacia) stuck in the snow but I quickly found out it that was still attached to the stump by dragging the side of my hand over its thorns. Yes, those thorns are every bit as sharp as they look. To be botanically accurate, they are actually stipules. A stipule is a growth that appears on either side of a leaf stalk (petiole.) In the case of the black locust these stipules have been modified into sharp spines, so that makes them stipular spines.

If the stipular spines don’t convince you that you’re looking at a black locust, the flat seed pods will. These dark brown pods stay attached to the tree and their color lightens during the winter. Finally as spring nears they begin to fall and, though they are light and can be blown long distances, many can be found under the tree on top of the snow, as the photo shows. The tiny brown seeds look like miniature beans. Their coating is very tough and black locust seeds can remain viable for many years.

Another locust that I see regularly is the honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), which in my opinion bears the king of all thorns. These thorns are big and as hard as iron. They can reach 6 inches in length and poke right out of the bark of the tree along its branches and sometimes even the main trunk. They are tough enough to puncture shoe soles and I always watch my step when I walk under one of these trees because thorns like these can cause a nasty wound. Confederate soldiers once used them to pin their uniforms together and survivalists still use them as fish hooks, spear heads, nails, sewing needles and even small game traps.

I wondered what could have created these perfectly round holes on this dead white pine log (Pinus strobus). They weren’t in the usual neat rows that a sap sucker makes and anyway they were much larger than sapsucker holes. Each hole was about 3/8 inch in diameter and after some Googling I found that an invasive horntail called the Sirex woodwasp (Sirex noctilio) likes pine trees and makes exactly these kinds of holes. But it hasn’t been found in New Hampshire yet, so it was back to more Googling. The Asian long horned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) is another invasive species that makes holes just like this but it only attacks hardwoods, so again it was back to Google.  Finally I found that a native beetle called the white spotted pine sawyer (Monochamus scutellatus) makes holes in weak and damaged white pines but I couldn’t find a good example of its hole, so I really don’t have an answer.

Being an engineer by trade these days I’m fascinated by any creature that could make such a perfectly round hole. Maybe I should have poked around in there. The photo makes it look like something might have been at home. If you know what makes holes like this I’d love to hear from you.

 

It might be spring but the “winter” mushrooms are still going strong. One of my favorites is the milk white toothed polypore (Irpex lacteus,) which in my experience is hardly ever really milk white. Its teeth lean more towards tan or yellowish brown. The teeth start life as tubes or pores in the spore bearing surface, which breaks apart with age to become tooth like as the above photo shows. This crust fungus is common on fallen branches and rotting logs.

I found this native northern maleberrry (Lyonia ligustrina) shrub growing between two highbush blueberry shrubs on the river bank. Maleberry is sometimes called male blueberry because the flowers look much like blueberry flowers, but the fruit of the two bushes is very different. The fruit on this bush is a hard, woody, 5 part seed pod. Maleberry fruit is said to make a good insect repellant, but you have to get them before they become hard and woody. Native Americans used its straight young stems to make bows, so its wood must be quite strong, flexible, and elastic. It is said that the wood also makes good fence posts but I’ve never seen a maleberrry branch that was big enough in diameter to be used for one.

 

Maleberrry is one of the easiest of all our native shrubs to identify in winter because its seed pods persist until spring. I just look for the star. There’s a very good chance when you find a maleberrry that there will be blueberries growing nearby.

 

The first insect I’ve seen since last fall was a winter stonefly. This one was living up to its name by resting on top of a granite post near the Ashuelot River. Its nymphs live beneath rocks and gravel on the bottom of streams and rivers. When the adults emerge they can be found along river and pond banks all winter long, so they are not a good indicator of spring. The adults feed on blue-green algae and the nymphs on aquatic plants. Hungry trout love to eat the nymphs and fishermen use them as live bait.

Willows have just started showing their furry gray catkins and if we hadn’t plunged back into another cold snap it wouldn’t have been too long before we saw their flowers. The cold we’re seeing now will hold them back for a while but it won’t hurt them any. Willows are a spring favorite that many of us enjoy seeing but they’re famous for clogging any type of piping with their moisture seeking roots, so they should never be planted close to a house. They’re great for planting along stream and pond banks because their extensive root systems help hold the soil in place.

The spring blooming witch hazels in a local park that I visit have been slow to unfurl their strap shaped flower petals, but if you look closely you can see that the bud scales are opening enough to show the 4 bright yellow petals tucked up into the buds. Spring witch hazels often make the mistake of blooming too early and their flower petals turn brown because of damage from the cold, but not this year. Each bud in this photo is about as big as a small pea.

