A Few Rarities

Well here it is, Saturday again already. Since last Saturday I’ve been here and there visiting a few old friends, many of which are quite rare, like the beautiful wild columbine shown above. I hope readers realize that when I say rare I mean rare to me; in my own experience, and a few of the plants in this post are like that. For all I know there could be fields of thousands of columbines just a few miles away but in my experience this small colony on some ledges in Westmoreland is the only one I’ve ever seen after 50+ years in these woods. I always imagine I hear someone out there saying “Rare? Those aren’t rare.” so I just wanted to clear that up. Usually when I say a plant is rare that means I’ve found it only in one or two places.

And this one is exceedingly rare, because this single blue cohosh plant is the only one I’ve ever seen. The bluish cast of the stems, flower buds, new spring shoots, and sky blue fruit all point to the blue in its name. The word “cohosh” comes from either the Abenaki or Penobscot Native American tribes. It is said to mean “rough” but I think its true meaning has been lost to the ages because it is used as a name for several different plants. The plant was once also called “papoose root” because of the way Natives used it to help in childbirth, but the latest reseach shows it should not be used in this way because it can induce miscarriage.

Each of the yellow green striped sepals of a blue cohosh flower contains a nectar gland to attract insects. Six yellow stamens (sometimes fewer) form a ring around the center ovary and the true petals are the shiny green parts that ring the center between the sepals and the stamens. It’s an unusual flower that is hard to mistake for anything else. When you find this one you know immediately that you’ve found something rare.

Dwarf ginseng is another rare plant that I’ve found in only tw places. The colony in this photo has gone from two or three plants several years ago to what you see here. Each single plant is small enough to fit into a teacup, and each spherical flower head is only about 3/4 of an inch across. This is not the same ginseng that herbalists use, so it should never be picked.

Wild ginger is rare enough in my experience that I have seen just the single colony that contains the plant seen here. I saw it in a garden once as well, but just once in the wild. The soft, heart shaped, matte finish leaves with their hairy stems are hard to mistake for any other spring blooming plant. Do you see the brown, cup shaped blossom in this photo?

This is the blossom which was down in the lower right in the previous shot. It’s a little odd as flowers go and though it’s easy enough to think they do the job I’ve never come back to look for seed pods, so for all I know this large colony of plants might have come about vegetatively with runners, sort of like strawberries. The flowers have no petals; they are made up of 3 triangular calyx lobes that are fused into a cup and curl backwards. Reproductive parts are found in a central column inside. Because they grow so close to the ground and bloom so early scientists once thought that wild ginger flowers must be pollinated by flies or fungus gnats, but they have been discovered to self-pollinate and are said to produce 6 seeds per flower. I’ll have to go back and see if I can find a seed pod to show you.

You might walk past a plant with hardly a glance, get a few yards further on down the trail and then stop, wondering “did I just see stripes?” So you go back, looking carefully for something with stripes. Finally, there it is; a Jack in the pulpit flower. Peering inside you see Jack, but you also see beautiful zebra stripes.

Carefully you open the hood of the spathe and see the spadix (Jack) and the beautiful stripes. But wait, you might wonder, “why are the stripes bolder on the inside than on the outside?” Since the plant emits a fungus like odor and is pollinated by tiny fungus gnats, the stripes aren’t insect guides. So why are they there? Maybe they’re there just to get you to stop and admire them. Maybe they’re there to get you to think like a child again and to remember how it was to live in a world full of wonder, where everything was new and happiness came in this instant, not some day. Maybe a simple thing like a flower can show you how, when you welcome each instant as it happens, life becomes full of joy and wonder, and beauty and love. Maybe flowers can do these things. Maybe they can even lead you back to yourself by reflecting the stillness and beauty that is there inside of you.

Nodding trillium is another plant you might walk right by, seeing the leaves and thinking it was too bad this trillium wasn’t blooming. But look a little closer, under the leaves, and there you find a single small white flower pointed at the ground, like a mayapple blossom.

And this flower has six delicious looking, plum colored anthers. These plants are relatively rare in this area. A friend gave me a tip a few years ago about a place that had a small colony of maybe a dozen plants, and that’s all I’ve ever seen. They bloom just as the red trilliums end and just before painted trilliums bloom. Nodding trilliums are also called whip-poor-will flowers because they bloom when the whip-poor-wills return in spring. They like to grow near rivers, and I’d guess probably streams and ponds as well.

Seeing buds breaking is one of the things I most look forward to in spring. Beech bud break is always especially beautiful and this spring they didn’t fail to amaze. See how they unfold themselves like an accordian from what was once a tiny bud. Once out of the bud the new leaves grow very quickly and lose their downy, silvery hairs before melting into the green of the forest. For just a short time they are like the wings of angels.

