Wall to Wall Sunshine

It’s time to get out of the woods and into the fields because that’s where all the sun lovers like these lupines are found. These particular plants grow alongside the road so I’m fairly sure they must have been planted by the state to help stabilize the embankment they grow on. Lupines seem to be even more beautiful when grown in large groups, and that’s probably because that’s the way they grow naturally.

Don’t forget to look up; there are some beautiful things going on up there. This is one of many black locust trees in the area that are blossoming right now.

Like the wisteria blossoms I showed in the last post black locust flowers hang in pendulous clusters and are very fragrant. Black locust wood is very hard and prized for use as fence posts, among other things. It is said that a fence made of black locust posts can last a hundred years.

In this shot I tried to get the bristles that give bristly locust its name, as well as the flowers. Bristly locust is more shrub than tree. Though it is said they can reach 8 feet the ones I know barely reach 6. Bristly purple-brown hairs cover its stems, the backs of its flowers and even its seedpods but they aren’t stiff or particularly prickly. The plant is native to the southeastern United States but has spread to nearly all of the lower 48 states. The beautiful pinkish purple flowers are very fragrant and bees love them. Certain nurseries sell them, so if you’re looking for a beautiful “plant it and forget it” native small tree that would do well on the edge of the woods and which pollinators would love, you might try one.

I don’t know who thought up the name “Jack go to bed at noon” for yellow goat’s beard but it’s accurate. They open when the sun finds them in the morning and then close up in early afternoon. These plants are from Europe but they could hardly be called invasive. I know of one colony off in a sunny meadow that really hasn’t expanded much in ten years. I’ve read that a kind of bubble gum can be made from the plant’s milky latex sap and its spring buds are said to be good in salads but I haven’t tried either.

I went to a local pond to see if the fragrant white waterlilies were blooming, and found maybe 30 of what will eventually be hundreds of them blooming. When you’re there and the breeze blows just right you can smell their wonderful fruity scent that some say smells like cantaloupe.

While I walked around the pond looking for a good place to get a shot of a waterlily blossom I got a big surprise; one of the biggest snapping turtles I’ve seen. That white clover blossom is about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch across, if that tells you anything.

At first I thought this big turtle had died of exhaustion but then I saw one of its back feet twitch and I knew it was alive. It’s best not to get too close to these creatures because what looks like a short neck is actually quite long and if one of your fingers gets caught in that beak well, you have a problem. This is the first shot I’ve ever gotten of a snapper’s big foot and claws. For a minute I felt as if I had been transported back in time a few million years.

These are gentle creatures that come on land only to lay their eggs, and they should be left alone to do so. I always just snap a couple of quick photos and leave them in peace. This one stayed in my mind though, so I went back to check on her the next day and was happy to not find her there in the hot sun. Though they glide through the water like a bird in the air on land they lose their buoyancy and feel their weight, and sometimes it seems as if they are struggling just to move. Egg laying also seem to take a lot out of them.

This is an invasive iris from Europe that is quite aggressive, and it grows wild in two or three spots along the river in Keene. It’s a beautiful thing but it spreads quickly so I can imagine the banks of the river lined with them in the not too distant future.

The dark markings on the petals are a good sign that this is “the” iris. I can’t think of a native iris that is yellow, grows in water, and is this big. They stand a good three feet tall and are very showy.

Our native wild irises are blue flags, which have shorter stalks and smaller flowers.

Sheep laurel are closely related to mountain laurel but they bloom a bit earlier. The flowers are smaller than mountain laurel and pink rather than white but as can be seen here, they have the same ten pockets that the tips of the anthers fit into. This makes them spring loaded, so when a heavy enough insect lands on them they all spring out and dust it with pollen. It seems like a lot of trouble for a flower to go through but it obviously works; there are always more laurel plants coming along.

Dragonflies are finally appearing and some like the chalk fronted corporal can hatch in the hundreds in just a small pond. This is a fairly common dragonfly that is good to practice your dragonfly photography on, because it likes to perch and wait for prey to come along. This one kept flying off this log and returning to the same spot and it didn’t mind me watching. They have pretty wing patterns and the chalky white coloring on their bodies can seem blue in certain light.

