Eden Revisited

I’ve been waiting for the Ashuelot River to return to normal levels so I could visit the forest I used to spend a lot of time in as a boy. It’s a beautiful place on land now owned by the local college, and they’ve mowed a trail through it. The trail runs very close to the river and that’s what the fence posts seen in this shot are for; to warn people that the river is right there, just feet away. It’s hard to tell due to all the growth but I learned years ago that there are otter slides and muskrat tunnels and sink holes that are easily fallen into. I stayed on the trail and in all the time I spent here I saw only an occasional glimpse of the river. I was too busy enjoying the beauty of the place.

When I was a boy there were no mowed trails here so my friends and I just found our own way through the woods, using game trails or other natural pathways. There have always been lots of birds and animals here and now the land is a designated wildlife management area. Since it floods badly when the river is high it really couldn’t be used for anything else. Though the sign points to wildlife “management” I think the management consists of letting the wildlife just be and do as it will.

I immediately started seeing insects when I got here, including this ebony jewelwing damselfly. They like to hunt around forested streams. There is also a river jewelwing which hunts riverbanks but I didn’t see one of those. There was certainly plenty for it to eat here. Never in my life have I seen swarms of mosquitoes like I did here. Even with bug spray on they got me. All the rain and flooding this year has led to a perfect storm of them and when you meet someone on a trail that’s all they talk about.

What I think might be a cloudless sulfur butterfly sat on a leaf, looking a bit like a leaf itself. It also looked as if it was having antennae problems. There are also clouded sulfurs, but they have black edging on their wingtips.

I saw what seemed to be very early New England asters in bloom. Many of the asters that grow here have the deepest colored purple flowers that are my favorites, but I don’t usually start looking for them until the end of September.

An eastern cottontail warmed itself in the morning sunshine. It let me have a few photos and then hopped off into the tall grass. I felt sorry to have disturbed its peace.

Something that surprised me was finding marsh bellflowers here. This is only the second place I’ve seen these small flowers, each time very near the river. I’m not surprised that they would like it here in this wet ground.

I found a Japanese beetle on a hedge bindweed blossom. As I pointed the camera at it, it reared up on its hind legs in challenge. “This is my flower,” it said. By the end of the day the blossom had most likely been chewed full of holes.

The trail closes in a bit in places and that’s because the river is close on one side and old silver maples crowd in on the other. Most of the trees here are silver maples with a few red maples. They’re the only trees that can stand the almost yearly flooding. In many places all the undergrowth had been flattened by the flood water but it wasn’t too bad right here.

This tall grass was very beautiful caught in a sunbeam like it was. I think it is tall woodreed, which is a grass that likes shaded, boggy places. It must have been about six feet tall and it stopped me in my tracks. All the gray in the background is caused by plants that were under water not long ago. The rain hadn’t washed the silt off them yet.

What I think might be a hairy footed flower bee sat on a leaf. These solitary bees are said to be the first to emerge in spring and like to visit pulmonaria flowers, which are some of the earliest to appear. They are native to Europe and North Africa, but have been introduced into Canada and the U.S. This is the only one I’ve seen.

This was another unusual bee because it was as big as the end of my thumb; easily the biggest bee I’ve seen. I think it must be some type of carpenter bee but I’m not sure.

Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius once recommended that we “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” That was just what I was doing here; a universe full of Stellaria pubera, the star chickweed, bloomed all along the trail and into the woods.

Woodland sunflowers, which had apparently been flattened by rain, were starting to lift up their heads.

I think there were more tall blue lettuce plants out here than I’ve ever seen in a single place. They like a bit of shade and wet ground to do their best, and they find both here. The flowers, each about the size of a pencil eraser, have leaned more toward white than blue this year.

For the first time I was able to get a fairly good photo of tall blue lettuce that shows where the “tall” in the name comes from. The undergrowth was about six feet tall and these plants soared many feet above it. I’d guess they were at leat twelve feet tall. It seems odd that such small flowers would appear on such a tall plant.

River silt, as fine as talcum powder, covered the trail where it had flooded, and then dried and cracked. When I see silt like this I always think about how many thousands of years it must have taken to build up the rich farmlands that are almost always found along our rivers.

This place has always been a source of wonder and as I walked along I thought of how lucky I was to spend my boyhood in such a beautiful place. Bordered by the railroad tracks I walked almost every day, it was an easy place to get to and I spent a lot of time exploring and learning from nature here. Anything a boy could want in nature I found here but I’ve always thought my friends and I came mostly because we simply loved the place. Even after all these years it’s still an easy place to love and now with the mowed trails, it’s even more beautiful than it used to be. I’ve never forgotten the silence, natural beauty, and freedom that I experienced here. It all led to a lifelong love of life.

