Things I’ve Seen

I’m not seeing many now, possibly because the nights are getting cooler, but I was seeing at least one monarch butterfly each day for quite a while. That might not seem like many but I haven’t seen any over the last couple of years so seeing them every day was a very noticeable and welcome change.

For the newcomers to this blog; these “things I’ve seen posts” contain photos of things I’ve seen which, for one reason or another, didn’t fit into other posts. They are usually recent photos but sometimes they might have been taken a few weeks ago, like the butterflies in this post. In any event they, like any other post seen here, are simply a record of what nature has been up to in this part of the world.

After a rest the knapweeds started blooming again and clouded sulfur butterflies (I think) were all over them. I’ve seen a lot of them this year. They always seem to come later in summer and into fall and I still see them on warm days.

This clouded sulfur had a white friend that I haven’t been able to identify. I think this is only the second time I’ve had 2 butterflies pose for the same photo.

I saw lots of painted ladies on zinnias this year; enough so I think I might plant some next year. I like the beautiful stained glass look of the undersides of its wings.

The upper surface of a painted lady’s wings look very different. This one was kind enough to land just in front of me in the gravel of a trail that I was following.

A great blue heron stood motionless on a rock in a pond, presumably stunned by the beauty that surrounded it. It was one of those that likes to pretend it’s a statue, so I didn’t wait around for what would probably be the very slow unfolding of the next part of the story.

Three painted turtles all wanted the same spot at the top of a log in the river. They seem to like this log, because every time I walk by it there are turtles on it.

Three ducks dozed and didn’t seem to care who was where on their log in the river.

Ducks and turtles weren’t the only things on logs. Scaly pholiota mushrooms (Pholiota squarrosa) covered a large part of this one. This mushroom is common and looks like the edible honey mushroom at times, but it is not edible and is considered poisonous. They are said to smell like lemon, garlic, radish, onion or skunk, but I keep forgetting to smell them. They are said to taste like radishes by those unfortunate few who have tasted them.

There are so many coral mushrooms that look alike they can be hard to identify, but I think this one might have been yellow tipped coral (Ramaria formosa.) Though you can’t see them in this photo its stems are quite thick and stout and always remind me of broccoli. Some of these corals get quite big and they often form colonies. This one was about as big as a cantaloupe and grew in a colony of about 8-10 examples, growing in a large circle.

Comb tooth fungus (Hericium ramosum) grows on well-rotted logs of deciduous trees like maple, beech, birch and oak. It is on the large side; this example was about as big as a baseball, and its pretty toothed branches spill downward like a fungal waterfall. It is said to be the most common and widespread species of Hericium in North America, but I think this example is probably only the third one I’ve seen in over 50 years of looking at mushrooms.

Something I see quite a lot of in late summer is the bolete called Russell’s bolete (Boletellus russellii.) Though the top of the cap isn’t seen in this shot it was scaly and cracked, and that helps tell it from look alikes like the shaggy stalked bolete (Boletellus betula) and Frost’s bolete (Boletus frostii.) All three have webbed stalks like that seen above, but their caps are very different.

Sometimes you can be seeing a fungus and not even realize it. Or in this case, the results of a fungus. The fungus called Taphrina alni attacks female cone-like alder (Alnus incana) catkins (Strobiles) and chemically deforms part of the ovarian tissues, causing long tongue like galls known as languets to form. These galls will persist until the strobiles fall from the plant; even heavy rain and strong winds won’t remove them. Though I haven’t been able to find information on its reproduction I’m guessing that the fungal spores are produces on these long growths so the wind can easily take them to other plants.

Elderberries (Sambucus canadensis) are having a great year. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many berries (drupes) as we have this year. The berries are edible but other parts of the plant contain calcium oxalate and are toxic. Native Americans dried them for winter use and soaked the berry stems in water to make a black dye that they used on their baskets.

Native cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) are also having a good year. The Pilgrims named this fruit “crane berry” because they thought the flowers looked like Sandhill cranes. Native Americans used the berries as both food and medicine, and even made a dye from them. They taught the early settlers how to use the berries and I’m guessing that they probably saved more than a few lives doing so. Cranberries are said to be one of only three fruits native to North America; the other two being blueberries and Concord grapes, but I say what about the elderberries we just saw and what about crab apples? There are also many others, so I think whoever said that must not have thought it through.

In my own experience I find it best to leave plants with white berries alone because they are usually poisonous, and no native plant illustrates this better than poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans.) Though many birds can eat its berries without suffering, when most humans so much as brush against the plant they can itch for weeks afterward, and those who are particularly sensitive could end up in the hospital. I had a friend who had to be hospitalized when his eyes became swollen shut because of it. Eating any part of the plant or even breathing the smoke when it is burned can be very dangerous.

Native bluestem grass (Schizachyrium scoparium) catches the light and glows in luminous ribbons along the roadsides. This is a common grass that grows in every U.S. state except Nevada and Washington, but is so uncommonly beautiful that it is grown in gardens. After a frost it takes on a reddish purple hue, making it even more beautiful.

It is the way its seed heads reflect the light that makes little bluestem grass glow like it does.

I think the above photo is of the yellow fuzz cone slime mold (Hemitrichia clavata.) The most unusual thing about this slime mold is how it appears when the weather turns colder in the fall. Most other slime molds I see grow during warm, wet, humid summers but I’ve seen this one even in winter. Though it looks like it was growing on grass I think there must have been an unseen root or stump just under the soil surface, because this one likes rotten wood. It starts life as tiny yellow to orange spheres (sporangia) that finally open into little cups full of yellowish hair like threads on which the spores are produced.

I was looking at lichens one day when I came upon this grasshopper. The lichens were on a fence rail and so was the grasshopper, laying eggs in a crack in the rail. This is the second time I’ve seen a grasshopper laying eggs in a crack in wood so I had to look it up and see what it was all about. It turns out that only long horned grasshoppers lay eggs in wood. Short horned grasshoppers dig a hole and lay them in soil. They lay between 15 and 150 eggs, each one no bigger than a grain of rice. The nymphs will hatch in spring and live for less than a year.

