Things I’ve Seen

Anyone who has read this blog for very long knows I like to play on the banks of the Ashuelot River, which meanders through several local towns. Though when I was a boy it was terribly polluted, now people fish for trout along its banks and eagles can sometimes be seen flying over it. That’s why a few years ago I was disturbed when I saw an oily sheen on the water that filled my footprint on the shore. It looked much like the puddle I found on the shore in the photo above and I posted it on this blog, saying how I was hoping I’d never see such a thing on these riverbanks again. Then happily, thanks to several knowledgeable readers, I found out that this sheen might easily have come from natural sources. Iron rich ferrous hydroxide that occurs naturally in soil can cause the oil like sheen on water, as can bacteria which generate hydrocarbons in oxygen depleted soil. I was very happy to hear that because though I don’t want to see this river polluted, I do think that this film on the water is beautiful. Just look at those colors.

While I was at the river, I spotted trees that had grape vines loaded with grapes growing in them. Wild river grapes (Vitis riparia) like a lot of rain, and I know that because we’ve had a lot of rain and I’m seeing more grapes than I’ve ever seen before. The odd thing about it though, is how the birds don’t seem to be eating them. These grapes are a favorite of many birds and they are often gone even before I can get a photo of them, but on this day I didn’t see that a single one had been picked. That’s a little disturbing.

Also disturbing is how none of the Oriental bittersweet berries (Celastrus orbiculatus) have been eaten. They are another favorite of the birds and they disappear as quickly as the grapes, so why aren’t they? This vine is very invasive and can strangle trees to death so I don’t want it to spread, but I do wonder about the birds.

While I was there wandering along the river, I took a shot of the Thompson covered bridge, named after playwright Denmon Thompson, who was a native son, and built in 1832. The bridge design is known as “Town lattice,” patented by Connecticut architect Ithiel Town in the early 1800s. The open lattice work lets a lot of light into the bridge and this is unusual because many covered bridges are dark and cave like. In the 1800s being able to see daylight inside a covered bridge would have been the talk of the town. The Thompson Bridge is considered by many to be the most beautiful covered bridge in New England but the person who ran the wires must not have known that.

This bridge is known as the Cresson Bridge, also in Swanzey and also crossing the Ashuelot River. It was opened to traffic in 1859 and I wanted you to see it so you could get an idea of how dark it was inside these old covered bridges. The tiny square windows didn’t let in much light, and that’s why Town truss bridges like that in the previous photo were such an innovation, and why they were so welcomed by the traveling public. By the way, back in those day traveling was done by sleigh in winter, so snow had to be shoveled onto the plank floors of covered bridges so sleigh runners would have something to slide on. What a job that must have been.

I finally found a blue bead lily plant (Clintonia borealis) with a ripe berry on it and now you know why I call it “electric blue.” That might sound like the title of a Jimmy Hendrix song but it is a very unusual shade of blue, to these eyes at least. It seems to sparkle in the right light and it is a deer magnet. From seed to berry can take 14 years, with two of those years taken up by seed germination. This is not a fast-growing plant.

I went to see Baily Brook Falls up in Stoddard and was surprised to see how little water was actually falling. With all of the rain we’ve had I thought they would be roaring. I have a feeling that beavers are involved and if I walked upstream, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they’ve dammed up the stream.

Since Bailey Brook Falls werent roaring I went to where I knew I’d hear the roar of water; the outflow dam at Swanzey Lake.

I’m always amazed by what I see when the leaves start falling. Here was a wasp nest as big as a soccer ball up in a maple tree, and I had been walking under it several times each day all summer long without seeing it. I’d bet its residents saw me though, and I’m glad they decided we could coexist. I was pruning a large rhododendron once that had a similar nest in the center of it. By the time I was able to stop running I had been stung on the back several times.

When the leaves fall from the trees the wind has greater force as it whistles through the bare branches and inevitably, small bird nests like these get blown out. I don’t know what bird made this one but you could barely have fit a hen’s egg in it. It was as light as a feather and very well made of grass.

