Along the River

There were two things I wanted to know last weekend; were turtles active yet and were trout lilies blooming. I couldn’t think of anyplace better to answer those questions than along the Ashuelot River, so last Saturday off I went along one of my favorite riverside trails. The water was quite high, probably from snow still melting in the higher elevations. Snow is still chest deep in the northern part of the state and they’re still having avalanches in the White Mountains, so reports have said.

I’ve been walking this trail for over 50 years so I know it well. There used to be a small wooden hut up ahead where that paved spot is. It had an open front facing the river and a bench to sit on, almost like a bus stop. It was made of wood so of course every young boy with a pocket knife had to come here and carve their initials into it, including me. I’ve wondered for years why it was there because in the 1960s this trail saw very little traffic. Traffic or not the trail was here and I think that it’s been here for quite a lot longer than I’ve been around because I think it was originally used by Native Americans. It’s close to many shallow areas in the river and there are lots of places to fish. It seems like it would be perfect for someone who lived off the land.

A pair of Canada geese chatted quietly off across a setback.

My question of active turtles was answered quickly. I also heard toads and tree frogs out here, as well as the little frogs we call spring peepers. It was great to hear them again. I wanted to get a better view of this turtle so I walked on, hoping for a side shot.

But all that was left was the log the turtle sat on. Not a very interesting subject.

I thought I had scared the turtle away but then I saw those two geese come steaming up the river and I wondered if they were what the turtle was afraid of. Do geese bother turtles? I don’t know the answer to that one. It’s a question that would require much sitting and watching to answer.

The geese weren’t afraid of me. In fact they followed along beside me as I went on. Maybe they thought I had a pocket full of bread. A couple of young boys on bikes came along, saw the geese and dropped their bikes. Once the geese saw them sit on the river bank they swam right over. Whether or not the boys had bread for them I don’t know.

It was a beautiful day but at 70 degrees F. it seemed warm and I was glad I hadn’t warn a jacket. The shirts I had on were plenty warm enough. There were lots of insects out but I didn’t get bitten by any of them.

There was still ice to be found in cool, shaded backwaters but the frogs were active and chirping even in places that still had ice.

A couple of posts ago I showed a papery trumpet shaped stem and wondered what it was. Luckily reader Eliza Waters recognized them and said they were jewel weed (Impatiens capensis) stems. I knew a lot of jewel weed grew in a spot along this trail and when I got there sure enough, there they were. Thanks again Eliza! Each stem is about a foot tall and has a trumpet shaped opening that looks just about right for a pea to sit in.

Ever since I was a young boy I’ve wondered what was over there on the other side of the river but since it probably would involve a lot of bushwhacking due to the lack of a trail, I’ve never gotten up enough ambition to find out. Maybe it’s better that way, but that glow does look inviting.

I suppose it’s a good thing I never did cross the river and follow along its far side. I might have been arrested. No hunting, no fishing and no trespassing pretty much covers everything.

That dark spot ahead is actually a wet spot, one of surprisingly few along this trail. The trail through these woods isn’t that far from where the railroad repair depot used to be in Keene, and the trail is black because it was “paved” with the unburned slag from the big steam locomotive fireboxes. This slag is usually called “clinkers” or “clinker ash” and it is made up of pieces of fused ash and sulfur which often built-up over time in a hot coal fire. Firebox temperature reached 2000 to 2300 degrees F. in a steam locomotive but they still didn’t burn the coal completely. A long tool called a fire hook was used to pull the clinkers out of the firebox and in Keene we must have had tons of the stuff, because it was used as ballast on many local railroad beds. The section that ran by my house was as black as coal.

I had finally reached the little red bridge, and this was the spot where my second question would be answered. I had been to another spot where thousands of yellow trout lilies grow and didn’t see any sign of them, not even a leaf. I thought this place might get more sunshine and maybe the soil warmed quicker, but there was still no sign of trout lilies. I could be rushing it though; I just discovered by looking back through the blog that April 20 is the earliest I’ve seen them.