The gypsy moth egg cases I’ve seen have been smooth and hard, but this example was soft and fuzzy so I had to look online at gypsy moth egg case examples. From what I’ve seen online this looks like one. European gypsy moths were first brought to the U.S. in 1869 from Europe to start a silkworm business but they escaped and have been in the wild ever since. In the 1970s and 80s gypsy moth outbreaks caused many millions of dollars of damage across the northeast by defoliating and killing huge swaths of forest. I remember seeing, in just about every yard, black stripes of tar painted around tree trunks or silvery strips of aluminum foil wrapped around trunks. The theory was that when the caterpillars crawled up the trunk of a tree to feed they would either get stuck in the tar or slip on the aluminum foil and fall back to the ground. Today, decades later, you can still see the black stripes of tar around some trees. Another gypsy moth population explosion happened in Massachusetts last year and that’s why foresters say that gypsy moth egg cases should be destroyed whenever they’re found. I didn’t destroy this one because at the time I wasn’t positive that it was a gypsy moth egg case. If you look closely at the top of it you can see the tiny spherical, silvery eggs. I think a bird had been at it.

Folklore says that the wider the orangey brown band on a wooly bear caterpillar is, the milder the winter will be. If we’re to believe it then this winter will be very mild indeed, because this wooly bear has more brown on it than I’ve ever seen. In any event this caterpillar won’t care, because it produces its own antifreeze and can freeze solid in winter. Once the temperatures rise into the 40s F in spring it thaws out and begins feeding on dandelion and other early spring greens. Eventually it will spin a cocoon and emerge as a beautiful tiger moth. From that point on it has only two weeks to live.

This bumblebee hugged a goldenrod flower head tightly one chilly afternoon. I thought it had died there but as I watched it moved its front leg very slowly. Bumblebees sleep and even die on flowers and they are often seen at this time of year doing just what this one was doing. I suppose if they have to die in winter like they do, a flower is the perfect place to do so. Only queen bumblebees hibernate through winter; the rest of the colony dies. In spring the queen will make a new nest and actually sit on the eggs she lays to keep them warm, just like birds do.

I’ll end this post the way I started it, with a monarch butterfly. I do hope they’re making a comeback but there is still plenty we can do to help make that happen. Planting zinnias might be a good place to start. At least, even if the monarchs didn’t come, we’d still have some beautiful flowers to admire all summer.

I meant to do my work today, but a brown bird sang in the apple tree, and a butterfly flitted across the field, and all the leaves were calling. ~Richard le Gallienn

Thanks for coming by.

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Things I’ve Seen

It’s time again for many ferns to start their reproductive cycles and in this photo the tiny spore cases (sorus) of polypody fern (Polypodium virginianum) shine like beacons.  Henry David Thoreau liked polypody ferns and said that “Fresh and cheerful communities of the polypody form a lustrous mantle over rocky surfaces in the early spring.” Of course they do exactly that and that’s how they come by the name rock cap fern. They’re an evergreen fern that loves to grow on boulders.

The tiny sori are made up of clusters of sporangia and are naked, meaning they lack the protective cap (indusium) that is found on many ferns. Each will turn a reddish brown color when ripe and ready to release its spores. The spores are as fine as dust and are borne on the wind. Sorus (plural of sori) is from the Greek word sōrós, and means stack, pile, or heap, and each sori is indeed a round pile of sporangia. As they begin to release spores the sorus are very pretty and look like tiny baskets of flowers. As of this photo it hadn’t happened yet.

We’re still having thunderstorms roll through and after each one passes I find a few more fungi, but nothing like the numbers I should be seeing. I thought this one might be the American Caesar’s mushroom (Amanita jacksonii) but it should be redder in color and the cap should have lined margins. Colors can vary but I wouldn’t think that the lined cap margin would, so in the end I don’t really know what it is. If you do I’d love to hear from you.

I put this tiny cluster of orange jelly baby fungi (Leotia lubrica) in an acorn cap so you could see how small they are. Once you train your eyes to see small things before long you’ll be able to see them everywhere and a whole new chapter in the book of nature will open for you. I have to retrain my eyes to see small things again each spring and I do that by visiting places where I know small flowers like spring beauty, red maple, and wild ginger grow. Your eyes adjust quite easily, I’ve found.  Despite their name jelly babies are sac fungi rather than jelly fungi.

These spiny puffballs (Lycoperdon echinatum) were young when I found them and I know that because they were pure white and still had their spines. As they age the spines will fall off, leaving a brownish powdery coating on the surface. Eventually a small hole will appear at the top of the puffball and brownish purple spores will puff out through it whenever it is touched or stepped on.

There are young people out there who seem to think that inhaling certain puffball spores will get them high, but it is never a good thing to do. People who inhale the spores often end up in the hospital due to developing a respiratory disease called Lycoperdonosis. In one severe instance a teenager spent 18 days in a coma, had portions of his lung removed, and suffered severe liver damage.

These oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) were pure white and seemed to shine against the dark wood of the log. They’re usually found on logs in large clusters. These examples were young and no bigger than a quarter.  Oyster mushrooms have off center stems that usually grow out of the side of the log and are hidden by the cap. They cause a white rot in living trees.

Mushrooms are often eaten by tiny worms called nematodes that live on plant and fungal tissue, but not oyster mushrooms. Scientists discovered in 1986 that oyster mushrooms “exude extracellular toxins that stun {nematode] worms, whereupon the mycelium invades its body through its orifices.” What this means is that oyster mushrooms are actually carnivorous. They also consume bacteria (Pseudomonas and Agrobacterium) in order to get nitrogen and protein.

I’m seeing a lot more great blue herons this year than I did last year. The one in the above photo was happy to stand like a statue, up to his knees in the Ashuelot river. I hoped it would do something interesting but in the end its patience outlasted mine.

I’m sure the heron would have loved to have met this spring peeper, but luckily the little frog was off in the forest near a pond.  The dark colored X shaped marking on its back and the dark bar on its head from eyes to eye make this frog easy to identify. Spring peepers are tiny things that are usually less than an inch and a half long and experts at camouflage, so I don’t see them often. I love them because they are the heralds of spring; few things are more pleasing to these ears than hearing their song on the first warm March evening.

