Things I’ve Seen

It’s so hot and humid here right now my camera lenses fog up the minute I take them from the dry, cool air of the car into the jungle humid air outside. If there’s one thing that can destroy a camera it is condensation so I’ve put together another “Things I’ve seen” post using all the photos that didn’t fit in other blog posts. Ten years ago I had never seen a Luna moth but on the day I took the  photo above there must have been at least 8 of them on a white painted block wall where I work. These moths are big and easy to see and I’ve read that Luna moths are one of the largest moths in North America, sometimes having a wingspan of as much as 4 1/2 inches. They are beautiful, with a white body, pinkish legs, and pale lime green wings. In northern regions the moth lives for only 7 days and produces only one generation, while in the south they can live for as long as 11 weeks and produce three generations.

Another moth I’ve never seen is this one. Until this year that is; now I’m seeing them everywhere. They’re relatively large as moths go and you would think they’d be easy to identify but I haven’t had much luck so far. I can picture it landing on a tree and disappearing completely.

I was told it was a sphinx moth and I think that’s accurate, but if you Google “sphinx moth with blue eyes on its hind wing you get the eyed hawk moth, but that one only lives in Europe and the U.K., so that can’t be it. But it really doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to see it and to see this view of it, which reminds me of a blue eyed baboon face. I’m guessing it might scare away a bird.

Long time readers of this blog know that I don’t “do” birds and insects because of colorblindness but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy seeing and hearing them and trying to get photos of them to show you. My identification skills aren’t as sharp as I’d like them to be when it comes to insects especially, but I think this dragonfly might be a slaty skimmer. It has a dark blue body that looks gray to me, and a black head. Females and juveniles are said to have a dark stripe down their backs so I’m assuming this must be a male. If I’m wrong I hope you’ll let me know, because I’m seeing lots of them right now.

I’m also seeing damselflies and this one landed right in front of me one morning, so I had to take its photo. Though I don’t see any blue I think it might be a blue tailed damselfly because of its other markings. The chances of being correct with my identification are vey slim however, so again I hope you’ll let me know if I’m wrong.

When I was a boy we called this foamy stuff on plant stems “snake spit,” but of course it isn’t any such thing. Instead it’s really the protective foam used by spittle bug nymphs and has nothing to do with snakes. The nymphs use it to make themselves invisible to predators and to keep themselves from drying out. They make the foamy mass by dining on plant sap and secreting a watery liquid which they whip up with air to create the froth. There’s no telling where a boy’s imagination might take him, but quite often the real story is even more amazing than the imagined one.

One rainy morning a bumblebee hid under a leaf to keep dry, but it wasn’t working.

As I’ve said many times on this blog, spring starts on the forest floor and so does fall. By the time we see the colorful tree leaves many leaves have already put on their fall colors in the understory, among them those of false Solomon’s seal (Maianthemum racemosum  or Smilacina racemosa,) which are some of the earliest. It marks the passage of time and though I like to see what their turning leaves will look like this year, I’m not ready to see them just yet. It seems like spring was just a few weeks ago.

Timothy grass (Phleum pretense) was brought to North America by early settlers and was first found in New Hampshire in 1711 by John Hurd. A farmer named Timothy Hanson began promoting cultivation of it as a hay crop about 1720 and the grass has carried his name ever since.

If you happen to be a nature lover and not watching for flowering grasses you’re missing a big chunk of the beauty that nature has to offer. Timothy grass flowers from June until September and is noted for its cold and drought resistance. It’s an excellent hay crop for horses. Each tall flower head is filled with tiny florets, each one with three purple stamens and two wispy white stigmas. The flower heads often look purple when they are flowering.

I saw this Japanese painted fern (Athyrium niponicum) growing in a local garden. Native to eastern Asia, these ferns often display hints of silver, blue and red on their stems and leaflets and their common name comes from the way they look like the colors have been painted on.  

I think, in the almost nine years I’ve been doing this blog, that this is only the second time I’ve been able to show you the red fruit of the red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa,) and that’s because the birds eat them as soon as they ripen. Why they left these alone is a mystery. The berries are said to be toxic but they were cooked and eaten by Native Americans so I’m sure they knew how to cook them in such a way as to remove the toxicity. They also used them medicinally. Red elderberry is one of two elderberries native to New Hampshire. The other is the common or black elderberry (Sambucus nigra V. canadensis) which has black berries and isn’t toxic.

I’ve read that large amounts of water will cause deformation in chanterelle mushrooms (Cantharellus cibarius) and I often see them looking that way. From the side chanterelles look like trumpets, but so do many other mushrooms including the false chanterelle. That’s why mushrooms should never be eaten unless you are absolutely sure you know what you’re eating. Chanterelle mushrooms are considered a delicacy but I’ve had mushroom experts tell me that you can never be 100% sure of a mushroom’s identity without examining its spores under a microscope. Since I don’t have a microscope that means you can never be sure of my identifications either, so please don’t eat any mushroom you see here until you have an expert examine it first. There are mushrooms so toxic that one or two bites have killed. We have mushroom walks led by an expert or experts here. If you want to become serious about mushroom foraging they are a good place to start.