I saw a spider web on a lawn and it reminded me of the synapses in my own brain. One of the questions that has been nagging at that brain for quite a long time is why nature uses the same shapes over and over again.

I looked down into the heart of a yucca plant and thought of the Native Americans who used every single part of this plant. They pounded the leaves and used the strong fibers inside them to weave sandals, cords, belts and baskets. They also ate the flowers and fruit of the plant. The sharp points at the tips of the leaves were used as sewing needles and the roots were peeled and ground and mixed with water to make soap for washing their hair and treating dandruff.  Sap from the leaves was used medicinally to stop bleeding and heal sores. Not a bit of it was wasted.

I found this colony of wooly alder aphids (Paraprociphilus tessellatus) on an alder limb in a swamp one recent day. Wooly alder aphids grow a white, filamentous waxy covering that looks like it’s made up of tiny white ribbons. A colony of them looks like white fuzz on the alder’s branches and this white fuzz helps protect them from the eyes of predators. They are sap sucking insects which secrete a sweet honeydew on the leaves and branches of plants. This honeydew attracts a fungus called black sooty mold, but since the mold grows only on the honeydew and not the plant, it doesn’t harm plants. The aphids themselves will do far more harm because they can literally suck the life out of a plant.

I’m not sure if the aphids with dots in this photo I took previously always look that way, if they haven’t grown the white waxy covering yet, or if they’ve lost the covering for some reason. They are very small; not even half the size of a house fly. I find them usually on the undersides of alder branches. If you are lucky enough to catch these insects in flight, they look like tiny white fairies. In fact another name for them is “fairy flies.” This is the best time of year to find them.

Here is something quite rare, unfortunately. American chestnuts were one of the most important forest trees, supplying both food and lumber. An Asian bark fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica) was introduced into North America on imported Asiatic chestnut trees and the disease all but wiped out over three billion American chestnut trees. New shoots often sprout from chestnut roots when the main trunk dies so they haven’t yet become extinct. Unfortunately the stump sprouts are almost always infected by the Asian fungus by the time they reach 20 feet tall but since some trees do bloom maybe these particular examples are growing from chestnuts. I found these three or four young trees a few years ago and have watched them get bigger over the years. They look very healthy so far. Though the leaves resemble beech leaves they are much bigger with very serrated margins. Many botanists and other scientists are working on finding and breeding disease resistant trees and maybe these trees will one day fit the bill. If you happen to find any you might want to keep an eye on them.

A tree “marriage” happens when two trees of the same species rub together in the wind. When the outer bark is rubbed off, the inner cambium layer of the trees can become naturally grafted together and they will be married from then on. The process is called inosculation and isn’t as rare as we might think. This example is special because it looks like the very tip of a branch on one trunk grew directly into the other trunk. It must have taken many years of strong winds and bark rubbing before they could grow together as they did.

Frost cracks happen when the sun warms the tree during the day and the temperature drops quickly at night. If you’re in or near the woods at night in winter you can often hear the trees splitting and cracking, and sometimes it’s as loud as a rifle shot. Frost cracks can heal in the summer when the tree produces a new layer of inner bark to heal the wound but then can crack again in winter. When this repeated healing and cracking happens over the course of a few years the buildup of new tissue can create a frost rib like that seen in the photo. I’ve seen them on several different species, so I don’t think any one species is more or less susceptible to cracking than others. It’s more a matter of how the sunlight falls on a tree’s trunk. Wrapping an ornamental tree’s trunk loosely in burlap in winter can help prevent the bark splitting.

If you grow stone fruits like peaches, apricots, plums or cherries then you should know the disease called black knot. It is caused by a fungus called Apiosporina morbosa. This fungus grows in the wild and its spores can be spread by rain or wind. The spores will typically infect trees from April through June on new growth. Infected stems swell up and produce hard black knots like that in the above photo. This disease can eventually kill the tree so infected limbs should be pruned off 2-4 inches below the knots and buried or burned before bud break the following spring. Black cherry seems particularly susceptible to the disease.

