Greening Up

The intense green is what pulled me into this scene. It was easy to see of course, but not so easy to show here. When I found it I took photos and then got home and saw that I had blown it. What was in the photos is not what I had seen, so I went back and stared and wondered and walked back and forth and looked at it from different angles and waited for clouds and finally, what you see here best approximates what I saw. Actually, what I felt is a much better term to use than what I saw, but feeling is much harder to convey in a photo. Like a painter painting what they love, you photograph what you love, because if you love it someone else will too. What I felt in this scene was simply spring; the melting and greening of spring, and I love spring. If you’re a lover of the season it gets into you and becomes part of you, and you feel as much as you see.

Not too far from where I took the above photo is the skunk cabbage swamp that I visit each spring. Skunk cabbages will tolerate growing in standing water for only a short time so what happens here is essentially why they grow here. The stream that flows through the area usually floods and covers the ground in an inch or two of water in winter but then subsides in spring. The water had just dried up before I took this photo, so if I had walked much further than where I stood I would have found myself ankle deep in the black mud that these plants like so much.

This is the only time of year that you could say a skunk cabbage leaf actually resembled cabbage, but you still have to use your imagination to see it. One bite would quickly convince you that it wasn’t  cabbage, however; the plant contains oxalic acid crystals which can cause serious mouth pain. Native Americans learned how to harvest the plants at the right stage of growth and then cook them in a way that broke down the harmful compounds, so for that reason you could say that they are edible, but only if you know how and when to prepare and cook them. Before long these leaves will turn black and liquify, and disappear back into the soil they grew from. By August there will be few signs that they were ever here.

I found myself under some big sugar maples in what the old timers would have called a sugar bush, and I thought about how many of these trees would have been tapped once upon a time. The wooden sap buckets hanging from the trees would have been poured into a big vessel of some sort; maybe a hollowed out log or an iron kettle, that would have been on a sled pulled by oxen or horses. Then it would have been taken back to the sugar shack and the sap poured or ladled into another big kettle to be boiled, and all of this had to be done each day. It was a huge amount of work but the Europeans who got here first lived big. They gleaned what they could from the surrounding landscape in the way of nuts, greens, berries and maple sap, and grew, raised or made the rest. Sometimes I find myself wishing I had been there with them but more often than not I’m glad that I wasn’t.

I went under the sugar maples looking for plants of course, because many of the ones you see on this blog at this time of year grow there. One of them is false hellebore. They grow in low areas in the forest because those areas stay wet longer. These plants also made me think of the early settlers, because they are among the most toxic found in a New England forest and eating them can cause an agonizing death. But how would someone who had just stepped off a boat know that? Those luscious, big green leaves appearing at this barren time of year would have looked very appetizing, and I wonder how many died. Did Native Americans warn the new comers? I’d like to think so, but then that would mean that Natives must have died from eating them. That’s the thing with poisonous plants; every time you find one it leads you right back to the question, who went first? Someone at some point had to be willing to sacrifice themselves, otherwise we wouldn’t know they were poisonous.

Growing just a few yards away in the same forest but up on a rise where the bulbous roots can dry quickly in sandy soil are ramps, which are not only edible but are considered such a delicacy that “ramp festivals” are held at this time of year all over the world. These wild leeks look like scallions and taste somewhere between onions and garlic. Their white blossoms appear in June but I never remember to go back to see them. This place is very different in June. All that sunshine becomes dense shade and that’s why these plants appear so early. This is also where many of our spring ephemeral flowers bloom.

Fern fiddleheads are suddenly popping up just about everywhere. Here under the sugar maples I found lady ferns, easily identifiable by their brown scales covering the stalk and the shallow groove in the stalk which doesn’t show in this shot but is on the left. This is one of the earliest ferns to appear in spring. The fiddleheads grow very fast and can change from being rolled tight and compact as you see here to stretched out full length in just a day or two. Lady ferns begin to turn yellow and then turn white quite early in the fall, and they and sensitive ferns are usually the only white ferns that we see. They like to grow in places protected from the wind in rich, loamy soil that stays moist.

Sensitive ferns were just stretching through the reddish wooly covering that encases the fiddlehead as it starts life. Like lady ferns, these ferns indicate moist, loamy soil. They like to grow near water and since there is a small pond near here this place is perfect for them. They don’t mind growing in places that flood regularly and they will often be the only things found growing in such places. They are very sensitive to frost, and that’s where their name comes from. You have to watch out for confusing these toxic ferns with edible ostrich fern fiddleheads. Their stalks are smooth and just about the same color as ostrich ferns but ostrich ferns have thicker stalks with quite a deep groove in them. Ostrich fern fiddleheads also appear later than sensitive ferns.

Now we’ll go from a mostly hardwood forest to a mixed forest. Hemlock, white pine, oak, maple, birch, hickory, poplar, and a few other species grow here. This type of forest is the most common in this area and the soil is on the acidic side, which is what a lot of the plants growing here prefer. As long as the evergreen canopy isn’t too thick mixed forests can get quite a lot of sunshine in the spring and a surprising number of spring ephemeral flowers can be found here.

Trailing arbutus was my grandmother’s favorite flower but she was never able to show it to me. It had once been collected to near extinction for nosegays because of its amazing scent so it was near impossible to find by the time I came along. Its scientific name is Epigaea repens which means “trailing on the earth” and that’s exactly what it does, but since it has woody stems (and leaves) that persist through winter it is considered a shrub. It likes the acidic soil found in our mixed forests and has made quite a comeback. I see it now just about everywhere I go, and it always makes reminds me of how my grandmother and I once searched for it. Native Americans believed the plant had divine origins and used it medicinally to treat a variety of ailments.

From one of the smallest wildflowers to one of our biggest, and from one with a heavenly scent to one called stinking Benjamin. There isn’t much point in getting down on your knees to smell this one because it’s a fair bet that you won’t like what you smell. It is a scent that attracts flies if that tells you anything, but red trilliums are very worth seeking out in spring. I’ve found places where 30 or 40 plants grew and blossomed together and it was quite a sight. The flowers are about as big as your palm, minus the fingers. They are considered a spring ephemeral, so once the trees leaf out it won’t be long before they disappear.

Goldthread is another spring ephemeral which gets is name from its bright yellow roots but I don’t care much about its roots; I care more about its busy little, aspirin size flowers. It’s an interesting flower, with its tiny styles that curve like long necked birds and the even smaller white tipped stamens. The big surprise is the flower’s petals, which are not the white, petal like sepals as one would think. No, this flower’s petals are the tiny golden yellow club-like parts that look like tiny spoons. They are much like spoons; the ends are cup shaped and hold nectar; an offering to any low flying insect that happens along. They are very small with hair like stems and move in the slightest breeze, so I often have to take twenty or more shots to show what I want. This time I had to try twice over two afternoons to get what you see here.

Goldthread is also called “canker root” because Native Americans showed settlers how to chew its roots to cure mouth sores. For this reason, it was another over collected plant that was almost impossible to find when I was a boy. Shakers were paying 37 cents per pound for dried roots in 1785 and people dug up all they could find. At one time more goldthread was sold in Boston than any other plant. Goldthread has shiny, quarter size, three lobed evergreen leaves that make it easy to find at any time of year. The flower will often stand 4 or 5 inches above its leaf so getting a shot with both the flower and leaf in focus can be difficult. I have almost done it though, as this shot from 10 years ago shows.