It might be accurate to say that I’ve seen millions of oak leaves in a life of 60+ years, but why I’ve never seen them wear neon colors like these is a mystery. They were very beautiful, as only new spring leaves can be. I’m always amazed by how beauty like this is everywhere you care to look. But you have to stop and look, and then you have to see.

Spring leaves wear unusual colors to keep sunlight from damaging them. These little oak leaves wear red, and not only do the have a color to protect them, they also have a velvety coat as well. Fully protected, they grow on until they can take the bright sunshine and slowly they’ll lose their velvet coat, turn green and begin to photosynthesize.

Oak leaves especially, are among the most colorful of new spring leaves but they’re small and easy to miss. They are part of the softness of spring, and I believe they help give nature its expressionist painting appearance at this time of year. It’s all softness, color, and light, and it’s beautiful.

Something that is not small and easy to miss is bud break on a shagbark hickory tree. I’m always surprised by how colorful the bud scales are. They look like flowers but like a Jack in the pulpit spathe, all the color is on the inside where nobody can see it until they burst open, as this one has. Seeing a tree full of these you might easily think you were seeing a tree full of beautiful flowers, but they’re often quite high up in the tree and it’s hard to tell. The reason I can see these buds so easily is because the beavers cut the trees back every few years, so the new branches are closer to the ground. Seeing them so close doesn’t detract from the peace found there along the river. They add to it, like a whispered exclamation of joy.

Things seem to be happening slowly this spring. I still haven’t seen any ripe red maple seeds twirling down out of the trees yet. That’s fine though, because they’re beautiful as they ripen on the trees.

A red winged blackbird sat on a cattail, singing a song of joy. Though this view was tame these robin size birds can be fierce. I’ve stumbled into their nesting sites before and suddenly found a male bird hovering right in front of my face, beating its wings so fast their sound was all I could hear. It’s always enough to make me turn and go back the way I came, which of course is just what the bird wants. They have a way of speaking to you that quickly drives home the point.

A female red winged blackbird eyed me warily from the top of a cherry tree. They nest in last year’s cattails at the edge of the water and fly away from the nest as soon as they hear you. And they have amazing hearing.

Shin high sweet vernal grass is usually one of the first grasses to bloom in spring. The feathery white filaments seen here are its beautiful female flowers. Smelling it reminds you of fresh cut hay with a bit of vanilla mixed in, and for that reason it is also called vanilla grass. I’ve read that its scent comes from the same substance that gives sweet woodruff its fragrance. You can dry sweet woodruff and put it in a drawer with your clothes to make them smell sweet but I don’t know if it would work with sweet vernal grass. It might be worth a try, but I could end up smelling like a bale of hay. That wouldn’t be all bad though, I don’t suppose. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

Meadow foxtail grass can fool you because from a distance its shape and its flowers look much like Timothy grass, which blooms later on in mid June. A closer look reveals the truth; this grass is rough and coarse, while Timothy is quite fine. Both are beautiful when they blossom and both are non-native. Meadow foxtail, as shown by its spring bloom time, is a cool season grass from Europe and Asia. It is perennial and fussy about where it grows, preferring moist, fertile, neutral soil. In this country it is useful as pasture hay, just like Timothy. I love its easily seen purple flowered beauty on walks.

Poison ivy has grown its beautiful spring leaves and as this photo shows, it isn’t long before the tiny flower buds appear as well. I haven’t gotten a rash from it yet this year but I’m sure I will because I get it every year. It’s very easy to see something beautiful and without thinking kneel down to get a shot of it. Then as you stand up you notice that you’ve been kneeling in poison ivy. It happens every year but luckily I’ve never been super allergic to it. I’ll get it on my knees or hands and it will stay there without spreading. Some aren’t so lucky.

Bees have been busily foraging on all the dandelions and if the pollen grains seen on this one are any indication, their work has been successful. Actually, you don’t really even need to see a bee; all the dandelion seeds being blown around by the wind tell the story.  

The seed head of a dandelion is sometimes called a clock, because how many puffs it takes you to blow all the seeds away is supposed to equal the time of day. Dandelion seeds are bristly where they attach to their round receptacle so it can take quite a few puffs. Above the seed is a thin, hollow tube called a beak, and above that is a “parachute” made of even thinner hairs, called the pappus. When still fresh but empty of seeds, the round, pillow like receptacle is full of dimples that show where the seeds were attached. The dimples spiral outward from the center, and the pattern the spiral makes is known as a fractal. In a nutshell fractals are never ending patterns, and nature is full of them. They appear in pinecones, ferns, snowflakes, forests, river deltas, galaxies, and just about everything I see. They’re very beautiful and nature uses them to efficiently fill a given space. Note how so many seeds can sit on the receptacle without touching one another. This means each seed can blow away freely without disturbing its neighbor when its turn comes.  

