Birds, Bark Beetles, and Beauty

I was on my way to see if spring beauties were in bloom when I spotted this large limb lying on the ground. I see lots of bark beetle damage on fallen limbs but about 99% of it is on white pine limbs. This one was different because it is an elm limb. The “galleries” bark beetles create have a signature much like a fingerprint, and the ones on this limb looked like those made by the European elm bark beetle. An adult female created the longer tunnel that runs parallel to the grain and then deposited eggs in smaller tunnels perpendicular to the main tunnel. When the eggs hatched the beetle grubs chewed their way across the grain before finally emerging as adults through holes they made in the outer bark, and then flying off to find another tree. What is left is lots of damage to the cambium layer just under the bark, which is the living, growing part of the tree.

The beetle calligraphy went on and on all down the branch, and it spelled death by Dutch elm disease. I’ve never seen galleries cover an entire large limb like this before but I find many things in the woods that are as beautiful in death as they are were in life, and this is one of those. I wondered what the men who will come to clear this away will think about it. Will it be just another day’s work or will they lose themselves in wonder for just a few moments and say “Wow, would you look at that.” That’s how nature hooks you; with just a few moments of wonder.

I left the calligraphy and headed toward where the spring beauties grow but I was stopped again by the neon yellow buds of a bitternut hickory, which I didn’t know grew in this place. These trees are relatively rare here and I think this is only the third one I’ve seen. I don’t even know what the leaves look like but I’ll have a good chance to get a look at them later on. Right now, the new leaves at the terminal point of the branch look like tiny hands. I could see that the new growth was quite fuzzy and that there were no bud scales, which means the buds are naked. I could also see that new lateral buds grew over large, sucker like leaf scars. These scars show where the previous year’s leaves attached to the stem, and they are usually quite large on hickories. They show where corky tissue started healing and scarring over, thereby “turning off” photosynthesizing. No more chlorophyll means each leaf turns bright yellow on hickories before falling.

And here was beauty. I first found these beautiful little spring beauties blooming on April 9^th this year, slightly later than last year when they bloomed on April 2^nd. Another name for spring beauties is “good morning spring” and it fits them well. Once I was sure I had some useable photos I got to my feet and walked back to the car. I thought of the young police officer who found me lying here taking photos last year. He had gotten out of his car, walked through ankle deep dry oak leaves, and stood right beside me, but I never heard a thing until he asked “Sir, is everything all right?” I didn’t think he’d understand my being lost in a flower so I just assured him that all was fine. He seemed relieved to discover that he didn’t have to call the coroner or the men in white coats. I showed him the first spring beauty he had ever seen and as I left on this day I remembered the kindness and concern in his expression. I hope he’ll also remember that day and come back to see the spring beauties.

Sometimes I get home and look at the photos I’ve taken and am astounded by what I see. Not because the photos are anything special, but because the subject is so very beautiful. Here is this little chickweed, a truly hated weed by most accounts, looking as beautiful to me as any other flower I’ve seen. I couldn’t see much of this “out there” because this tiny thing is about half the diameter of a pencil eraser. I saw the white petals but no real detail. To finally see what was little more than a white smudge turn into this beautiful thing almost seems miraculous. If you have good eyes take care of them so you can see all the amazing beauty that surrounds us, live and in person.

I was checking on some box elders to see how close they were to bud break when I looked up and saw this mockingbird watching me. I walked closer for a better shot; sure it would fly away…

But it didn’t fly away; it just turned its head. I don’t “do” birds so I didn’t know it was a mockingbird at the time but Google lens filled me in later. Then I wished I had heard it sing. We had one in the yard most of one summer and that bird’s songs were so beautiful I’ve never forgotten it. I had to laugh when I read that mockingbirds can mimic squeaky gate hinges, sirens, and barking dogs. The real surprise came when further reading revealed that even acoustical analysis couldn’t tell the difference between the mockingbird and the original sound. Life is just one amazing thing after another, day after day after day.

Since the days were slowly getting warmer I thought I’d check to see if the sedges were blooming yet, and I started with a plantain leaved sedge that I know of that grows in an old stone wall. This plant is a lime lover so it tells me that there is limestone in the area. When I found it years ago it was just a single plant but now it has spread to a dozen or more. I admired its crepe papery leaves. It wasn’t flowering yet but all the spiky growths coming from it meant that it was ready to.

The spiky growths are the sedge’s four to six inch flower stalks, which are called culms. The male butter yellow flowers appear at the top where the dark bud scales are seen, and the wispy white female flowers will appear lower down. You can just see the white threads of a female flower getting started on the left side of the stalk about half way down in this shot.

