A Hint of Fall

Fall officially began two weeks ago but often the calendar doesn’t align with what we see, and fall colors are only just starting to appear.  We’re probably a week or two away from peak color but you can get glimpses, as this view of Half Moon Pond in Hancock shows. Water cools slower than the air and fog forms on lakes, ponds and rivers most mornings now.

While at the pond I took some photos of marsh St. John’s wort seed pods, which are an amazing shade of red. It’s particularly amazing to me because it is one of the few shades of red in nature that I can actually see. Colorblindness plays havoc with reds and blues for me.

Though the drive down this dirt road was mostly green there was quite a bit of yellow to be seen as well. Birches turn yellow and usually do so quite early.

This black birch (Betula lenta) was half green and half yellow. This tree’s bark looks like cherry bark but the twigs have an unmistakable taste of wintergreen, so nibbling on a twig is the easiest way to identify it. Black birch was once harvested, shredded and distilled to make oil of wintergreen, and so many were taken that they can be very hard to find now. Most are found on private property rather than in the forest where they were harvested.

This witch hazel was also half green and half yellow, but in a very different way. Once this shrub loses all its leaves it will bloom. Witch hazel is our latest flower; I’ve seen them even in January.

At this time of year small black witch hats can be seen on some witch hazel leaves. They are actually the gall of the witch hazel gall aphid (Hormaphis hamamelidis). These galls won’t hurt the plant, but they do look a little strange. They are called nipple galls or cone heads.

The yellow ribbons along the edges of the old road were made of ferns and wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis.) Native Americans used the root of this plant as emergency food and it was also once used to make root beer.

The ripe berries of autumn olive (Elaeagnus umbellata) signal fall’s arrival. It’s a terribly invasive plant originally from Japan but also very fragrant in spring. Its wonderful fragrance overlaps that of lilacs and honeysuckle and smelling all 3 mingled together is a little slice of heaven that I look forward to each spring.

It looks like it’s going to be a good year for burning bushes (Euonymus alatus,) both in color and berries.

The color of burning bushes can vary considerably, from red to pink to magenta. These along the river have chosen vivid magenta this year. The many berries will ripen from greenish white to orangey red and the birds will eat them quickly, and that’s what makes this plant so invasive. Once they become established they can take over large areas of forest and create enough shade so native plants don’t have a chance.

Fall is the time when more colorful crust fungi appear. This orange one, which I believe is Stereum complicatum, is the first I’ve seen. This fungus is usually brown and I’m not sure if it changes color in the fall or if some of them decide they want to be orange.  Of course, I might also have the identification wrong, but it’s very pretty no matter its name and I like seeing it in the woods.

I don’t know if day length or cooler temperatures trigger the need to produce spores in jelly fungi, but I see more of the jelly like fruiting bodies in the fall and winter than I do at other times of year. So far I’ve never been able to find an explanation for why that is.

But I do know that it’s great to come across bright orange jelly fungi in the dead of winter, even if it is frozen solid.  I think this one’s name is orange witch’s butter (Dacrymyces palmatus,) which isn’t in the same family as yellow witches’ butter (Tremella mesenterica.)  It likes to grow on fallen pines and often looks like it is being squeezed out of voids in the bark, but that’s because it actually grows on the wood of the log and not the bark.

A huge old oak tree was a sea of green except for this one branch which had turned yellow. If this entire tree turns that color it’s really going to be something to see.

Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) continues its long, slow change from green to red. Though some trees and bushes seem to change color overnight, Virginia creeper won’t be rushed. This photo was taken on a rare rainy day so the leaves were shinier than they would normally be.

I visited one of my favorite cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) groves hoping to see them wearing orange but instead I saw mostly yellow and green. I don’t know if they’ll go from yellow to orange or not, but I’ll keep checking. Cinnamon ferns get their common name from their cinnamon brown fertile fronds that appear in spring.

This is what I was hoping to see in the cinnamon fern grove. Seeing that many ferns wearing this color is kind of amazing.

There is a spot on the Ashuelot River to the north of town where one tree turns color before all of the others. I can’t get close enough to it to know for sure but I think it’s a maple. It certainly is bright, whatever it is.

There is still more green than other colors along the river, but pink, yellow, and orange can be seen here and there. This is one of my favorite places to walk in the fall. Before too long the colors here will be astounding.

Since I started with a photo of Half Moon Pond I’ll end with one too, taken with my cell phone just 2 days ago in the early morning light. It shows the promise of things to come, I think. Everyone has been wondering what this extended drought would do to the fall colors but from what I’ve seen so far things look to be fairly normal.  One theory says that fall will be colorful but brief and that could prove to be true, but we’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile I’ll enjoy being inside this beautiful kaleidoscope of colors.