I saw a hollowed-out stump that was slowly filling with fallen leaves beside a trail. From what I’ve read in the book Bark; a Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast, by Michael Wojtech, eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) are the only trees with stumps that will rot away from the inside out. It’s an interesting thing that I don’t see that often.

You would think that with all the rain we’ve had I’d be seeing slime molds everywhere, but actually I’ve seen very few this year. I believe the orangey brown material in this photo was once an active slime mold but by the time I found it, it was dry and hard. There are many different orange slime molds so it’s impossible to tell which one it is but it was still interesting. It shows how a slime mold will spread over its immediate surroundings, looking for food. Slime molds “eat” tiny unseen organisms such as bacteria and yeasts, and they are also said to help decompose leaves and rotting logs.

I’ve seen many thousands of pixie cup lichens (Cladonia pyxidata.) They’re the ones that look like tiny golf tees, but I’ve always wondered what they looked like when they first started forming. Did they always look like golf tees? I didn’t think so but I couldn’t say why. Then one day I thought I had found the answer. As you can see in this photo the little golf tees start life looking like simple pegs. You can see a few with tiny “cups” just starting to form. Pixie cup lichens are squamulose lichens with fruticose fruiting structures called podetia. Squamulose means they have scale like lleafy obes that often overlap like shingles. The parts that look like tiny golf tees are called podetia. Podetia means a stalk like growth which bears the spore bearing fruiting bodies. Finally, frucitose means a lichen with bushy, vertical growth. It is thought that some colonies of pixie cup lichens might be as old as 4,500 years. It’s good I think, to know a little more about these tiny life forms that see everywhere I go.

A boulder on the side of the road was covered by moss and though that might not seem surprising or earthshaking, it caught my attention.

Picture yourself in a small, single engine plane flying low over the treetops in the Amazon jungle, and you’ll understand why I was fascinated by this mossy boulder. I imagined that scene would look a lot like this.

Here’s a little hint of what’s to come. We finally had a frost, more than a month after our average first frost date and the second latest since such things have been recorded. But we haven’t had a freeze, and that means we still have colorful leaves on some of the trees.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau

Thanks for coming by.

Read Full Post »

Time for a Climb

Early last Sunday morning I set out to climb Hewes Hill is Swanzey, which takes you to Tippin Rock. I don’t know what I was thinking but I wore sneakers instead of my hiking boots and by the time I had  crossed the field to get to the trail head my feet were soaked from the heavy dew. One unusual thing about this photo is that there is a cloud in it. That’s been a rare sight around here this summer.

Dew wasn’t the only thing in the field. The red clovers saw their first frost of the season.

Each leaf was covered in ice crystals, but it wasn’t enough to harm them. By the time I had come back down the lone cloud had disappeared and the sun was full on the field, but there wasn’t a sign that anything had been damaged by frost.

The trail was shaded and much cooler than I expected. The steady climbing kept me plenty warm enough though.

Mossy stumps tell the logging history of this place but it’s still very hard to picture these hills barren of trees as most of them were a hundred years ago.  One very unusual thing about this particular piece of land is its lack of stone walls. I was looking for them but didn’t see a single one. I didn’t think it was possible.

You have to look closely at those mossy stumps because not all that is green is moss. I saw several stumps covered with greater whipwort liverworts (Bazzania trilobata.) The trilobata part of the scientific name refers to the three tiny lobes at the bottom of each leaf. Though its common name includes the word greater this is a very small liverwort, but the fact that it grows in large colonies makes it easier to see.

This trail is well blazed but many aren’t. I’m not sure that those who maintain trails understand how important blazing is, especially at this time of year. Though well-worn trails might seem obvious to those of us who follow them regularly, when the leaves fall they cover them-often to the point where they can’t be seen. Without blazes on the trees it’s very easy to lose your way in the fall and I’ve had several people tell me that they won’t go to one place or another because the trails are so poorly marked. I think that people who are unfamiliar with a trail should help blaze it, or at least have a say in where the blazes appear.