Tall asters weren’t so tall after the rain was done with them. This one could barely lift its head out of the ferns, and it should be six feet tall.

Broom sedge isn’t a plant I see a lot of but there were large colonies of them here so they must like moist ground. I like its bristly, reddish seed heads.

Goldenrod glowed in the bright sunshine. There has always been goldenrod here for as far back as memory will take me, and it has always been beautiful. One thing I thought of that is lacking here these days are the big black and yellow spiders that used to be here. I used to love watching them but I haven’t seen one in a long time.

I spent parts of two different days here. On the first day it was so windy everything was thrashing around and branches were falling off the trees but it kept the bugs away. This little pearl crescent (I think) butterfly hung on with all it had as the goldenrod it clung to thrashed back and forth in the wind gusts. It took quite a few tries to get this not so great shot. Every time the wind would stop I’d bring the camera up, ready to get the shot, but as soon as I clicked the shutter it would start in again. I spent a lot of time just standing and waiting, using the patience the great blue herons taught me.

On the second day when the winds had calmed down I noticed that many of the thistles that live here had gone to seed and thistle down floated in the air. Since thistle seeds are a favorite of gold finches I thought I’d better walk over to the place where I usually find them.

I wasn’t disappointed; the beautiful little birds were here as they are every year, enjoying the fruits of the bull or spear thistles. I never noticed how their black forehead “hair” fell down over their eyes like it does. This one is a breeding male. The bad boy look must help him attract females.

He wasn’t going to waste time watching me watch him; he dug right in and the thistle down was flying. I’ve also watched them pull garden zinnias apart, throwing petals everywhere to get at the seeds. They also go for evening primrose and any other small seeded plantss. According to the Cornell School of Ornithology their natural habitats are weedy fields and floodplains, so it makes perfect sense that they would come here every year.

He who does not become familiar with nature through love will never know her. ~Friedrich Von Schlegel

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Drying Out

Here’s where all the rain we had went. The Ashuelot River roared mightily as it went rushing by on its way to the Atlantic, carrying countless tons of soil with it. In flood the river deposits fine silt it over all the land that is flooded and then, sometimes many years later, rains wash it back into the river. It’s all a circle.

One of the flowers that like growing in the soil deposited by the river is the monkey flower, and I’ve seen more of them this year than I ever have. I haven’t seen a monkey in one though.

It is said that whoever named the monkey flower saw a monkey’s face in it, but I don’t see a monkey any more than I see a turtle in a turtlehead flower. Maybe its just lack of imagination on my part, I don’t know.

Here is where I found a monkey; in the face of a blue dasher dragonfly.

Because they kept landing in the shade I had to try many times over several days to get a shot of what I think might be an emerald damselfly. It’s the only useable shot I’ve gotten of one. I like its big blue bug eyes and its green metallic shine. This one, if I’ve identified it correctly, is a male and its abdomen and tail are powder blue, though they look white in this shot. The “tree” it is hanging on to is really just a twig, smaller in diameter than a pencil. This long bodied damselfly reminded me of the old wives’ tales about it and others of its kind that I heard as a boy. They were called “sewing needles” or “devil’s darning needles,” and were supposed to be able to sew your eyes and lips closed if you weren’t careful. Why would anyone tell a child such foolishness? I can’t see that doing so would serve any useful purpose. It would only make them afraid of a beautiful part of nature, and of what possible use is that? I can’t remember ever believing any such stories but memory can’t always be trusted, so I may have.

According to what I’ve read flies like hoverflies, or blowflies like the one seen in this photo, visit flowers to sip their nectar and taste their pollen. Flies sip the nectar for strength, which they need to keep flying, and the pollen helps them produce healthy eggs. Since they are hairy, bottle or blowflies help with pollination by carrying pollen from one flower to another. I walked though a field of Queen Anne’s lace flowers one day and saw as many flies as I did bees.

Some of the dogwoods are whispering things I’d rather not hear, so I didn’t listen. I just admired their beautiful colors.

A few posts ago I talked about the legume family and how you could identify them by the flowers, which have a standard and a keel. Here, on showy tick trefoil flowers you can see the vertical, half round standard and the keel, which juts out at about 90 degrees or so from the standard. Inside the keel are the reproductive parts. When ready the keel opens and lowers, and the reproductive parts show themselves as they’ve done here. Strong, smart insects like bumblebees will often force open the keel to get to the goodies ahead of time.