An autumn forest is such a place that once entered, you never look for the exit. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for coming by.

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Things I’ve Seen

Since we aren’t having the pumpkin festival here in Keene any longer I don’t have any carved Jack O’ Lanterns to show you, but I did see a ghostly lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina) on a recent walk in the woods. According to the “Fern Bulletin,” which is a quarterly publication devoted to ferns, fern reproductive systems weren’t understood until the middle of the 16th century, when fern spores were finally studied. Before that time people thought that there were male and female ferns, and that’s how the lady fern came by her common name. There are other stories about the origin of the name but this one seems the most plausible.

How about a scary, one eyed howling stump for Halloween?  No, it wasn’t really howling but it looked like it was about to.

Jacqueline Donnelly from the Saratoga woods and waterways blog said that cone galls (Hormaphis hamamelidis) on witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) reminded her of tiny witch hats, and I have to agree. These galls are caused by the witch-hazel cone gall aphid. The gall is rich in nutrients and provides both food and shelter for the female aphids. For part of their life cycle these galls are bright red.

The parts of the willow that would have once been leaves were converted into a gall when a fly called a gall gnat midge (Rabdophaga strobiloides) laid an egg on its stem. The resulting larva released a chemical that convinced the willow to produce this gall rather than the leaves that it normally would have. The little pink larva rests inside all winter and emerges as an adult when the air temperature warms up in the spring.

After seeing few turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) over the last couple of years this year I’m seeing them frequently, including the blue / purple ones that I’m always happy to see.  They range from tan to brown to orange, red or blue and purple. I’ve searched for a few years to find out what influenced their color and finally just read that both genetics and environment are determining factors. There are many other fungi that look like this one but the pores on its underside and the colorful banding are the two most reliable identifying characteristics for turkey tails. Turkey tails are saprobic fungi, meaning they decompose dead or decaying organic material. They cause white rot of the sapwood, so having them on a living tree is not good.

Fungi with a resupinate or flat sheeting habit are sometimes called crust fungi. They often grow on the undersides of logs, which is where I found this blue example. Some crust fungi, like the cobalt crust fungus (Terana caerulea,) are very beautiful and also very rare. Rolling logs over can be a lot of work but can also reveal hidden and unexpected beauty.

These bunchberry plants (Cornus canadensis) seemed all ready for Halloween. Seeing a forest floor carpeted in drifts of white bunchberry flowers is a delight that is hard to equal. The bright red berries that follow the flowers grow in bunches, and that gives this plant its common name. The berries are loaded with pectin and early settlers put them in puddings to add color and help them jell.

Bunchberry has also been found to be the fastest plant. According to a study done at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts “Tests have shown that the petals of the bunchberry plant’s tiny flowers can move at 22 feet per second when they open with an explosive force. The petals explode open to launch pollen an inch into the air. The pollen is ejected to 10 times the height of the small plant so that it can be carried away on the wind.”

The scientists say in Nature Magazine: “Bunchberry stamens are like miniature medieval trebuchets, specialized catapults that maximize throwing distance by having the payload [pollen in the anther] attached to the throwing arm [filament] by a hinge or flexible strap.”

A Japanese barberry stump (Berberis thunbergii) bleeds bright yellow. A strong, permanent yellow orange dye can be made from all parts of the barberry. From the Pioneer Thinking Newsletter: “To make the dye chop the plant into small pieces and place them in a pot. Double the amount of water to plant material. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about an hour. Strain. Now you can add your fabric to be dyed. For a stronger shade, allow material to soak in the dye overnight. To fix the color mix 4 parts cold water to 1 part vinegar. Add fabric to the fixative and simmer for an hour. Rinse the material and squeeze out excess. Rinse in cool water until water runs clear.” Maybe dyeing fabrics with it would help control the spread of this invasive shrub.

The beavers seem to have started a sculpture garden along the banks of the Ashuelot River. Nearby they had felled a large American elm (Ulmus americana.) Anyone who has cut and split wood knows that elm is tough and stringy and hard to do much of anything with, so why beavers would choose it is a mystery.

This fungus was big-as big as a soccer ball. I thought it might be a black-staining polypore (Meripilus sumstinei) which is related to the hen of the woods. However, since a few cuts on the spore bearing surface showed no black stains I’ll have to keep searching for its identity. It and a few others grew on the roots of a living oak, which does not bode well for the tree.