Indian pipes (Monotropa uniflora) have just started appearing, pushing up through the forest litter. They’re not mushrooms but they like dark forests and plenty of moisture just like mushrooms, so when I go mushroom hunting I usually find them as well. These plants slowly turn their single bell shaped flower from looking at the ground to looking straight up to the sky, and that is the sign that they’ve been pollinated. From then on they will turn brown as the spores ripen. They are also called ghost plants. Fresh stems contain a gel that Native Americans used to treat eye problems. The common name comes from the plant’s shape, which is said to resemble the pipes that the Natives smoked.

I found a cluster of what I believe are resinous polypores (Ischnoderma resinosum) growing on a dying tree. The sharp eyed will notice that they’re in full sunshine. That might seem strange because everyone knows that mushrooms like to grow in deep shade, but what not everybody knows is how almost everything growing in a forest will get its moment in the sun, even if it is just a single shaft of sunlight falling on it for a few minutes at the end of the day. On this day I just happened to come along while these fungi were having their moment in the sun.  

The whitish underside of this mushroom will quickly turn brown if bruised, but these were pristine. Polypores get their name from the pores on their undersides. The pores are actually tubes where the spores are produced, and they are the fungi’s way of increasing the spore bearing surfaces. More surface area means more spores produced, and it’s always about the continuation of the species. The life force; the will to live, is strong in all living things and billions of spores ensure that there will be more resinous polypores.

One of the odd things about these particular example of resinous polypores were how they grew on a standing tree. The tree was close to dead but this fungus usually grows on recently fallen hard or softwood log, where it causes white rot that separates the annual rings in the wood. Though it often appears in summer another name is the late fall polypore.  Drops of a reddish brown liquid often appear on it in rainy weather, as this photo shows. Resinous polypores are considered edible but once again I’m not a mycologist and don’t have a microscope, so if you are going to eat this mushroom you should learn how to identify it from an expert.

Chocolate tube slime molds get their common name from their long brown sporangia, which stand at the top of thin black, horsehair like stalks. They typically grow in clusters on rotting wood and are found on every continent on earth except Antarctica. They are also called “pipe cleaner slime molds” or “tree hair.” There are thought to be about 18 species which can only be accurately identified with a microscope. Some can be quite long and look like sea anemones, but these examples were short; about a half inch long. They start life as a white plasmodial mass before becoming a cluster of small yellow bumps, and they in turn grow into what you see here. They do remind me of undersea coral.

In this photo you can see why chocolate tube slime mold is also called “tree hair.” The wiry black stalks do indeed look like horsehair.

All the rain, heat and humidity we’ve had means perfect conditions for slime molds. I found this example searching for food on last year’s leaves. Through a process called cytoplasmic streaming slime molds can reach speeds of up to 1.35 mm per second, which is the fastest rate recorded for any micro-organism. Scarcity of food is what drives them on, always searching for bacteria and yeasts to feed on. As this photo shows, slime mold plasmodium can be a mass of glistening vein-like material (actually a single-celled amoeba) that creeps across dead leaves, wood, or soil. I think this example might be the many headed slime (Physarum polycephalum.)

Here’s a closer look at a smaller version of the slime mold in the previous photo, which was on the same leaf. Science seems to think that slime molds have a limited intelligence, and that thought opens doors that I didn’t know existed.

The world is as large as I let it be. Each step I take into the unknown reveals a thousand more steps of possibility. Earth may not be growing but my world certainly does with each step I take. ~Avina Celeste

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Things I’ve Seen

I don’t know much about dragonflies but I think this one might be a male chalk-fronted corporal (Ladona julia) dragonfly. From what I’ve read he is a skimmer and gets his name from the two chalky “Corporal’s bars” behind his head, which actually are a Captain’s insignia, not a Corporals. Anyhow, he was sunning himself on a dead cattail leaf near a pond when I met him. I noticed that he had a very hairy back, which I’ve never seen on a dragonfly before. He wouldn’t let me get very close so I had to use the bigger Canon SX-40 with its zoom lens.

I was looking for cones on a northern white cedar one evening and found this beautiful white moth on one of the branches. It was getting late and the light was poor but I was able to get enough detail to make an identification. I’m fairly certain that it’s a pale beauty moth (campaea perlata) but if I’m wrong I hope someone will let me know.  Whatever its name it was a beautiful thing.

I remembered that I wasn’t checking the white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) for moths; I came for the cones, each of which has dark, indigo blue tips when they’re young.