Sometimes trail blazers get a little carried away, but not often.

This tree started down a crooked path but finally decided to straighten up. Much like a few humans I know, I thought as I continued on up the trail.

In the past when I’ve done a post about this place I’ve mentioned how “Captain Obvious” must have put this sign up, but I can’t get a good shot of both the sign and the rock it points to to prove it.

The sign is mere feet from this 40 ton glacial erratic boulder, which would be real hard to miss even in the dark. The boulder gets its name from the way it rocks (tips) back and forth if you push it in the right place. I’ve never been able to move it but I’ve talked with someone who saw a group of kids all stand on one end to make it move. If you look closely at the underside you can see that it comes down to a point like the keel of a boat. Someday I’ll meet a group of younger people up there who’ll be frantic to make it tip.

Meanwhile though, I think I’ve finally solved a mystery about this rock that has bugged me for quite a while. A photo from circa 1900 show this face of the boulder covered with lichens, but as you can clearly see in the above photo there is hardly a lichen on it.

Here is the photo that I’m speaking of. This is the same face of the boulder as that seen in the previous photo and it’s covered with rock tripe lichens (Lasallia pustulata.) The mystery was, how did they all disappear in 100 years? Lichens don’t do that; there should be more of them, not fewer.

I’m not sure who the lady in the photo is but she illustrates very well how big this stone really is. I’d guess that it’s about 8-9 feet high, 18-20 feet long and 8-9 feet wide.

Anyone who has worked in a park or a cemetery knows that the easiest way to remove lichens from stone without harming the stone is with a wire brush, and here is one tied to this tree just a few feet away from the boulder. Really, I wondered, someone has that much free time? I appreciate their efforts and I know their heart is in the right place but a naked rock looks a little out of place and unnatural when all the other rocks in the neighborhood are wearing lichens.

Rock tripe (Umbilicaria mammulata) is a large green lichen that fades slightly and turns crisp like a potato chip when it dries out. It sticks itself to stone by way of a single, navel like attachment point. The rest of this lichen hangs from this central point and when wet enough feels like a cooked egg noodle. I can imagine that scrubbing them off stone with a wire brush would be challenging.

I came here early in the morning because last year I climbed in the afternoon to take photos of the fall foliage and I was disappointed that the bright sunlight didn’t let the colors come through very well. If you stand where I was standing when I took this photo the sun shines directly at you in the afternoon and the camera doesn’t seem to be able to cope with such blinding light, even if I underexpose. This morning light from the left is gentler on the eyes and colorful foliage should be much easier to see.

For now we’ll have to imagine the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows. And if we’re real lucky a purple might appear here and there.

There are some amazing outcrops of stone up here, with cliff faces so high and sheer that rock climbers come here to climb. The one pictured was small compared to the one the rock climbers use, and it was as big as a 2 story building.  That’s a full sized white pine tree standing there; I’d guess 50-75 years old.

The rocks have lichens like this scattered rock posy (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) all over them. I was surprised to see the orange fruiting bodies (Apothecia) considering how dry it has been here. This is a small lichen that looks completely white or grayish unless you look closely.

I couldn’t come up here without stopping to say hello to my friends the toadskin lichens (Lasallia papulosa.) They’re beautiful, interesting little lichens and I like to visit them when I can but they don’t make it easy; the only place I’ve ever seen one is on top of a hill. They are a cousin of the rocktripe lichens and the two often grow side by side. I think of them as rock tripe lichens with warts. They fasten themselves to the stone in the same way, and you can see the navel at the top center of this example. The tiny black dots are their spore producing structures (Apothecia) which they seem to have year round.

I don’t want to be the one who says life is beautiful. I want to be the one who feels it. ~Marty Rubin

Thanks for stopping in.

 

Read Full Post »

A Frosty Morning

Last Saturday morning I had errands to run but I also wanted to see if the weathermen had been correct with their frost predictions.