This fly agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria) was also big; easily the biggest capped mushroom that I’ve ever seen. I put a quarter on its cap to give you a sense of its size. The quarter is about an inch across and I’d guess the mushroom was about 10 inches. It looked like a dinner plate.

This mushroom was no bigger than a nickel, but far more beautiful than the two giant ones seen previously. I think that the gills are the most beautiful part of some mushrooms.

This fern came into life curled like the head of a fiddle and left the same way.  Sometimes beauty can be found even in death.

Lest you think that autumn has ended here, the beeches and oaks are now taking center stage. This small beech looked like it was on fire, so brilliant were its leaves.

There’s just no telling what you’ll find in the woods of New Hampshire. What a peaceful place to sit and contemplate the wonder of it all.

The knots in the wood can’t be untied. ~Marty Rubin

Thanks for stopping in. Happy Halloween!

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A Walk Along the Ashuelot River

 

Canada geese are flying in pairs up and down the Ashuelot River again and the ice that covered it for a while in this spot has melted. The deep snow that has kept me off its banks has melted enough so it is once again possible to explore, and it’s a great feeling because I’ve missed being there. The going can still be difficult though. Just after I snapped the above photo we saw snow squalls, so these shots had to be taken over 2 or 3 days.

One of the first things I saw was a broken grass stem, so I thought I’d see how close I could get with my camera.

Black eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) still have plenty of seeds on them.  With a winter like the one we’ve just had I would expect every food source to be stripped clean but there are still large amounts of natural bird feed out there.  I’m not sure what to make of it. Maybe it happens every year and I’ve just never noticed.

 

 Something I haven’t seen here before was a large clump of cord glaze moss (Entodon seductrix). This moss is a sun lover and it was growing on a stone in full sun. It is also called glossy moss because of the way it shines. Its leaves become translucent when wet and a little shinier when dry, but unlike many other mosses its appearance doesn’t change much between its wet and dry states.

Bitter wart lichen (Pertusaria amara) is a rarity here. The only one I know of grows on the limb of an old dead American hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana) tree that still stands near the river. When I went to visit this lichen I noticed with dismay that all of the bark is falling from the dead limb that it grows on, so this might be that last shot I get of this particular example.

This close up shot of the bitter wart lichen shows the darker gray, deeply fissured body (thallus) and whitish fruiting bodies (apothecia) that erupt from it. The apothecia look like warts and are how this lichen gets its common name. From what I’ve read about this lichen the apothecia are rarely fertile, and that might explain why I’ve only seen just this one. The “bitter” part of the common name comes from its bitter taste. Not that I’ve tasted it-I just take the lichenologist’s word for it.

There is a lot of dead deer tongue grass (Dichanthelium clandestinum) showing in places, all beaten down by the heavy snow load. This grass is tough and it amazes me how this can all just disappear into the soil in just a few short months. This grass gets its common name from the way its leaves resemble a deer’s tongue.

White pines (Pinus strobus) are showing signs of sticky new growth. In his writings Henry David Thoreau mentioned the white pine more than any other tree, and once wrote of being able to see distant hills after climbing to the top of one. The tallest one on record was about 180′ tall.

Staghorn sumacs (Rhus typhina) grow along the edges of the woods that line the river and their buds are swelling. Up close the hairy, first year branches of this tree look more animal than plant. Another name for staghorn sumac is velvet tree, and that’s exactly what it feels like.

Along this stretch of river is where the inner bark on dead staghorn sumacs is a bright, reddish orange color. I’ve looked at dead sumacs in other locations and have never seen any others with bark this color. I’ve read descriptions that say the inner bark is “light green and sweet to chew on,” but no reference to its changing color when it dries, so it is a mystery to me. If you’re reading this and know something about sumac bark I’d love to hear from you.

Native witch hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) also line the banks of the Ashuelot in this area. This is a shot of the recently opened seed pods, which explode with force and can throw the seeds as far as 30 feet. I’ve read that you can hear them pop when they open and even though I keep trying to be there at the right time to see and hear it happening, I never am.

There are no man made trails here but there is a very narrow game trail which in places is crowded by poison ivy plants (Toxicodendron radicans) on both sides, so I always wear long pants when I come here. Even with longs pants one early spring I knelt to take a photo of a wildflower and must have landed right on some poison ivy because my knees itched for two weeks afterward. I’m lucky that the rash stays right on the body part that contacted the plant and doesn’t spread like it does on most people. In the above photo are the plant’s berries looking a little winter beaten, but which will also give you a rash if you touch them.  This is a good plant to get to know intimately if you plan on spending much time in the woods because every part of it, in winter or summer, will make you itch like you’ve never itched before.

