Posts Tagged ‘New Oak Leaves’
Yale Forest in the Spring
Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged American Beech Bud Break, Black Birch, Canon SX40 HS, Evergreen Christmas Fern, Gold Thread, Insect Wing Trap, Juniper Haircap Moss Spore Capsules, Keene, Mallard, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New Oak Leaves, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Partridge Berry, Spring, Spring Forest, Spring Plants, Starflower Bud, Swanzey New Hampshire, Trailer Hitch, Violet, Wood Horsetail, Yale Forest on May 23, 2020| 18 Comments »
Hiking a New Trail
Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Ashuelot River, Bird's Nest, Canon SX40 HS, Cheshire Fairgrounds, Cheshire Railroad, Garlic Mustard, Golden Birch, Horsetails, Keene, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New Oak Leaves, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Red Trillium, Sessile Leaved Bellwort, Skunk Cabbage, Skunk Currant, Spring, Spring Plants, Staghorn Sumac, Stone Arch Bridge, Swanzey New Hampshire, Violets, Whistle Post, Wild Sarsaparilla on May 16, 2020| 27 Comments »
Last Sunday I needed to see something new, so I decided on the rail trail that heads south out of Keene to Swanzey, Troy, Fitzwilliam, and eventually the Massachusetts border. I’ve done the northern and southern legs of the trail but never this middle section. I started my hike on this amazing stone arch bridge. Built of granite quarried a half mile away from the site, it was dry laid with no mortar in 1847 and soars 38 feet above the river. The bridge is 27 feet wide with a span of 68 feet, and its arch has a radius of 34 feet. Evidence of the plug and feather method used to split the stones is still visible on the faces of many of the stones. It’s hard to imagine how it was ever built without the use of modern tools and equipment.
The bridge is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, which means it earned a little money for upkeep. Part of the upkeep involved upgrading the drainage and laying a new bed of pea stone where the trains would have run. It seems to be still as solid as the day it was built.
Here is a postcard view of the bridge, probably from the early 1900s. The view and landscape is very different today of course. These postcards were usually actual photos colored by hand but I think this one was a drawing.
The white building in the postcard view is no longer there. This view from the top of the bridge looks west towards Vermont. It was a partly cloudy, very windy day and the gusts felt like they might blow me right off the bridge so I didn’t hang around up here for very long. We’ve had at least some wind nearly every day for over a month now.
I saw some very symmetrical horsetails. This is one plant you do not want in your garden because once you have them you’ll never be rid of them. When I had my gardening business I tried just about everything I could think of including covering them with black plastic for a full year. They loved it and grew on as if nothing had happened.
I also saw some very red new leaves on the staghorn sumacs (Rhus typhina.)
The trail is wide and dry for the most part because the drainage channels that the railroad built 150 years ago are still working.
Skunk currants (Ribes glandulosum) grew in patches here and there along the trail. I’ve read that the plant gets its common name from the odor given off by its ripe dark red berries, which doesn’t sound too appealing but they are said to be very tasty. If you can get past the smell, I assume. This is a very hairy plant; even its fruit has hairs. The Native Ojibwa people used the root of skunk currant to ease back pain but it is not a favorite of foresters or timber harvesters because it carries white pine blister rust, which can kill pine trees.
Skunk currant flowers are quite small at about 1/4 inch across. They are saucer shaped with 5 petals and 5 purple stamens.
Unfortunately I also saw a lot of garlic mustard out here. Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is an invasive plant once used as an edible pot herb. This plant forms large colonies and chokes out natives by poisoning the soil with compounds called glucosinolates that leach into the soil and kill off many soil fungi that native species depend on to survive. It grows from 1-4 feet tall and has a strong but pleasant garlic / onion odor when the leaves are crushed. It spreads quickly and prefers growing in shaded forests. It isn’t uncommon to find areas where no growing thing can be seen on the forest floor but this plant. It is considered one of the worst invasive species because of its ability to spread rapidly and is found in all but 14 U.S. states, including Alaska and large parts of Canada. Maybe if we all decided to eat it, it would prove to be less of a problem. According to what I’ve read, the young spring plants are delicious.