I’m happy to be seeing quite a lot of bees this year. This bumblebee foraged on a Joe Pye weed flower head one day.

I was kneeling, trying to get that perfect shot of a flower when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. I watched for a while, fascinated as an orb weaver spider wove its web, before remembering that I had a camera.  It was quite big as spiders go and easily seen but the camera had trouble with the details, so I had to move in closer. When I did it retreated to its home under a fern frond, so this was the only useable shot I got. It had very furry legs and a bright red body.

There is an insect called the oak leaf skeletonizer but it eats only the soft tissue on the upper side of an oak leaf, leaving it translucent The damage to the oak leaf in the above photo was most likely caused by a caterpillar. It ate the soft tissue on both sides of the leaf, leaving only the veins behind. I’m guessing that the beautiful white hickory tussock moth caterpillar was the culprit. It feeds on nut trees, including oaks.

Speaking of oaks, they’re shedding their leaves regularly now due to the drought. They and other trees like apples and hickory nuts are shedding their fruit as well, trying to conserve energy. Wild blueberries, raspberries and blackberries have also been in distress and many are small and deformed. Some animals might have a hard time of it, but it’s too early to tell.

The leaves of tall meadow rue (Thalictrum pubescens) often change color early on. These became a beautiful purple; as beautiful as any flower. In spring before it blossoms meadow rue is often mistaken for columbine because its leaves look similar. It is also called king of the meadow due to its great height. I’ve seen plants reach more than 8 feet tall in optimal conditions.

In some places bracken ferns (Pteridium aquilinum) have already dried out and gone to orange. Bracken is one of the oldest ferns; fossils date it to over 55 million years old. The plant releases chemicals which inhibit the growth of other plants and that is why large colonies of nothing but bracken fern are found. Some Native American tribes cooked and peeled the roots of bracken fern to use as food but modern science has found that all parts of the plant contain carcinogens.

Invasive Tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) berries can be red or orange but I seldom see the orange ones and I wonder if that might be because they ripen from green to orange to red. This shrub is native to Siberia and is very tough; our drought doesn’t seem to have affected any of the plants I’ve seen. Birds love its berries and that’s why it has been so successful. In this area there are very few places where it doesn’t grow.  Tatarian honeysuckle was introduced as an ornamental shrub in the 1750s. It has deep pink, very fragrant flowers in spring. Though it is invasive it has been here so long that it’s hard to imagine life without it.

Hobblebush berries (drupes) turn dark purple when they’re fully ripe but I like seeing them when they’re in the red stage as they are here. Anyhow, I rarely see them in the purple, ripe stage because birds and animals eat them up so fast. Among the birds cardinals, turkeys, cedar waxwings and even pileated woodpeckers are known to eat the fruit. Bears, foxes, skunks and squirrels are among the animals that eat them, so there is a lot of competition. It’s no wonder I rarely see them ripe. The fruit is edible and is said to taste like clove spiced raisins or dates but the seeds are large and the flesh thin. They can be eaten raw or cooked and are said to taste better after a frost. Native Americans had several medicinal uses for hobblebush, from curing headaches to chest and breathing problems, and they also ate the berries.

Why pay attention to the little things? If the beauty of this smoky eye boulder lichen (Porpidia albocaerulescens) doesn’t answer that question, then nothing ever will.

There’s a whole world out there, right outside your window. You’d be a fool to miss it. ~Charlotte Eriksson

Thanks for coming by.

 

 

 

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Looking Back

I’ve never done one but since year in review posts seem to be becoming more popular, I thought I’d give it a try. The hardest part seems to be choosing which photo to show for each month. I struggled with trying to decide at times, so some months have two. I’ll start with a reader favorite from last January; this shot of vole tracks on the snow seemed to draw a lot of comments.

Another reader favorite from last January and a favorite of mine as well was this shot of red elderberry buds (Sambucus racemosa.) I remember wondering why the bud scales were opening so early in the year since they’re there to protect the bud. We must have had a warm spell, but I remember it being very cold.

There was no warmth in February, as this photo of the Ashuelot River in Swanzey shows. We had below zero F cold for long periods throughout the month and the river froze from bank to bank. That’s very rare in this spot and when it happens you know it has been cold.

Despite of the cold of February in March the skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) appeared right on schedule, signaling the start of the growing season.  Through a process called thermogenesis in which plants create their own heat, skunk cabbage can raise the temperature above the surrounding air temperature. This means it can melt its way through ice and snow, which is exactly what it had done before I took this photo. Skunk cabbage is in the arum family.

In April the tiny female flowers of our native hazelnuts (Corylus americana) appear and I’m always pleased to see them. I measured the buds with calipers once and found that they were about the same diameter as a strand of spaghetti, so you really have to look closely to find the flowers.

In May the beautiful downy angel wing-like leaves of American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) begin to appear. Seeing them just after they’ve opened is one of the great delights of a walk in the forest in spring, in my opinion.  Beech is the tree that taught me how leaves open in the spring. I won’t bother explaining it here but it’s a fascinating process.

Since mayflowers, also known as trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens,) were one of my grandmother’s favorites I had to include them here. They are also one of the most searched for flowers on this blog. I’m anxious to smell their heavenly scent again already, and it’s only January.

In June I stopped to take a photo of the red sandspurry (Spergularia rubra) that I’d been ignoring for so long. These are easily among the smallest flowers I’ve ever tried to photograph, but also among the most beautiful. Though they’re considered an invasive weed from Europe I don’t see how something so tiny can be considered a pest. They are small enough so about all I can see is their color when I view them in person, so I was surprised by their delicate beauty when I saw them in a photo. I’ll be watching for them again this year.

July is when our roadside meadows really start to attract attention. There are beautiful scenes like this one virtually everywhere you look. For me these scenes are always bitter sweet because though they are beautiful and bring me great joy, they also mark the quick passing of summer.

