Things I’ve Seen

Ox-eye daisies are plants that always say June. They came over from Europe in the 1800s but they are much loved and many believe them to be native. I can say from experience that these flowers look much better in a field than they do in a vase, because they wilt quickly after picking.

I saw some type of solitary bee (I think) dancing over the petals of an ox-eye daisy. It looked like it was dressed for dancing.

Roses native to New England are the Virginia rose, the Carolina rose, the swamp rose, the smooth rose, the shining rose, and the prickly rose. We also have roses that appear to be wild but which have escaped cultivation, and I believe this might be one of those. All of them are beautiful and are much loved. I’ve never heard anyone say “Oh no, a rose!”

White admiral butterflies, which are one of our largest and most beautiful butterflies, have appeared. They’re not quite as big as a monarch butterfly but big enough to be seen from a distance. They can often be found “puddling” on gravel roads as this one was.

Though I did see one up in a tree the other day if I went back through the years on this blog I think nearly every photo I have of this butterfly would be on gravel. I can’t think of a single time I’ve gotten a shot of one on a flower. Although I’ve read that they drink nectar and sap, they also get moisture from sand and gravel.

Normally I wouldn’t show a shot with blown out highlights but since this is only the second shot of a little wood satyr butterfly that I’ve ever gotten, I hope you’ll forgive the white spots on the leaf. This is one of the “thumbnail size” butterflies and it’s very hard for me to see but I kept up with this one as it leaf hopped and tried to hide in the tall grass. Finally after about 10 minutes of following it, it sat still for more than 15 seconds and I got a shot of something I rarely see. Since the caterpillar of this butterfly eats grasses and doesn’t live off toxic plants like milkweed, the butterfly has no real protection from birds except for its erratic movements, its ability to disappear in tall grass and its eyespots, which may or may not fool a predator. All of that is why seeing one sitting on a leaf like this is a remarkable thing.

Spangled skimmers are still showing off their spangles in the sunshine. In the last post I showed this dragonfly hanging off of some vegetation with its wings spread wide but I didn’t have a side view, so here it is. This is an excellent “starter” dragonfly if you’re trying out dragonfly photography. They’re relatively common, easy to spot and easy to track from a distance due to the bright white spangles on the leading edges of the wings.

Twelve spotted skimmers are a common enough dragonfly but I’ve had quite a time finding one that would sit still this year. In fact all the dragonflies seem skittish this year, but that could just be my imagination. To get to twelve spots on this dragonfly you have to count the brown spots, not the white ones. Only mature males have these white spots; females and immature males have the twelve brown wing spots but not the white. Skimmers usually fly just above the water looking for flies, mosquitoes, beetles, and other flying insects, but the name “skimmer” comes from the way they can scoop up water to help with egg laying by using two flanges on the underside of the abdomen.

Yellow bladderwort flowers rose above its spoke shaped leaves in a local pond. The leaves of this plant have small air filled bladders on them. When an insect touches fine hairs on a bladder a trapdoor quickly opens and sucks the insect in. Once inside, enzymes digest it. Other names for bladderwort are hooded water milfoil and pop-weed. The small flowers on this one were too far offshore to get close to. In the past I’ve found them growing in wet mud along shorelines but so far not this year.

Something I’ve never seen before is a bladderwort so young the flower hadn’t even opened yet. Flower or no, this photo does show the structure of the plant like I’ve never seen it. It was so young its bladders hadn’t formed yet, but you can see some of those on the plant in the extreme lower right corner. You can also see the plant’s main stem, anchoring it to the pond bottom. I’ve pulled these plants up in the past, thinking I could get a better photo of the flowers, but as soon as they leave the water they collapse in on themselves and lose their form.

The eardrum of a bullfrog is external and is called a tympanic membrane. On females the membrane is the same size or just a bit bigger than the eye. On males it is obviously much bigger than the eye. If you’d like to compare the difference you can go back to the previous post. There was a shot of a male bullfrog in it and the difference is striking. I’d say this frog, which I’ve called Zen bullfrog due to its pose, its chosen perch, and the way it was staring off into space, is a female. I’ve read that only male bullfrogs can croak.

NOTE: As a reader has pointed out, this is a northern green frog, not a bullfrog. I was so focused on hearing, I wasn’t seeing what was right in front of me!

I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings so I didn’t say anything, but I did notice that the kingbirds seem to be eating well. In fact the small pond and its surrounding area that was full of dragonflies last year has just a very few this year. The word seems to have gotten out in Birdville that the pond is a great place to dine, and now the trees are filled with chubby kingbirds.

Sleek and fast is what green herons are, and they’ve just returned to some of the places I visit. I saw this one high up on a tree branch staring at the sky one evening. Soon young birds will be learning how to fish and catch frogs. They’ll put up with humans where they’re finding plenty of food but they aren’t quite as comfortable getting close to people as great blue herons are. Neither are they as big. This one looked to stand about two feet tall. They’re quite pretty birds though and are always special to see, because they aren’t something you see every day.

I always try to remember when I walk a rail trail that sometimes I’m walking through someone’s back yard, and that message was reinforced the other day when I stumbled upon a raised garden bed someone had built out of stone. The foxglove flower stalks growing wild outside the flower bed were almost as tall as I was. In old England picking foxglove was unlucky, and its blooms were forbidden inside because it was believed that they gave witches access to the house.