The sunshine seemed to always be just up around the next bend. Until I got to the next bend, that is. By then it had disappeared.
This is a typical New Hampshire mixed forest with mostly pine, hemlock, cherry, beech, oak, maple and white and gray birch. Also this single beautiful golden birch.
I saw a small bird’s nest in a cherry sapling. It was about 5-6 inches across so a small bird must have made it.
Violets bloomed all along the trail. I thought this might be an early blue violet but since my color finding software sees mostly purple, I’ll just call it a violet. It had long above ground rhizomes that I’ve never seen on a violet.
Sessile leaved bellworts (Uvularia sessilifolia) grew along the drainage channels in groups. I’ve seen them carpet large areas of forest floor so I had the feeling that they must have just gotten started here. They’re in the lily of the valley family, which can also form large colonies.
This signal post looked new, and that’s because someone had painted it. I’m not sure why anyone would but there it was, looking like it had just been installed yesterday.
I was very surprised to see skunk cabbages (Symplocarpus foetidus) growing on a wet hillside. I’ve read that eating the leaves can cause burning and inflammation but something had eaten many of the leaves. Often animals don’t have the same reaction to plants that we do. Birds even eat poison ivy berries.
This is a photo of the fruit of a skunk cabbage which is a rare sight, even for those of us who look for such things.
I saw just two red trilliums (Trillium erectum) out here. I also saw Jack in the pulpit, starflowers, and lots of fern fiddleheads. The trilliums and our other spring ephemerals will probably be done by the time this post is read. Leaves on the trees and warmer weather finish their short bloom periods quickly.
I saw lots of wild sarsaparilla plants (Aralia nudicaulis) just unfurling their leaves. At this stage many people confuse wild sarsaparilla with poison ivy, which comes up at the same time and has glossy green leaves. One way to tell the two apart is by the stem. Poison ivy usually has an older, woody stem while sarsaparilla has a fresh, tender stem. The roots of this plant were once used to make root beer but the drink that was called sarsaparilla contained no part of the plant. It was made from birch oil and sassafras root.
There were already flower buds on some sarsaparilla plants. They’ll bloom in late May, with ping pong ball size flowerheads made up of tiny individual flowers.
I thought these new oak leaves were beautiful, both in color and shape. They were soft like velvet, and there were flower buds as well.
A broken whistle post told me that a road was coming up. What looks like an M is really an upside down W. The W stands for whistle and the post is called a whistle post, because it marks the spot where the locomotive engineer was to blow the train’s whistle. When there is a crossing very nearby, where the railbed crosses a road, the whistle would have alerted wagon or auto drivers that a train was coming. Some whistle posts were marked – – o -, which meant “two longs and a short” on the whistle.
There was indeed a road; route 12 south out of Keene parallels the rail trail and I had walked to the Cheshire Fairgrounds in Swanzey. Only 2.2 miles by car from where I started, so I’d guess it was a two mile walk.
And that meant that it was two miles back, but on such a sweet spring day with birds singing in the trees two miles didn’t seem like anything, really. It was one of those days that gets inside you and lets you see how wonderful this life really is, and there was no hurry to get anywhere or to do anything. I felt doubly blessed.
Some journeys take you farther from where you come from, but closer to where you belong. ~Ron Franscell
Thanks for stopping in. I hope everyone is able to find some outdoor time.