I did admire some American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) The leaves are just coming out of their purple winter color and turning green so they can begin photosynthesizing again. This plant is also called teaberry or checkerberry and its small white flowers resemble those of the blueberry. It is probably the easiest of all wintergreens to identify because of the strong, minty scent that comes from its crushed leaves. If you have ever tasted teaberry gum then you know exactly what it smells and tastes like. The plant contains compounds that are very similar to those found in aspirin and Native Americans used it medicinally. They also chewed the minty leaves on long hikes.

Alders love water and many grow here. This speckled alder (Alnus incana) lived up to its name.

I’ve tried for a long time to show you what alders look like with all their male catkins open and dangling like jewels and with the help of a flash I was finally able to get a photo. It isn’t as easy as I thought it would be; it only took 8 years.

The bent tree marks a side trail that I keep telling myself I’ll have to follow one day, but I never do. I hope to have much more time for such things once I retire. I’d love to be able to just sit in the woods again without a care like I did when I was a boy.

One of the many feeder streams along the trail had a lot of what looked like orange rust in its water and that’s why this photo of it looks so strange. It might be algae coloring it, or maybe last year’s decaying leaves. The reflections of the trees look as if they have leaves but the leaves are really on the bottom of the stream.

The greatest joy is not finding something that we’ve been looking for. The greatest joy is when we’d given up on ever finding it and then it found us.
~Craig D. Lounsbrough

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Things I’ve Seen

I saw this deformed speckled alder cone (Alnus incana) and took a couple of photos of it.  I can’t tell you what it says but it speaks to me and I like it, so here it is.

Some of our mosses have started producing spores, like the apple moss (Bartramia pomiformis) pictured here. Reproduction begins in the late fall for this moss and immature spore capsules (sporophytes) appear by late winter. When the warm rains of spring arrive the straight, toothpick like sporophytes swell at their tips and form tiny globes that always look like pearls to me, but someone thought they looked like apples and the name stuck.  Sometimes the capsules do turn red as they age, so I guess the name is appropriate.  When there are no sporophytes showing this moss is easily confused with broom moss (Dicranum scoparium.) I know how easy it is to do, because I confuse the two all the time. The leaves look almost identical, but those of broom moss are not as shiny.

Star moss (Mnium cuspidatum) is also not wasting any time in spore production. I wanted to show you it’s leaves but they were so small and curled because of dryness, I couldn’t get a good shot of them. Like the apple moss we saw previously this moss makes immature toothpick like sporophytes in late fall, and then they swell to form capsules when the warm spring rains arrive. The capsules droop at the tip as seen in the photo. You can tell that they haven’t fully matured by the tiny, whitish stocking cap like structure, called a calyptra, which covers the end of the spore case. It stays in place until the spores are ready to be released. This moss is very short and grows just about anywhere, including in lawns. I found this example on the wet rocks along a rail trail.

I went looking for my old friend the downy rattlesnake plantain orchid (Goodyera pubescens) and even though I know where it lives I walked by it several times before I found it. You would think the color would stand out against the brown leaves but I can look right at it and not see it sometimes. Maybe colorblindness has something to do with it. In any event I went looking for it because I love the color and netting on its leaves and I just wanted to see it again. It’s another one of those plants that I can sit beside and just admire.

 

While I was walking back and forth searching for the downy rattlesnake plantain a downy woodpecker said maybe I’ll do instead and flew down onto the path a few feet away. He didn’t stay long though, and by the time I had finished fumbling around with my camera he had found a tree just out of the comfortable range of the lens. He stayed relatively close for quite a while though, letting me snap away. I think he knew he was too far away for my camera and that all of the photos would be soft and fuzzy.

Note: A reader has pointed out that this is a female hairy woodpecker. It’s a good thing I don’t get many bird photos!

 

I wondered if he was the woodpecker that excavated this cavity in an old dead pine. It was close to where we were when I saw him.