Speckled alder catkins are just showing signs of producing pollen, as the greenish smudges on the larger male catkins in this photo shows. Soon the bud scales will pull back and the flowers will open. Spring is happening but right now you have to look around a bit to see it.

 

The one plant that tells me that spring is really here is skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus). It doesn’t waste time worrying that it might be too cold; it just raises its internal temperature and melts its way through the ice and snow and shouts that spring is finally here. I don’t know if the black bears are coming out of hibernation yet but if they are they’ll be happy to see skunk cabbages. It’s often the only food available to them in early spring.

You can just see the rounded greenish yellow flower head through the opening in the red and yellow mottled spathe on this one. This plant is called skunk cabbage for a good reason, and it is thought that its odor attracts pollinators like flies, stoneflies and bees. Since skunk cabbage can raise its internal temperature by as much as 35º F above the surrounding air temperature, it is also thought that warmth might be another reason that insects visit them.

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men.  ~Chinese Proverb

Thanks for stopping in and happy spring!

Note: Today marks the start of the fifth year of this blog. I’ll take this opportunity to say that I appreciate your continued interest and I thank you very much for taking the time to read about what I think is important, and for leaving such thoughtful and often very helpful comments.

Allen

 

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Local Scenery

When I’m out looking for plants I’ve never seen I often take photos of the places I visit, and most of those never appear here. I don’t consider myself a very good landscape photographer, but for a change of pace I thought I’d show some of the local scenery that I see in my travels. This photo is of Mount Monadnock from Perkins Pond in Troy, New Hampshire. I went there thinking I could get a good shot of a yellow water lily and found that there were so many of them that you couldn’t hardly see the water surface in places.

 

When you live in a 4.8 million acre forest big, open spaces are rare, so I always take a few shots of those that I find. I took this photo more for the clouds than anything else. They were so low that it felt as if I might touch them if I jumped high enough.

 

This is one of many woodland trails I visit. On most days I’m more likely to be found in a place like this than anywhere else. This particular piece of forest has soil that has been undisturbed for a very long time and plants like striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculate) and downy rattlesnake plantain orchid (Goodyera pubescens) grow here.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for any length of time knows that I also spend time on the banks of the Ashuelot River, where I find a lot of different wildflowers. Last winter this entire area was completely covered by a thick sheet of ice and it amazes me how the plants that live here can survive it.

This small pond is another spot that I visit often. It’s in a place called Robin Hood Park in Keene, which I keep telling myself I’m going to do a post about but never do. There is a path that goes around the entire pond and the huge old white pine and eastern hemlock trees keep it very shaded and moist, so many different mushrooms and slime molds grow here. When the warm muggies arrive in summer this is the first place I go to look for all of the things that grow in low light.

 

I don’t usually take many photos of man-made objects but this old hunting shack had a for sale sign so I thought I’d stop and take a look. It needs a little work but it can probably be had for a song.

This old wheel had been leaning against the wall of the shack for a while. It was a white rubber tire on a steel rim with wooden spokes. I’ve never seen one like it.

One day I came upon these stone steps out in the middle of nowhere and walked up them, thinking I’d find an old cellar hole at the top, but there was nothing there. They were just stairs that led to nothing, not even a path.

This photo is of reflections, because the water was as still as a sheet of glass.

 

One of the things I love about New Hampshire in the summertime is how quickly the road sides can become beautiful meadows. Sometimes you can drive along a road and not see any flowers and then just a day or two later they’re everywhere. It’s hard to have a pessimistic view of life while surrounded by beauty like this.

 

Looking up through the branches of a black locust tree. I’ve always liked the dappled sunlight that is found under locust trees.

Here’s a shot of the kayak that I bought at a moving sale last fall. This shot was taken just before I took it out on our maiden voyage recently. It was and is a lot of fun, but I’ve got to get used to it. I bought it because there is a pond I know of where rose pogonia orchids, pitcher plants and sundews grow but the only way to see them is in a boat. That will happen next year, after I have my sea legs under me. Right now being alone in a kayak out on a pond that is miles from nowhere doesn’t seem like such a good idea.

The kayak took me to this island in another local pond. Most of the bushes growing on its shores are high bush blueberries, but they weren’t ripe yet. This pond has people living all around it so if anyone has a boating accident help is within earshot.

 

This is a local swamp I visit sometimes to watch the sun set. Sunsets can be really spectacular here but on this evening it was too cloudy.

I thought I saw the head of a lion come roaring out of the leading edge of these clouds one evening.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the blue sky, is by no means waste of time. ~John Lubbock

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