Things I’ve Seen
Posted in Nature, Things I've Seen, tagged Ashuelot River, Beaver Dam, Beaver Damage, Beech Bud Break, Beech Leaves, Bitternut Hickory Bud, Canon SX40 HS, Comma Butterfly, False Hellebore, Gray Squirrel, Greater Celandine, Insect Eggs, Interrupted Fern Fiddlehead, Keene, Lady Fern Fiddlehead, Maple Bud Break, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New maple Leaves, New Oak Leaves, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, River Wave, Spring, Swanzey New Hampshire, White Baneberry Shoot, Wireworm on May 9, 2020| 24 Comments »
I’m seeing more butterflies these days. This one, which I think is a comma (Polygonia c-album,) landed on the path just in front of me one day. They winter over in leaf litter and on the undersides of logs so it would make sense that they would be one of the first to appear. I’ve also seen a few small blue butterflies, maybe half the size of this one, but I’ve yet to get one of them inside the camera. I hope I can show them to you because they’re a beautiful shade of blue.
I was weeding around some lilacs one day and all of the sudden this was there. From what I’ve seen online it appears to be a wireworm, which is a click beetle grub. Click beetles get their name from the way they click when they try to turn over if they land on their backs. There are about 60 species of click beetles but only five are plant pests. The grubs feed on plant roots but from what I’ve read they don’t do any real damage. In this photo the grubs head is the darker area in the upper left. Not seen are three pairs of legs, just behind the head.
I had to turn a picnic table over one day to clean it prior to painting it, and when I did I found this egg mass from an unknown insect.
A closer look showed that the tiny eggs looked like hen’s eggs, and most had already hatched. There must have been over a hundred of them and they were so small I could hardly tell what they were without looking at the camera screen replay.
There are still plenty of acorns left from last fall’s crop so squirrels are fat and happy. They had a mild winter, too.
All the rain we’ve had has made for some high water in streams and ponds, but one of the streams that run through the property where I work was abnormally high, so we walked its banks to see if anything was damming it up.
It was easy to see what the problem was; beavers, but what you see here is quite rare because this is an eastern hemlock tree and beavers don’t usually eat them. I’ve never seen them eat all the bark off a tree and its roots like this either, of any species.
We kept following the stream until we came to their dam and then we started taking it apart. This photo shows the dam after we had dismantled about half of it. To do the whole dam took all afternoon and it was hard work. The beavers had woven in logs and branches as big as my leg and getting them out of the dam took quite a lot of effort but it had to be done. Dammed up streams flood fields, forests and even roads. In this case this stream flows under a road, so you can’t just ignore the fact that it isn’t flowing. Depending on the size of the beaver family they can build a dam in a day or two, so we expect we’ll be visiting this spot again before long. They don’t give up easily.
All the rain water made taking wave photos at the Ashuelot River a lot of fun. If you didn’t mind the roar, that is.
There seems to be a lot of water in this post but I can’t help that; I just take photos of whatever nature shows me. At one time I thought something like this was an oil slick or some other form of pollution but several helpful readers have commented over the years that it can also be caused naturally, by decomposing vegetation and other natural phenomena.
It’s always very colorful.
White baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) is an extremely toxic plant but I love the movement that its new spring shoots have. Every time I see them I think how nice it would be to sit beside them and draw them, but I never seem to find the time. They make me think of someone contemplating a handful of pearls, which of course are actually its flower buds. Soon it will have a club shaped head of small white flowers. Native Americans brewed a tea from the roots of this plant and used it medicinally to treat pain and other ailments, but no part of it should ever be ingested. In late summer it will have bright white berries with a single black dot that give the plant its common name of doll’s eyes. The berries especially are very toxic.
Hairy fiddleheads like these belong to either cinnamon fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) or interrupted fern (Osmundastrum claytoniana.) Since I know these ferns I know they’re interrupted ferns but normally I wouldn’t be able to tell unless I saw the spore bearing fronds. Both are beautiful right up until fall, when they turn pumpkin orange.
Lady fern fiddleheads (Athyrium filix-femina) are also up. Lady fern is the only fern I know of with brown / black scales on its stalk. This fern likes to grow in moist, loamy areas along streams and rivers. They don’t like windy places, so if you find a shaded dell where a grove of lady fern grows it’s safe to assume that it doesn’t ever get very windy there.