Near the woodpecker tree a beard lichen hung from the end of a fallen branch. I have a hard time passing a beard lichen as big as this one was without taking a photo. I think it might be boreal oak moss (Evernia mesomorpha.) The forest I was exploring when I found all of these things is a strange place with plants that you rarely see anywhere else, like larch, spruce, and striped wintergreen. It has a very boreal feel to it, like it really belongs up in Canada.

The calendar might say spring but winter is hanging on for dear life this year and doesn’t want to let go. In shady places in the deep woods there is still snow and ice to be found.

 

Last year I found a place where hundreds of field horsetails (Equisetum arvense) grew, but this year there were just three shoots. If any of you have had horsetails in your garden you know that they don’t give up easily, so I couldn’t imagine how hundreds became three. It turned out that the cold was holding them back I think, because there are more coming along now.

One of them was far enough along to start producing spores. The fertile spore bearing stem of a common or field horsetail 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. The whitish “ruffles” at the base of each brown sporangiophore are the spore producing sporangia. When the horsetail looks like the one in the photo it has released its spores and will soon die and be replaced by the gritty green infertile stems that most of us are probably familiar with. Horsetails were used as medicine by the ancient Romans and Greeks to treat a variety of ailments.

The two toned buds of Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) are poking up everywhere now. This is a fast growing plant once it gets started and it won’t be long before it blooms. Native Americans sprinkled dried powdered roots of this plant on hot stones and inhaled the smoke to alleviate headaches. All parts of the plant except the roots and young shoots are poisonous, but that’s assuming you know how to prepare the roots and young shoots correctly. Sometimes the preparation method is what makes a plant useable.

The pinkish leaf buds of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) are growing quickly now. They often show hints of orange too and are quite beautiful at this stage; in my opinion one of the most beautiful things in the forest at this time of year. It’s interesting how the bud scales on the two smaller lateral buds open perpendicular to those on the terminal bud. I’ve never noticed that before.

 

This is how striped maple comes by its common name. Striped maple bark is often dark enough to be almost black, especially on its branches. This tree never seems to get very big so it isn’t used much for lumber like other maples. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one bigger than my wrist, and even that might be stretching it. It could be that it stays small because it usually gets very little direct sunlight. The green stripes on its bark allow it to photosynthesize in early spring before other trees leaf out but it’s still the most shade tolerant of all the maples, and that’s usually where it’s found. It is said that Native Americans made arrow shafts from its straight grained wood.

The male flower buds of American white ash (Fraxinus americana) appear before the leaves do and look like little blackberries from a distance. According to the U.S. Forest Service one of the earliest reported uses of white ash was as a snake bite preventive. Ash leaves in a hunter’s pocket or boots were “proved” to be offensive to rattlesnakes and thereby provided protection from them. It is said that we have timber rattlers here but since I’ve never seen one I don’t think I’ll put ash leaves in my boots just yet.

Box elder (Acer negundo) was the first tree I ever planted. The tree’s male flowers appear here but my grandmother had a big female one in her front yard that dropped about a billion seeds each year. She knew that if they all grew their roots would destroy the brick foundation, so every few years she would pay me a quarter to go around the house and pull all the seedlings. One day I found a nice tall one that I liked so I pulled it up, took it home, and planted it. That tree took off like I had given it super strength fertilizer and last I knew was still growing strong. It was another one of those times that a plant spoke to me and told me that they and I just might get along.  When you really love them they can tell, of that I’m convinced.

Somehow this post ended up being a little tree heavy but sometimes that’s just the way it works out. The subject of the above photo isn’t a tree but it is called tree moss (Climacium dendroides) because of its resemblance. This tough little moss loves wet places that flood occasionally so I always look for it when I’m near water. It always seems to glow from within, happy to simply be alive.

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

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More Signs of Spring

Some of our terrestrial wildflowers have started to open. I was real happy to find several coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) plants blossoming beside an old dirt road. Coltsfoot is one of our earliest blooming wildflowers and once I see them I know that things will happen fast from then on. Spring beauties, trout lilies, bluets and many others will follow in rapid succession now. I don’t think coltsfoot looks much like a dandelion but it does get mistaken for them.