Every time I see a bicolor hedge bindweed blossom I remember when I had to search high and low to find one, because 99% of them were plain white. Now it’s just the opposite; all I see are bicolor ones and I have to search for the plain white ones. It’s an interesting lesson on how flowers evolve to attract more insects. More insects mean more pollinated flowers and that means more seeds. More seeds increase the likelihood of the continuation of the species, and continuation of the species is a driving force in nature.

One evening this cottontail saw me and crouched down to make itself small, as if it wanted to melt into the earth, but as I stood and watched it relaxed and made itself “big” again. I like it when animals sense that I mean them no harm, as this rabbit did. After taking a couple of shots I thanked it and left as it went on munching white clover. I could have artificially lightened this shot but I wanted you to see what I saw. I liked all the lights in the grasses.

Eastern amber wing dragonflies are very pretty but also quite small; I’ve read that they are only about an inch long. I saw them swarming around a pickerel weed plant at a pond and noticed that they never seemed to land. They were always in motion, so I gave up trying to get a shot. Then one day when I wasn’t near water the one shown above flew in front of me and landed on this grass stalk. As you spend more time with nature you find yourself becoming increasingly thankful for what once seemed small or insignificant things, like a dragonfly or a rabbit willing to pose for a photo. Gratitude tends to seep in quite naturally, as do love and joy.

A bee foraging on pollen had its pollen sacs filled to almost overflowing, by the looks. Knapweed pollen is white, as we can see. It’s a beautiful but supposedly invasive flower. I say supposedly because in this area it stays mostly on the embankments the highway department planted it on. I do see it in the wild occasionally but usually just a plant or two.

I’ve always liked the buds on Joe Pye weed as much as the flowers but of course the butterflies and bees prefer the flowers. Last year I found a colony of several plants that were covered in monarch and great spangled fritillary butterflies. I hope I see the same this year, because I still haven’t seen a monarch.

One day I found a little orange skipper butterfly probing for nutrients in the gravel along the side of a road. I got home intending to try to identify it and found so many species of little orange skippers it seemed like it would take forever to identify it, so little orange skipper will have to do for a name.

Pretty little pale spike lobelias have started blooming. Though their color can range from white to deep blue, most I’ve seen this year have looked like the one in the photo. This plant reaches to about knee high and grows in what can be large colonies. Each single flower could hide behind a standard aspirin. Next will come their cousins, Indian tobacco lobelia.

I don’t know who Barbara was but this plant is called Barbara’s buttons. It’s a native perennial plant (Marshallia) in the aster family. The flowers ae quite pretty and unusual, and probably about the same diameter as a large hen’s egg. I’ve read that it grows on roadsides, bogs, or open pine woodlands but it is said to be rare, even in its native southeastern U.S. It can be found for sale at nurseries specializing in rare, unusual and / or exotic plants. I first found this one last year in a garden at a commercial business building.

Like most other plants flowering raspberry is blooming well this year. I’ve known them for a very long time so they seem like old friends. I always like to see their cheery blooms, but even though their fruit looks like a giant, end of your thumb size raspberry, they seem tasteless to me. People have said that you have to put them on the very tip of your tongue to taste them but I’ve tried that as well, and all I’ve tasted is nothing. It was as if I was trying to taste air.

Invasive Japanese honeysuckle berries go from green to this electric, neon orange, and then to bright red, and the birds love them. That’s why I say once the genie is out of the bottle it’s near impossible to get it back in. True, you’d need an army devoted to nothing but honeysuckle control, but why not organize one?

It appears to be a great year for hazelnuts but in some places the blueberry crop has failed. In other areas like hilltops and mountainsides they’re doing fine. I met someone just the other day who told me the apple crop has also failed in certain orchards because of the late freeze, and he said his hay crop will only bear a single late cutting this year. You can’t cut hay in the rain.

I found this plant growing in the garden of a local business and realized that I didn’t know its name. The flowers looked like small hollyhock or rose of Sharon blossoms, but only half the size. The scalloped, basal leaves were shiny and stem leaves were narrow, like willow leaves. The plant was about 3 feet tall and loaded with flowers. I took a couple of shots of it and Google lens told me it was a false mallow.

With flowers like these I was sure it had to be in the mallow family because it had “that look” but false mallow was one I had never heard of.  After a little reading I found that it doesn’t like real hot weather and goes dormant until it gets cooler unless it gets regular watering, so I think I’d try it first where it got mostly cooler morning sun, even though some instructions say full sun. It blooms in mid to late summer and is drought tolerant and deer resistant, which would make it valuable in this area. If you like hollyhocks but don’t have the room this one might be for you; another name for it is “miniature hollyhock.”