In August I saw this little yellow legged tail wagger at a local pond. I didn’t know its name but luckily readers did. It’s a cute little juvenile spotted sandpiper, which is not something I expect to see on the shore of a pond in New Hampshire.  It must have been used to seeing people because it went about searching the shore and let me take as many photos as I wished.

August was also when my daughter pointed me to this violet coral fungus (Clavaria zollingeri,) easily the most beautiful coral fungus that I’ve ever seen. It grew in a part of the woods with difficult lighting and I had to try many times to get a photo that I felt accurately reproduced its color. I plan to go back in August of this year and see if it will grow in the same spot again. Stumbling across rare beauty like this is what gets my motor running and that’s why I’m out there every day. You can lose yourself in something so beautiful and I highly recommend doing so as often as possible.

According to reader comments this aging purple cort mushroom (Cortinarius iodeoides) was the hit of the September 12th post. This mushroom starts life shiny and purple and then develops white and yellow streaks as it ages. Its shine when young comes from a very bitter slime that covers it. Only slugs don’t mind the bitterness apparently, because squirrels and chipmunks never seem to touch it.

In October all that was left blooming were a few of our various native asters and goldenrods. The temperature was getting cool enough to slow down the bumblebees, sometimes to the point of their not moving at all. It’s hard to imagine anything more perfect in nature than a bee sleeping in a flower.

This was my favorite shot in October, mostly because the fallen leaves remind me of shuffling through them as a schoolboy. And I’ll never forget that smell.  If only I could describe it.

But leaves are always more beautiful on the tree, as this November photo of Willard Pond in Antrim shows. The oaks and beeches were more colorful than I’ve ever seen them and I could only stand in awe after I entered the forest. It was total immersion in one of the most beautiful forests I’ve ever been in.

Then strangely, on Friday November 6th, all the leaves fell from nearly every oak in one great rush. People said they had never seen anything like it. I got word from Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, saying the same thing happened in those states on the exact same day. It will be interesting to see what the oaks do this year. I can’t find a single word about the strange phenomenon on the news or in any publication, or online, so I can’t tell you what science has to say about it. The post I did on Willard Pond generated more comments than any other ever has on this blog.

It was also in November when Yoda the porcupine slowly waddled his way across a Walpole meadow and sat at my feet. I wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted but I wondered if maybe he just wished to have his photo taken. After all, I could tell that he had just seen his stylist by his perfectly groomed hair. I was happy to oblige and this is one of the photos taken that day. He was just too cute to not include here.

This one I’m sure most of you remember since it just appeared in the December 9th post. That was when I decided to do an entire post with nothing but photos that I had taken with my phone, and this was the winner, according to you. It’s a simple snapshot of some water plants that I saw in Half Moon Pond in Hancock one foggy morning, and it showed me that you don’t need to go out and spend thousands of dollars on camera equipment to be a nature photographer. Or a nature blogger.

So you don’t think that I just click the shutter and get a perfect photo each time, I’ve included this little gem. The oddest thing about it is, I don’t know how or where it was taken. It just appeared on the camera’s memory card so I must have clicked the shutter without realizing it. It illustrates why for every photo that appears on this blog there are many, many more that don’t.

Perhaps you need to look back before you can move ahead. ~Alan Brennert

Thanks for stopping in. As always, I hope readers will be able to get out and experience some of the beauty and serenity that nature has to offer in the New Year.

 

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Mid October Flowers

The weather people said we were in for a growing season ending killing freeze last Saturday night so I went looking for late bloomers before it happened. I’ve seen dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) blooming in January so I wasn’t real surprised to see one in October, but over the last two years these flowers have been very scarce. I saw 5 or 6 on this day though so I wonder if the very hot temperatures we’ve had in summer lately have something to do with their scarcity, as some of you suggested the last time I mentioned not seeing any.

The flowers of false dandelion (Hypochaeris radicata) look much the same as those of true dandelions in a photo, but in the field they are much smaller and stand on 6-8 inch long, wiry stems.  Its leaves look like smaller and narrower versions of dandelion leaves. The plant is also called cat’s ear, possibly because of the bracts along its stem that look like tiny cat’s ears.

Spotted knapweed (Centaurea maculosa) is terribly invasive and hated by pasture owners but its flowers are beautiful. This plant is native to Europe and Asia and was accidentally imported in a hay seed shipment in the late 1800s. One reason it is so strongly disliked is because it releases a toxin that can hinder and prevent the growth of neighboring species. It grows in all but 5 states. Though mowed down earlier by highway crews these plants bounced right back and are again covered with flowers.

It must have gotten too cold for this bumblebee because it died as it lived, hugging a flower.

Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota) sometimes has a second blooming period like yarrow does. Though the flowers are smaller and not as tall they can almost fool you into thinking that it’s summer again.  When freshly cut Queen Anne’s lace flowers will change color depending on the color of the water in which they are placed, so if you put a bouquet into purple water you’ll have purple Queen Anne’s lace.

The pee gee hydrangea (Hydrangea paniculata) is a “panicled” hydrangea, meanings its flower heads are cone shaped rather than round. These plants grow into large shrubs sometimes reaching 10-20 feet tall and nearly as wide. Though originally introduced from Japan in 1862 this plant is thought to be native by many and is a much loved, old fashioned favorite. What I like most about this hydrangea is how the flower heads turn a soft pink in the fall. When they’re cut and dried they’ll hold their color for quite a long time.

Goldenrods (Solidago) still bloom but now the flower heads are smaller and they’re spottily seen here and there rather than everywhere like they were a month ago. According to English apothecary and botanist John Gerard in 1633 goldenrod was “strange and rare” in England and “the dry herbe which came from beyond the sea sold in Buckler’s Bury in London for halfe a crowne for an hundred weight.” It was highly regarded of as a cure for bleeding ulcers and for healing bleeding wounds. The plant must also have been very valuable to early colonials but seeds must have found their way to England because it was eventually found growing wild there and the bottom fell out of the imported goldenrod business.