Every time I see the first sessile leaved bellwort of spring I feel the urge to draw it. The usually single, buttery yellow flowers hang from curved stems and this makes for a delicate looking, very pretty plant in my opinion. It always looks like something I’d see in a painting. The word sessile describes how one part of a plant joins another and on this plant the leaves are sessile on the stem, meaning they lie flat against the stem with no stalk. The leaves are also elliptic, which means they are wider in the middle and taper at each end.  Each flower has 6 separate petals that curve out at the tip, giving them a shape which is similar to that of the leaf. Sessile leaved bellwort is in the lily of the valley family and is also called wild oats. They almost always grow in large colonies.

Bluets, also called Quaker ladies because their shape is said to be similar to that of the hats once worn regularly by women of the Quaker faith, like to come up in lawns and grassy areas, and they don’t mind being mowed. For that reason, I’ve been encouraging two or three tiny plants, hoping they’ll grow and bloom along with the white and purple violets, wild strawberries, and dandelions in my lawn. Bluets can be deep blue, white, or anything in between. They also grow in forest clearings, I’ve discovered.

Blackberries have leafed out. I doubt I’ll see any berries though. Some thing or someone always gets them before I do but it wasn’t always that way; when I was a boy I could eat blackberries and raspberries all the way from Keene to Swanzey, all along the railroad tracks.

A staghorn sumac bud looked more animal than vegetable.

New leaves and buds can be very beautiful and I love how you can often easily see things in the buds that it isn’t so easy to see in the fully opened leaves, like the beautiful veining on this Norway maple for instance. And how the bud scales, there to protect the bud in winter, open to free the bud and let it feel the warmth of the sun.

The sunshine “activates” or stimulates the new leaves, and they often have a huge amount of movement in them as they twist and spiral and unfurl themselves from the bud, reminding me of how I will sometimes stretch after a nap. Just think; all of this came from a bud like that one in the previous photo. It happens slowly so you can’t see any movement, but you don’t need time lapse photography to see what has gone on, and what will go on. It’s easy enough to see it in your mind but be careful: it’s also easy to become absolutely fascinated by it. Once that happens its hard to pass a tree in spring without stopping. Is it any wonder it can take me half a day to move a mile? There’s just one amazing thing after another to see.

The soft, velvety leaves of red oak just breaking from the bud can be very beautiful as well, and they often come in red, orange, pink, and even pure white. They have that same beautiful twisting, stretching, spiral movement that we just saw in the Norway maple leaves. A tree full of breaking buds is never boring because there is infinite variety and endless movement. No two buds ever look identical or open in exactly the same way, even though they all grow from the same tree. I hope you’ll give yourself time to just stop now and then, and look and see how life is always unfolding; always changing. It’s really too beautiful to miss.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again. ~Henri Cartier-Bresson

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »

Mid April Flowers

On one of my daily walks I passed a house that had a single white crocus coming up in what was once apparently a flower bed. The wide open flower reminded me of a bloodroot flower (Sanguinaria canadensis) so even though I was sure it was too early, I went to where the bloodroots I know of grow and found a single flower there; the earliest I’ve ever seen one bloom. It grows in a group of maybe 25 plants but there wasn’t a sign of any of the others, just this single blossom. Since that day we’ve had some cold nights with frost, so I’m hoping I’ll get to see the others. This plant gets its common name from the bright red sap in its roots, which Native Americans used to decorate their horses with.

Cheery little bluets (Houstonia caerulea) have suddenly popped up in all the lawns. Another name for this plant is Quaker ladies, but I’ve always thought it should have been quaking ladies because all the flowers move in the slightest breeze. I took this photo on a windy day so I was surprised that it came out. What appear to be four petals is actually a single tubular blossom with four lobes.

All the rain we had last summer must have done the willows some good because they’re blooming like I’ve never seen them bloom this year.

Male (shown here) and female willow flowers grow on separate plants. Though willow trees are wind pollinated these willows rely on insects for pollination so there is plenty for the bees to do this year.

Here are the less showy female willow blossoms. If pollinated each flower will become a small yellow, banana shaped seed pod which when ripe will split open and release fluffy seeds to the wind.

Here is a shot of some willow seed pods that I took in 2012. They’re very easily found in summer, but trying to figure out what species of willow you are looking at is far from easy because they cross pollinate so readily. As Henry David Thoreau said “The more I study willows, the more I am confused.”

The pretty flower buds of white ash (Fraxinus americana) are out of the bud and I hope they didn’t get frost bitten. Sometimes these buds are as black as blackberries and other times they’re colored like these were. The Native American Wabanaki tribe made baskets from ash splints and some tribes believed the wood was poisonous to rattlesnakes and used canes made of ash to chase them away.

Male box elder flowers (Acer negundo) are now well out of the bud and their reddish-brown anthers at the ends of long filaments can now blow in the wind and release their pollen. Quick growing, weak box elders are considered “weed trees” that aren’t good for much, not even for fire wood, and many trees throughout the city have been cut down. I was having trouble this year finding a single female tree but I think I’ve finally found one. Male and female flowers bloom on separate trees and I think the lime green flowers on female trees are the prettiest so I always look for them. They begin to show just as the tree’s leaves unfurl. Native Americans must have thought highly of the box elder because the oldest wooden Native American flute ever found was made from its wood.

I haven’t seen any of the female red maple blossoms (Acer rubrum) becoming seeds yet but it’s bound to happen with all of the millions of flowers blossoming in just this small area.

Male red maples are certainly doing their part. Their anthers loaded with pollen, ready for the wind to do its job.

I wanted to see if the sedges were blooming yet so I went to see the plantain leaved sedge (Carex plantaginea,) which is one of the earliest to bloom. I was happy to see that it was full of flowers. I like its crepe paper like leaves, too. They are large for gathering light, so it does well in the shade under trees. The prominent midrib, two lateral veins, maroon bases, and puckered look of the leaves are all used as identifying features for plantain leaved sedge.

The buttery male sedge flowers are the easiest to see, situated as they are at the top of the four-inch stalk, which is called a culm. You can just see the wispy white flowers there behind it. They always appear lower down than the male flowers.

The female flowers are delicate looking, white sticky threads, just waiting the for wind to bring them pollen. They are sublime in their simplicity and they’re one of my favorite things to see in spring.

The deeply pleated, extremely toxic leaves of false hellebore (Veratrum viride) have appeared. They come along between the spring beauties and trout lilies, so are right on time. I was slightly dismayed the other night when a local television show did a piece about a local forager. As the announcer spoke about the forager collecting ramps, the camera showed false hellebore. That was a serious mistake I thought, because eating false hellebore can be deadly.

This photo that I took years ago shows that true ramps, which are a wild onion or leek, bear no resemblance to false hellebore. If you forage for wild plants you would be wise to know them both. The bulbs and leaves of ramps are very strongly flavored with a pungent odor, so a simple sniff would help tell the difference. In some places they are called “The king of stink.” Their usage has been recorded throughout history starting with the ancient Egyptians. They were an important food for Native Americans and later for white settlers as well.

Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra) isn’t native to this region as far as I know, but there is one at the local college and I just happened to see its buds breaking. Bud break is defined as “when the green tip of a leaf can be seen emerging from the bud,” but there is often far more to it than that. It’s usually a beautiful thing to witness, and is one of my favorite things about spring. Spring flowers are beautiful, but there is so much more to spring than just the flowers.

Purple trilliums (Trillium erectum) are up and each plant has a single bud that should open in the near future, though I’ve waited a week or more for it to happen in past years. They usually bloom in mid to late April and are one of our largest and most beautiful native wildflowers. This cluster of plants was growing on a boulder.