I found a peachy daylily in my yard that I had forgotten I had. That’s the beauty of daylilies; you can fuss with them if you like but they are in fact a “plant it and forget it” perennial. If you’re looking for a low maintenance garden, daylilies should be near the top of your list. With early, midseason, and late varieties that come in just about any color but blue or black, you can do a lot with them.

Beautiful swamp milkweed is still blooming. One of the benefits of the overcast skies and rain has been longer blooming times for many plants. Some I’ve seen have been blooming for close to a month, and that’s unusual.

I was crawling around on the forest floor, getting shots of mushrooms when I noticed something blue in the cleft of a large boulder. Prying it out with my finger wasn’t easy but I got it out and saw that it was a painted stone. There in the woods it looked like a waterfall falling over the edge of the stone. Whoever painted it has some artistic ability; I thought it was nice how they got the feel of falling water with their brush. Now though, when I see it in a photo, it looks like snowy mountain peaks and trails, trees, and sky. Unless someone was on their hands and knees as I was they would never have seen it, so I wonder what the point of hiding it there was. In any event it I enjoyed seeing it, so I owe a thank you to whoever put it there.

If you want a photographic challenge try enchanter’s nightshade. Not only are the flowers smaller than a pea, but the plants usually grow in deep shade. I’ve had years when I just couldn’t pull it off even after trying many times, but this year after maybe a dozen tries I got lucky. Enchanter’s nightshade isn’t a nightshade at all, but is related to evening primroses. Its small round seed pods readily stick to your clothes and I sometimes find that I’m covered with them when I get home.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Circe the enchantress drugged Odysseus’ crew and turned them into swine. Circe, who was the daughter of the sun and granddaughter of the oceans, gives enchanter’s nightshade its scientific name Circaea.

As children, we are very sensitive to nature’s beauty, finding miracles and interesting things everywhere. As we grow up, we tend to forget how beautiful and magnificent the world is. There is magic and wonder for eyes who know how to look with curiosity and love. ~ Ansel Adams

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Walking Near Water

These trees aren’t pines but I thought of John Muir when I saw them. He said “Between every two pines is a doorway to a new world.” This is the kind of place I’ve been spending time in lately and he was right, but I don’t think the species matters. There’s a doorway to a new world between every two maples as well.

There is a lot of water where I’ve been walking and on June first, just like clockwork the big female snapping turtles came up out of the water to find some warm, soft soil to dig their nests in. This one was there beside the road, waiting to start digging when I happened by. From what I’ve seen egg laying seems an exhausting process for a turtle and it didn’t appear that she was in any hurry to start. At least once each year she must sacrifce the lightness of her existence for the good of her kind. Here she is no longer bouyant. She bears the full weight of gravity because the continuation of her species is all that matters.  

I looked a little closer when something didn’t look right and saw that she had lost an eye. I’ve debated whether or not to show you this photo and I finally decided that yes, you should see it. I’m here to report on nature, not to sanitize it or to lie to you about it and the truth is, when you spend a lot of time in nature, you regularly see death and injuries. It is something you have to be able to stand apart from, just as at times you must be able to stand apart from yourself. Death is a natural part of living and when I see a dead animal I know it was its time. Often I also know that because of its death another animal was likely able to stay alive, or maybe even feed its family. It’s just the way it is; every living thing gets eaten eventually, be it by predator or microbe.

I walked around this mother turtle and saw that her other eye was fine. I also saw deep peace in that eye; an eternal peace, and I knew she would be well. I wished her an easy time of her egg laying and left her to get on about her business.

All of the sudden pretty little blue toadflax is lining the sides of roads. It’s funny how so many things seem to wait for June. All of the sudden it’s June first and there they are, just like the turtles.

I’m seeing lots of nannyberry blossoms this year. This native viburnum is common and easy to find, especially in spring when it blooms. The numerous small, five lobed white flowers are very pretty with their five yellow tipped stamens. They’ll be followed by edible dark blue, juicy one seeded berries (drupes), which are sometimes called wild raisins. They and many other native viburnums and dogwoods are great for attracting birds and wildlife to the garden. They’re also strong native plants that don’t need any special pampering. In fact most of them do best when just left alone, so they’re a great choice for the occasional gardener.