Chalk fronted corporals get their name from the “Corporal bars” behind their head. They’re not afraid to fight and won’t put up with interlopers trying to take over their spot. If you don’t like being bitten by mosquitoes then you should cheer the arrival of these and other dragonflies because they eat mosquitoes by the bag full. In fact if you’re very fortunate a swarm of chalk fronted corporals may follow you as you walk along, eating all the mosquitoes and deer flies that are swarming around you. If you’ve ever wondered why dragonflies will sometimes hover in front of you and seem to stare this is why; you attract their lunch.

Have you ever thought about what someone means when they say a plant is just an old weed? To me it means that they aren’t seeing the truth, because all things have their own beauty. They are spending more time sorting than seeing, and chances are they miss the beauty of things like blue toadflax, seen above. Just stop and look, and then really see.

Maiden pinks have started blooming. Though described as invasive everyone I know enjoys seeing them, so they aren’t any trouble. They like dry, hot, sandy soil in waste places where nothing else will grow anyway, so I say let them brighten the bare spots. They were once called “flashing lights” and it’s a good name for them.

This blue damselfly landed on a leaf right in front of me. “Thank you,” I thought as I took its photo. This is what I mean when I say that sometimes it can seem as if nature is throwing itself at you, and it’s a wonderful thing. Anyhow, this little damselfly might be a female eastern fork tail. And it might not; that’s the best I can come up with after a quick online comparison. I’m done spending hours, days, weeks and sometimes even months trying to put a name to something, because in the end the name is meaningless to me. It’s just a pretty blue damselfly.

Of course some names that are learned with effort aren’t easily forgotten, and that was the case with this spangled skimmer dragonfly. The “spangles” are the black and white bits at the leading edge of its wings; black is on the outside and white on the inside. These spangles shine in sunlight, which makes this dragonfly very easy to spot.

The pollen cones have opened on the red pines, white pines, and umbrella pines. These are the opened male pollen cones of the red pine seen here. If you have hay fever right now is not a good time, because the air is filled with pollen. One day I looked through a haze at the far hills that was so thick I thought it was smoke from more Canadian wildfires. I checked the air quality on my phone and it was good for this area, so it must have been pollen. That’s how I discovered that pollen doesn’t bother my lungs in the same way that smoke from fires does. It does make me sneeze though.

Where does all that pollen go? Everywhere, actually. It gets all over cars and inside the houses of people foolish enough to leave their windows open. When it rains it is washed into waterways, which is what the above photo shows. It floats on water and gathers in the shallows, so thick that great blue herons can’t see fish and frogs through it. Once we have a good heavy shower of rain it all disappears, presumably to the bottom of the pond or lake.

Not all the pollen is wasted though; some will reach the places it is needed, like these tiny pink flowers of the red pine. These flowers will become the tree’s pinecones, which will carry the trees seeds. That pollen, nuisance that it can be, means the continuation of life.

I went and saw the river of Dame’s rocket, which was always beautiful. I say “was” because I went back a week later and found that all of the plants in this photo had been dug up. The plants are not native and are very invasive, so I can understand why but still, I’ll miss them.

At a glance Dame’s rocket can fool you into thinking it is garden phlox, but phlox flowers have five petals and Dame’s rocket flowers only have four. It’s quite beautiful and fragrant but if you have it in your yard you’d better keep an eye on it, because it can spread quickly.

The alliums are blooming, from large ornamental flowerheads…

…down to small edible flowerheads like chives. Both are in the onion family and are quite pretty.

I thought I’d sneak in one plant that doesn’t like wall to wall sunshine; the blue bead lily. The leaves of this plant look like lady’s slipper leaves without the pleats and the flowers look like miniature Canada lilies. Blossoms have three petals, three sepals, and six stamens, as do all members of the lily family. Later on in July or August the electric blue berries that give this plant its name will appear. They’re beautiful and unusual, and worth keeping an eye out for.

This dragonfly is I believe, a lancet club tail. I saw it perched on a rock studying what looked like plans for a house or garage. Now wait just a minute, I thought, dragonflies are smart but they aren’t that smart. In fact what it was studying were just plant parts that had randomly fallen in a pattern that looked like a house and I’d bet that it wasn’t studying them at all, but it makes an interesting photo. When you get to know them dragonflies can keep you guessing because they are indeed more intelligent than we have been taught insects should be.

I like this one’s eyes, and I hope you do as well. I’d love to be able to see through those eyes, just once.