It was clear that we had had a good frost, but I wasn’t sure if it had been a freeze. A surface has to have a temperature colder than the surrounding air before water vapor will freeze on it to become frost. Frosts can happen when the air temperature is above freezing and are usually brief-happening just before sunrise and then melting quickly. A freeze happens over a longer period of time, and the temperature falls lower. The temperature might be 36 degrees for a frost and 28 degrees for a freeze. Below 28 degrees is considered a hard freeze.

Everything was coated in white. 

At the town landfill I spotted this colorful pile of crushed glass shining in the sun.

My second stop was the Ashuelot River, where nearly every plant had a coating of frost. This is a Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii.) this small, prickly shrub was introduced as an ornamental from Japan in 1875. Of course, it has escaped cultivation and now grows in forests all over New England. I like the way the frost formed a rim of needles around almost every leaf. 

These goldenrod blossoms looked like they had been snowed on. 

The asters looked the same-covered in ice needles. 

But when the sun touched a plant the frost disappeared quickly. 

What I didn’t expect to see was the native witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) blooming, because the flower’s ribbon like petals are temperature sensitive and only unfurl when it is warm enough. On this morning it was about 30 degrees but the sun was shining brightly and the witch hazels were getting plenty of it, so it must have warmed them up enough to bloom. Since it is an understory shrub the leaves of the trees above it also kept it from getting frost covered. 

I probably won’t be seeing any more Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora) until next spring. 

The ripples under the bark of the muscle wood (Carpinus caroliniana) tree are what give it its common name. It is also called American hornbeam, blue beech, and ironwood. It’s in the hazelnut family and it will take a lot more than frost to hurt this tree. My last stop was at a local lake and the ripples in the sand echoed those of the muscle wood. This shot, taken through about 6 inches of water, shows how brightly the sun shone and how still and clear the water was. It was warming up quickly and that meant I could head into the cooler, shaded woods, but that’s another story for another day.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn

Stand, shadowless like Silence, listening

To Silence ~ Thomas Hood

Reminder: It is turkey and black bear hunting season here in New Hampshire. Be safe in the woods.

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »

Is The Growing Season Getting Longer?

Since I am both a gardener and allergy sufferer I was of two minds when I saw white patches on neighborhood roofs yesterday morning;  I don’t like to see our gardening season end, but I’m all for a good freeze wiping out the annual ragweed infestation. By the afternoon however, when I saw bumblebees buzzing among the still blooming impatiens, I knew the frost I had seen earlier was light and scattered at best. 

Gardeners and allergy sufferers who might have been thinking that the gardening and pollen seasons here in Southwestern New Hampshire seemed to be getting longer weren’t imagining it. Our average first frost date is September 15th and the chance of a hard freeze on October 7th stands at about 50%, but here it is October 8th and we haven’t even had a real frost yet. Temperatures this weekend are supposed to soar into the 80s and remain above average for most of the week. So what is going on?

Twenty researchers at the National Academy of Sciences, documenting pollen data and daily temperatures in Canada and the U.S. over the last 20 years, found an increase in the number of frost free days and a shift in the timing of fall frosts, which means that spring now begins earlier and fall later. In some areas the span between the last frost in spring and first frost in fall has lengthened by as many as 27 days.

A report whose lead authors include Lewis Ziska of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Christine Rogers of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst says “There was a highly significant correlation between latitude and increase in the length (days) of the ragweed pollen season over the period from 1995 to 2009.” Since ragweed is an annual plant that is killed by frost, this means that annual vegetables and flowers also have a longer growing season.

The aerobiology committee for the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology says:  “As we’re seeing warmer and warmer weather, fall gets warmer and longer and the effect is that there’s no frost to kill the ragweed and end the allergy season. Rising temperatures have produced a similar lengthening of the spring allergy season, which is now starting about a month earlier than it did decades ago.”

I can’t speak for allergy sufferers, but gardeners have known for a long time now that something was afoot-we didn’t really need scientists and politicians telling us that. But what is there to do about it? As I see it, all we can do is plant our gardens earlier and then take our allergy pills and harvest later, but a more long term solution might include voting for those who don’t deny the reality that surrounds them.