Here is a closer look at the pencil eraser size cedar cones with their blue tips. Whenever I see something like this I’m always curious why the plant would expend so much extra energy turning part of itself blue. Doing so must benefit the tree in some way. Or maybe it doesn’t take a lot of extra energy.

This tree has an interesting history; Native Americans showed 16th century French explorer Jacques Cartier how to cure scurvy with the leaves of it and he was so impressed that he named it Arborvitae, which is Latin for Tree of Life. He also had trees with him when he returned to Europe, so Thuja occidentalis became the first North American tree to be introduced there.

English plantain (Plantago lanceolata) is blooming. The shape of the flower head is called ovoid. Each tiny (4mm) flower has a yellowish, pointed bract that is a little hard to see and will produce 2 seeds if pollinated. It is also called ribwort and narrow leaf plantain because of its basal growth of narrow, ribbed leaves. It is found in England and Europe and was brought over by early settlers because of its many medicinal uses.  Native Americans called it “White man’s foot” because it grew along foot paths used by the settlers. It is considered an invasive weed these days but I like its unusual flower heads so I don’t mind seeing it blooming in my lawn. This one had a little blue on it, which I’ve never seen before.

Grasses are flowering too, and it’s a splendid show that many people miss. I think this one is orchard grass (Dactylis glomerata,) which is a cool season, high quality pasture grass with good drought tolerance. It comes from western and central Europe and has been grown in the US for over 200 years.

Orchard grass seed heads are composed of spikelets that bear two to eight flowers which dangle from thin filaments (pedicels) and shimmer in the breeze. According to the book Grasses: An Identification Guide by Lauren Brown, George Washington loved orchard grass so much so that he wrote “Orchard grass of all others is in my opinion the best mixture with clover; it blooms precisely at the same time, rises quick again after cutting, stands thick, yields well, and both cattle and horses are fond of it green or in hay.”

Porcupine sedge (Carex hystericina) is also flowering. The tiny wispy white bits at the ends of the pointy “prickles” are its flowers. It’s easy to see how this sedge got its common name. Another is bottlebrush sedge, which also fits. This plant loves to grow near water and that’s where I always find it. Waterfowl, game birds and songbirds feed on sedge seeds and the sedge wren builds its nest and hunts for insects in wetlands that are dominated by sedges.

I was kneeling to take a photo of a toadflax blossom and looked over my shoulder to see this turtle laying eggs in a mown grassy area. I’m not great with reptile identification but I think she’s an eastern painted turtle (Chrysemys picta.) She was quite far from water and it didn’t seem to me like she had made a very good choice in nest sites what with lawn mowers running over it weekly, but the soil was sandy and easy to dig in and I’m sure she knows more about egg placement than I do.

She didn’t care for posing and was tucked up into her shell as far as it would allow, so I took a couple of quick shots and let her be. Nest preparation can be exhausting work for a turtle.

She had a strange wart like growth on the rear of her shell. Many of the turtles I see seem to have something wrong with their shells.

What the good folks at bug guide.net think might be a Muscoidea fly in the genus Anthomyia stopped in to see what I was doing one day. He was very hairy and I told him so. I don’t think he cared much for my opinion though, because he flew away. These flies can cause significant damage to crops because of the way their larva invade the stems and roots of some plants like onions. They are not at all garden friendly.

The folks at Bug guide.net tell me that this is a soldier beetle called Rhaxonycha Carolina or Atalantycha neglecta. They can’t tell which because of the poor quality of the photo, I presume. Both beetles have what looks like a fur collar. He was on my windshield and the “sun” he is crawling toward is the reflection of the camera’s flash. Soldier beetle larvae feed on the eggs and larvae of beetles, grasshoppers, moths and other insects, and adult soldier beetles feed on aphids and other soft-bodied insects, so they’re a good insect to have in the garden. They are attracted to plants like marigold and goldenrod.

Seeing this foamy “snake spit” on plants immediately takes me back to my childhood, because that’s what we called it when I was a boy. Of course it’s really the protective foam used by spittle bug nymphs and has nothing to do with snakes. The nymphs use it to make themselves invisible to predators and to keep themselves from drying out. They make the foamy mass by dining on plant sap and secreting a watery liquid which they whip up with air to create the froth. This example was on a yarrow stem.

Since I started with a dragonfly I’ll end with what I thought was a common blue damselfly (Enallagma cyathigerum) until I found out that they live in Europe. Now I’m not sure what it is, other than a blue damselfly. I wish the background was less busy so you could see its wings better, but beggars can’t be choosers and I was lucky to have it pose at all. If you know its name I’d love to hear from you.

One should pay attention to even the smallest crawling creature for these too may have a valuable lesson to teach us.  Black Elk

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