Blue eyed grass is another plant that just seems to appear one day. First you can’t find it anywhere and the next day it’s everywhere. I found this one in the shade and I admired the way its petals looked as if they had been cut from satin cloth. The plant is in the iris family and has nothing to do with grass but I don’t name them, I just introduce them.

Ox eye daisy. Is this really what an ox’s eye looks like? I suppose I haven’t paid attention, but I can’t remember the last time I saw an ox. One thing I’m sure of when it comes to this flower is, even if you put them directly into water they’ll wilt as soon as you cut them. When I was married (In June) we didn’t have money for flowers from a florist so we picked daisies. The next day at the wedding reception every table had a vase full of wilted daisies on it. My father in law wore a crown of them.

Our native blue flag iris is another flower that waits for June. It likes wet feet so it can be found in ditches and along riverbanks or pond edges, sometimes growing right in the water. They’re very beautiful and I look forward to seeing them each year. When I see them I know it’s June, so who needs a calendar?

Vetch has come into bloom and since I see purple as blue and blue is my favorite color, I’m happy to see it. The only thing I might have an itch about when it comes to vetch is how, from a distance I always wonder if it might be some other rarer blue flower, so I always have to walk over to it and find out. It’s not a real problem; I get to see a lot of vetch that way.

A rabbit looked over its shoulder as if to ask “What are you doing here?” If I had spoken rabbit I would have said “I’m part of all this, just as you are.”

Blackberries seem to be having a good year so far. Blueberries have blossomed heavily as well, so the bears will be happy.

When I went by them the first time it was early in the morning so the yellow hawkweeds were closed against the dew. When I retuned later they burned as bright as the morning sunshine.

A damselfly hugged a grass seed head, hoping to get some of that morning sunshine for itself. This day started off quite cool, but it warmed up quickly.

All of the sudden red clover blossoms have appeared and I’m enjoying seeing them in the morning all covered in dew. It wasn’t always this way; I once despised them because I saw them with a gardener’s eyes; I saw how two or three of them could make a garden seem disheveled and uncared for, the way they sprawled all over. You couldn’t pull them because their roots seemed to reach to the earth’s core and if you weed wacked them you were left with an ugly stump, so you had to dig each one, and that took extra time. They were high on my list of despised weeds until one evening I saw the day’s last ray of sunlight falling directly on a red clover, as if it was lit by a spotlight. I walked over to it and knelt to take its photo and everything changed.

Can you lose yourself in a flower? Yes you can, the same way you can lose yourself in music or art or mathematics. And you can find yourself as well. That evening I saw for the first time how very beautiful each tiny orchid like flower was. As I knelt there in the grass before this once despised weed it was as if a space had opened in my mind. There was room for everything in this space and I saw how beautiful life was, and how much easier it became when nothing had to be excluded. All traces of plant snobbery washed out of me that evening and I have loved all flowers ever since, be they roadside weeds, rare wildflowers, or prized garden specimens. In case you were wondering, that is why you find them all here on this blog.

There was no breeze so English plantain was still, quietly offering its flowers to any passers by. Maybe when the breeze came up and it could once again dance there would be more takers.

I sat on a log beside the water waiting for a dragonfly to come along, and this one did. I think it was a chalk fronted corporal. They’re skimmers and they have two vertical white bars just behind their head that don’t show well in this photo. As you can tell by its shadow the sun was fully out at this point. It had gotten hot quickly and I was starting to feel it so I took a couple of quick, not very good shots and left. It would reach into the 90s F. on this day but I made sure I was inside by the time that happened.

I went back to the same spot a couple of days later when it was cooler but this time instead of dragonflies I saw a great blue heron fishing. It stood playing statue, watching me for about 15 minutes before deciding I wasn’t a threat. I watched it catch a nice fish but I didn’t get any good shots of it happening. I also saw an American bittern this day but I wasn’t able to get a shot of it either, because it quickly disappeared behind a clump of cattails. That was too bad, because I’ve heard that bitterns are rare birds, rarely seen.

In another spot this white admiral butterfly landed on a dry gravel road in the hot sun, which butterflies seem to do a lot. I believe this one was “puddling,” which is drawing up moisture and nutrients from the soil. It tried several spots before it found one it liked and then it went into a trance, as if it was mesmerized.

It would slowly raise and lower its wings as if keeping time with a heartbeat so I walked slowly around it, trying to get a shot of its wings fully open. Open or closed they were very beautiful and there wasn’t a mark on them from birds. This butterfly has several variants so if it doesn’t look like the white admiral you know, that could be why. Some of them are quite plain.