Even on a gloomy day Forsythia was bright and cheery. Although they’ve become kind of a ho-hum shrub spring would be very different without them in this area. They bloom on any street you care to travel. Some are in hedge form, some are neatly trimmed and others are left natural, as this one was. If you have an embankment that you’re sick of mowing or otherwise dealing with, just plant Forsythia on it. One of the most beautiful spring sights I’ve ever seen was a roadside embankment covered with Forsythias. They were allowed to grow as natural as they wanted, and it was like seeing a yellow waterfall.

Hellebores have come out, just after Easter rather than during Lent. This isn’t my favorite hellebore but since I don’t have any of my own beggars can’t be choosers. This one grows in a local park. I do hope to one day grow some here but there is work to be done first.

There are many varieties of daffodil and I don’t know their name, but these two were tiny; each flower couldn’t have been much over an inch across. I’ve seen the small yellow Tête-à-Tête daffodils and these were probably close to their size but bi-colored.

I know they’re called glory of the snow (Chionodoxa) but our snow is usually long gone before these flowers appear, so I’m not sure where their true glory lies. It doesn’t matter though, because they’re beautiful and I enjoy seeing them each year.

Chionodoxa come in many different colors and are in the asparagus family (Asparagaceae,) along with hyacinths, grape hyacinths, scilla and many other plants.

I stood on the shore of a sea of scilla and watched as the wind made waves, and it was beautiful.

Just after I took this shot of lilac buds a front moved in and the temperature dropped severely before the wind blew and hail fell. Normally I would say something like here is a taste of what’s to come, but now I’m not so sure. I hope they and all of the other flowers made it through the cold and I hope to be able to show them to you in the near future.

In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty. ~Christopher Morley

Thanks for coming by.

Read Full Post »

Things I’ve Seen

On Friday, April 16th nature decided to surprise us. This photo shows what I saw on my way to work that day. Parts of the state ended up with a foot of heavy wet snow but it was too warm for it to last..

…and in a day or two it was all gone.

It did get cold for a while but that didn’t slow things down for too long. Ferns like this lady fern  (Athyrium filix-femina) still showed off their stamina with their naked spring fiddleheads. Lady fern is the only fern I know of with brown / black scales on its stalk in the fiddlehead stage. 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.

Interrupted fern (Osmundastrum claytoniana) fiddleheads wore fur and huddled together to keep warm.

Red maple (Acer rubrum) seeds (samaras) are growing by the many millions. These are one of the smallest seeds in the maple family. It is estimated that a single tree 12 inches in diameter can produce nearly a million seeds, and if the tree is fertilized for 2 years seed production can increase by 10 times. It’s no wonder that red maple is getting a reputation for being a weed tree.

For a short time between when they appear and when they ripen and fall American elm (Ulmus americana) seeds have a white fringe. When they ripen they’ll become dry and papery and finally fall to the wind. I grew up on a street that had huge 200 year old elms on it and those trees put out seeds in the many millions. Elm seeds contain 45% protein and 7% fiber and in the great famine of 1812 they were used as food in Norway.

As I write this the large, infertile white blossoms of hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) have most likely fully formed, but when I last went to see them this is what they looked like; almost there. 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 a beautiful bright red before ripening to a deep purple color.

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) can be quite beautiful when it starts to unfurl its leaves in spring but Americans have no love affair with it because it is an invasive weed that is nearly impossible to eradicate once it becomes established. I’ve seen it killed back to the ground by frost and in less than 3 weeks it had grown right back. I’ve heard that the new spring shoots taste much like rhubarb. If we ate them maybe they wouldn’t be such a bother. Maybe in pies?

This mullein plant was one of the biggest I’ve seen; as big as a car tire. I loved the pattern the leaves made. Native Americans used tea made from its large, gray green furry leaves to treat asthma and other respiratory ailments. They also used the roots to treat coughs, and it is also said to be useful as a relaxant and sleep aid. The Cherokee tribe are said to have rubbed mullein leaves in their armpits to treat prickly rash and the Navaho tribe made an infusion of the leaves and rubbed it on the bodies of their hunters to give them strength. Clearly this plant has been used for many thousands of years. It is considered one of the “oldest herbs’ and recent research has shown that mullein does indeed have strong anti-inflammatory properties.

Wild Leeks (Allium tricoccum), also called ramps, are up. They look like scallions and taste somewhere between onions and garlic. They are considered a great delicacy and are a favorite spring vegetable in many parts of the world, but they’ve been over collected so harvesting has been banned in many parts of the U.S. and Canada. They’re slow growers from seed and a 10 percent harvest of a colony can take 10 years to grow back. They take 18 months to germinate from seed and 5 to 7 years to become mature enough to harvest. That’s why, when people write in and ask me where to find them, I can’t tell them. The two small colonies I’ve found have less than 300 plants combined.

This photo is from a few years ago when I foolishly pulled up a couple of ramps, not knowing how rare they were. It shows their resemblance to scallions though, and that’s what I wanted you to see. They are said to be strongly flavored with a pungent odor, but they’ve been prized by mankind since the ancient Egyptians ate them. Each spring there are ramp festivals all over the world and in some places they’re called the “King of stink.” The name ramp comes from the English word ramson, which is a common name of the European bear leek (Allium ursinum,) which is a cousin of the North American wild leek.

In one of the spots I go to find ramps I find false hellebore (Veratrum viride) growing right beside them. There is a lesson in that, and it is know your plants well if you’re going to eat them. Ramps are one of the most delicious wild plants and false hellebore one of the deadliest. As you can see from the photos they look nothing alike but people do still confuse them. As recently as 2019 a physics professor and his wife wanted some spring greens for breakfast at their cabin in Vermont. The greens they chose, instead of the ramps they thought they were picking, were actually false hellebore. They spent 2 weeks in the hospital and almost died. From 2014 to 2019 in Vermont 18 people were poisoned by false hellebore so again; know your plants. In this case it is simple: ramps smell like onions and false hellebore does not.

And then there is skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus,) which is also up at the same time as ramps and false hellebore. Though I haven’t heard of anyone mistaking skunk cabbage for ramps,. when the leaves of skunk cabbage just come up and start to unfurl I could imagine some thinking they were ramps. In any event skunk cabbage won’t kill a person but after smelling it I can picture it giving a person a good tummy ache.

There are is magic in the woods; beautiful things that many never see, and the glowing spring buds of the striped maples are one of them. Velvety soft and colored in pink and orange, they are one of the things I most look forward to seeing in spring.

But you have to be quick and pay close attention if you’re going to watch spring buds unfold, because it can happen quickly. This striped maple bud was all ready to break.

I saw a porcupine in a tree where I work. This porcupine, if it is the same one, had a baby with her last year. This year she doesn’t look well but since you could fit what I know about porcupines in a thimble and have room to spare, I can’t be sure. I do know that three or four of us thought she looked as if something was wrong.

I felt as if I was being watched one day when I was taking photos of violets and turned to find a very suspicious robin wondering just what it was I was up to. I said hello and it hopped even closer. It looked very well fed and I wondered if it was hopping in the grass because it was too heavy to get off the ground. Of course I didn’t ask. Instead I stood and walked across the lawn and when I turned to look again I saw that it was still watching me. Probably making sure I wasn’t making off with any of its worms.

I don’t see many wooly bear caterpillars in spring but here it was. Folklore says that the wider the orangey brown band on a wooly bear caterpillar is, the milder the winter will be. We did indeed have a mild winter but I doubt the wooly bear cared either way because wooly bears produce their own antifreeze and can freeze solid. Once the temperature rises into the 40s F in spring they thaw out and begin feeding on dandelion and other early spring greens. Eventually they spin a cocoon and emerge as a beautiful tiger moth. From that point on it has only two weeks to live. Since this one was on a step I’m guessing that it was looking for a place to make a cocoon.