A pretty little yellow warbler landed in a poplar tree and seemed to want its photo taken. It was quite small and was a challenge for my old camera. I knew it wasn’t a goldfinch but I don’t “do” birds due to color blindness so I only knew what it wasn’t. Luckily a friend who is a lifelong birder happened along and told me what it was when I showed him the photo. Though I often have trouble seeing birds thankfully I’ve never had any trouble hearing them. And now, with a phone app called Merlin I can finally identify what I’m hearing. One day I stood and listened to two rose breasted grosbeaks have a conversation. First the one nearby would sing its beautiful song and then another bird far off would sing a similar song. It was a beautiful thing to hear, and now I know what I was hearing.

Birch trees are not rare in this area, but I thought the sunlit white trunks of these young trees were beautiful against the varying shades of green. The word birch comes from the root word bhereg, which means “to shine, bright, white,” and of course that’s just what they do.

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 coming by. Have a great week.

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Mid April Flowers

Since it has been so cool here over the past week or so flowers that looked like they were ready to open a week ago still haven’t, but that doesn’t hold true for the magnolias which are now in full bloom.

This one is one of my favorites. I like the purple on the backs of its petals.

These orange tulips, the first I’ve seen this year, bloomed in a very weedy bed.

Glory of the snow (Chionodoxa luciliae) bloomed in different colors this week. I looked closely and saw that there were only one or two flowers per stem, even though it looks like many more. I know of only one place to find these spring bulbs.

The scilla is beautiful this year. A mild winter seems to suit it well.

Many Forsythias have come into bloom, including this old overgrown example. It’s a hard shrub to keep up with but it blooms better if you do.

Japanese andromeda blossoms (Pieris japonica) look like tiny pearlescent glass fairy lights topped with gilded ormolu mounts, worthy of the art nouveau period. Japanese andromeda is an ornamental evergreen shrub that is very popular, and you can see why. Some think the blossoms resemble lily of the valley so another common name for the plant is lily of the valley shrub. Some varieties have beautiful red leaves on their new shoots.

I’ve seen exactly one horsetail so far this spring and this is it. The fertile spore bearing stem of a common horsetail (Equisetum arvense) ends in a light brown, cone shaped structure called a strobilus. Since it doesn’t photosynthesize at this point in its development the plant has no need for chlorophyll, so most of it is a pale, whitish color. When it’s ready to release its spores the cone opens to reveal tiny, mushroom shaped sporangiophores.

This horsetail had just started to open, revealing its spore producing sporangia. The whitish “ruffles” at the base of each brown sporangiophore are the sporangia. Once it has released its spores it will die and be replaced by an infertile stem. I should see many more of these as the season progresses, because they usually grow in large groups.

False hellebores (Veratrum viride) have appeared. They always remind me of rocket ships when they first come up.

False hellebore is one of the most toxic plants growing in a New England forest and people have died from eating it after mistaking it for something else. Even animals won’t eat them, but certain insects or slugs will, and usually by July the plant’s leaves look shot full of holes. They have small green flowers later in summer but I think the deeply pleated oval leaves are quite pretty when they first come up in spring.

For those who have never seen false hellebore flowers, here are some I found a few years ago. The small flowers aren’t much to look at, but it’s easy to see that the plant is in the lily family by their shape. These flowers are the same color green as the rest of the plant but have bright yellow anthers. There are nectar producing glands that ants feed on and when they do, they pollinate the flowers. These plants are hard to find in flower because they do so only when they are mature, which means ten years or more old. When they do blossom they do so erratically, so you never really know what you’ll find. When they finally bloom they carry hundreds of flowers in large, branched terminal clusters.

I usually see trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) blooming with spring beauties but this year even the leaves seem late; spring beauties have been blooming for two weeks. This plant takes its common name from its leaves, which are speckled like the body of a trout. The flowers will probably have appeared by next weekend and there should be many thousands of them in this spot.

A clump of sedge doesn’t look like much until you look closely. I think most people see it as just another weed that looks like coarse grass, but it can be beautiful when it flowers.

Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica) is blooming early this year; they usually bloom along with trout lilies. The female flowers look like tiny, wispy white feathers and they appear lower down on the stem, beneath the male flowers. What is odd about this plant is that the female flowers usually appear before the cream colored male flowers. That’s to ensure that they will receive pollen from a different plant and be cross pollinated. 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 beautiful little flower that is well worth a second look.

For me flowers often have memories attached, and trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) always reminds me of my grandmother. She said that no other flower could match its fragrance and that was high praise, because she knew her flowers. We used to look for them when I was a small boy but I can’t remember ever finding any with her. That’s probably because so many of them were dug up by people who erroneously thought that they could just dig them up and plant them in their gardens. The plant grows in a close relationship with fungi present in the soil and is nearly impossible to successfully transplant, so I hope they’ll be left alone.