The freeze we had in mid May killed off most of the black locust flower buds but I found a couple of protected trees blooming beautifully. I love these native trees with their fragrant flowers that hang like wisteria blossoms. Black locusts are another plant in the huge pea / bean family and like many other legumes its leaflets fold together at night and when it rains.

Bristly locust blooms when black locusts do but are really more shrub than tree, though they can reach 8 feet. What sets this locust apart from others are the bristly purple-brown hairs that cover its stems, which are easily seen in this photo. 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 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. If you’re looking for a beautiful “plant it and forget it” native small tree that would do well on the edge of the woods and which pollinators would love, this might be it.

I went by the local college to see what was blooming and found some huge oriental poppies in bloom. They’re beautiful flowers that are even more beautiful when massed together. They’re also easy to grow.

For years I’ve thought that the beautiful berries of silky dogwood, which are blue and white for just a short time, must have influenced the blue and white porcelain made in China. But the wheel? I never thought much about it until I looked inside this poppy. I had looked at thousands of poppies, but I had never really seen one until this day and imagine; this pattern perfectly reflects that of a wheel found on an archeological dig near Edinburgh Airport in Scotland. A well preserved charitiot fron 475-380 BC was unearthed and on its wheels were 12 spokes with the same symmetry seen on this poppy. It is said that Roman chariots were influenced by Celtic chariot design. I thought about that and realized that there was once a time when one person’s design couldn’t influence another, because man and nature were all there was. All creative inspiration had to come from the patterns, forms, and shapes found in nature, because there was nothing else. Maybe the poppy was part of that.

I found a beautiful river of rocket. Dame’s rocket that is, and it was early enough in the morning to smell its fragrance. I had heard about how fragrant it was in the evening but apparently it is sunshine or heat that turns off its fragrance, because on this cool morning most of the plants were in the shade and they were heavenly fragrant. They aren’t native but no matter where they grow they’re another wonderful gift from nature.

Nature is not a place to visit, it is home. ~Gary Snyder

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Things I’ve Seen

An eastern cottontail hiding in the tall grass saw me as soon as I saw it and we both froze. I was able to turn my camera on and slowly raise it up to eye level, and finally get a couple of not so hot shots.

The rabbit was fine with me being there for a while because it munched on grass, but then it turned and hopped off, and I saw its fluffy cotton tail.

What I believe is a band winged meadowhawk dragonfly landed on an old garage door at work early one morning. The light was low and the photos weren’t that good so I was going to discard them, but then I saw something odd going on. This dragonfly had what appeared to be tiny eggs all over it.

Here is a closer look at the “eggs” on the dragonfly. I’ve searched for dragonfly diseases and dragonfly parasites but have had no luck finding anything out. If you happen to know what this is about I’d really love to hear from you. I know dragonflies lay eggs but I’ve never heard of them laying them on each other.

Note: A helpful reader has identified these as immature water mites. What is happening in these photos is called “Phoresy,” which a symbiotic relationship where one organism transports another organism of a different species. The red mites are parasites in the tick family and they do suck the dragonfly’s bodily fluids. When the dragonfly lands or hovers near water they will fall / jump off. Thanks go to Ginger Wells Kay, to the folks at BugGuide.net and to Kathy Keatley Garvey and the bug squad from the University of California for this information.  

This dragonfly looked fine but I haven’t been able to identify it. One of the club tails, maybe?

A grasshopper seemed very interested in what I was doing. In fact as I was taking its photo it turned to get a better look. Or maybe to give me a better look.

I expect to see leaves in colors other than green in the spring or fall but not in summer, so these ash leaves seemed confused to me. It is thought that plants might do this to prevent the leaves getting too much sunlight, but it doesn’t seem like anyone really knows for sure.

I can’t explain why some plants do this but it can often be beautiful, as this Joe Pye weed shows.

For years now I’ve meant to check our native alder bushes in the spring for new tongue gall growth and each year I’ve forgotten. But then I was taking photos of a Deptford pink that grew under an alder and I stood up and there they were. And they really do look like tongues, especially at this stage. Some were even bright red.

I went back on a rainy day and got this shot of another tongue like gall. Instead of being caused by an insect like many galls, alder (Alnus incana) tongue gall is caused by a fungus (Taphrina alni.) The fungus chemically deforms parts of the ovarian tissue of the female cone-like catkins (strobiles) and causes long, tongue shaped galls known as languets to grow from them. These galls seem to like high humidity so are usually found on alders that grow near swamps, ponds and streams. 

Once they’ve reached their limit of growth the tongue galls dry and blacken, and look like this. I think this is something most of us have seen.