Just so you don’t think summer has arrived because you see so much sunshine in these photos, I’m putting this photo in to cool things off. I was at the river one morning trying to get some good wave photos but I didn’t have any gloves with me and my hands were freezing cold, so I gave it up. What this shot doesn’t show is the stiff wind that was blowing directly upstream. At about 20 degrees it was a bit cool that day but then later in the week Thursday was 88 degrees and Friday was 91 degrees, so the temperature was all over the place. Not good weather for the plants.

A group of painted turtles were sunning themselves on a log and that put an end to the question of whether or not they had appeared yet. They made me wonder how cold the water was and I also wondered what they were all looking at. Maybe they were just trying to cool off. I’ve heard they cool themselves by exposing more skin to the air. It must have been hot in those shells in the warm sunlight we had that day. Of course, they could have always taken a swim to cool off but then they’d lose their place on the log. Pride of place might be important to a turtle.

A song sparrow sang like it wanted all of existence to hear its beautiful songs. It actually lifted itself almost off its branch each time it started singing. I recently read on NPR that these little birds sing 6-12 different songs, but they don’t always sing them in the same order. They can “shuffle” their playlist and start with a different song each time. Not only does this ability seem more attractive to a potential mate, it also seems to show that they can keep the entire half hour sequence of 6-12 songs in memory, and a half hour of memory is apparently a lot for a bird. There are lots of theories about why birds sing but I’ve always believed a large part of it was simply the joy of living. Maybe all things feel this joy and maybe all things sing, in their own way.

The willows are almost in full bloom now, and they’re beautiful against the blue of the sky.

I haven’t seen any female flowers yet but they can’t be far behind because the males are shedding pollen, as can be seen in this shot. There’s nothing quite like allergy season.

Glory of the snow have come up. There wasn’t any snow but they were still glorious. It looked as if each flower had a tiny light burning in its center. Just look at how they glowed.

Last week I found a magnolia with a single bud showing color and I thought that it might be pushing it a bit and would probably get frost bitten if it opened, but this week it had several flowers open. It obviously decided to roll the dice and go for broke.

These flowers are beautiful; white inside and pink outside, so I do hope they don’t get burned by frost. I’ve seen this tree before with every single petal on it the same color as a brown paper bag, its beauty all wasted. Since we’d had several nights in the mid-20s before I got back to it, I saw that it didn’t mind living on the edge and flirting with disaster.

As I was leaving the pond where I was taking photos of willows a great blue heron glided over me and looked as if it was about to land. I turned and walked back and sure enough, there it was. But it wasn’t playing statue as they so often do; this bird was hungry.

It quickly caught a fish, which after a bit of squeezing it flipped into the air. Then into its big mouth went the fish, head first. It was good at catching fish; from the time it landed until the time it caught one couldn’t have been more than 2 or 3 minutes. Though it looks like a black blob the fish is a yellow perch, and I found that out by going into Lightroom and over exposing it enough to see the dark stripes on its body. I’m not sure why it looks so dark when everything else looks normal, but perch is a very common native fish here in rivers, lakes and ponds and they’re easy to catch. It’s often the first fish caught by youngsters learning how to fish.

The bird swallowed its catch with a gulp and turned to face me with a big grin, as if to say “That’s how it’s done, son.” What a show off.

Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields…Watch now, how I start the day in happiness, in kindness.
~Mary Oliver

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Early April Flowers

Since violets don’t usually bloom here until the end of April, I was surprised to find them so early. I was doubly surprised to see that they were white wood violets (Viola sororia albiflora) because I see maybe one white one for every hundred blue / purple ones. I’ve read that the American Violet Society says that the white ones are just white versions of the common blue violet (Viola sororia.) A kind of natural hybrid, I suppose. They’re prettier in my opinion, with their dark guide lines that help insects find the prize.

That ancient plant the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) has bloomed. They are members of the dogwood family but you would never know it by the tiny flowers, each one about an eighth of an inch across. The entire flower cluster seen here is barely an inch across. Though I’ve never seen it they say that each flower will become a small red fruit.

It is the fruit of the Cornelian cherry that is the reason it has been used since ancient times. Man has had a relationship with this now little-known shrub for about 7000 years, and we know that from finding remains of meals from the early Neolithic period that included cornelian cherry fruit. They usually bloom at about the same time Forsythias do, but they are seen in the form of small trees rather than the shrubby form of Forsythias. From a distance it might be easy to mistake one for a dwarf crab apple when it wasn’t in bloom.

So far, I’ve seen just two magnolia blossoms, this one and a white one that had been nipped by frost. So far it seems like spring is moving very slowly because of the still cool nights. Days are running in the high 50s F. lately and showery to partly sunny for the most part.