All I’ve seen of trailing arbutus so far are these buds, but it won’t be long. The fragrant blossoms were once so popular for nosegays it was collected nearly to the point of extinction in New England, and in many states it is now protected by law thanks to the efforts of what is now the New England Wildflower Society. Several Native American tribes used the plant medicinally. It was thought to be particularly useful for breaking up kidney stones and was considered so valuable it was said to have divine origins. Its fragrance is most certainly heavenly and I’m looking forward to smelling them again.

The unusual joined flowers of the American fly honeysuckle (Lonicera canadensis) usually start blooming during the last week of April, so this plant is a little early this year. Its unusual paired flowers branch off from a single stem and if pollinated will become joined pairs of reddish orange fruit shaped much like a football, with pointed ends. Many songbirds love its fruit so this is a good shrub to plant when trying to attract them. I see it growing along the edges of the woods but it can be hard to find, especially when it isn’t blooming. This photo shows the buds, which were just opening.

The whitish feathery things seen here are the female pistils of the American elm (Ulmus americana.) If the wind brings it pollen from male anthers each female flower will form small, round, flat, winged seeds called samaras. I remember them falling by the many millions when I was a boy; raining down enough so you couldn’t even see the color of the road beneath them. You can still see the shriveled, blackish male flowers in this flower cluster as well.

I’m at a loss as to how to explain what these are. I know they’re maple seeds (samaras) forming but I don’t know if they’re red or silver maple seeds. For a while I was fairly sure they were silver maple but after looking in several books and spending hours searching online over the years, I’ve had no luck finding anything like them, so it will have to come down to leaf shape. Once I see the leaves I’ll know for sure because they’re very different between the two species.

These I’m sure of. They are the female flowers of a red maple (Acer rubrum) becoming seeds, and they look very different than the ones in the previous photo.

On some trees the male staminate red maple flowers are still going strong, but on others they’ve passed. Staggered bloom times helps ensure thorough pollination, and it does work well because there are many millions of seeds falling each year.

Vinca (Vinca minor) is an invasive plant from Europe, but it was brought over so long ago that many people think it’s a native. In the 1800s it was given by one neighbor to another along with lilacs and peonies and I’ve found all three still blooming beautifully around old cellar holes out in the middle of nowhere, as this plant was. I never knew that the flowers untwisted themselves from the bud as this one was doing. Spirals are found all through nature, even inside the human body, and here is another one.

Some of the plants you’ve seen in this post grow near this beaver pond, which was nearly as pretty as the flowers I was searching for, in my opinion. I hope you think so too.

Flowers carry not only beauty but also the silent song of love. You just have to feel it. ~Debasish Mridha

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone had a very happy and safe Easter.

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Early April Flowers

I saw a plant with pretty little blue flowers on it that I haven’t seen before. I think it might be called heartleaf (Brunnera macrophyllas,) which is also called Siberian bugloss and great forget-me-not. It’s a perennial garden plant native to the Caucasus that apparently prefers shade.

The flowers were very pretty and did indeed remind me of forget-me-nots.

Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) gets its common name from the way chickens peck at it. The plant is in the mint family and apparently chickens like it. The amplexicaule part of the scientific name means clasping and describes the way the hairy leaves clasp the stem. The plant is a very early bloomer and blooms throughout winter in warmer areas. Henbit is from Europe and Asia, but I can’t say that it’s invasive because I rarely see it. I’ve read that the leaves, stem, and flowers are edible and have a slightly sweet and peppery flavor. It can be eaten raw or cooked.

This is the first Forsythia blossom that I’ve seen this year. 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. Forsythia is a plant that nurserymen agree does not have a fragrance, yet some say they love the plant for its fragrance and others say they can’t stand its odor. I’ve never been able to smell one, but I don’t correct those who think they do. If an imagined fragrance seems real to the person doing the smelling, then so be it. Forsythia is a native of Japan and was under cultivation as early as 1850 in England. It is named after William Forsyth (1737-1804), the Scottish botanist who co-founded the Royal Horticultural Society in London. The shrub is said to forecast the weather because as the old saying goes “Three more snows after the Forsythia shows.” I’m hoping it isn’t true.

I’m seeing a lot of chickweed blooming now. I’m not sure if this is common chickweed, which has shiny leaves or mouse ear chickweed, which has hairy leaves. I do see some hairs but they look like they might be coming from the bracts rather than the leaves. In the end it doesn’t matter because it’s a pretty little thing that I’m always happy to see so early in spring.

One of my favorite spring bulbs is striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica.) Since blue is my favorite color I’m very happy to see them. But I don’t see many; they border on rare here and I hardly ever see them. The flowers are about the same size as the scilla (Scilla siberica) flowers I think most of us are familiar with. They’re beautiful little things and though catalogs will tell you that the blue stripes are found only on the inside of the blossom they actually go through each petal and show on the outside as well as the inside, as the unopened buds in this photo show. I think it must be their simplicity that makes them so beautiful.