When I was in my late teens I worked for a nurseryman who always called these flowers peach leaved bluebells, so that’s what I’ve always called them. The thing is, I’ve never heard anyone else ever call them that, so I think “peach leaved bluebells” must just be an older name for them. In any event they’re a beautiful blue campanula and I’ve always loved them.

I find that more and more I’m drawn to the simple, uncomplicated things in life and this pretty Japanese iris fit that description perfectly. There’s nothing to ponder or think about; you can just enjoy its simple beauty.

Spreading dogbane has just started blooming with its pretty (but small) candy striped pink and white flowers. It’s closely related to milkweed and attracts many of the same insects that milkweed does, especially butterflies, so if you’re looking to photograph insects it’s a good plant to spend some time with. The bell shaped flowers are just big enough to hold a pea, and very fragrant.

If you pound the stems of spreading dogbane you can tease out the strong stem fibers, and Native Americans used them as a twine for making nets for hunting rabbits, among other things. Ingesting enough of the milky latex sap can stop the heart, but using the right amount can be used to treat heart disease. It is still used in fact, in some countries.

Sulfur cinquefoil has always been one of my favorite weeds, even if it is a bit rough looking. It has a center in its buttery yellow petals that seems to shine like the sun. Sulfur cinquefoil hails from Europe, where it grows as a wildflower. Here it grows in unused pastures and along roadsides and it is considered a noxious weed in some areas because it out competes grasses. It certainly doesn’t do that here; I usually have to hunt around to find it.

Native carrion flower vines are beautiful, almost musical things when they first appear in spring. They’re climbers and their strategy is to grow so tall so quickly they can no longer support their own weight, and then they fall to one side or another. With luck they’ll fall on top of a nearby bush that they can wrap their tendrils around and climb over the top of, getting as much sunlight as they can.

Carrion flowers are small but they’re stinkers that live up to their name. In this shot you can see a green fruit forming below each flower. When ripe they’ll turn deep purple and will do their part in keeping the birds fed all winter.

Crown vetch is a very beautiful thing that is unfortunately also highly invasive. Native to Africa, Europe, and Asia it spreads quickly and chokes out native plants. Since its seed is still used by highway departments throughout the U.S. to stabilize embankments along roadways, its aggressive tendencies are either not known or are being ignored.

Multiflora rose is native to China, Japan and Korea and was imported as an ornamental. Of course it almost immediately escaped and now grows unchecked by insect or disease. I’ve seen it grow 30 feet into trees using the same strategy as the carrion flower vine we saw earlier; it sends out long shoots that eventually fall under their own weight and wherever they fall is where they grow. All that is seen here is one plant growing 15-20 feet long, more or less horizontally, supported by native shrubs like staghorn sumac. Once it grows in and over native shrubs it hogs all the sunlight and eventually kills the shrubs that support it.

The flowers of multiflora rose are small at about an inch across, but there can be so many of them on one plant that their beautiful fragrance can be detected from quite far away. You can quite literally follow your nose right to it. The flower’s anthers start out bright yellow and become darker following pollination. Finally the flowers will become small, bright red rose hips that birds love. Its sale and distribution is banned in New Hampshire but since each plant can easily produce half a million seeds I think it’s here to stay.

Heal all has just started blooming. I call the plant nature’s cheerleader because of the way all the flowers seem to be saying Yay! In the past the plant was thought to be able to heal just about any illness a person could have, and that’s how it got its name. It is also called self-heal, woundwort, heart-of-the-earth, carpenter’s herb, brown wort, and blue curls. It is in the mint family and thought to be native to Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. In China it is used in traditional herbal medicine, so it must be native there as well.

The lowly yarrow was once so prized it was traded back and forth between nations. Once considered one of the nine “holy healing herbs” it was used to stop the flow of blood, and warring armies made sure they carried plenty of it. It has even been found in the graves of Neanderthals, so mankind has had a long relationship with it. I think of these things when I see it after it has been run over on roadsides. Once worth more than just about anything known, it is now a totally ignored weed. How times do change.

What I believe to be a calico pennant dragonfly stood on the tip of a pickerel weed leaf. It was really windy that day and it looked like it was clinging to the leaf with all its might.

It swayed this way and that like a flag, and that’s where the name “pennant” comes from. I sometimes see them hanging on with just their two front legs but on this day the wind was so strong I think it needed extra help. I’ve always had trouble getting a good shot of their wing patterns and this time was no exception. The reflective surface of the wings made a tough shot for the camera but I’m sure it made it easier for birds to see them.

At a glance blue dasher dragonflies look a lot like the spangled skimmer seen earlier in this post but they don’t have the white “spangles” on their wings; only the black stigmata. They are another dragonfly that likes to perch, and will fly off and return to its perch again and again as long as you don’t get too close.

Here is the face of a blue dasher dragonfly. What look like tall, yellow eyes are actually marks on its body. The round turquois bits with white dots on them are its compound eyes. The white dots are highlights from sunshine. I’ve read that they have a nearly 360 degree field of vision and can see 200 to 300 images per second, compared to the 60 per second we see. Almost 80% of their brain is dedicated to sight, so when you get close to a dragonfly it’s because it let you. All those times I’ve gotten close to one and thought I had snuck up on it, I was fooling myself.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring- these are some of the rewards of the simple life. ~ John Burroughs

Thanks for stopping in. Have a great, beauty filled week.

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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

Thanks for coming by.

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