Slender fragrant goldenrod (Solidago tenuifolia) is one of the easiest to identify because of its scent, which is said to resemble anise and sassafras. Since I’ve never smelled anise and sassafras I can’t confirm this, but its fragrance is pleasant so I always bend to give it a sniff when I see it. This plant closely resembles lance leaved goldenrod (Solidago graminifolia) but its leaves are narrower and have a single vein in each leaf. Lance leaved goldenrod leaves have 3-5 veins.

Red clover (Trifolium pretense) is very cold hardy and make up some of the latest blooming flowers we see here. I’m never disappointed when I stop to take a closer look at these beautiful little flowers. Though it isn’t a native plant Vermonters loved it enough to make it their state flower. It’s easy to see why; some flowers seem to glow with their own inner light and this is one of them.

Asters of every kind bloom here and after seeing so many you can find yourself thinking if I’ve seen one I’ve seen them all, but this one stopped me in my tracks because of the central blue / purple disc flowers. The center disc flowers of an aster are (almost) always yellow or brown and I can’t remember ever seeing any that were this color. The flowers were quite small; no more than 1/2 inch across with ray flowers that had an odd curving habit. If you know this aster’s identity I’d like to hear from you. I’ve looked in books and online and haven’t found anything like it.

Since it blooms in early June seeing gray dogwood (Cornus racemosa) blooming this late in the year was a surprise.  An unusual thing about this shrub is its white berries. White usually signals that the fruit is poisonous, like those of poison ivy, poison sumac, or white baneberry, but though I’ve read that gray dogwood berries aren’t edible I haven’t read anything saying they’re poisonous. Birds certainly love them and gray dogwoods make an excellent choice for those trying to attract them. Though the flowers in this photo look a little sad an 8 foot tall gray dogwood covered with white blossoms in June is a sight not easily forgotten.

Black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis) flowers in October were as much of a surprise as dogwood flowers. Though it seemed to have only three petals instead of five the flower in the upper right had plenty of anthers. This plant prefers disturbed ground and I see it everywhere. One way to identify it is by looking at the undersides of the leaves, which are whitish and tomentose, which means kind of matted with flattened hairs. Raspberry and blackberry leaves have green undersides.

Those are snowflakes and ice pellets on that sedum. Only the toughest plants will bloom from now on.

David Marsden of The Anxious Gardener blog wrote a great post on aconite (Aconitum napellus) recently. He highlighted the plant’s toxicity in an informative and fun to read post and reminded me of a large group of aconite plants that I found growing in a children’s park once. I decided to go back and see if they were still there and as the above photo shows, they were. The plant can take a lot of cold and its blooms appear quite late in the season. Though beautiful the plant is extremely toxic; enough to have been used on spear and arrow tips in ancient times. In ancient Rome anyone found growing the plant could be put to death because aconite was often used to eliminate one’s enemies.

A side view of the blossom shows why aconite is also called monkshood. It’s a beautiful thing but I question the wisdom of growing it in a children’s garden.

I saw this daisy like flower blooming in a local park when snow was falling. It looked like a Shasta daisy on steroids, growing two feet tall with tough leathery leaves that looked much like Shasta daisy leaves. After a little research I think it might be a Montauk daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum,) also called Nippon daisy, which tells me that it must be from Japan. It was blooming beautifully after a 28 °F night, so it’s certainly cold hardy. Those are ice pellets on its petals. If only it was a Shasta daisy just come into flower in June.

May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life. ~Apache Blessing

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Late September / Early October Flowers

There aren’t many garden flowers that say fall in New Hampshire like the chrysanthemum. The trouble is even though they’re sold as “hardy mums” few can survive our kind of winter cold and most will die. This one was given to me by a friend many years ago and despite having no special care whatsoever has survived winters when the temperature fell to 30 and 35 below zero F (-34 to -37 C.) Purple and white seem to be the hardiest of all the chrysanthemums.  Frost won’t hurt this one; it will bloom right up until a freeze.

Sweet everlasting’s (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium) common name comes from the way it lasts for years after being cut and dried. This example had a fully open flower which is something I don’t see that often. Usually the plant has many buds rather than open flowers. An odd name for this plant is rabbit tobacco, given to it by Native Americans because they noticed that rabbits liked to gather where these plants grew. Because of these gatherings they thought that rabbits must smoke the plant as a way to communicate with the Creator. They apparently decided to try smoking it too because it was and still is used in smoking mixtures by some Native people. I’ve never seen a rabbit near it.

Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata) looks like a fragile flower but it can take quite a lot of frost and the small pea sized blossoms can be seen until late in the season. It gets its common name from its swollen seed pods that are said to look like the tobacco pouches that Native Americans carried.  There doesn’t seem to be any records of Native Americans smoking it but it can make you very sick and they used it as an emetic. Burning the dried leaves is said to keep insects away but burning just about anything usually keeps insects away, so I’m not sure what that would prove for the plant.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) blooms earlier in the season then rests a bit and blooms again in the fall. The plant has more common names than any other that I can think of and one of them, bad man’s plaything, makes me laugh every time I see a yarrow plant. I can’t imagine how it came by such a name but it could have happened thousands of years ago; yarrow is mentioned in the Chinese I Ching, which is said to pre date recorded history, and has also been found in an excavation of a Neanderthal grave site. 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.

Yellow toadflax (Linaria vulgaris) is considered an invasive species but I don’t see it that often and I was surprised to see it blooming so late in the year. When the plant is grown under cultivation its flowers are used as cut flowers and are said to be long lasting in a vase. It has been used medicinally in Europe and Asia. It always reminds me of snapdragons.

New England asters (Aster novae-angliae) and other asters are popular with bees right now but something I noticed last year seems to be true this year as well; the bees visit the lighter colored flowers far more than the darker ones. That could explain why I don’t see the darker colored ones that often, but I wonder why bees would prefer one over the other.

This is the darkest colored New England aster I’ve seen this year and though it was blooming profusely there wasn’t a bee on it.

The white heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides) is a plant that is so loaded with small white flowers along its stems that it doesn’t look as if you could fit one more on it. For that reason it has another common name; the many flowered aster. Asters were burned by the Greeks to drive away serpents, and the Romans put wreaths made of aster blossoms on alters to the gods. In this country Native Americans used asters in sweat baths.