Glory of the snow (Chionodoxa forbesii,) doesn’t appear on this blog very often because I only see it occasionally. They remind me of scilla but the flowers are twice the size. I’ve read that they come from south-west Turkey. Though they are said to be one of the earliest blooming spring bulbs I’ve seen quite a few others that are weeks earlier.

That little crocus in the upper right told me that it was just about time to say goodbye for another year but I didn’t really want to hear it. I’ll be sorry to see them go.

Magnolias are blooming and they aren’t looking too frost bitten. Some of these flowers are intensely fragrant. You can just see one of the beautiful purple buds that these flowers come from off to the left.

Someone remarked that they were surprised that I hadn’t been seeing more pollinators, but seeing them and capturing them with a camera are two different things. I’ve seen plenty of them but so far this is the first that was willing to pose. That blossom in the lower right just wanted to do its own thing, apparently. Obviously a leader and not a follower.

The pollinators are doing their job, judging by the amount of seeds I’ve been seeing.

The purple flowers of ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea), which is in the mint family, have a very light minty scent that isn’t at all overpowering unless you mow down a large patch that has taken over the lawn. Lawns are one of its favorite places to grow and so it has been labeled a terrible weed and kicked to the curb. It is said that nature abhors a vacuum and rushes to fill it. I would add that nature also abhors bare ground and so has plants like ground ivy rush to fill it. That’s something that many don’t understand-if a lawn is doing well and is thick and lush weeds can’t get a foothold and won’t grow because there is too much completion. It isn’t a plant’s fault that its seed fell on a piece of bare ground in what we might call a lawn. 

Gosh I thought, have I never seen bleeding heart foliage? I’ve been in a lot of gardens and yes, I’ve seen lots of dicentra foliage, but never like these. The color was beautiful, I thought.

American elm (Ulmus americana) flowers form in small clusters. The flower stems (pedicels) are about half an inch long so they wave in the slightest breeze and that makes them very hard to get a good photo of. They are wind pollinated, so waving in the breeze makes perfect sense. Each tiny flower is about an eighth inch across with red tipped anthers that darken as they age. The whitish feathery bits seen here and there are the female pistils which protrude from the center of each elm flower cluster. If the wind brings it pollen from male anthers it will form small, round, flat, winged seeds called samaras. I remember them falling by the many millions when I was a boy; raining down enough so you couldn’t even see the color of the road beneath them.

Here is a closer look at the male anthers. They’re a pretty plum color for a short time. Male flowers have 7 to 9 stamens with these dark anthers. Each male flower is about 1/8 of an inch across and dangles at the end of a long flower stalk (Pedicel.)

I keep vacillating between red maple and silver maple when I see seeds (samaras) forming with white hairs on them. I think the answer might be that when very young red maple samaras are bright red with white hairs which are lost as they age, and that’s what is confusing me. You can see the white hairs in these buds which are just showing samaras, but you won’t see them for long because they disappear in just a couple of days. They’re really quite beautiful and worth looking for.

There is a very short time when the first leaf of skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) really does look like cabbage but you wouldn’t want it with your corned beef. It comes by its common name honestly because it does have a skunk like odor. Whether or not it tastes like it smells is anyone’s guess; I don’t know anyone who has ever eaten it. I’ve read that eating the leaves can cause burning and inflammation, and that the roots should be considered toxic. One Native American tribe inhaled the odor of the crushed leaves to cure headache or toothache, but I wonder if the sharp odor didn’t simply take their minds off the pain.

A passing glance might tell you that you had stumbled onto a large group of dandelions, but unless you looked a little closer, you’d be wrong.

A closer look would tell you this isn’t a dandelion at all; it’s a coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara.) One way to tell is the lack of leaves at the base of the flower stalk, because coltsfoot leaves don’t appear until after the flowers have finished blooming. They’re very pretty little flowers but they aren’t with us long. Depending on the weather and how hot it gets I’ve seen them disappear in two weeks. Coltsfoot is native to Europe and Asia and was brought here by early settlers. It has been used medicinally for centuries and another name for it is coughwort.

Coltsfoot flowers are often smaller than dandelions and they are usually flat, rather than the mounded shape of a dandelion. But the real clincher is the stem, which is scaly like that seen here. Dandelion stems are smooth.

Ice out on Half Moon Pond in Hancock came about a month early this year. It’s so nice to see the water again. You can also see a dusting of snow on Mount Skatutakee there in the background. Skatutakee is thought to be an Abenaki (Algonquin) word for fire, according to the book Native American Placenames of the United States By William Bright.