The new shoots of Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) are up and leafing out. Usually even plants this small will have tiny flower buds on them but I didn’t see any on this one. Each year the above ground stem leaves a scar, or “seal” on the underground stem, which is called a rhizome. Counting these scars will reveal the age of the plant but of course you have to dig it up to do that and I never have.

I finally found the female flowers of sweet gale (Myrica gale.) They’re bushy little things that remind me of female alder catkins. Sweet gale is also called bog rosemary and likes to grow on the banks of acidic lakes, bogs and streams. Touching the foliage releases a sweet, pleasant scent from its resinous leaves which have been used for centuries as a natural insect repellent.

These are the male catkins of sweet gale. They’re much larger than the female catkins and much easier to spot.

If there is anything that holds more promise than new spring leaves I’ve never experienced it.

Bud break is defined as “when the green tip of a leaf can be seen emerging from the bud.” It’s happening right now to a lot of trees like this sugar maple. I love the veining on sugar maple leaves just before they unfurl.

I complained in an earlier post how, though maple leaves often come out of the bud colored red, all I was seeing this year were green. Of course as soon as I say something like that nature throws me a curve ball and on this day all I saw were young red leaves. Actually my color finding software calls them salmon pink and orange.

All of the snow in that first photo ended up like this; spring runoff. That means of course that I get to enjoy the moisture in its two forms; first when it clothes every branch and twig and second when it becomes a beautiful waterfall. This is one of my favorite spring scenes. I call this the “disappearing waterfall” because it comes and goes depending on the weather. It was in fine form on this day but it could be gone completely the next time I go to see it.

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.

Read Full Post »

Late April Flowers

I finally, after 6 or 7 attempts, caught bloodroot plants (Sanguinaria canadensis) in full bloom. Like other spring ephemeral flowers bloodroot isn’t with us long and in fact a few of these flowers had already lost petals, but luckily colonies in different places bloom at different times and in that way their bloom time can be extended. They’re blooming just a little early this year.

Bloodroot petals have very fine, almost invisible veins in them and if you don’t have your camera settings just right you won’t see them in your photos. When they’re in bright sunlight the veins disappear, so I shaded this flower with my body and boosted the ISO settings on the camera so I could catch them. It’s not an easy flower to do well but with practice and a little luck you can show it at its most beautiful.

Ornamental cherry trees are blooming and I’ve seen both white flowers and pink ones. These trees often blossom far too early and end up getting frost bitten, and I saw a few brown petals on this tree. Our native cherries will be along in May.

Ornamental cherries do have beautiful, if over anxious, flowers. They are one of our earliest blooming trees, usually coming along with the magnolias.

Bradford pear blossoms (Pyrus calleryana) have pretty plum colored anthers but that’s about all this tree has going for it. Originally from central Asia and the Middle East the tree was introduced by the USDA in  1966 as a near perfect ornamental urban landscape tree, loaded with pretty white blossoms in spring and shiny green leaves the rest of the time. Even Ladybird Johnson promoted it but problems quickly became evident; the tree has weak wood and loses branches regularly, and birds love the tiny pears it produces, which means that it is quite invasive. In the wild it forms nearly impenetrable thickets and out competes native trees. And the pretty flowers? Their scent has been compared to everything from rotting fish to an open trash bin, so whatever you do don’t plant a Bradford pear. I smelled this one before I saw it so you might say I followed my nose right to it.

Insects don’t seem to mind the smell.

Pulmonaria (Pulmonaria officinalis) is an old fashioned but pretty evergreen garden plant that originally hails from Europe and Asia. The silver mottled leaves were once thought to resemble a diseased lung and so its common name became lungwort. People thought it would cure respiratory ailments like bronchitis and the leaves were and still are used medicinally in tinctures and infusions. The leaves and flowers are edible, and if you’ve ever had vermouth you’ve had a splash of pulmonaria because it is one of the ingredients. The plant does well in shade and has flowers of blue, pink, white, purple and red.

Vinca (Vinca minor) is now approaching full bloom. Though this plant isn’t a native it might as well be because it is much loved. In fact I’ve never heard anyone complain about it. Neighbors have been passing it to neighbors for hundreds of years, and I find it growing out in the middle of nowhere quite regularly.

What looks like a 5 petaled flower on a vinca plant is actually one tubular flower with 5 lobes, as this photo shows. Vinca contains the alkaloid vincamine, which is used by the pharmaceutical industry as a cerebral stimulant. It has been used to treat dementia caused by low blood flow to the brain. It’s origin is probably Europe and one of its common names is “Flower of death” because of the way it was once planted on the graves of infants. Too bad that such a pretty flower has to have such a morbid connection but in truth many flowers are associated with death. I once worked for a lady who refused to grow gladioli because they were so commonly used at funerals.

I love the color of this magnolia bud. I believe the variety name is “Jane.” If so its flowers will be tulip shaped.

Sometimes lilac buds look like they’ve been frosted with sugar. It’ll be so nice to smell those flowers again.

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) has just come into bloom and these are the first blossoms I’ve seen. These small but fragrant flowers were once over collected and nearly obliterated but I know of several large colonies so they seem to be making a comeback. People need to understand that the plants are closely associated with fungi in the soil and unless the fungi are present these plants will not live, so digging them up to put in gardens is a waste of time. Not only that but it robs the rest of us of the pleasure of seeing them.

The inside of a trailing arbutus blossom is very hairy and also extremely fragrant.

I found lots of viola plants (Viola tricolor) under a tree one day, all blooming their hearts out. Viola blossoms are about half the size of a pansy blossom but every bit as colorful and the plants usually have more flowers than a pansy plant will. Pansies were derived from violas so all pansies are in fact violas but plant breeders have worked on them for years and pansies come in a wider range of colors. I love them because they are very cold hardy and appear early in spring when not much else is in bloom.

I had to go back for another look at the female lime green box elder flowers (Acer negundo.) They were even more beautiful than they were last week. The female flowers appear along with the leaves, and you can see a new leaf or two here as well.

The male flowers of box elder are small and hang from long filaments, and aren’t very showy. Each reddish male flower has tan pollen-bearing stamens that are so small I can’t see them. The pollen is carried by the wind to female trees and once they’ve shed their pollen the male flowers dry up and drop from the tree. It’s common to see the ground covered with them under male trees.

The flowers of Norway maples (Acer platanoides) usually appear well after those of red maples but this year they’re blooming quite early. These trees are native to Europe and are considered an invasive species. White sap in the leaf stem (petiole) is one way to tell Norway maples from sugar maples, which have clear sap. Their brightly colored flower clusters appear before the leaves and this makes them very easy to see from a distance. Once you get to know them you realize that they are everywhere, because they were once used extensively as a landscape specimen. Norway maple is recognized as an invasive species in at least 20 states because it has escaped into the forests and is crowding out native sugar maples. It is against the law to sell or plant it in New Hampshire but the genie is out of the bottle and they are everywhere.

It’s tough to isolate a single Norway maple flower in such a large cluster but I always try, just so you can see what they look like. This is a male (staminate) flower. They have 8 stamens, five petals, five sepals, and a greenish central disc. They’re quite different from any other native maple.

Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are up and growing fast. These wild leeks look like scallions and taste somewhere between an onion and garlic. They are a favorite spring vegetable from Quebec to Tennessee, and ramp festivals are held in almost all states on the U.S. east coast and many other countries in the world. Unfortunately they are slow growers and a ten percent harvest of a colony can take ten years to grow back. They take up to 18 months to germinate from seed, and five to seven years to mature enough to harvest. That’s why ramp harvesting has been banned in many national and state parks and in parts of Canada, and why Ramp farming is now being promoted by the United States Department of Agriculture.

This photo, taken years ago, shows what the complete ramp looks like. I foolishly pulled these two plants before I knew they were being threatened. The bulbs and leaves are said to be very strongly flavored with a pungent odor. In some places they are called “The king of stink.” The name ramps comes from the English word ramson, which is a common name of the European bear leek (Allium ursinum), which is a cousin of the North American wild leek. Their usage has been recorded throughout history starting with the ancient Egyptians. They were an important food for Native Americans and later for white settlers as well.

I’m seeing a lot more white violets than purple this year and that’s a little odd because it’s usually the other way around. I’d love to see some yellow ones but they’re rare here.

Sessile leaved bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia) is also called wild oats and the plants have just come into bloom. They are a spring ephemeral and won’t last long but they do put on a show when they carpet a forest floor, despite their small size. They are a buttery yellow color which in my experience is always difficult to capture with a camera.

In this case the word sessile describes how the leaves lie flat against the stem with no stalk. The leaves are also elliptic and are wider in the middle than they are on either end. The spring shoots remind me of Solomon’s seal but the plant is actually in the lily of the valley family.

And just look what has finally come Into the light; one of our largest and most beautiful spring wildflowers. Purple or red trillium (Trillium erectum) is also called wake robin, because its bloom time once heralded the return of the robins. The flowers have no nectar and are thought to be pollinated by flies and beetles. Their petals have an unpleasant odor that is said to be similar to spoiled meat, and this entices the flies and beetles to land and pollinate them. As they age each petal will turn a deeper purple. Their stay is all too brief but when they fade they’ll be followed by nodding trilliums (Trillium cernuum) and then painted trilliums (Trillium undulatum,) both of which are also very beautiful.

Flowers have a mysterious and subtle influence upon the feelings, not unlike some strains of music.  They relax the tenseness of the mind. They dissolve its vigor. ~Henry Ward Beecher.

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone is doing well and will continue on that way.

Read Full Post »

Late April Flowers

I’m happy to be able to say that the bees have suddenly appeared. This one happens to be the very first bumblebee I’ve seen this season, but honeybees have also shown up in what seems like great numbers.

The honeybees were swarming all over the flowers of the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) and it really was like a swarm. I thought for sure I’d get stung but they let me be.

But I couldn’t get a photo of a honeybee for you no matter what I did, so you’ll have to take my word for it. They were also swarming all over these willow flowers. It’s so good to see them in such great numbers. I was getting a little anxious about not seeing any, even on the warmer days. I think there are many people out there who don’t understand all of what bees do for us. If they go we go, and not long after unless we all work the orchards and fields with little paintbrushes. I do know how to pollinate flowers by hand but it isn’t something I’d want to do from dawn to dusk every day.

We had some major winds one day last week and a huge old white pine fell on my favorite grove of coltsfoot plants (Tussilago farfara.) Many of them appear to have been wiped out but there are enough left to re-seed the area, so I expect this little grove of plants will grow in again eventually. They seem to love this spot.

Remember what I said in my last flower post about coltsfoot blossoms always having a flat flower head rather than a mounded one like a dandelion? Well, you can forget that. I’m not sure when I’ll learn that there are no absolutes in nature. “Never” and “always” simply don’t apply when you describe nature, and nature reminds me of that every single time I use either word on this blog. I also said coltsfoot has a scaly stem though and that remains true, as you can see in the above photo.

If this doesn’t say spring then nothing ever will. The bulb gardens are coming along nicely and tulips are about to bloom. The fragrance of those hyacinths was almost overwhelming.

I think it’s almost time to say goodbye to the reticulated iris (Iris reticulata) for another year. Their time with us is brief, but beautiful.

I hope we see crocuses for another week but it’s up into the 60s F. this week and that might wither them. Thanks to a helpful reader I found that there are indeed many “bee friendly” and non-bee friendly crocus varieties out there, so I hope everyone will do their homework when buying crocus bulbs. Often when plant breeders work on flowers they have to sacrifice one thing to get another, like breeding the scent out of a rose to get bigger blooms. In the case of crocuses many bred varieties no longer have viable pollen and nectar for the bees. This is important because there are so few flowers blooming at this time of year and the bees don’t have a lot of choice. I’ve never seen a single bee on this group of flowers. I thank Emily Scott for leading me to this information.

Scilla (Scilla siberica) has just come up in the last week. They’re very cheery little flowers and they’re my favorite color. The only complaint I’ve heard about these nonnative bulbs is that they can be invasive. They can get into lawns here sometimes but people don’t seem to mind. In fact that’s just what many people want them to do.

Ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) is doing well this year and I’m now seeing flowers by the hundreds. It’s a pretty little thing which can also be invasive, but nobody really seems to care.

I saw my first violet of the year. I think it’s a common blue violet because of the white hairs on the throat of the side petals. It came up among so many other plants I couldn’t even see its leaves.

I’ve been watching the trees and one of the things I’ve seen was a magnolia bud shrugging off its winter fur coat. I’d guess it will be a flower by next week at this time. Some magnolias are very fragrant and I’m looking forward to smelling them again.

Box elder buds (Acer negundo) had their dark, reddish brown male stamens just starting to show. These flowers are small and hang from long filaments. Each male flower has a tan colored, tiny stamen too small to be seen without magnification. Once the male flowers have opened the beautiful lime green female flowers will appear along with the leaves. Box elders have male and female flowers on separate trees, so I need to find a female.

Though both male and female flowers appear in the same cluster on American elms (Ulmus americana) I didn’t see any female flowers on this example, which was one of only a handful that I could reach. This is odd because the female flowers reach maturity first to prevent cross pollination, so they should be showing. It could be that I was too late to see them. Female flowers are white and wispy like feathers and male flowers have 7 to 9 stamens with reddish anthers. Each male flower is about 1/8 of an inch across and dangles at the end of a long flower stalk. (Pedicel)

The flowers of American elm appear before the leaves. This is a closer look at the male flowers, which are very small. They look like they’ve been dipped in sugar.

Some of the red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) buds have opened and flower buds have formed. The white flower heads (racemes) aren’t what I’d call stunning but the bright red berries on black stems that follow them certainly are. The only problem with them is how quickly the birds eat them. It happens so fast that I have rarely been able to get a photo of them. The roots, bark, flowers and leaves of the shrub are poisonous but some people do make syrup or wine from the berries. Native Americans steamed the sweetened berries and made a kind of jelly or jam from them. The berries are very seedy and are said to be bitter when unsweetened. I’ve always heard they were poisonous like the rest of the plant, so I won’t be eating or drinking them.

I checked on one of two places I know of where ramps (Allium tricoccum) grow last week and there was no sign of them. This week there they were, up and growing fast. These wild leeks look like scallions and taste somewhere between onions and garlic. They are considered a great delicacy and are a favorite spring vegetable in many parts of the world, but they’ve been over collected so harvesting has been banned in many parts of the U.S. and Canada. They’re slow growers from seed and a 10 percent harvest of a colony can take 10 years to grow back. They take 18 months to germinate from seed and 5 to 7 years to become mature enough to harvest. That’s why, when people write in and ask me where to find them, I can’t tell them. The two small colonies I’ve found have less than 300 plants combined.