 

The river seems so happy now that the dam that stood here for more than 250 years is gone. Trout and other fish have returned. Eagles once again fish it, ducks and geese swim in it, and all manner of animals visit its shores.

I can remember when the Ashuelot ran a different color each day because of the dyes that the woolen mills discharged directly into it. I’ve seen it run orange, purple, and everything in between. It was very polluted at one time but thankfully it was cleaned up and today tells a story of not only how we nearly destroyed it, but also how we saved it. Knowing what I do of its history, it’s hard not to be happy when I walk its banks.

The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it. ~Chinese philosopher

Thanks for stopping in.

 

 

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So Long February

The weather people were a little off with their predictions for last weekend and instead of a nor’easter dumping a foot of heavy, wet snow we had drizzle that lasted for a day and a half. I was happy that it didn’t snow because I’m ready for spring, but the clouds and drizzle didn’t make for very good photographic opportunities.

 

February has been a moody, cloudy and cool month and it’s another one that I’m not sorry to say goodbye to. I don’t know if I’m imagining it or not, but even the geese seem to prefer sunny days. I hardly ever see them in this part of the Ashuelot River in cloudy weather.

 

The river banks are lined with Native witch hazel (Hammamelis virginiana) in this area. The buds on this shrub might fool you into thinking it was spring by the way the tiny leaves appear, but they have no bud scales so this is how they look all winter long-naked to the weather.

 

Beavers have been gnawing at this elm tree for months. I can’t imagine why they picked on one of the toughest, stringiest trees unless it is to keep their ever growing teeth from getting too long.

 

This maple burl was interesting but on the small side-probably about as big as a football.  One day, if it is allowed to grow, it could be worth a lot of money if sold as figured maple lumber.

 

The trouble with finding mushrooms at this time of year is it’s hard to tell if they are fresh or if they have been there all winter. These looked and felt fresh and I’m fairly certain that they are jelly crep mushrooms (Crepidotus mollis.) They are also known as soft slipper mushrooms. The biggest one was about as big as a quarter.

  

The fronds of our native evergreen polypody ferns curl sometimes and that makes their spore bearing capsules (Sori) much easier to see. They appear on the undersides of fertile fronds.

The spore sacs on the undersides of the common polypody fern frond are naked rather than covered. They look like tiny piles of birdseed. Common polypody ferns are also called rock cap fern because they like to grow on boulders.

 

Smokey eye boulder lichens (Porpidia albocaerulescens) also like to grow on boulders and weren’t too far from the polypody ferns. I can’t be positive that this is a smokey eye boulder lichen because the reproductive structures (Apothecia) are so blue. They are usually light to dark gray, so I don’t know if the one pictured is another species or if the color is a trick of the very low light from the drizzly sky.

 

Hair cap moss (Polytrichum commune ) is always a welcome sight. This moss is very common on nearly every continent and gets its common name from the hairs that cap the hood that protects the spore case. Sometimes it is called goldilocks.

In the forest everybody is racing to grow taller faster to reach the required amount of sunshine first. Grape vines stake out their territory the previous year by fastening themselves to anything and everything, so when it gets warm enough they have a head start advantage.

You will find something more in woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you that which you can never learn from masters. ~Saint Bernard

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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Between Christmas and a Snowstorm

Up until Christmas we’ve had a snowless winter here, more or less, but we woke to a dusting on Christmas morning and Wednesday night into Thursday we had a real snowstorm that dropped 4 or 5 inches. These pictures were taken before all of that happened though, so you won’t see much snow here just yet.

The moon rose early on Christmas Eve.

I was surprised to find this under the tree on Christmas day. Not too long ago I bought a Canon SX 40HS camera and I’m real happy with it, except when it comes to macro mode. It’s probably me doing something wrong, but I just can’t get as close as I want to with the SX40. Melanie at the Lemony Egghead blog uses a Panasonic Lumix camera and does some amazing things with it, so I decided that I’d get one sometime. “Sometime” came a little earlier than I expected, because my kids got it for me for Christmas. You can check out Melanie’s blog by clicking here. You won’t be sorry that you did.

The Panasonic is a great camera. I took a picture of this very confused witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) with it on the day after Christmas and the Leica lens is just as clear and sharp as you would expect anything with the Leica name on it to be. Our native witch hazel blooms in late fall, but I’ve never seen it bloom on Christmas.