Not even 24 hours before this photo was taken all I saw were buds when I visited the place where the spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) grow, but this day I saw many blossoms. Soon there will be thousands of them carpeting the forest floor. They’re such small flowers; each one is only slightly bigger than an aspirin, but there is a lot of beauty packed into a small package.

I always try to find the flower with the deepest color. I’ve read that it is the amount of sunlight that determines color in a spring beauty blossom. The deeper the shade, the more intense the color, so I look for them in more shaded areas. I’ve seen some that were almost pure white but no matter where I find them they’re always beautiful. Another name for them is “good morning spring.”

I should let everybody know that, though New Hampshire has a “stay at home” order like most states, we are still able to go outside for exercise as long as we don’t do it in groups. I’m lucky enough to still have a job so I’m also outside at work all day and not breaking any rules by bringing the beauty of nature to you each week. I almost always go into the woods alone even without such an order in place and I meet very few people there, so for now there is no real danger involved in keeping this blog going.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

Thanks for coming by. Stay safe everyone.  

 

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More Mid April Flowers

Forsythias are blooming on nearly every street in town now, and it’s like they’re shouting that spring is finally here.

Magnolias are also blooming and so far they aren’t looking frost bitten. This one was intensely fragrant.

I saw some glory of the snow (Chionodoxa forbesii,) which is a plant that hasn’t ever appeared on this blog because I don’t see it. These were a surprise and blossomed in a couple of different colors. They remind me of scilla but the flowers are twice the size. I’ve read that they come from south-west Turkey. Though they are said to be one of the earliest blooming spring bulbs I’ve seen quite a few others that are earlier.

There are lots of tulips blooming now. This one was one of my favorites because of the color.

I also love the color of this hyacinth. I’ve seen this flower in only one spot and it’s the only one I’ve ever seen with such loosely spaced flowers along the stem. I’m beginning to wonder if it even is a hyacinth.

Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas) are finally blooming. Cornelian cherry is in the dogwood family. Its common name comes from its small tart, cherry red fruit which man has eaten for thousands of years, especially in Mediterranean regions. It is one of our earliest blooming shrubs, but the buds can open slowly as they did this year. I think from the time the bud scales opened to reveal the yellow buds until bloom time was almost a month this year. They teach patience to someone who can’t wait for spring.

Common blue violets (Viola sororia) have just appeared, much to the displeasure of many a gardener, I’m sure. Though pretty, these little plants can over take a garden in no time at all if left to their own devices. Violets are known for their prolific seed production. They have petal-less flowers called cleistogamous flowers which fling their seeds out of the 3 part seed capsules with force. They do this in summer when we think they aren’t blooming. Personally I tired of fighting them a long time ago and now I just enjoy them. They’re very pretty little things and their leaves and flowers are even edible. Though called “blue” they’re usually a shade of purple but since I’m colorblind blue works for me.

A clump of sedge doesn’t look like much until you look closely. I think most people see it as just another weed that looks like coarse grass, but it can be beautiful when it flowers.

Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica) usually blooms when trout lilies bloom but this single clump was early this year. It must have just bloomed too, because all I saw were the male flowers shown here. The female flowers look like tiny, wispy white feathers and they appear lower down on the stem, beneath the male flowers. What is odd about this plant is that the female flowers usually appear before the cream colored male flowers. That’s to ensure that they will receive pollen from a different plant and be cross pollinated. 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 beautiful little flower that is well worth a second look.

This is the first trillium I’ve seen this year. It had no flower bud yet and it’s leaves were just unfurling, but I was happy to see it. It is a purple trillium (Trillium erectum,) which are also called red trillium, wake robin, and stinking Benjamin because of their less than heavenly scent. “Benjamin,” according to the Adirondack Almanac, is actually a corruption of the word benjoin, which was an ingredient in perfume that came from a plant in Sumatra. I’m not sure I’d call this scent a perfume.

False hellebore (Veratrum viride) shoots always look like rocket ships to me when they first come up.

Unfortunately false hellebore is also one of the most toxic plants to grow in a New England forest and people have died from eating it after mistaking it for something else. Even animals won’t eat them, but certain insects or slugs will, and usually by July the plant’s leaves look shot full of holes. They do have small green flowers later in summer but I think the deeply pleated oval leaves are also quite pretty when they first come up in spring.

Ornamental cherry trees are blooming and I’ve seen both white flowers and the nice pink ones seen here. These trees often blossom far too early and end up getting frost bitten. I’m hoping that doesn’t happen this year. Our native cherries will be along in May.

When I was looking at some box elder trees I looked down and found dead nettle (Lamium purpureum) blooming all around me, which was a surprise since I’ve been visiting the trees for years and have never seen dead nettle there before. This plant is originally from Europe and Asia but has made itself right at home here. The leaves on the upper part of the stem usually have a purplish cast and the small purple flowers grow in a cluster around them. It’s a pretty, orchid like flower but so small that I can barely see it without a macro lens.