Greater celandine (Chelidonium majus) leaves stay green under the snow all winter and they also shed water. The plant is native to Europe and Asia but early settlers brought it with them to use medicinally, and it has found its way into all but 19 states in the U.S. Soon 4 petaled yellow flowers will appear. When I was a boy we stained our hands with the plant’s yellow sap and called it mustard. Thankfully we never ate it, because all parts of it are toxic.
This strange color belonged to the buds of a bitternut hickory tree (Carya cordiformis,) which is on the rare side here. It is said that the nuts from this tree are so bitter that even squirrels won’t eat them.
Here is the same bud in full sun, looking electric yellow. The wood is very flexible and Native Americans used it to make bows. Early settlers used the oil from the nuts in their oil lamps and to help with rheumatism.
I’ve never seen false hellebore (Veratrum viride) plants grow like they are this year. This spot usually has a few but this year there are hundreds of them.
False hellebore is a pretty thing but it is also one of the most toxic plants in the forest and if you forage for edible plants, you should know it well. In 2010 five campers in Alaska nearly died from eating its roots. Thanks to being airlifted by helicopter to a hospital they survived. There is another account of an entire family being poisoned by cooking and eating the leaves.
It’s amazing what a little sunlight can do for a maple bud…
…and new maple leaves as well.
Tiny new oak leaves were an almost impossible shade of green.
If there is just one thing I hope this posts shows it’s how beauty is all around us, and not just in the form of flowers. I love seeing flowers as much as the next person but when I see something like this beech bud unfurling I have to just stand and admire it for a while. And then I take far too many photos of it, trying to let you see what I saw. Beech bud break in spring is one of nature’s small miracles that will happen each day for the next couple of weeks. I hope everyone gets to witness it.
Art, music, the beauty of a leaf or flower; all can invite us to step outside of ourselves; to lose ourselves and walk a higher path, at least for a time. Art and music may be hard to access at the moment, but nature is always right there. Indescribable, endless beauty and deep, immense joy. These are what nature offers to those willing to receive them, and all it costs is a little time.
But you can’t dawdle too long because once those buds break it’s all about making leaves and it can happen quite fast. If you can’t get into the woods why not take a look at the trees in your own yard or neighborhood? You could be very surprised by what you find.
I meant to do my work today, but a brown bird sang in the apple tree, and a butterfly flitted across the field, and all the leaves were calling. ~Richard le Gallienn
Thanks for stopping in. I’m hoping all of you moms out there have a very happy Mother’s Day tomorrow, and I hope you’ll have beautiful weather on your day.
Another Rail Trail Hike
Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Wildflowers, tagged Ashuelot New Hampshire, Ashuelot Paper Mills, Ashuelot River, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Cherry Blossoms, Cheshire Rail Trails, Cypress Spurge, Early Spring Plants, Forget Me Nots, Green Mountain Railroad, Hobblebush Flowers, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New Oak Leaves, NH, Northern Whit Violet, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Red Oak, Spring, Trailing Arbutus, White Forget Me Nots on May 15, 2019| 27 Comments »
Last Saturday was a beautiful spring day so I decided to walk a rail trail in Winchester, which is south of Keene. This particular section of trail has an abundance of wildflowers and native flowering shrubs all along it and I wanted to see what was blooming. Out and back the hike I usually do through here is 6 miles but on this day I cheated and only did about three miles. It was enough to see plenty of flowers.
The trail follows along the southern stretch of the Ashuelot River after it leaves Keene. In this area the river is at its widest. Not too far from where this photo was taken, in Hinsdale New Hampshire it meets up with the Connecticut River, and from there it will flow south to the Atlantic.
The railroad engineers had to hack their way through some serious ledges out here but nothing too deep, so plenty of light gets in. I think that must be why so many flowers grow here.
One of the first flowers I saw were these very small white violets and I wondered if they could be northern white violets (Viola pallens.) From what I’ve read it’s an early white violet that prefers damp woodlands, and it is certainly damp here.