One look at the scaly stem of a coltsfoot should convince anyone that they’re not looking at a dandelion, which has a very smooth stems. I was hoping to find a dandelion so I could get a photo to use in comparison but what was once one of our earliest wild flowers now seems to be blooming later each year.

Getting a decent shot of a yellow flower in full sun is difficult to say the least but nothing says spring like a daffodil in the sunshine, so I had to try. We’ve had about a full week of good warm, sunny weather and the spring flowering bulbs are opening quickly now.

One of the spring flowering bulbs I most look forward to seeing each spring is striped squill. The simple blue stripe down the middle of each white petal makes them very beautiful, in my opinion. The bulbs are very hard to find but they are out there. If you’d like some just Google Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica and I’m sure that you’ll find a nursery or two that carries them. They are much like the scilla (Scilla siberica) that most of us are familiar with in size and shape but they aren’t seen anywhere near as often and border on rare in this area. The example pictured here grows in a local park.

Skunk Cabbage leaves (Symplocarpus foetidus) are up and growing fast. It’s at this point that some of them really do resemble cabbage leaves.

 

Male speckled alder (Alnus incana) catkins go from brown to purplish red to yellow as they open to release their pollen. It’s like someone has hung colorful ornaments from the branches during the night, because it seems like they appear that quickly.

Close up photos reveal brown and purple scales on alder catkins. These scales are on short stalks and surround a central axis. There are three flowers beneath each scale, each with a lobed calyx cup and three to five stamens with anthers usually covered in yellow pollen, but I’m not seeing a lot of pollen on this particular example.

When the male (staminate) alder catkins become more yellow than reddish brown then it’s time to start looking for the tiny female (pistillate) flowers. Since alders are monoecious both male and female flowers can be found on the same shrub. The female flowers often form at the very tips of the branches in groups of 3-5 and contain red stigmas that receive the male pollen. Once fertilized the female flowers will grow into the small, cone like seed pods that I think most of us a familiar with.

Nature uses this same color again and again on the female flowers of red maple, hazelnut, speckled alder, eastern larch and others but why, I wonder. All of those flowers are wind pollinated so the color isn’t used to attract insects. There must be something more to it that I’m missing.

 

One day I went to a small pond and there must have been hundreds of frogs of at least three different kinds peeping, croaking and quacking at once. It was the loudest frog concert that I’ve ever heard.

Frogs aren’t the only ones that the warm days have stirred. I saw these two garter snakes warming themselves in the sun one day.

I don’t know enough about snakes to know if one was a female and one a male but this is the other one.

I’m not sure why this turtle was balancing itself on such a skinny little tree branch but it seemed content and was willing to pose.

I didn’t see it until I looked at the photo but this robin had a damaged a wing feather. It didn’t seem to hinder his flying ability at all so I think he was probably fine. I was surprised that he let me get so close.

My grandmother had a large weeping willow so willow trees always bring back fond memories. Right now they have taken on that golden haze that they show only in early spring and seeing them makes my winter weary spirit soar.

Down at eye level the gray, fuzzy willow catkins have turned to golden blossoms that light up the pond edges and river banks. They are a beautiful reminder of why spring has always been my favorite season and it’s such a joy to see them again.

Whenever I have found myself stuck in the ways I relate to things, I return to nature. It is my principal teacher, and I try to open my whole being to what it has to say.  ~Wynn Bullock

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Along a Stream

Spring is coming slowly this year, mostly because of a temperature roller coaster that can have near zero wind chills one day and 50 degree warmth the next. Still, spring is happening, as the ice free stream in the above photo shows. It’s a stream I know well and it looked so inviting that I decided to follow it one sunny day. There was a lot of snow still in the woods but luckily it had formed a good crust and I could walk along on top of it.

The stream wasn’t completely ice free though. In fact in shady places it still had a thin skim of ice bank to bank. Last fall I saw a brook trout here that was so big it made me gasp with surprise, but I didn’t see any this day.

I did see some green something on the bed of the stream. I think it might be filamentous algae, but I don’t know for sure.