I went to the spot where bloodroot grows just to see if had come up yet. Since it was a rainy day I didn’t expect to see any flowers so I was surprised to find them blooming and very wet. Anyone who knows bloodroot knows that the flowers fold up at the slightest hint of clouds so to find them blooming in the rain was a first for me. Like other spring ephemeral flowers bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) isn’t with us long but luckily colonies in different places bloom at different times, and in that way their bloom time can be extended. I think it’s blooming about two weeks early this year.

The lime green, sticky pistils of female box elder flowers (Acer negundo) appear along with the tree’s leaves, but a few days after the male flowers have fully opened, I’ve noticed. Box elders have male flowers on one tree and female flowers on another, unlike red maples which can have both on one tree. This shot is of the flowers just as they appeared.

This view is of the female flowers fully opened. They’re very pretty things that many people miss seeing. Several Native American tribes made sugar from box elder sap and the earliest known example of a Native American flute, dating from 620-670 AD, was made from its wood.

The male flowers of box elder are small and hang from long filaments. 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. Once they 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.

Female silver maple flowers (Acer saccharinum) have started turning into seeds, which are called samaras and are the tiny fuzzy white bits seen here. They’re very pretty little things but I doubt many people ever even notice them.

Red maple samaras (Acer rubrum) look quite different but silver and red maples will bloom at the same time and the flowers look a lot alike until they reach this stage. I hope everyone will have a chance to see these beautiful little bits of nature.

A heavy rain finished the season for this willow’s male flowers, by the looks. If the pollen was washed away before it could ride the wind to the female blossoms future generations might suffer.

The trees are quickly leafing out already and that means less sunshine each day for spring ephemeral flowers like spring beauties (Claytonia virginica.) They’re with us just a very short time so I hope you won’t get tired of seeing them. I visit them every other day or so because I love seeing them, and I take a lot of photos. I’ve read that these flowers are an important early spring source of nectar for pollinating insects, mostly small native bees and some flies and I’ve noticed lots of insects flying around them.

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. ~Thornton Wilder

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Things I’ve Seen

For six weeks now we’ve had at least one rainy day per week and often two or three. This has amounted to a drought busting 2-3 inches of rain each week and the water table is again where it should be, if not a little high. Unfortunately along with the rain we’ve had cold and until this past week it seemed that it would never warm up, but warm up it has and temps in the 90s are expected for part of next week. Beaver brook seems happier when it’s full. It cheering chuckles and giggles can be heard throughout the forest and it is a welcome companion when I walk along its shores.

The orangey red fertile fronds of cinnamon fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) have appeared. They once reminded someone of sticks of cinnamon, and that’s how this fern comes by its common name.

A closer look shows that this isn’t cinnamon. The fertile fronds are covered with its sporangia, which is where its spores are produced. Each one is hardly bigger than a pin head. Native Americans used this fern medicinally, both externally and internally for joint pain. Many ferns were also woven into mats.

Even the seeds (samaras) of red maple (Acer rubrum) are red, and a beautiful red at that. Squirrels love red maple seeds and that’s probably a good thing because our trees produce many millions of them. A single tree about a foot in diameter was shown to produce nearly a million seeds, and red maple is the most abundant native tree in eastern North America. Native Americans used red maple bark to wash inflamed eyes and as a remedy for hives and muscle aches. The tree’s wood was used for tools and its sap boiled into maple sugar, much like the sap of the sugar maple.

One of the things that determines how many acorns an oak will produce is the weather. Since the male flowers release pollen to the wind in the hopes that it will reach the female flowers, rain can have a big impact because it can wash the pollen out of the air. Since we’ve had a lot of rain this spring it will be interesting to see how many acorns we have this fall. The flowers shown are the male catkins of a red oak (Quercus rubra.)

These are the male pollen bearing cones of the mugo pine (Pinus mugo.) Mugo pine is a native of southwestern and Central Europe which is used as a landscape specimen. Its pollen cones closely resemble those of our eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) When the female flowers are fertilized by this pollen they produce the seed bearing pine cones that we are all familiar with. Here in New Hampshire pine pollen is responsible for turning any horizontal surface, including ponds and vehicles, a dusty green color each spring. It also makes some of us have sneezing fits.

I heard that the new spring fiddleheads of the royal fern (Osmunda regalis var. spectabilis) were purple and, since I’ve never paid attention to them I decided to go and see some. Sure enough they were deep purple. I shouldn’t have been surprised because another name for this fern is flowering fern, because its fertile fronds are purple.