Bumblebees preferred the small flowers of the heath aster on this day and the plants were covered with them. They were moving very slowly though, and instead of flying crawled from flower to flower.  Our bee season, like our flower season, is coming to an end.

I’ve seen many wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum) flowers growing alongside corn fields but I’ve never seen one with such pronounced veins in its petals. Maybe the cold brings them out. Honey bees love these flowers. They can be white, purple, light orange or pale sulfur yellow. Photos I’ve seen of the white version also show pronounced veins in the petals. Wild radish is in the mustard family and is sometimes confused with wild mustard (Brassica kaber,) but that plant doesn’t have hairy stems like wild radish.

I’m not sure what’s going on with dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) but I’ve seen very few of them over the last two seasons. I used to see them virtually everywhere I went but I had to look for several days to find one for this blog last spring. I stumbled onto the one shown here. It seems very strange that they’d suddenly disappear, or could I somehow just not be noticing them? Is anyone else seeing fewer of them, I wonder?

Though phlox seems to me more like a summer than a fall flower many of them will bloom until we see a hard frost. This purplish one was seen in a park so I think it’s a cultivar rather than a native plant, but we do have native purple phlox so I could be wrong. It was a spot of color that grabbed my attention and I was happy to see it, so I thought it needed to have its picture taken.

Since I like the color blue so much it’s hard not to like vetch, even though it is invasive and is probably responsible for more than a few gray hairs on this head. Once it gets in a garden it is close to impossible to eradicate by pulling alone, and I know that because I tried many times in many gardens over the years. It’s especially annoying when it gets into shrubs. I think this example is hairy vetch (Vicia vilosa,) which was originally imported from Europe and Asia to be used as a cover crop and for livestock forage. It’s now found in just about every meadow in New Hampshire.

Though I’ve seen dandelions blooming in a mild January witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is usually our latest blooming flower. Oddly enough the spring blooming witch hazels (Hamamelis vernalis) are among our earliest flowers, so this shrub has both ends of the season covered. Both are called winter bloom because they bloom so close to that season. My father always had a bottle of witch hazel lotion handy, and this plant reminds me of him. Today’s witch hazel lotion recipe might have come down from Native Americans, who used the plant to treat skin irritation in the same way it is used to this day.

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life – but there was no one to tell me. ~George Washington Carver

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Flowers Seen in October

Here in southwestern New Hampshire we don’t see many wildflowers in October, but every now and then you can find a stray something or other still hanging on. The bumblebee on this goldenrod (Solidago) was moving but very slowly and looked more like it was hanging on to the flower head rather than harvesting pollen. Bumblebees I’ve heard, sleep on flowers, so maybe he was just napping. The thought of a bee sleeping in or on a flower seems very pleasing to me, for some reason.

New England asters (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) are late bloomers but even they aren’t seen much after mid-October. This one had what I think is a halictid bee on it. They are also called sweat bees. At first I thought it was a hoverfly, but the long antennas changed my mind. He flew off immediately after this shot was taken, so there was no time for study.

Aster identification can be difficult but I think this one was a panicled aster (Aster simplex.) I don’t see too many large white asters at this time of year.

I’m not sure what is going on with dandelions in this area but I’ve seen very few this year. On the other hand, I’ve seen false dandelions (Hypochaeris radicata) almost everywhere I’ve been. If you look at just the flowers this plant might be confused with hawkweed, but its leaves are very different and look more like small dandelion leaves.

The small violet blossoms of Indian tobacco (Lobelia inflata) have just a hint of yellow on the inside and are quite cold hardy. We’ve had two or three light frosts and the example in the photo continues to bloom in my yard. The plant gets its common name from the way its seed pods are said to resemble the tobacco pouches carried by Native Americans. They did smoke it, but medicinally to treat respiratory and muscle disorders, and as a purgative.

 

I was surprised to see this lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) blooming so late in the year. Even its berries should have come and gone by now. Something had been munching on its leaves.

I found this nasturtium in a friend’s garden. A little white hoary alyssum (Berteroa incana) leaned in to whisper encouraging words to the nasturtium while it was having its photo taken, and it stayed perfectly still the whole time.

Another surprise was this wild cucumber vine (Echinocystis lobata) still flowering and producing fruit. Apparently the male flowers aren’t as delicate as they look. One of the mysteries of nature for me is why this plant has so many male flowers when there is only a single female flower at the base of each flower stalk. Another mystery is why I keep forgetting to get a photo of that female flower.

Common yellow wood sorrel (Oxalis stricta) is often confused with clover but clover has oval leaflets rather than the heart shaped ones like those seen in this photo. Yellow wood sorrel’s three leaflets close up flat at night and in bright sunshine, and for that reason it is also called sleeping beauty or sleeping molly. The flowers also close at night. The stricta part of the scientific name means “upright” and refers to the way the plant’s seedpods bend upwards from their stalks.

Red clover (Trifolium pratense) likes cool weather and blooms right up until a hard freeze, even though there are few insects left to pollinate it. Red clover makes excellent hay and silage and increases the quality of grass pastures, and that is most likely the reason it was introduced by colonists in the late 1700s.

Our native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) starts blooming sometimes as early as mid-September, so seeing it isn’t a great surprise. What is surprising is how I’m finding it growing in so many different places.  It’s doing well this year and each plant is loaded with blossoms. The “hama” part of the plant’s scientific name means “at the same time” and is used because you can see leaves, flowers, and the prior year’s fruit all at once on the same plant. During warm winters I’ve seen witch hazel bloom as late as mid-January.

Sweet everlasting (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium) is living up to its name by still going strong.  Actually, the common name comes from the way it lasts for years after being cut and dried. An odd name for this plant is rabbit tobacco, given to it by Native Americans because they noticed that rabbits liked to gather where these plants grew. Because of these gatherings they thought that rabbits must smoke the plant as a way to communicate with the Creator. It was and still is used in smoking mixtures by some Native people.