Also growing on the stream bed was what I think is one-rowed watercress (Nasturtium microphyllum,) which is originally from Europe and Asia and which, as the all too familiar story goes, has escaped cultivation and found a home in the wild.  The plant is called one-rowed because the seed pods have their seeds in one row instead of the usual two rows found in common watercress (Nasturtium officinale.) I’ve read that it is an aquatic plant but I can’t seem to find out if it will actually grow under water as these do. I think the yellow color of its leaves comes from being under the ice of the stream all winter, which would have cut off light and effectively blanched them.

It looked like someone had carved tiny wooden flowers and stuck them in the snow for me to find, but of course they were just the seed pods of Indian pipes. Personally I find them much more beautiful in this state than when they’re flowering. They are one of those things that I could lose myself in, and sit and look at for hours.

I went to see what horsetails (Equisetum hyemale) looked like in the winter and found that they looked much the same as they do in summer, except that the snow had broken a few. They grow to about knee high here on the stream bank.

Horsetails produce spores in their cone shaped tips, but the examples in this spot rarely grow them. Another name for this plant is scouring rush because of all the silica they contain in their tissues. They make great pot scrubbers in a pinch when you’re camping and in Japan they are boiled and dried and then used to smooth wood. They are said to produce a finish superior to any sandpaper. The green, black and tan stripes always remind me of socks.

Horsetail stems are hollow and this example was dripping water like a faucet.

You don’t realize how much stuff falls from evergreen trees until you walk through an evergreen forest in winter. There must be tons of it and I’m so glad that I don’t have to rake it all up.

 

Instead of being caused by an insect like many galls, alder (Alnus incana) tongue gall is caused by a fungus (Taphrina alni). The fungus chemically deforms parts of the ovarian tissue of the female cone-like catkins (strobiles) and causes long, tongue shaped galls known as languets to grow from them. These galls seem to like high humidity so are usually found on alders that grow near swamps, ponds and streams.  These galls have a bright red phase in spring so I’ve got to remember to look for them this year. They blacken over time and the ones pictured are last year’s galls.

There are many wild grapes growing along this stream and most have reached considerable age. Few people ever come here so they are left to grow on their own. They produce an abundant crop almost every year and on warm days in the fall the woods smell just like grape jelly.

European barberry (Berberis vulgaris) and American barberry (Berberis canadensis) both have clusters of 3 or more thorns but since American barberry doesn’t grow in New England this one has to be European barberry. Its red berries were once used medicinally and are rich in vitamin C. They were also used in cooking in much the same way that lemon peel is used today, and the bright yellow inner bark was used to make yellow dye. With so many uses it’s no wonder that early settlers brought it from home, but of course it immediately escaped cultivation and was found growing wild in New England as early as 1671. It’s still here but is nowhere near as invasive as Japanese barberry (Berberis thunbergii) and in fact can be hard to find. I know of only two plants.

There are a few dead trees along the stream and this might have something to do with it. Bootstrap fungus is caused by honey mushrooms (Armillaria mellea), which are parasitic on live wood and send out long root like structures called rhizomorphs between the wood of a tree and its bark. When fresh the rhizomorphs are cream colored but darken to brown or black as they age. The fungus is also called armillaria root rot or shoestring root rot. It causes a white pulpy rot in the wood and kills many species of both soft and hardwood trees.

Woodpeckers seem to like it here along the stream, because there was plenty of evidence that they had been here. This hole was quite deep into the tree and I wondered if it was a nesting hole. I saw a pileated woodpecker land on a tree right outside my window one day but I don’t see a lot of their rectangular holes, so he might have been just passing through.

Bark beetles sometimes create such beautiful patterns in wood that it looks as if a calligrapher has taken up a chisel instead of a pen. When I think of things like this, created under the bark of a limb and never meant for me to see, that’s when I feel an almost overwhelming sense of gratitude, just for being alive and able to see beauty like this every day.