The flowers sat atop long stems but they were half the size of the violets that I usually see. In fact they were so small that I couldn’t even tell they were violets from five feet away. They’re pretty little things and there were lots of them.
I think every shade of green I’ve ever seen was represented here on this day. The forest was amazingly beautiful and I felt like I was being bathed in chlorophyll.
Some trees like this cherry couldn’t have fit another blossom on its limbs.
Oaks were in the business of flowering too, but this one’s buds hadn’t opened yet. I think this was a northern red oak (Quercus rubra.) We have other oak species but red oaks are the most common in this part of the state.
I thought that these tiny oak leaves, just opened and velvety soft, were very beautiful.
I saw the first Cypress spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias) plants of the year and I was surprised to see them blooming. This plant is also called cemetery weed because it’s often found in them. It was introduced from Europe in the mid-1800s as an ornamental. Of course, it immediately escaped the gardens of the day and is now seen in just about any vacant lot or other area with poor, dry soil. This plant forms explosive seed pods that can fling its seeds several feet.
All parts of spurge plants contain a toxic milky white sap which may cause a rash when the sap on the skin is exposed to sunlight. In fact the sap is considered carcinogenic if handled enough. Medicinally the sap is used externally on warts or internally as a purgative, but large doses can kill. Foraging on the plant has proven deadly to livestock. Cypress spurge has very unusual flowers. There were tiny insects flying all over this group of plants but I couldn’t tell what they were.
I was hoping the hobblebushes would be blooming and wow, were they ever. Winter must have been kind to these native shrubs because I’ve never seen them bloom as heavily as they are this year. Hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) is one of our most beautiful native shrubs in my opinion, and they have just started blooming. The large white, flat flower heads are very noticeable as they bloom on hillsides along our roads.
Botanically speaking the flower head is called a corymb, which is a flat topped disc shaped flower cluster. Hobblebush flower heads are made up of small fertile flowers in the center and large infertile flowers around the perimeter. The infertile flowers are there to attract insects to the much less showy fertile ones and it’s a strategy that must work well because I see plenty of berries in the fall. They start out green and go to bright red before ripening to a deep purple color. The outer infertile flowers are about three quarters of an inch across and a single fertile flower could hide behind a pea. All flowers in a hobblebush flower head have 5 petals, whether fertile or infertile.
These beautiful shrubs bloom all along this trail and when they’re finished native azaleas will take their place. The azaleas will be followed by native mountain laurels, so this place will be blooming for quite some time.
For the first time I decided to get off the rail trail and follow this old road, which leads to the site of a ruined factory which stood out here years ago. Undergrowth and trees grew close to the road, making it narrow and hard to see what was going on very far up ahead. I talked to a man a few years ago who told me that a black bear had followed him and his wife when they were hiking out here once, so this closed in place made me want to be super aware of every sound. I heard lots of beautiful birdsong and what sounded like a fawn calling for its mother, but I didn’t hear anything that sounded like a bear. I’d guess this place must be a bear’s dream come true though, because all these flowers will eventually become fruit. Rose-hips, hobblebush berries, blueberries, apples, crab apples, grapes, raspberries and blackberries are just a small sampling of what could be on a bear’s menu here. When all that fruit ripens it could literally eat its way over six miles of trail.
Rubble piles are all that’s left of the factory, which I believe was a paper mill. I think someone told me that it burned down quite a few years ago. There were a lot of bricks but little wood, so it seems plausible.
You can’t see it because of all of the growth on the far side of the river but there is a road behind the trees. At one time a bridge crossed the river here and led directly to this factory from that road. This pier in the middle of the river is all that’s left of the bridge, which was probably taken by a flood.
! was surprised to see trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) blooming out here because I’ve been here several times and have never noticed it, but a colony like this one has obviously been here for years. It grew almost vertically on moss covered stone.
This will probably be the last time I see these flowers this year. The brown spots on them is a good sign that they’re just about done.