I never expected to see an ox-eye daisy blooming in October but that’s one of the great things about nature study; there is always another surprise right around the next bend. I’m always grateful to be able to see and smell flowers but even more so in October because it is then, when they really shouldn’t be blooming, that I remember what a great gift they are.

Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom:
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
~ Zenkei Shibayama

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Things I’ve Seen

This bumblebee was so taken with this purple coneflower that I don’t think he even knew that I was there.

 

If I understand what I’ve read correctly I think that this is a great spangled fritillary butterfly (Speyeria cybele.) It was about as big as a monarch butterfly but of course the best way to identify one is by the markings on the underside of the hind wing, which I didn’t get a photo of. In any case it was a beautiful sight perched as it was on a swamp milkweed flower head.

 

I recently found this milkweed plant covered with aphids.  Not surprisingly, they are called milkweed aphids (Aphis nerii) and are tiny, bright yellow insects with black legs that pierce plant tissue and suck the juices out of plants. An aphid colony can produce large amounts of honeydew which attracts sooty mold and that is the black color. Aphids stunt plant growth and if not controlled will eventually kill the plant. These aphids are also called oleander aphids and in places like Florida can often be found on that shrub.

Growths like these on the undersides of staghorn sumac leaves (Rhus typhina) look like potatoes but they are red pouch galls caused by the sumac gall aphid (Melaphis rhois.) A female aphid lays eggs on the underside of a leaf and plant tissue swells around them to form a gall which turns red as it ages. The eggs overwinter and mature inside the hollow gall until spring, when they leave the gall and begin feeding on the plant. Scientists have paleobotanical evidence that this aphid has had a relationship with its sumac hosts for at least 48 million years.

Blackberry seed gall is caused by the blackberry seed gall wasp (Diastrophus cuscutaeformis.) These very small, round, hollow galls look like seeds and form in clusters around blackberry stems. Each tiny gall has a stiff, hair like spine and together they form a hairy mass like that in the photo. It feels very much like a baby bottle brush. These masses are usually described as being reddish brown in color so I’m not sure why this one was yellow green. Maybe they start out life that color and change to brown as they age.

After a noticeable absence of herons and cormorants through spring and early summer I finally spotted this great blue heron far on the other side of a pond and was able to get a soft edged photo of him. He spent a lot of time preening his chest feathers so I wondered if he was drying off after a fishing session.

 

The terminal blossom clusters of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) become berries that start out beige-green and slowly become speckled with reddish brown before turning completely red. This plant is also called treacle berry because the berries are supposed to taste like treacle, which we call molasses here in the U.S. Some say that they taste sweet and syrupy like maple syrup and others say that they taste terrible. If you’re thinking that you’d like to try them be certain that the plant is false Solomon’s seal. Never eat any part of a plant that you’re not sure of.

Blue isn’t a color that you see very often in nature so I’m always happy to find the deep blue fruit of the blue bead lily (Clintonia borealis.) The seeds in these berries can take two years to germinate and adult plants can take twelve years to finally show their yellow, lily like blossoms. This plant is also called “cow tongue” because of the shape of its leaves. Native Americans used the leaves medicinally.

I didn’t think anything could match the blue of blue bead lily fruit but then I saw this balloon flower (Platycodon grandiflorus.) I like the little starfish like stigma, which was very hard to get a sharp photo of for some reason.

 

Eastern red spotted newt s (Notophthalmus viridescens) are cute little things about four or five inches in length. This one watched me taking photos of a slime mold for a while before running off. They spend the first part of their life as aquatic larva before crawling onto land to begin their red eft stage as a terrestrial juvenile. After two or three years on land they develop gills as adults and return to aquatic life. The bright color tells potential predators to beware of their toxicity.

Bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) and deer tongue grass (Dichanthelium clandestinum) are taking on their fall colors. The rosy brown of bracken fern and light, yellow green of deer tongue grass are a combination that is pleasing to the eye.

For all who think that plants don’t have their own inner light; behold these honeysuckle leaves.

A single flower of our native Rhododendron maximum looks like it has 5 petals when it’s on the plant but it is actually one, 5 lobed petal. The yellowish green spots are at the top of the blossom so this one is pictured upside down. I tried rotating the photo 180 degrees but then it looked the blossom was about to slide off the page.

 

I watched the wind blow this male calico pennant dragonfly (Celithemis elisa) back and forth like a flag as it hung onto the end of a twig, but the “pennant” part of the name didn’t click until later on when I was reading Mike Powell’s blog. A pennant was exactly what it behaved like so the name makes perfect sense. If you like dragonflies you should visit Mike’s blog. He gets far more photos of them than I do.

A stream had backed up into a low depression and formed a small pond. All of its silt then settled onto the forest floor in a thick layer, which then cracked as it dried. The silt deposit was thick enough so not a single twig, stone or stem came through it, and was so flat that I could have swept it. You don’t expect to find such a desert like landscape in the middle of a New Hampshire forest, so it was an amazing thing to see.

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. ~Henry Miller

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Things I’ve Seen

Here are a few more of those things I’ve seen on the trail that didn’t make it into other posts.

This chipmunk saw me but just sat on his rock, not making a sound. After I got home and saw the photo I wondered if maybe he was too chubby to be able to run away.

It’s been a good year for all kinds of fruits and nuts, including acorns. Maybe that’s why the chipmunk is so chubby.

 

This caterpillar was happily eating all the leaves from my lilac. The helpful folks over at bugguide.net  tell me that it is a laurel sphinx caterpillar (Sphinx kalmiae). It was as big as my index finger and had a wild looking horn. In this stage the caterpillar is nearly ready to stop feeding and start looking for soil to pupate in. The laurel sphinx moth is gray brown with brownish yellow wings-not nearly as colorful as the caterpillar.

I’m seeing many more turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) this year than I did last. They are very colorful this year. Polysaccharide-K, a compound found in these fungi, has shown to be beneficial in the treatment of gastric, esophageal, colorectal, breast and lung cancers.