Go out, go out I beg of you
And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
With all the wonder of a child.
~Edna Jaques

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Spring Flowers

Sometimes you can lose yourself in a flower’s beauty, especially when it’s the first crocus of the season.

How can you not have a spring in your step and a smile on your face after seeing something like this?

The male (staminate) flowers of speckled alder (Alnus incana) have just started opening, making the forest edges look as if someone has hung jewels from the bushes.  Soon they will release their pollen and start a new generation of alders.

Male speckled alder catkins viewed up close reveal brown and purple scales. These scales are on short stalks and surround a central axis. There are three flowers beneath each scale, each with a lobed calyx cup and three to five stamens with anthers covered in yellow pollen.

The tiny female (pistillate) catkins of speckled alder consist of scales that cover two flowers, each having a pistil and a scarlet style. Since speckled alders are wind pollinated the flowers have no petals because petals would hinder the process and keep male pollen grains from landing on the female flowers. These female catkins will eventually become the cone-like, seed bearing structures (strobiles) that are so noticeable on alders.

 

I’ve known for a long time that the female flowers of the American hazelnut (Corylus americana) were among the smallest I’d seen, but I wondered exactly how small. To find out I measured the tiny bud that the hair-like, scarlet pistils protrude from with the same vernier calipers I use to measure precision machine parts. I found that the bud diameter is almost the same as a single strand of spaghetti, or about 4 thousandths of an inch (.004).

The catkins full of male (staminate) American hazelnut (Corylus americana) flowers don’t have the brown and purple scales that speckled alder catkins do. They are longer and more golden in color, but they work the same way as the alder catkins described previously. They seem to glow in the late afternoon sun.

 

Forsythia buds are showing some color. It’s a very common shrub and it won’t be long before nearly every street in town shouts spring, thanks to its cheery yellow blooms.

The witch hazels at a local park have finally completely unfurled their strap-like petals. I’ve shown these flowers at various stages of development over the last month and have been calling the shrub “Vernal” witch hazel, which isn’t correct. Our native vernal witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) only grows in the southern and central United States. I’m guessing that the shrub pictured, even though it does bloom in spring, is most likely a Japanese witch hazel (Hamamelis japonica), because it is extremely fragrant.

 

If you don’t mind getting down on your stomach in the kind of swampy ground that they like to grow in you can sometimes get a peek inside the spathe of a skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) to see its flowers. A spathe is just a modified leaf or bract which kind of wraps around itself and protects the flower bud. As the plant matures a gap opens in the spathe to let in the insects which will pollinate the flowers. The one on the right has a good sized hole that the lens of my Panasonic Lumix might just fit into.

Well, the lens fit the hole in the skunk cabbage spathe but the flash didn’t but luckily there was a broken one nearby that allowed a peek at the spadix with all of its flowers-something very few people ever get to see. Each flower on the spadix has four yellowish sepals. The male stamens grow up through the sepals and release their pollen before the female style and pistil grow out of the flower’s center to catch any pollen that visiting insects might carry from other plants.

The scattered rock posy lichen (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) isn’t a flower but it has both the name and beauty of one, so I let it have a place here. This lichen keeps its pale orange fruiting bodies (apothecia) year round, so seeing it in winter is like finding a flower in the snow.

When the female flowers of red maples (Acer rubrum) just start to poke out of their protective bud scales they remind me of female American hazelnut flowers, though they are bigger and much easier to see.

 

As I was admiring the red color of the female red maple flowers a robin flew down just a few feet away and began kicking up dead leaves as if he wanted to show me what the color red was really all about. Finally satisfied that he had been admired too, off he flew. My color finding software actually sees more brown than red on his breast in this photo, but he doesn’t have to know that. Let him strut.

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

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A Walk Along the River

We’re on a temperature roller coaster here in southwestern New Hampshire, with temps in the low 20s one day and high 30s the next. This weekend they say we might hit 50 degrees, so the ice and snow will be melting fast.

Watching water freeze probably wouldn’t be considered high excitement, but if the above shot is compared to the one in last Saturday’s post, taken from the same spot, the slow buildup of ice in the Ashuelot river can be seen.