There was a Boston and Maine railroad siding near my grandmother’s house and there were always boxcars parked there so I used to climb all over them when I was a boy. These tired old boxcars are slowly sinking into the ground they sit on but I like to come and see them. They bring back some happy memories.
These cars were originally from the Green Mountain Railroad, which still runs as a scenic railway through parts of Vermont. Why they were put out here I don’t know, but I’m sure they must have once served the paper mills in the area.
I saw quite a few forget-me-nots near the old boxcars. They weren’t really a surprise because I’ve seen them along this rail trail before. Only Myosotis scorpioides, native to Europe and Asia, is called the true forget me not. The plant was introduced into North America, most likely by early European settlers, and now grows in 40 of the lower 48 states. In some states it is considered a noxious weed though I can’t understand why. I hardly ever see it.
The big surprise on this day was seeing white forget-me-nots. I’ve never seen them before and didn’t know they came in white. They were pretty enough but I think I like the blue ones more.
The woods were ringed with a color so soft, so subtle that it could scarcely be said to be a color at all. It was more the idea of a color – as if the trees were dreaming green dreams or thinking green thoughts. ~Susanna Clarke
Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone is seeing plenty of spring wonders!
Things I’ve Seen
Posted in Nature, Things I've Seen, tagged Beech Bud Break, Beech Buds, Box Elder Flowers, Canon SX40 HS, Chipmunk, Early Spring Plants, Evergreen Christmas Fern, False Morel Fungus, Green Ash Tree, Keene, Ladybug, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New maple Leaves, New Oak Leaves, NH, Panasonic Lumix DMC-527, Sedges, Spotted Salamander, Spring, Tent Caterpillar, White Pine on May 11, 2016| 26 Comments »
Evergreen Christmas ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides) have just come up and this is one of the spring fiddleheads that I must have never paid attention to, because I was surprised to see it covered with silver hairs. I think its spiral shape is beautiful but it’s also common; spirals are used over and over in nature. Prehistoric people carved spirals into the walls of their caves and we have tiny spirals in our ears. Snail shells grow in spirals, millipedes curl into spirals, sunflower florets, grape tendrils and even entire galaxies are spirals. And no one knows why.
Spotted salamanders are burrowing creatures that spend much of their lives in burrows or under leaf litter, coming out only to eat and mate. I happened to be doing some digging at work and uncovered the salamander in the above photo. They like rainy weather in the spring, so they must be very pleased with this month so far. I left this one alone and it burrowed right back into the soil after a few moments.
It’s nice to see the chipmunks again. They’re very curious little creatures and will often follow along as you walk wooded trails. They live in stone walls when they can and when they hear you they’ll often come out of their burrows to see what you’re doing. That’s just what this one was doing when I took his photo. He sat there until I started walking and then hopped from rock to rock following me.
Fungi have started to make an appearance and the first I’ve seen is this brain fungus (Gyromitra esculenta) which is a false morel that often grows very near true morels. This is a problem because false morels can be toxic and true morels are not, so if you are a mushroom forager you’ll want to know each one well. An easy way to tell them apart is by the way the cap attaches to the stem. The brain fungus cap attaches only at the top of the stem, and a morel’s cap attaches to the stem over its full length. Cutting one in half lengthwise will tell the story. The brain fungus gets its common name from its reddish brown cap that resembles a brain.
White pines (Pinus strobus) seem to be doing well this year, showing plenty of new growth. The buds seen in this photo are called candles and will grow on to become new branches and needles. White pines are very common native trees here in New Hampshire. There are records of early colonial settlements being entirely wiped out by scurvy before Native Americans showed the settlers how to make tea from white pine needles. They are one of the richest sources of vitamin C found in nature. Native Americans used all parts of the tree and were said to value pines above any other plant.