Azalea Exobasidium gall is another leaf and flower gall that is caused by a fungus instead of an insect. It can cause swollen shoots, stem galls, witches’ brooms and red leaf spots, but more often than not it causes white galls like that seen in the above photo. The white color comes from the spores of the fungus, which are spread by wind and rain. I found this and many other examples growing on some wild roseshell azaleas.

While I’ve been working on this post we’ve had two days of rain, so I hoped to see some mushrooms. I didn’t have to look too hard; this yellow fly agaric (Amanita muscaria v. formosa) grew in the middle of a trail. I used to do 2 or 3 mushroom posts each year but last year I didn’t find enough to do any, so I was happy to see this one. The name fly agaric comes from the practice of putting pieces of the mushroom in a dish of milk. The story says that when flies drank the milk they died, but it’s something I’ve never tried. Fly agaric is said to have the ability to “turn off” fear in humans and is considered toxic. Some Vikings, called “berserkers”  are said to have used it for that very reason.

I also saw a white slime mold on an oak leaf. Some slime molds can be very small and others quite large. This one in its plasmodium stage was average, I’d say; about as big as the leaf itself. When slime molds are in this state they are usually moving, but very slowly. Slime molds are very sensitive to drying out so they usually move at night, but they can be found on cloudy, humid days as well. I haven’t been able to identify it so for now all I can say is that it is a white slime mold, possibly a Physarum, in the plasmodium stage. Slime molds, even though sometimes covering a large area, are actually made up of hundreds or thousands of single entities. These entities move through the forest looking for food or a suitable place to fruit and eventually come together in a mass. They move with the single mindedness of a school of fish or a flock of birds. So far science can tell us what they aren’t, but not what they are.

And there were Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora,) which are not fungi but often appear at the same time. Each plant has a single flower and each flower nods toward the ground until it is pollinated. Once pollinated they turn and point straight at the sky, and in that position they will turn brown and become hard like wood, and finally the seed pods will split open and release the tiny seeds. They are dust like and are borne on the wind.

Blueberries seem to be having a great year. The bushes I’ve looked at have been loaded with berries, so the bears and birds will eat well.

Invasive Tatarian honeysuckle (Lonicera tatarica) berries ripen from green to orange to red and for the first time I caught all the stages in one photo. This shrub is native to Siberia and is very tough. 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.

Black elderberry fruit has just started to form. In this stage the big flower heads always remind me of star charts.

Fern balls are created by an insect called either a fern leaf tier or a leaf roller, depending on who you listen to. They appear at the tip of a fern frond and look like a ball. Inside the ball are caterpillars of a moth, possibly in the herpetogramma family. The caterpillars pull the tip of the fern into a ball shape and tie it up with silk. Once inside the shelter they feed on the leaflets.

These are busy moths; I’m seeing a lot of these balled up leaves this year.

The fern that had the fern balls on it was either an interrupted fern (Osmunda claytoniana,) shown above, or a cinnamon fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum,) shown in the next photo. Since it had no spore cases on it, it was hard to tell. Interrupted fern gets its common name from the way the fertile fronds look as if they’ve been “interrupted” by spore cases, which are the dark areas on this fern.

Cinnamon fern spore bearing fronds are reddish and whoever named the fern thought they looked like cinnamon sticks. If you saw both ferns growing side by side and neither was producing spores most of us would think they were identical.

Timothy grass has just started to flower. Each flower head is filled with tiny florets, each with three purple stamens and 2 wispy white stigmas. Timothy grass makes an excellent hay crop and gets its common name from Timothy Hanson, a farmer who began to cultivate and promote it in 1720, a few years after its introduction into colonial America in 1711. It should be cut for hay before it reaches this stage but it’s quite beautiful when it blossoms. When you see someone chewing a stalk of grass in a photo or painting it is usually Timothy. I chewed many myself as a boy, and I just thought of the opening line of Ventura Highway by the band America: Chewing on a piece of grass, walking down the road…

The oddest thing I’ve seen lately is this piece of cantaloupe i found on a lawn. I once worked with someone who made pens as a hobby, and he told me that he knew some people who used the netting from cantaloupes to decorate the pens they made. I can’t imagine how it was done but I’d bet they were beautiful pens.

This view says summer to me. I grew up lazing on the banks of a river, seeing views just like this one every day. May every child be so lucky.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
~Lao Tzu

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Things I’ve Seen

New readers of this blog might not know this, but I’m always finding things that never seem to fit into other posts. When I have found enough of these unusual, sometimes bizarre and often beautiful things, I put them all in a post of their own. That’s what this post is.