This photo is from a few years ago when I foolishly pulled up a couple of ramps, not knowing how rare they were. It shows their resemblance to scallions though, and that’s what I wanted you to see. They are said to be strongly flavored with a pungent odor, but they’ve been prized by mankind since the ancient Egyptians ate them. Each spring there are ramp festivals all over the world and in some places they’re called the “King of stink.” The name ramp comes from the English word ramson, which is a common name of the European bear leek (Allium ursinum,) which is a cousin of the North American wild leek.

I saw the salmon pink shoots of Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) just out of the ground. This plant grows fast and will be flowering in no time.

I also saw some new shoots of red or purple trillium (Trillium erectum.) The leaves should be unfurled by the weekend and the large reddish flowers will quickly follow. It isn’t a flower you want to get on your knees to sniff though; another common name is stinking Benjamin, and it lives up to it. These early plants have to get it done before the leaves come out on the trees, so they live life in the fast lane. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them blooming next week.

I was looking for yellow trout lilies and was feeling disappointed because I saw many leaves but didn’t see a single bud, so I thought I’d wander a few yards over into the part of the woods where the spring beauties grow. Usually trout lilies bloom before spring beauties, so you could have knocked me over with a feather when I saw dozens of spring beauties blooming. I was so happy to see them; even though each blossom is only the size of an aspirin they’re very beautiful things.

Imagine the one thing in all the world that you want more than anything else is suddenly there lying right at your feet and you’ll have a good idea of how I feel when I stumble upon the first spring wildflowers. My pulse begins to quicken, every thought flies out of my head, I fall to my knees and it’s just the flower and me; an instant dullard. The entire town of Keene could have paraded right by me and I’d never have known it.

The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thanks for coming by.

Read Full Post »

Things I’ve Seen

In my last post I spoke about climbing Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard. I took a short detour on the way home that day to see Bailey Brook Falls in Nelson. The brook wasn’t running quite as high as I expected considering the regular rain and all the snowmelt we’ve seen lately. The state says we’re still in a moderate drought because the underground aquifers have been depleted, so hopefully we’ll see our average rainfall this summer. That would help a lot.

This is my favorite view of the falls. Interesting how the brook is always split in two here.

A pileated woodpecker had carved a deep hole out of this white pine (Pinus strobus.) There’s nothing remarkable about that; I see holes like this all the time. It’s what happened afterwards that is worth noting.

The pine tree’s sap had turned a beautiful blue, deeper in color than most I see. I see more blue pine sap in winter than at other times of year so I’ve always assumed that it was the cold that turned it blue, like it does to some lichens, but now that I’m noticing it in warmer weather as well I’m just not sure. Does the cold turn it blue in winter and then it stays that way from then on? I’ve spent many hours searching for the answer and can’t find a single reference to blue pine sap, so I can’t answer the question.

Ninety five percent of the white pine sap I see looks like this; kind of a cloudy tan color, and that’s why blue pine sap is so startling and unusual. Pine sap (resin) has been used by Native American tribes for thousands of years to waterproof just about anything that needed it; baskets, pails, and especially canoes. The Chippewa tribe also used pine sap to treat infections and wounds. The treatment was usually successful because pine sap seems to contain several antimicrobials.

I also saw some resin on a black cherry tree, which is something I’ve never seen before. It was clear and amber colored and very different than pine resin. This is the kind of resin that insects got trapped in millions of years ago and which are found occasionally today, preserved forever just as they were when they became stuck in the sticky sap. There were quite large globs of it here and there on this tree and I wish I had taken one to add to my collection of outdoor oddities.

Because of colorblindness I don’t usually try bird identification but I think I’m safe saying that this is a European starling. European starlings were first introduce into New York In the 1890s. Those original 100 birds have now become  over 200 million, and they can be found from Alaska to Mexico. I saw three birds working this lawn for insects; not exactly a flock. The name starling comes from their resemblance to a four pointed star when they fly.

I’ve read that a starling’s spots are more easily seen in winter and all but disappear in summer, but they were very noticeable on all 3 of these birds. They’re a pretty bird but I understand that a lot of people here in the U.S. don’t like them.

Milk white toothed polypore is a resupinate fungus, which means it looks like it grows upside down, and that’s what many crust fungi seem to do. Their spore bearing surface can be wrinkled, smooth, warty, toothed, or porous and though they appear on the undersides of branches the main body of the fungus is in the wood, slowly decomposing it.

The “teeth” are actually ragged bits of spore bearing tissue. They start life as tubes or pores and break apart and turn brown as they age. Milk white toothed polypores appear very late in the year and are considered “winter mushrooms.”

Lady fern (Athyrium filix-femina) is one of our earliest to show in spring but this year it was even earlier than I thought so it got ahead of me. These fiddleheads were already about 6 inches tall. This fern doesn’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. Lady fern is the only one I know of with brown / black scales on its stalks. It likes wet or very moist ground along rivers and streams.

I found a beard lichen (Usnea) still attached to a cut log and it turned out to be the longest one I’ve seen. They’re very common on pines and hemlocks in our area. They attach themselves to the bark but take nothing from the tree, much like a bird perching. Lichens in the Usnea genus contain usnic acid and have antiseptic / antibiotic properties. They have been used since ancient times throughout the world to heal wounds.

Bud break is defined as “when the green tip of a leaf can be seen emerging from the bud,” and I can’t think of a better plant to demonstrate it than rhubarb.

There is a very short time when skunk cabbage leaves (Symplocarpus foetidus) actually look like cabbage leaves. I’m guessing that with skunk in their name they don’t taste anything like cabbage though, and I hope I’m never hungry enough to be tempted by them. I’ve heard that bears will eat them when they can’t find anything else.

Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are up and growing fast. These wild leeks look like scallions and taste somewhere between an onion and garlic. They are considered a great delicacy and are a favorite spring vegetable from Quebec to Tennessee, and ramp festivals are held in almost all states on the U.S. east coast and in many other countries in the world. Unfortunately they are slow growers and a ten percent harvest of a colony can take ten years to grow back. They take up to 18 months to germinate from seed, and five to seven years to mature enough to harvest. That’s why ramp harvesting has been banned in many national and state parks and in pats of Canada, and why Ramp farming is now being promoted by the United States Department of Agriculture.

This photo from a few years ago shows what the complete ramp looks like. The bulbs and leaves are said to be very strongly flavored with a pungent odor. In some places they are called “The king of stink.” The name ramps comes from the English word ramson, which is a common name of the European bear leek (Allium ursinum), which is a cousin of the North American wild leek. Their usage has been recorded throughout history starting with the ancient Egyptians. They were an important food for Native Americans and later for white settlers as well.

False hellebores (Veratrum viride) grow close to the ramps and woe be to the forager who confuses them. Though all parts of ramps are edible false hellebore is one of the most toxic plants in the New England forest, so it would be wise to know both well before foraging for ramps. One clue would be the deeply pleated leaves of the false hellebore, which look nothing like ramp leaves. Second would be the color; ramps are a much deeper green. Third would be size; everything about false hellebore is bigger, including leaf size. The final clue would be the roots. False hellebore roots are tough and fibrous and don’t look at all like the bulbous, scallion like root of ramps. I’m surprised that anyone could confuse the two, but apparently it has happened.

I think these buds were on a white ash (Fraxinus americana), but it could also be a green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica). Both are commonly planted along streets and in parking lots and I saw this tree in a store parking lot. One thing that helps identify ash trees are the shape of the leaf scars that appear just below the buds, and I didn’t look at it closely. On the white ash these scars are “C” shaped and on green ash they look like a “D.” White ash leaf scars are also much larger than those on green ash. Ash bears male and female flowers on separate trees.