Royal fern is the only fern that grows on every temperate continent except Australia, which makes it one of the most widespread of all living species. They are also thought to be one of the oldest living things, with fossil records of the Osmundaceae family dating back over 300 million years. Individual plants are thought to be able to live 100 years or more. They like wet feet and grow along stream and river banks in low, damp areas.

Poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) starts out life in spring with its leaves colored red or bronze and people are often fooled by it at this stage. It is a plant that anyone who spends time in the woods should get to know well, but even then you can still occasionally be caught by it. It doesn’t need to have leaves on it to produce a reaction; I usually end up with a rash on my legs each spring from kneeling on the leafless vines to take photos of spring beauties. Luckily it doesn’t bother me too much but I’ve known people who had to be hospitalized because of it.

This Northern water snake was basking in the sun, which they often do. I’ve seen them about 3 feet long but they can reach about 4 1/2 feet in length. According to Wikipedia they can be brown, gray, reddish, or brownish-black, but the ones I’ve seen have looked black. That could be because they were wet but they also darken with age and become almost black. They aren’t venomous but I’ve heard that they will bite and that their bite can sometimes lead to an infection if it isn’t taken care of. They eat small fish, frogs, worms, leeches, crayfish, salamanders, and even small birds and mammals, like chipmunks. They’re also very fast and hard to get a good photo of.

Early one morning I saw a dragonfly on a building. I knew it was alive because it was moving one of its legs slowly back and forth. It let me get the camera very close and didn’t flinch even when I turned on the camera’s LED light. I haven’t been able to confidently identify it but I thought it might be a Lancet club tail. I hope someone will let me know if I’m wrong.

I’ve never gotten so close to a dragonfly. Odd that it didn’t fly away.

Tent caterpillars appear in early spring as buds begin to open. They prefer fruit trees but can also be found on maples, hawthorn and others. Their nests are smaller and more compact than fall webworms and are found in the crotch of branches rather than at the ends. Often the caterpillars can be seen crawling over the outside surface of the nest as these were. They feed in morning and early evening, and on warm nights. They do a lot of damage and can defoliate a tree in no time at all. Though the tree will usually grow new leaves it will have been severely weakened and may not bear fruit. As the larvae feed they will make the silky nest larger to enclose more foliage.

A close up look at the tent caterpillars. They can be seen crawling everywhere at this time of year. Tent caterpillars are an important food source for insects, animals and birds. One bear was found to have eaten about 25,000 of them and more than 60 species of birds will eat them. Frogs, mice, skunks, bats, reptiles and 28 different insects help control the population but nothing can stop them. Scientists have found that a severe outbreak can defoliate tens of thousands of acres of forest.

This robin had a beak full of caterpillars but they weren’t tent caterpillars. He didn’t seem real happy to see me.

Some think that without ants their peony blossoms wouldn’t open, but that’s really just an old wive’s tale. Peony buds have very small glands called extrafloral nectaries along the outside edges of their bud scales. These glands produce a mixture of sugar, water and amino acids, and this is what attracts the ants. To repay the peony for its gift of nectar the ants drive off pests that might harm the buds.

Native Americans held turkeys in such high regard they buried the birds when they died, but the turkey’s value was in its feathers, not its meat. The feathers were used to decorate their ceremonial clothing and as arrow fletching to stabilize arrows.  They were also used for winter cloaks because they were lightweight and very warm. A feather from a turkey was powerful medicine thought to symbolize abundance, pride, fertility and wisdom, but the meat was considered starvation food. Early colonials mentioned the small flocks of young turkeys seen near Native villages and how the Natives refused to kill them for food, which they couldn’t understand. Of course Europeans saw little to no value in the feathers.

Why some plants have red or purple leaves in spring isn’t fully understood, but it’s thought that the color helps protect their new, fragile leaves from damaging ultraviolet rays and cold temperatures. It isn’t just trees that use this strategy; many shrubs and plants also have new leaves tinged with red or purple. The rattlesnake weed (Hieracium venosum) in the above photo shows just how purple some new spring leaves can be. Eventually all its leaves will be green but the color won’t disappear entirely; a deep maroon color will be left on their veins, making this a very beautiful plant at any time of year.

The heartwood of oaks and some other tree species have a high tannin content and when iron or steel come into contact with the tannins a chemical reaction takes place. This almost always results in a discoloration of the wood. It is caused by nails, barbed wire, chains, or any one of a hundred other iron or steel objects that can be found in trees. There is even a photo online of a bicycle grown into a tree. This is trouble for loggers, because if the sawmill sees stains like those on the red oak log pictured above they’ll reject the log. Their saw blades are expensive and running them through steel just doesn’t work.

If you happened upon a shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) tree just after bud break it would be easy to believe that you were seeing a tree full of beautiful flowers, but what you saw would be the colorful insides of the newly opened bud scales. What you saw would also be one of the most beautiful things you could find in a New England forest in spring.

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

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