The twig that these mushrooms grew on was less than half the diameter of a pencil, so that should help illustrate just how small these mushrooms were. By the time I found them it hadn’t rained for a few days so they were kind of dry. I think these are one of the Marasimus mushrooms-possibly Marasimus epiphyllus.

I’ve been giving red clover blossoms a closer look this year and have found that they vary greatly in color, sometimes appearing as a washed out pale pink that can look almost white all the way to a deep rose / purple color. I’ve been taking photos of the flower heads and letting my color finding software tell me what it sees. The software tells me that this one with a bee or hoverfly on it is pale violet, thistle, and plum.

Compared to the flower head in the previous photo this is very dark. The color finding software sees dark orchid, violet and medium purple. Red clover flower heads are made up of many individual florets, each having 5 petals. One petal is called a banner, 2 petals on either side of the banner are called wings, and 2 more fused petals make up what is called the keel. The keel encloses the reproductive structures.

 

 Bracken ferns (Pteridium aquilinum) climb all over each other, trying to be the one to reach the sun first. These ferns are now almost 4 feet tall. Bracken fern releases chemicals that inhibit the growth of other plants, and this gives it the ability to form large colonies with reduced competition from other species.

A deer (or more than one) went the same way I was going and not too long before, judging by the freshness of its footprints in the damp sand. I was wondering if I scared it off.

I was walking along the side of a road one day and saw something in the road that didn’t look like it belonged there. It turned out to be this Goldsmith Beetle (Cotalpa lanigera.) This beetle was quite big-at least as long as the diameter of a quarter-and had a metallic shine, as if it had been painted with metallic paint. I wish that I had taken a photo or two of its underside, which is said to shine red-gold like polished copper. I can’t remember ever seeing this one before.

I’m so colorblind that if this eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) had of just stayed still I probably never would have seen him. Instead he dashed across the path in front of me and froze. He convinced himself that he was invisible and that gave me time to fumble around with my camera, trying to get a photo. He let me take as many as I wanted but as soon as I took a step he was gone in a gray streak. I chose this shot because you can see his round cottony tail.

 

Timothy is blooming. No that’s not the title of a 60s song about Timothy Leary-it’s about the grass known as Timothy (Phleum pretense.) I’ve been waiting for it to flower because I think it’s the most beautiful of all the grasses. The story of how this grass got its name says that it was unintentionally introduced from Europe in 1711 and in 1720 a farmer named Timothy Hanson began to cultivate it. The grass took on his name and has been called Timothy ever since. It is an excellent hay grass.

 

English plantain (Plantago lanceolata) is also blooming. This is another plant with a beautiful flower. This plant is considered a common weed found in lawns and waste places now, but it wasn’t always that way; Anglo-Saxons had nine sacred herbs that they believed protected them from sickness and other evils, and this was one of them. At that time, no other plants had such an elevated status. This plantain was cultivated in Europe and brought here in colonial times to be used medicinally. Native Americans called it “white man’s footprint,” because it grew wherever the colonists went.

White Cheese Polypore (Tyromyces chioneus) grew on the end of a log. The Tyromyces part of the scientific name means “with a cheesy consistency” and chioneus means “snow white,” so both the common and scientific names for this fungus say the same thing. This fungus has a scent that some people say is like cheese cake.

Many sedges and rushes grow near water and I like to include water in their photo if I can. That isn’t always as easy as it sounds, but this time it worked and I liked the color of the water behind these dark green bulrushes (Scirpus atrovirens.) Bulrushes aren’t true rushes, but are members of the sedge family. In Anglo Saxon times a sedge was any plant that grew near water, but now a sedge is one of nearly 1000 species in the genus Carex.

While waiting for the moon to rise one night I saw this colorful sunset.

The moon I was waiting for was a “super moon,” according to those in the know. This super moon was a moon that was both full and at its closest point to the earth for this year. It will not be as close to the earth again until August of next year. I wanted to get a view of it reflected in water and I drove around to rivers, lakes and ponds but I could never get to the side of the body of water that would have shown its reflection.

I have since found that there is a freeware program called “The Photographers Ephemeris,” which you can get by clicking here. In a nutshell, this program lets you position yourself anywhere on a Google map and see in which direction the sun and moon will rise and set from that position. I could have put myself on the accessible part of the local lake shore and seen beforehand, with a high degree of accuracy, that the moon wouldn’t be reflecting in the lake and saved myself the drive. The program can be used on computers or phones.

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. ~ Henri Poincaré

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