Photo of the Earth and Sun is by NASA

Read Full Post »

No Frost Yet

I had written something else for today but I since frost is the hot topic I thought I’d talk about the weather instead. I know-everybody talks about it but nobody ever does anything about it!

All the signs were pointing to frost yesterday afternoon but we dodged a bullet here in suburbia. It’s mighty nippy out there right now at 6:00 am, (about 38°F) but I’m not seeing any frost. Since it’s always coldest (and darkest) just before dawn, I think the danger has passed. Yesterday we had falling temperatures through the afternoon with clear skies and no wind last night, and these are usually sure signs that frost is on the way, so I’m surprised. 

Clouds act like a blanket and keep temperatures from falling too fast, but clear skies allow radiational cooling, which just means that all the warmth escapes into the atmosphere. Wind stirs up the atmosphere and keeps cold air from settling and staying in one spot, but on windless nights the cold can pool in low spots and cause leaf surface temperatures to cool rapidly. When the surface of a leaf reaches 32° F water vapor can form ice crystals on it, and that is frost. Because cold air sinks, a thermometer 5 feet off the ground might read 40° F, while at ground level where plants are it can be freezing. This is when people ask how we can have frost when it’s so warm.

 A fact I find interesting is that cold air flows downhill much the same as water does. I once had clients who lived at the top of a hill and their first frost was always a week or two later than the unlucky folks at the bottom of the hill. I was also able to plant their vegetable garden much earlier in the spring because their higher elevation warmed earlier.

Speaking of vegetables, I hope everyone has their tarps or sheets ready. There was light snow on top of Cannon Mountain up in the White Mountains yesterday morning at an elevation of 4,080 feet, so it won’t be long before we see frost.

Read Full Post »

Frost is probable in September

From now until May, all bets are off!

I have already posted most of this in the September gardening guide on nhgardensolutions.com, but in case any of you missed it:

Though you may hear that it’s anywhere from the 11th to the 21st, tomorrow, September 15th is the traditional first frost date for this area and weathermen are calling for nighttime temps in the 30s by the end of this week. Though usually light and scattered at this time of the month, frost should be expected from now on. On average, in Keene, NH on September 15th the chance of frost is about 50%. By September 27th it is closer to 90%.

Gardeners should watch forecasts carefully and be prepared to cover their tender vegetables like tomatoes, annuals, and other tender plants with tarps, sheets, or even newspaper at short notice.  Hardy crops like those in the cabbage family, any root crops, most perennials, and garden mums will be fine uncovered.

If you are overwhelmed by green tomatoes and don’t want to cover them, pull the plants up by the roots, (or dig them) knock off all loose soil, tie some stout twine around the base of the stem and hang them upside down in a shed, garage or basement. Any bits of soil remaining on the roots will help keep them moist. Most of the tomatoes will still ripen in spite of such harsh treatment. This should be done before a frost kills the foliage, and they should be in a place where temps won’t fall below 32 degrees F after they are hung.

Over the previous two weeks house plants should have been slowly acclimated to growing indoors once again by being brought in over night. If not they should be brought in now or at least put undercover on a porch or in a garage.  Tropical houseplants will suffer any time the nighttime temperatures fall much below 55 degrees F and even a light frost can finish them off, so they shouldn’t be outside at night. Leaving the windows open during the day after they are brought in will also help them adjust.

Those wishing to do more planting or transplanting of spring bulbs, perennials, shrubs and trees shouldn’t despair because there is still plenty of time for new plantings to establish good root systems before the soil freezes solid in December.  It may seem like we’ve had a lot of rain lately, but new plantings should still be watered deeply at least once each week and more often if it hasn’t rained. Plants can lose a lot of moisture in winter and soil moisture amounts can be very deceiving at this time of year, so they should be monitored to make sure that soil is good and moist when it finally freezes. Don’t rush to put those hoses away!

I found the photo of frost rimmed leaves on a website that offered free nature screen savers .

Read Full Post »