Hyacinths have come along now, and they always seem to me to mark the midway point of the flowering bulb season. They’re very beautiful and one of the most fragrant of all the spring flowering bulbs.

All of the sudden there are daffodils everywhere. In the last flower post I did I showed some that had been hurt by frost but these were untouched. According to the National Trust in the U.K. the daffodil’s drooping flowers are said to recall the story of Narcissus bending over to catch his image in a pool of water.

The local college has some very early tulips. They stay small but after a while will have yellow along with the red in the blossoms, if I remember correctly.

Striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica.) is a scilla size flower that is one of my very favorite spring flowering bulbs. I tried to find them years ago and had a hard time of it but I just looked again and they now can be easily found through most spring bulb catalogs. Still, even though they’re easy to find now I never see them. I know of only this one place to find them and they are very old, coming up in the lawn of a local park. Though the catalogs will tell you that the blue stripes are found only on the inside of the blossom they actually go through each petal and show on the outside as well. I think they’re very beautiful.

Johnny jump ups (Viola) are blooming by the hundreds now. I chose this as my favorite on this day.

The cool weather is being good to the coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) plants. I see more and more blossoms but not a single seed head yet.

This dandelion blossom was just waking up, and I put it here so those of you who don’t know could see the difference between it and the coltsfoot blossom in the previous photo. In truth the only thing they have in common is the color. Size, shape and growth habit are different but the easiest way to tell the two apart is to look at the flower’s stem. Coltsfoot stems are scaly and dandelion stems are smooth.  

Bleeding hearts (Dicentra spectabilis) are growing about an inch per day when the sun shines, and if you look closely, you can see tiny flower buds all ready to get started. These are the tall, old fashioned bleeding hearts that die back in the heat of summer.

Raindrops were being cradled lovingly by the new growth.

Skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) are looking more cabbage like each day, but you wouldn’t want to eat them.

I’ve been looking for some moss spore capsules to try out my new camera on and apple moss (Bartramia pomiformis) obliged with its tiny round capsules, fresh out for spring. Reproduction actually begins in the late fall for this moss and immature spore capsules (sporophytes) appear by late winter. When the warmer rains of spring arrive the straight, toothpick like sporophytes swell at their tips and form tiny green globes, so their appearance is a good sign of spring.

Each spore capsule is about 1/16 of an inch in diameter. Tiny, but after a few failed tries the new camera was able to do the job. The pointed part seen is the calyptra, which is a hood or cap which covers the lid-like operculum. The calyptra falls off first as time passes and the spores ripen, and finally when the spores are mature the operculum comes off and the spores are released to the wind.

Here is an apple moss spore capsule against a U.S. nickel. I tried to find the height of the date text on a nickel but had no luck. It is safe to say that it’s very small.

Though the male catkins are looking a bit tired the female flowers of American Hazelnuts (Corylus americana) are still going strong.

Hobblebush buds (Viburnum lantanoides) are opening but you’d never know it unless you had watched the hard mass that was there in winter slowly soften and begin to expand. Still, even at this stage it isn’t much to look at, and it might be hard to believe that in about a month it will be one of our most beautiful native wildflowers.

It is indeed hard to believe that the unshapen mass in the previous photo will become something as beautiful as this, but come mid May the woods will be full of wonderful blossoms like this one. Hobblebush flower heads are large-often 6 or more inches across, and are made up of small, fertile flowers in the center and larger, sterile flowers around the outer edge. All are pure white. I can’t think of a better reason to walk through the woods in spring.

I haven’t seen any of the feathery female flowers of the elms (Ulmus americana) yet but I’ve seen plenty of the male flowers like those shown here. Male flowers have 7 to 9 stamens with dark reddish anthers. Each male flower is about 1/8 of an inch across and dangles at the end of a long flower stalk (Pedicel.)

Male (staminate) box elder flowers (Acer negundo) are just showing in the recently opened buds. Once they begin to show like this things happen fast, so I’ll have to watch them.

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) buds are showing color, so it won’t be too long before I can smell their wonderful fragrance again. It was my grandmother’s favorite wildflower because of that scent. Several Native American tribes considered the plant so valuable it was said to have divine origins, and I think she must have thought so too.

Trout lilies are up but so far leaves are all I’ve seen. The leaves always appear before the small yellow, lily like blooms. It won’t be long.

I was lying on my stomach at the edge of the woods trying to get this photo, just a few yards from one of the busiest highways in Keene, when I heard “Sir, is everything all right?” I looked up and found a young Keene Police officer looking down at me. I assured him everything was fine, thanked him for his concern, showed him the first spring beauty blossoms he had ever seen, and off he went. I thought afterwards that he had closed his car door, walked down an embankment full of crunchy oak leaves and stood right there beside me, and I hadn’t heard a thing. This, I thought, is a good example of becoming lost in a flower. I could imagine by his look of genuine concern what must have been going through that young officer’s mind. It can’t be every day that a policeman sees someone lying motionless in the weeds beside the road. At least, I hope not.

