Urban Nature Walk in Bussey Brook Meadow

[urbpan]

This past Sunday we had an Urban Nature Walk in the Bussey Brook Meadow Urban Wild. This little chunk of land connects the Forest Hills rapid transit stop to the Arnold Arboretum, making it very easy for any car-free Bostonian to get there. As it happens, two of us came by car, two by bicycle. This photo is from the end of the walk, when we emerged from an Arboretum gate to find an abundance of black raspberries!




We found several of these snails, all crawling on plants. Their shape reminds me of pond snails, but they are clearly terrestrial. Some hapless googling shows a resemblance to the mouse-ear snail, but that critter lives on salt marshes, and Bussey Brook is fresh water. Any malacologists in the house?


I let the snail ride on me long enough to be part of the scale to show how big these Paulownia leaves are.


Our little group is made of dedicated photographers! Despite being savaged by mosquitoes, each participant held bravely still for macros. I saw many raised welts on foreheads and forearms. I'll link to everyone's blogs so you can see the fruits of our labor.


I was initially resistant to having an Urban Nature Walk in or near the Arboretum again, since we did one back in March. Also, we're having a great mushroom season, and I didn't want to go somewhere so well-maintained that the mushrooms would be all cut down before we could enjoy them. Fortunately this section of the arboretum had a lot of wood chip mulch around some of the plantings and we found a bunch! This is a coprinoid mushroom, maybe Coprinopsis lagopus?


There were tons of this kind of bird's nest fungi! (Crucibulum laeve)




These last two species will have to go unidentified--we'll just enjoy them for their beauty!


This was a nice treat, an eastern tailed blue posed for us!


Down by one the ponds I spotted what looked like a large insect perched below a leaf. It turns out to be the exuvia of a dragonfly nymph--the nymph crawled from the pond, split out of its skin, and flew away.


I noticed this fruit seemed to be suffering from quince rust, but I didn't recognize the plant. Fortunately we were in an Arboretum, so I could look at the tree's name tag. Turns out it's quince. That makes sense.


Unfortunately, the weeds along the fence line weren't so helpfully labeled. We threw some guesses out (I thought the fruit looked like an elm, but the leaves are all wrong) but until I see Ajay's blog we'll throw it out to you: Know this one?

See other pics from the walk from lizziebelle here: http://lizziebelle.livejournal.com/846229.html
And from Ajay here:
http://sicloot.com/blog/2013/07/urban-nature-walk-bussey-meadow/

Comments

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

Aha, so that was a dragonfly after all! Well spotted! Perhaps it was the one we saw sitting nearby?

Great pictures! Thanks for the fun walk!

hoptree

[sicloot.myopenid.com (from livejournal.com)]

I believe that last plant is hoptree (Ptelea trifoliata). I'll put up my post soon.

Re: hoptree

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I think you're absolutely right Ajay. I'm baffled by the elm-like fruit (other common names include wafer ash and stinking ash, according to Sibley) when it's in the same family at Citrus). I'll have to teach myself more. Thanks man!