The beautiful fruits (samaras) of the silver maple (Acer saccharinum) start out their lives deep red with a white furry coat. When you see them beginning to form you have to check them frequently to catch them in this stage because it happens quickly and ends just as quickly. The mature seeds are the largest of any native maple and are a favorite food of the eastern chipmunk. Silver maples get their common name from the downy surface of the leaf underside, which flashes silver in the slightest breeze.

The pinkish leaf buds of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) are growing quickly now. They often show hints of orange and are quite beautiful at this stage; in my opinion one of the most beautiful things in the forest at this time of year. Branches full of them stop me in in my tracks. There is so much beauty out there; I hope all of you are seeing as much of it as you are able to.

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.

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Things I’ve Seen

I saw a great example of bud break in this rhubarb plant. Bud break is defined as “when the green tip of a leaf can be seen emerging from the bud,” but there is often far more to it than that. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more crinkly leaf.

At first I thought these were British soldier lichens but something about them didn’t seem quite right. They seemed almost gritty, and that’s because they’re gritty British soldiers (Cladonia floerkeanna.) They like to grow on well-rotted wood or soil and I found this example on very old wood. The stems are covered with granules and squamules, which are lobed, scale like growths on the body of a lichen.

Fluted bird’s nest fungi (Cyathus striatus) grew in the mulch at a local park. The tiny funnel shaped nests are the spore producing fruiting bodies of this fungus and are called peridia. Their shape makes them splash cups and when a raindrop falls into one it splashes out the eggs (peridioles), which contain the spores. Unfortunately the eggs had already been splashed out of these examples, but I’m hoping they might produce another crop.

This view of the bird’s nest fungus shows the funnel shape and inside flutes. The flutes on the inside and brown hairs on the outside are identifying features. Each one is about .39 inches (1 cm) tall. They are very hard to spot since they are so small and essentially the same color as the wood that they grow on, and this is only the second time that I’ve ever seen them. They felt quite tough and almost woody.

Even though I was sitting in my truck taking photos through the windshield this great blue heron was determined to keep as many cattails between us as he could. Then just for a few seconds he stepped out into the open to catch a spring peeper and was caught in the above photo. The small pond is full of spring peepers and he was doing his best to clean it up. He caught a few while I watched but I couldn’t catch the action with the camera. The pond also has some big snapping turtles in it but I don’t know if they’d bother a bird this big.

Along the Ashuelot river the Canada geese came as close to shore as I’ve ever seen. Normally they stay well out in the middle but on this day for some reason they had no fear. They were also very quiet and didn’t honk once the entire time I was there, which is also unusual. They’re usually quite loud.

This one kept a wary eye on me as if wondering just what I was up to. Or it could have been that he was hoping for a few crumbs of bread, but I didn’t have any.

The buds of striped maples (Acer pensylvanicum) have just started to break. These are among the most beautiful buds in the forest, covered in soft down which is sometimes orange and sometimes pink, and often both together. They are worth looking for, and now is the time. Soon two other beautiful leaf bids will open; beech and shagbark hickory. Those are events I never miss.

I’m guessing that this tree is a woodpecker’s equivalent to the corner convenience store. I’ve never seen a tree so full of holes, and they went all the way up the trunk. It must be full of insects.

You might think I’m straying far from the forest when you see this coin but since it was found in the forest I’m really not straying far. I show it here for the history buffs out there and because it’s a very important coin; the first official copper one cent piece ever minted in the Colonial United States. It was designed by Benjamin Franklin and is called the Fugio cent because of its image of the sun shining down on a sundial in the center with the word “Fugio” on the left. Fugio is Latin for “I flee / fly,” which when shown with the sundial reminds the bearer that time flies. On the right is the date 1787 and at the bottom are the words “Mind Your Business.” A coworker found it near an old cellar hole in the woods. To hold something over 200 years old that Benjamin Franklin had a hand in was a rare treat.

The reverse side of the coin has the words “We Are One” in the center, surrounded by the words “United States.” A chain with 13 links symbolizes the 13 original states. I wonder how much it must have hurt to lose this coin in 1787. At about the diameter of a Kennedy half dollar (1.2 inches) it is large for a cent.

Ramps (Allium tricoccum) are up and growing fast. These wild leeks look like scallions and taste somewhere between an onion and garlic. They are a favorite spring vegetable from Quebec to Tennessee, and ramp festivals are held in almost all states on the U.S. east coast and many other countries in the world. Unfortunately they are slow growers and a ten percent harvest of a colony can take ten years to grow back. They take up to 18 months to germinate from seed, and five to seven years to mature enough to harvest. That’s why ramp harvesting has been banned in many national and state parks and in pats of Canada, and why Ramp farming is now being promoted by the United States Department of Agriculture.

This is what the complete ramp looks like. I foolishly pulled these two plants three years ago before I knew they were being threatened. The bulbs and leaves are said to be very strongly flavored with a pungent odor. In some places they are called “The king of stink.” The name ramps comes from the English word ramson, which is a common name of the European bear leek (Allium ursinum), which is a cousin of the North American wild leek. Their usage has been recorded throughout history starting with the ancient Egyptians. They were an important food for Native Americans and later for white settlers as well.

False hellebores (Veratrum viride) grow close to the ramps and woe be to the forager who confuses them. Though all parts of ramps are edible false hellebore is one of the most toxic plants in the New England forest, so it would be wise to know both well before foraging for ramps. One clue would be the deeply pleated leaves of the false hellebore, which look nothing like ramp leaves. Second would be the color; ramps are a much deeper green. Third would be size; everything about false hellebore is bigger, including leaf size. The final clue would be the roots. False hellebore roots are tough and fibrous and don’t look at all like the bulbous, scallion like root of ramps. I’m really surprised that anyone could confuse the two, but apparently it does happen.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a willow more colorful than this one was. A kind of orange red, I think.

This robin watched me watch him. He was only about two feet away and just sat quietly while I took his photo. I said thank you and told him that his photo would be seen all around the world. He didn’t seem at all impressed and went back to seeing what he could find to eat.

The serenity produced by the contemplation and philosophy of nature is the only remedy for prejudice, superstition, and inordinate self-importance, teaching us that we are all a part of Nature herself, strengthening the bond of sympathy which should exist between ourselves and our brother man. ~Luther Burbank

Thanks for coming by.

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

Mid April Flowers

I’ve heard all the arguments against forsythia and I agree with most of them, but you have to admit that spring would be very different without their cheery blooms.

Forsythias shout that spring has arrived and it’s hard to ignore them because they are everywhere. I think you’d have a hard time finding a street in this town that doesn’t have at least one.

It’s great to stop for the daily paper and see this beautiful pink magnolia on my way into the store. Every time I do I feel like I should thank the owner for planting it.

Someone at the local college must like reticulated iris (Iris reticulata) because hundreds of them grow there. They’re a very early spring flower that does well in rock gardens and goes well with miniature daffodils like tete-a-tete.

I’m interested in both botany and history and they come together in the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas). This under used shrub is in the dogwood family and is our earliest blooming member of that family, often blooming at just about the same time as forsythias do. The small yellow flowers will produce fruit that resembles a red olive and which will mature in the fall. It is very sour but high in vitamin C and has been used for at least 7000 years for both food and medicine. In northern Greece early Neolithic people left behind remains of meals that included cornelian cherry, and the Persians and early Romans also knew it well. As you look at its flowers it’s amazing to think that Homer, Rumi, and Marcus Aurelius most likely did the same.