Summer is the annual permission slip to be lazy. To do nothing and have it count for something. To lie in the grass and count the stars. To sit on a branch and study the clouds. ~Regina Brett

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Things I’ve Seen

June is when the big female snapping turtles come up out of the ponds and swamps to find some warm sand to lay their eggs in. This one had just done so and still had wet mud clinging to her when I saw her on one of my walks. Egg laying seems to be quite a project for the big reptiles but every year many thousands of eggs are lain, so they always find a way.

Seeing this garter snake might have stopped the snapper in its tracks, because they are omnivores and eat snakes, frogs, fish, crayfish, insects, plants, birds, small mammals, and even other turtles. It was on another walk that I saw this snake and what was really odd about it was how it was out in the open in daylight. They often come out to the edge of the woods to sun themselves during the day but are always within easy reach of cover, and will slither off quickly if you approach them. This one had no cover at all, not even high grass.

I kept trying to get a shot of the snake with its forked tongue out, but I missed every time. Garter snakes are timid and nonpoisonous, so they are nothing to worry about. Still, if my grandmother had been there, she would have been up a tree. Garter snakes eat crickets, grasshoppers, small fish, and earthworms. They do have teeth, but they’re no real danger to humans. I’ve read that the saliva of some garter snake species contains a mild neurotoxin that causes paralysis, making small prey easier to swallow.

While I was taking photos an 85 year old lady stopped and rolled down her car window and told me how she was deathly afraid of snakes but, she said, when she was just a girl she once let them drape a boa constrictor over her shoulders at a circus for a free candy bar. I told her she and my grandmother would have gotten along quite well.

That garter snake probably would have like to have met Mr. bullfrog, but I doubt it could have swallowed him. This was a big frog, but I never would have seen it if it hadn’t croaked loudly after a neighboring frog did the same. They do talk to each other. One will start it off and then they’ll all start croaking, one right after the other. It can be quite loud.

On the same day I saw the frog in the previous shot I saw a bullfrog jump right out of the water and snatch something out of the air before landing with a splash, and I think it might have been a cousin of this spangled skimmer dragonfly. The “spangles” are the black and white markings on its wings, otherwise it closely resembles the slaty skimmer, which is what I thought it was at first. It was quite far away when I took this shot. I also saw lots of pretty twelve spotted skimmers on this day but I couldn’t get a shot of any of them.

I saw 3 or 4 eastern swallowtail butterflies probing the damp sand at the edge of a dirt road recently. They’re pretty things and at about the same size as a monarch butterfly, big enough to see easily. They often show up just before the mountain laurels bloom and I see them hanging from the laurel flowers almost every year.

Usually I have to wait for butterflies to fold their wings but this time I had to wait for this one to unfold them. I was hoping it would have more blue/purple on its wings than it did.

I hike in the woods but I walk on roads, and on one of those walks a hawk flew out of the woods, swooped down right over my head, and landed on a wire ahead of me. I thought as soon as I got too near it would fly off but no, I walked over and stood right under it and it didn’t move. I don’t carry my “big” camera with me when I walk because I walk fast and its constantly bumping into my chest bothers me, so I had to get this shot with my small macro camera. That’s why it isn’t a very good shot, but it does show a hawk. I’m not very good with birds but it might be a cooper’s hawk. If you know what it is for sure I’d love to hear its name because I think it lives here and I’m fairly sure I’ve seen it before.

In this shot I took of the evening sky with my phone camera there was a bird flying up there to the right that I never saw until I looked at the photo. I wondered if it could be a hawk, but the detail isn’t fine enough to tell. It’s just a silhouette.

I saw a familiar sight on an oak branch on a recent walk. Wooly oak galls are usually about the size of a ping pong ball when I find them, but have a kind of felt feel, like a tennis ball. The gall is caused by secretions from the grubs of the wool sower gall wasp (Callirhytis seminator) and they only appear in spring.

There are small seed like structures inside the gall which contain the wasp larva, and that’s why these galls are also called oak seed galls. What I want to point out about these galls though, is how books will tell you that they will only grow on white oak trees, and that isn’t true. Though they almost always do grow on white oaks I’ve also seen them on red oaks, so don’t be fooled by the galls like I have been; check the leaves. One thing I’ve learned from studying nature is the words always and never do not apply.