 

Lion’s mane, bear’s head, monkey head, icicle mushroom-call it what you will, Hericium americanum is a toothed fungus that is always fun to find in the woods. This mushroom is edible but unless you can be 100% sure of your identification you should never eat a wild mushroom. Bruce Ruck, director of drug information and professional education for New Jersey Poison Control at Rutgers, says it better than I: “Eating even a few bites of certain mushrooms can cause severe illness. Unless you are a mycologist, it is difficult to tell the difference between a toxic and non-toxic mushroom”

Speaking of toxic mushrooms, here’s one now. This is the toxic pigskin puffball (Scleroderma citrinum), which isn’t really a puffball at all but an earth ball. Earth balls are always hard to the touch and never “squishy” like puffballs. If you eat them they won’t kill you, but they can make you quite sick. In the book A Northwoods Companion author John Bates says that “a single large puffball contains so many spores that if every spore germinated to an adult for two generations, the resultant mass would be 800 times the volume of the earth.” But what is considered large? The largest puffball ever found was nearly 5 feet across.

 

Forked bluecurl seeds (Trichostema dichotomum) are so small that the only way I can see them is in a photo. This plant has beautiful blue flowers with long, curving, blue stamens. It is an annual, so it has to grow new from seed each year. Two or three seeds nestle in a basket shaped, open pod and sometimes I take a few seed pods home, hoping that I can get the plant to grow in my yard. So far I have had limited success, even though I’ve provided the same growing conditions.

Many of the woodland ferns have lost their chlorophyll and have gone pale now. I recently turned one of these pale fronds over and found all these tiny sori. These are clusters of even tinier sporangia which are the spore masses where the fern’s spores are produced. I think this one might be a New York fern (Thelypteris noveboracensis), but to be honest I didn’t pay close enough attention to its identifying characteristics to be certain.

Even poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) has to get in on the fall show. Poison ivy can grow in the form of a shrub or a vine and in this case it had twined its way up a birch tree. Beautiful to look at but you don’t want to touch it. The oils in the plant form a complex with skin proteins and interrupt the chemical signals that the skin sends to the rest of the body. The area of exposed skin is then viewed as foreign and the body attacks it, which results in a very itchy rash that can becomes sore and bleed. And if that isn’t bad enough it is also systemic, meaning you can touch the plant with your hand and end up with a rash on your leg or any other part of your body. Some internal cases of poison ivy- that can come from eating the leaves –have been fatal.

I found another poison ivy on another tree that had lost all its leaves and had just its berries showing. Over sixty species of birds have been documented as eating these berries.  Apparently birds are immune to its toxic effects.

 

The native cranberries (Vaccinium macrocarpon) have ripened, but you’ll sure get your feet wet harvesting them. I find them growing in a bog in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. The pilgrims named this fruit “crane berry” because they thought the flowers looked like sandhill cranes. They were taught how to use the berries by Native Americans, who used them as a food, as a medicine, and as a dye.

One cool day I found this bumblebee curled into a ball in an aster blossom and I thought it had died there but, as I watched I could see it moving very slowly. I’ve read that bumblebee queens hibernate in winter, but I can’t find out what happens to the rest of the hive.

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous. ~Aristotle

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Things I’ve Seen

There is a little bit of everything in this post.

Tiny pinwheel mushrooms (Marasmius capillaris) fruit only on oak leaves and that’s exactly what those pictured were doing. A sunbeam just happened to be lighting them up when I walked by.  Most mushrooms like places with dim light but if I had time to spend watching them I think I’d find that all of them got at least some sunshine each day.

 

Clusters of what I think are tiny orange chanterelle wax cap mushrooms (Hygrocybe cantharallus ) grew all over a log. These little mushrooms have caps with scalloped rims and gills that are slightly paler than the cap. The flash I had to use made the gills appear just a little lighter than they really were but otherwise the colors are true.

 

Coral fungi grow in places where there isn’t much light and since a flash can sometimes change the color of the subject, at the suggestion of Laura over at the Touring New Hampshire blog I bought an LED light. I haven’t used it enough to say much about it, but this is the first photo I took with it. A couple of things I noticed were, it did not change the color of these mushrooms and lit the scene enough so the camera wasn’t calling for a flash. In fact, at 100 lumens it is so bright that I might need a diffuser.

These are the tiniest mushrooms I’ve ever tried to photograph. They were so small that this entire group could have been hidden behind a single pea. I never knew that fully formed mushrooms grew so small and I have no idea what they are. Natural light was plentiful (for a change) when I took this photo.

 

The last time I showed pinesap plants (Monotropa hypopitys) you could see the flower buds. In this photo you can see the individual flowers and that is important to note when trying to tell it from its close relative Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), which has a single flower. These were also under LED lighting and the colors seem true to what they should be.

 

I decided to get out of the woods and visit a local meadow again before things started going to seed. It’s hard to stay away from such a beautiful place for very long.

There were many bumblebees in the meadow and most were visiting the goldenrod.

I was happy to also see plenty of honey bees in the meadow. I didn’t notice that this one had shredded wings until I saw the photo. I’ve read this is common among honey bees and comes from them simply over using their wings.

Luckily this great black wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus) was too busy with goldenrod flowers to pay much attention to me. This is a digger wasp and he (or she) is big and jet black all over. Solitary females live in holes that they dig in soft ground. They prey on katydids, which are several times larger than they are, so they need plenty of flower nectar to keep that kind of power up. Their sting is said to be very painful, but I didn’t know that when I was taking these photos.

 

Their legs are quite long and hang down when they fly. This is a good way to identify them because most wasps keep their legs close to their bodies when they fly. I like the purple highlights on the wings, which look embossed.

 The shiny red berries of painted trillium (Trillium undulatum) seem to be everywhere this year, so apparently the high temperatures and heavy rainfall were to their liking. There should be plenty of seedlings in the spring.

 

 On their way to becoming brilliant red, the berries of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum) are speckled for a short time. This plant is also called treacle berry because the berries are supposed to taste like treacle or molasses.

 More often than not when I get down on the ground to take a photo of something I look around carefully before I get back up to see if there is anything else worthy of a photo, and that’s how I ended up with a shot of a fern shadow.

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. ~Washington Irving.

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