The shoots of false hellebore (Veratrum viride) rise straight out of the damp ground and look like a rocket for a short time before opening into a sheaf of deeply pleated leaves.

I can’t think of another plant that false hellebore really resembles but people occasionally poison themselves by eating it. When it comes to poisonous plants false hellebore is the real deal and can kill, and it’s not a good way to go. In 2010 five people who had been hiking the Chilkoot Trail in Alaska had to be evacuated by helicopter for emergency medical treatment after they ate false hellebore roots. Luckily they all survived, with quite a tale to tell.

Native American used the plant medicinally but they knew it well and dug the roots in the winter when their toxicity was at its lowest level. There is a legend that says the plant was used in the selection of new chiefs, and by the sounds of it anyone who lived through the experience was thought of as chief material.

Wild leeks (Allium tricoccum) come up at the same time as false hellebore and in fact I found these growing very near the false hellebore plants shown previously. But how anyone could confuse the two is beyond me, because they look nothing like each other. Even the leaf color is different. Wild leeks, also called ramps, are edible and considered a great delicacy, and each year there are ramp festivals all over the world.  These plants lose their leaves before they flower in midsummer and that makes the flowers very hard to find, so this year I’m telling myself that I’m going to put marking tape on the trees near where these plants grow so I can finally get photos of the flowers later on.

Some friends of mine have this beautiful hellebore growing in their garden and I wanted to get a shot of the flower to see if it looked anything like the flowers of false hellebore. False hellebore flowers bear a slight superficial resemblance, but they are much smaller and are green, and the leaves look nothing like a true hellebore. Nobody seems to know how the name false hellebore came about. If it wasn’t because of the flowers or leaves, what could it have been? Maybe because true hellebores are also poisonous?

Pliny said that if an eagle saw you digging up a hellebore he (the eagle) would cause your death. He also said that you should draw a circle around the plant, face east and offer a prayer before digging it up. Apparently doing so would appease the eagle.

There are plants that can take me out of myself and cause a shift in my perception of time so that I often have no idea how long I’ve been kneeling before them, and spring beauty (Claytonia virginica) is one of them. How could you not lose yourself in something so beautiful?

I’ve read that spring beauties that grow in the shade are the most colorful and for the most part I’ve found that to be true, but this year I noticed that the newly opened flowers were also more colorful than those that were fully opened. Just look at this example’s deep color and near perfect form. To me it’s everything a flower should be and though I can think of many flowers that are as beautiful, I’d have a hard time naming one that was more beautiful.

 

I know a place where hundreds of thousands of trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) grow but each year I find a single one that buds before all of the others. Though I didn’t mark it I think this is the same one that budded first last year. I think that because of its being located to the right of a path near a small pond, and this year I want to mark the location. This plant gets its common name from its leaves, which are said to resemble the side of a trout. A brook trout maybe, but not a rainbow.

Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) is another of our beautiful native wildflowers that I wanted to show you but it was cloudy, cold and windy on the day that I went to take their photo and they don’t like that kind of weather any more than we do, so they all closed up and wrapped themselves in their leaves. Earlier in the week they weren’t even showing yet, so they’ll be around long enough to give me another chance. Bloodroot’s common name comes from the poisonous blood red juice found in its roots. Native Americans once used this juice for war paint.

The bud scales of red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) have opened to reveal lilac like flower buds. They are handsome at this stage but the whitish, cone shaped flowers are less than spectacular. Though this plant’s bright red berries are edible when cooked I’ve heard that they don’t taste very good. The leaves bark and roots are toxic enough to make you sick, so this shrub shouldn’t be confused with common elderberry (Sambucus nigra) which is the shrub that elderberry wine comes from.

You might think this was just an old weed not worth more than a passing glance but if you did you’d be wrong, and you’d miss one of the high points of early spring in New England.

Most people never see the beautiful flowers of Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica) that appear on the weedy looking plant in the previous photo in mid-April. Creamy yellow male staminate flowers release their pollen above wispy, feather like, white female pistillate flowers but the female flowers always open first to receive pollen from a different plant. As the plant ages the male flowers will turn light brown and the female flowers, if pollinated by the wind, will bear seed. It’s a plant that is well worth a second look.

The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »

Bald Mountain Preserve

Bald Mountain Preserve in Marlow, New Hampshire is a great place to see many wildflowers, including purple trillium (Trillium erectum), painted trillium (Trillium undulatum), blue bead lily (Clintonia borealis), foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia), goldthread (Coptis trifolia), violets, and others. It is north of Keene and is called “the icebox of Cheshire County” because it often boasts the lowest temperature in winter.

Can you see the trail? There it is just to the left of the fallen birch. You have to climb over the stones to follow it.

You also have to use stones to cross a stream that winds its way through the preserve.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen so many hobble bushes (Viburnum lantanoides) in one place, and they were almost ready to bloom. I’ve got to remember to get back here soon because all of these bushes in bloom must be quite a sight. They are one of most showy and beautiful native shrubs.

 

False hellebore (Veratrum viride) plants grow all along the stream banks here and I’ve seen many bear flowers in the past. This tells me that they have been here for a while because this plant doesn’t begin to bloom until it is at least 10 years old.

People often mistake false hellebore for skunk cabbage, but the leaves of skunk cabbage aren’t pleated like these are. Confusing the two isn’t an issue because people don’t eat skunk cabbage, but unfortunately people do confuse false hellebore with edible ramps, also known as wild leeks (Allium tricoccum) and have been poisoned by doing so.

False hellebore is 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 is said that the plant was used by some Native American tribes to select a new leader. All the candidates would eat the root, and the last to start vomiting would become the new leader. I think I would have been comfortable with just being a follower.

Though I didn’t find them at the Bald Mountain preserve I’m including a photo of ramps here so people can compare them to the previous photo of false hellebore. Personally, since even the color is different, I don’t see how anyone could confuse the two plants, but it has happened.

Some kindhearted soul built a bench to sit on. There isn’t much of a view from it but you can sit and catch your breath.

The most impressive sight here is this monolithic granite outcrop that has to be at least 60 feet tall. It would soar above a two story house and it is a large part of the reason that this place is so popular with rock climbers.

By pacing off this broken slab I got rough measurements of 30 feet long by 15 feet wide by about 4 feet thick. At 168 pounds per cubic foot that equals over 150 tons, which is more than a diesel locomotive. What a sound it must have made when it fell from the cliff face! Even more remarkable than its weight is how one face is almost perfectly flat.

It’s clear that these boulders have been here for a very long time. This one was all decked out in mosses and polypody ferns (Polypodium virginanum.) They are also called rock cap ferns, for good reason. Grouse, deer and wild turkeys feed on their evergreen fronds in winter.

Other ferns like cinnamon fern were just out of the soil. It is interesting how plants that have just come up out of often wet soil can look so clean. The muddy soil doesn’t seem to stick to them at all. If I could discover their secret it sure would save me a lot of laundry and vacuuming time.

In the end I didn’t find any wildflowers but that doesn’t bother me because I know that when they’re finished blooming in Keene they will still be blooming here, so I’m glad that I made the journey.

I was surprised to see the waterfall in the above photo on my way home-surprised because it is in a spot that I’ve driven by hundreds of times without ever seeing a waterfall. It’s amazing what we miss.

On the path that leads to nowhere
I have sometimes found my soul.
~Corinne Roosevelt Robinson

Thanks for stopping in.

 

Read Full Post »

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

Thanks for stopping in.

Read Full Post »