White pine (Pinus strobus) pollen cones have come and have opened, and have released their yellow-green pollen to the wind. It settles on everything, and if you leave your windows open you find that it even comes into the house. My car is covered with it but luckily it is like dust and just blows away.

This year I went looking for red pine pollen cones (Pinus resinosa) and the ones I found before they had opened were very beautiful, but they were also in someone’s yard so I didn’t get a shot of them. Then I remembered where there were others that I could get close to and here they are in this photo, but they had already opened. They are much bigger than white pine pollen cones.

Pollen cones are the male flowers of the tree and this photo shows the female flowers. When the male pollen finds them, if all goes according to plan they will be fertilized and will become the seed-bearing pine cones that I think we’re all familiar with. Some flowers on coniferous trees are very small; so small that sometimes all I can see is a hint of color, so you have to look closely to find them.

The Ashuelot River gets lower and lower and still no beneficial rain comes to refill it. I’m starting to get the feeling that it may not be a good year for mushrooms, but I hope I’m wrong.

Another name for royal fern (Osmunda spectabilis) is “flowering fern,” because someone once thought that the fertile, fruiting fronds looked like bunches of flowers. You can see them here on the fern in the photo but though they are often purple they don’t look much like flowers to me. 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.

Here is a closer look at the spore capsules of the royal fern. They aren’t something that many people get to see.

For the first time, this year I was able to find and get a shot of a royal fern fiddlehead. Even at this stage it’s a beautiful fern. In the fall, at the other end of its life, it will turn first bright yellow and then will become a kind of beautiful burnt orange color.

Three bracken fern fronds (Pteridium aquilinum) appear at the end of a long stem and flatten out horizontally, parallel to the ground. They also overlap and shade the ground under them. These growth habits and their ability to release chemicals that inhibit the growth of many other plants means that almost nothing will grow under a colony of bracken fern. They will not tolerate acid rain, so if you don’t see them growing where you live you might want to check the local air pollution statistics.

Ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) is not a fern that I see a lot of. It likes damp ground and shade but even beyond that it seems to be very choosy about where it grows. It’s a very beautiful fern that I wish I’d see more of.

Ostrich fern fronds are narrower at the tip and base and wider in the center. The leaf stalk of an ostrich fern is deeply grooved, much more pronounced than others. Sensitive, interrupted fern and cinnamon fern have grooved leaf stalks but their grooves are much shallower. If you like to eat fern fiddleheads in spring you should get to know ostrich fern by that groove.

In some plants the same pigments that color leaves in the fall when they stop photosynthesizing also color their leaves in the spring before the leaves have started photosynthesizing. Once they start producing more chlorophyll, they’ll quickly turn green. This coloring of new spring leaves is a form of protection from the weather that some plants and even trees use. Heavy cloud cover, cold snaps, and even too much sunlight can cause some leaves to slow down their greening process in spring, but plants like the Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium) seen in this photo do it almost every year, I’ve noticed.

Another plant with purple leaves in spring, every spring in my experience, is the native clematis called virgin’s bower or traveler’s joy (Clematis virginiana). It won’t be long before its small white flowers decorate the roadside shrubs as it climbs over them to reach optimum sunlight but by that time all of its leaves will have turned green. An extract made from the plant is hallucinogenic (and dangerous) and was used by Native Americans to induce dreams. Mixed with other plants like milkweed, it was also used medicinally. It is a very toxic plant that can cause painful sores in the mouth if eaten.

There are many grasses starting to flower now and I hope you’ll go out and see them. Never mind your hay fever; I have allergies too. Nature doesn’t mind being sneezed at. Take a pill, grab some tissues and become one of those who sees the beauty that most never see. Even if you have to see it through watery eyes now and then, it’s still beautiful.

A native smooth carrion flower vine (Smilax herbacea) grew beside a trail and it seemed as if it just flung itself into existence and went wild, with leaves and tendrils and great arching stems everywhere. I thought it was a beautiful thing, and it stopped me right in my tracks. No matter what is going on in life, no matter where you are, there is always beauty to be seen. You don’t even have to search for it; it is just there, like a dandelion blooming in a crack in the sidewalk as you hurry along, or a white cloud floating across a blue sky reflected in the glass of your car window. It is there I think, to remind us to just slow down a little and appreciate life more; to take the time to enjoy this beautiful paradise that we find ourselves in.

If you Love all Life you observe, you will observe all Life with Love.  ~Donald L. Hicks

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