I’ve never been able to get this close to a lichen with any camera I’ve owned. This bit of orange rock posy lichen (Rhizoplaca chrysoleuca) was about as big as an aspirin tablet.

Lichens take on an other-worldly appearance when you get in real close. One of the reasons I think macro photography is so much fun is because it always reveals things that I couldn’t see when I was taking the picture. These lichens appear to be some kind of rock tripe but I can’t find them in books or on line.

This orange witch’s butter (Dacrymyces palmatus ) was frozen solid and even had a little snow on it. The color becomes more intense as it dries and I was able to spot it from quite a distance.

This rose has seen better days, but I still find it fascinating to look at.

The twin flowers of the partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) have a fused ovary and form one berry, but you can always see where the two flowers were by looking for the dimples on the berry. This berry had a face on it.

A common Black Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) seed head, looking uncommonly geometric.

I switched back to the Canon to get this shot of the colorful inner bark of a staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina.)  At least I think it’s a staghorn sumac-I visit a spot quite often that had several old trees blow down last summer so I’m assuming this is one of them. The inner bark of staghorn sumac was used to make dye by Native Americans. It looks bright red to me but my color finding software tells me that it’s brown. 

Something I wouldn’t ask the Panasonic camera to do is take a shot of the not quite full moon and Jupiter like the Canon did on Christmas night.

  

But when I need to get in real close I’ll call on the Panasonic every time.  I’m sure it will see a lot of use as I walk off the Christmas goodies!

When there’s snow on the ground, I like to pretend I’m walking on clouds ~Takayuki Ikkaku

I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas and that the weather treated you kindly. Thanks for visiting.

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Found in Field and Forest

This is another post full of those things that didn’t seem to fit in other posts.                       The last of the crabapples-one that the birds and squirrels have both rejected for some reason. Native evergreen fan clubmoss (Diphasiastrum digitatum) looks like a small evergreen tree.  Clubmosses are some of the oldest vascular plants on Earth. The foliage contains toxic alkaloids so most animals don’t eat it, which means that man is its only real threat. Since they produce spores rather than seeds and a single mature plant can take 20 years to develop from a spore, they should be left alone. Foamflower (Tiarella) is another native evergreen whose fuzzy leaves sometimes turn deep purple in the fall. More often than not though, they look a little blotchy like those in the photo. In the book Forest Forensics, Tom Wessels describes white pine (Pinus strobus) and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) stumps as “decaying from the outside in.” He also says that it takes 50 years for the wood to completely decay.  I’m guessing that this is the stump of a white pine because hemlock has rot resistant bark that is usually still in place even when the wood has completely decayed. A local river was so calm this day that, if I turn this picture 180 degrees, I don’t know if I’m looking at sky or water. I like the little cups formed by the bracts on common witch hazel (Hamamelis viginiana.) These bracts are at the base of the flower and are where a single brown, box shaped seed capsule will develop over the course of a year. Next autumn these seed capsules will open quickly with a loud snapping sound and shoot the seeds as far as 40 feet from the parent plant. I find native witch hazel shrubs growing along river banks here in New Hampshire.

The bubble gum pink fruiting bodies (Apothecia) held on short stalks above a blue-green background (Thallus) give this candy lichen (Icmadophila ericetorum) its name. I found large colonies of this lichen growing near a local pond. It grew on moist sand in full sun near white pines and blueberries. The ground hasn’t frozen yet so mushrooms are still growing. I see mostly small brown types but this pinkish tan one was growing in the middle of a trail. I think it might be one of the Russulas. Native pipsissewa (Chimaphila umbellata ) seed capsules haven’t opened yet.  At one time this plant, one of the wintergreens, was an ingredient of root beer.  Native Americans had many medicinal uses for the plant and the name pipsissewa is Cree for “it breaks into small pieces.” This is in reference to their belief that the plant broke up gall and kidney stones. The scientific name Chimaphila is from the Greek ceima,”winter”; and filos “lover” because it is evergreen.

Running ground pine (Lycopodium clavatum) is actually a type of clubmoss.  The horizontal branching stems can cover large areas. Here it grows among mosses, American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens,) and fallen beech leaves. I found this dandelion blooming happily on November 23^rd. It still has a ways to go to beat the record of the December 21^st bloomer I saw last year. This goldenrod seed head was leaning out over water, which made for a very dark background.

He who walks may see and understand. You can study all America from one hilltop, if your eyes
are open and your mind is willing to reach. But first you must walk to that hill ~ Hal Borland

Thanks for visiting.

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