Last Saturday none of this ice was here.

While I was at the river I walked along the banks to my favorite grove of witch hazel shrubs (Hamamelis virginiana.) I found one blooming here on the day before Christmas, and here it is still blooming. It is supposed to be a late fall bloomer-one of the latest-but seeing it blooming this late is strange. It is only one plant out of many that is doing this, and I’d bet that plant breeders would love to get their hands on it and develop an “ever blooming” witch hazel.

This is what one would expect an American witch hazel to look like at this time of year. The small cups are formed by four bracts that curve back. The petals unfurl from these cups on warm fall days. It takes about a year for the plant to form seeds.

Alder (Alnus) fruits come in the shape of small cones, called strobiles, which contain even smaller seeds, called nutlets. These flat, triangular seeds are an important food source for small birds like chickadees. Alders like a lot of moisture and can be found on the banks of ponds, rivers and streams in full sun.

 

These are the male staminate flowers of the alder, called catkins, which will open in the spring and release pollen to fertilize the female flowers. The female flowers will then produce the strobiles shown in the previous picture.

Lichens are much easier to see in the winter. This is bristly beard lichen (Usnea hirta) I think. I’m beginning to see that, though they grow almost anywhere, many lichens seem to prefer growing near a water source like a river or a lake. Ledges that trickle groundwater are another good spot to find them. 

I’ve never noticed before that the bright red fruits of the burning bush (Euonymus alatus) seem to turn to a kind of orange jelly in the winter. I’m surprised there were any fruits left because birds love them. Burning bush, also called winged euonymus, is one of our most invasive plants and the woods near the river are full of them. 

It’s easy to see how whitewash lichen (Phlyctis argena) got its name because it looks like somebody took a paintbrush to the tree trunk that it grows on. This crustose lichen almost always grows on deciduous trees like red maple but can occasionally be found on conifers. It is also called blemished lichen. 

I liked these furry looking seed heads but couldn’t figure out what plant they were on. It had a woody stem and stood about a foot and a half tall. 

Hoar frost is also called rime and forms when water vapor contacts surfaces which are below freezing. The sun melted the snow around this clump of grass, but then frost formed on it quickly. This frost usually happens when the sky is clear and is also called radiation frost for the radiational cooling that takes place before it forms.

Wilderness touches the heart, mind and soul of each individual in a way known only to himself ~Michael Frome

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I Wonder

 The water in the streams here in New Hampshire is so clear you can easily see the bottom. I wonder if it is like that in other places too. This is the stream I found one of the deadliest plants known-water hemlock- growing in.  I wonder-if you were downstream from such a toxic plant and drank the water, would you be poisoned?

 I understand what lenticels are and what they do and that all trees have them, but I wonder why only some trees, like this speckled alder, have large lenticels and some have only tiny dots almost too small to see. I suppose I might as well wonder why some of us have blue eyes and some brown.

 

It’s easy to see why the sensitive fern is also called the bead fern-the modified leaflets that hold the fern’s spores look like black beads in winter, but I wonder what happens to them later in the year. I’m always so busy gardening in the spring that I’ve never taken the time to find out.

 Years ago I earned part of my living building dry stone walls and for pleasure I used to hunt minerals. In both cases I had to break large stones with sledge hammers. I know that most stones are very hard, and that leads me to wonder who went to all the trouble of drilling this hole into this granite stone, which is out in the middle of nowhere. If it was done by hand with a 10 lb sledge and a star drill, it took someone many hours. I wonder who, how, and most of all, why?

 This-what would you call it-a crypt? A root cellar? Whatever it is it is built to last, with cinder block walls and concrete slab roof. The dwarfish door–too small to stand and walk through-looks as if it has been painted recently and is locked, even though the debris built up in front of it would probably make it impossible to open. Someone has even put sheet metal over it to keep the rain off. What really has me wondering is that it is far enough from any houses so as not to belong to any house in the area. Who built it? Why? What is inside it?

If I find the answers to any of these mysteries, I’ll let you know.

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