If you are lost inside the beauties of nature, do not try to be found. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

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More Spring Flowers

More flowers are blooming daily now and it’s getting a little harder to keep up with them. Here are just a few that I’ve seen.

This striped sqill (Puschkinia scilloides, variety libanotica) was a big hit the last time I showed it here so I thought I’d give readers a little more information about where to find it. First, it is a spring flowering bulb that is planted in the fall, so it shouldn’t be ordered until mid to late summer.  The only place I have been able to find it for sale is Brent and Becky’s Bulbs’ spring / fall catalog, which you can view online by clicking here. Our friends in the U.K. can order them through Kevock Gardens by clicking here. If you order these bulbs you should remember to specify the variety, which is Libanotica. I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t able to find a European supplier, but I’d bet that there is at least one out there.

Daffodils have just started blooming. These were the first ones I’ve seen.

 

This is the first magnolia blossom I’ve seen. It was very fragrant, with a scent that reminded me of cabbage roses or peonies. The temperature might drop as low as 25 degrees tonight-I hope the petals don’t get nipped by frost.

In the forest bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is all ready to bloom. This plant gets its common name from the way its root “bleeds” red sap when it is cut. Native Americans used the colored sap for decorating baskets, as war paint, and even as an insect repellant. Each plant has a single leaf and flower growing on separate stems.

False hellebore (Veratrum viride) has just come up over the last 3 or 4 days. Though it was used by Native Americans in various ways including medicinally, this plant is one of the most toxic n the New England forest. Unfortunately at this time of year it is also one of the most interesting, and big enough to make it hard to miss. Most people who eat it mistake it for ramps and eat the root, which is its most potent part.

 

I like the patterns made by the deep pleats in the leaves of false hellebore. Its small green flowers are interesting, but not very pretty. I went looking for them last year and never found them, so I’ll have to try again.

Yellow trout lily (Erythronium americanum ) isn’t blooming yet but I they are very close. Each pair of leaves sends up one stalk which bears a single yellow, nodding flower. This plant is also called dogtooth violet because of the underground bulbous root that looks like a tooth.  The name trout lily comes from the way the mottled leaves resemble a trout’s body.

 

Spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) grow among the trout lilies. Each flower consists of 5 white, pink striped petals, 2 green sepals, 5 pink tipped stamens, and a single tripartite pistil, which means that it splits into 3 parts. Two days ago I didn’t see a single spring beauty blossom and now the woods are full of them.

It seems early for trilliums here but these plants were growing out of a crack in a boulder, so maybe the sun-warmed stone gave them an extra boost.  These were very near a popular trail so I’m hoping nobody picks them before I get back to see the flowers.

These leaves might not look like much but they cause quite a stir each spring, even causing entire towns to close down to have festivals in this plant’s honor. These are ramps (Allium tricoccum,) also called ramson, wild leeks, wood leeks, wild garlic, and spring onions. Ramps are native and considered a vegetable. Note the difference between these plants and false hellebore, above. Ramps are said to have a strong, garlic like odor and a strong onion taste. I can only vouch for the odor-they do smell a bit like garlic, but more like onion to me. Native Americans called the plant chicagou and, since it grew there in abundance, the city of Chicago was named after it.

The white, swollen lower stem of ramps is what all the fuss is about. Ramps remind me of the fiddleheads from ferns that are available for just a short time in spring. Both plants are considered great delicacies and are served in upscale restaurants at astronomical prices.  I haven’t seen any fiddleheads yet and was surprised at the size of these plants.

This dandelion (Taraxacum officinale) blossom is barely bigger than an acorn cap so it won’t win any prizes, but it’s the first one I’ve seen this spring. It seems like they are late this year.

We may have as many as nine different willow species here in New Hampshire and they all bloom at different times. This, one of the earliest, just started blooming. I believe the photo is of the male flower of Salix discolor, known as pussy or glaucous willow, but it could also be Goat Willow (Salix caprea.) Willows are one of my favorite spring flowers.

 I hope you can stand another look at skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus.) I wanted to show people in places it doesn’t grow what the leaf looked like so they could see how much they really do resemble cabbage leaves at this stage. The leaves are the stinkiest part of the plant, so it’s doubtful that anyone could ever eat one by mistake. I had a woman stop while I was taking this picture and tell me that she was glad that these plants weren’t growing outside her bedroom window.

Blossom by blossom the spring begins~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

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