Flowers usually appear just as leaf buds break but before the leaves fully develop on green ash trees (Fraxinus pennsylvanica.) I think the ones shown here are male, because they are typically shorter and less showy than the female flowers. They have a tubular calyx and 2 stamens and are often purple tipped as those in the photo. Ash trees are sensitive to pollution, so seeing them is a good sign of clean air.
I’ve already shown photos of female box elder (Acer negundo) flowers recently but I turned a corner and there they were, hanging at eye level. I didn’t mind because I think the sticky lime green pistils are beautiful. One of the biggest trees I’ve ever seen was a box elder growing on the banks of the Connecticut River and that was odd because they’re considered a relatively short lived tree.
As I become more familiar with sedges I’m seeing more and more of them. I found the one in the above photo near a local pond. The male flowers are the creamy yellow parts at the top and the female flowers are the wispy white filaments along the bottom. The female flowers bloom first to catch pollen from other plants and then a few days later the male flowers start to shed pollen so the wind can take it to another plant. This ensures cross pollination and guards against self-fertilization. Sedges look like course tufts of grass but the flower stalks are triangular instead of round, and this leads to the old saying “sedges have edges.” They are gaining popularity as garden plants and some even use them in place of a lawn. I haven’t been able to identify this one yet.
Tent caterpillars were just leaving their nest when I happened along. The moth that laid the eggs on this tree was a species of moth in the family Lasiocampidae, which lays its eggs almost always on plants in the rose family, like cherry and apple trees. The eggs hatch just as the new buds appear on the tree and the caterpillars feed three times each day, just before dawn, at midafternoon, and in the evening after sunset. Cherry leaves contain toxic compounds that the caterpillars absorb so most birds won’t touch them, and that’s the reason for their great success. They can defoliate a tree and this will weaken it, because without leaves it can’t make the food it needs. Most trees will recover, but they won’t look too good while they do. People often confuse tent caterpillars with fall webworms, but fall webworms don’t cause any real damage because the trees they appear on have usually stopped photosynthesizing and no longer needs the leaves that the caterpillars eat.
I noticed that this ladybug on a beech bud had a large black spot on the rear of its shell that looked like damage. I tried to find information on ladybug diseases but didn’t have much luck.
Here’s another look at the damaged ladybug. Not only did its shell have a black spot, it looked like it had been dented as well. Ladybugs eat many insects that can damage plants so I hope there aren’t any diseases spreading among them. Maybe a bird caused the damage. Whatever it was didn’t seem to hinder its movement; it crawled along the beech bud as if the wind were at its back. When it reached the very tip it turned and went back just as quickly, and I wondered if what was damaged was its sense of direction.
The reason I found the ladybug was because I was in the woods looking for one of the most beautiful signs of spring. Angel wings are what newly unfurled beech leaves (Fagus grandifolia) remind me of, with their fringe of soft silvery, downy hairs. Each spring I check the buds once or twice a week to see if the typically arrow straight buds are curling, because that’s the sign that they’ll open before long. After they’ve started to curl they’ll also start to swell up, and that’s when I start checking them every other day. This beauty happens quickly and is easily missed.
Beech (and other tree) bud curling is caused by the cells on the sunny side of the bud growing faster than those on the shaded side. This creates a tension that curls the bud and eventually causes the bud scales to pull apart so the leaves can emerge. At the bud’s location on the tree branch an entire year’s new leaves and stems will often grow from a single bud, as can be seen in the above photo. It’s incredible to think that all of that growth came from a single bud in just a matter of days.
Oak leaves are usually one of the last to appear, so I was surprised to see these new leaves. The weather is fooling us all I think, but it’s a great opportunity to see what in nature is triggered by warmth and what is triggered by day length.
The woods are full of beautiful things that you’ve never seen and won’t ever imagine and I hope you’ll have a chance to go and see them for yourself. As I’ve said here before; I can’t tell you what you’ll see but I can guarantee that you’ll never regret seeing it.
Some of the best advice you will ever hear will come from the forest. ~Dacha Avelin
Thanks for coming by.