The Urban Pantheist

I love the color of the spring oak leaves

Despite the dry conditions, there was a bloom of reishi mushrooms coming from subterranean roots

Urban Nature Walk returns to the Riverway, on a quest to reach Ward's Pond, the spring that gives it water. I quickly got over doing an UNW on a Saturday (I have a mushroom class tomorrow) and met up with the group by the Longwood T stop. The first three to show up all brought gigantic cameras, so I will look forward to seeing their pictures, and linking you to them as well.

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My dad and I were keen to see manatees. We failed in Big Cypress, and I barely caught a glimpse on Captiva. Fortunately we were blathering about it somewhere and some nice lady suggested we go to Manatee Park. Sounds like just the thing!
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Oak leaves, from both red and white oaks, on the wet zoo greeting.


Hackberry leaf with hackberry nipple galls, caused by aphid-like insect, Pachypsylla sp.


For whatever reason this buckthorn leaf is flying the pan-African colors.

This little oak (Probably Quercus rubra) is sprouting from an acorn that a squirrel most likely buried near one of the perennial beds.

Left alone for a hundred years, our yard would turn into a mixed forest of red oak and Norway maple. In fact, if human activity in eastern Massachusetts halted altogether, the whole place would be mostly mixed deciduous forest in a few decades. It wouldn't look like the forest that was present when European colonization took place: the American chestnut and American elm trees are gone, and new trees like Norway maple and Tree of heaven are practically naturalized. A larger effect might be the grazing white-tailed deer, unchecked by predators, they have helped make certain forest plants extremely rare. Eventually the wolves will spread back to New England, and without human opposition the mountain lions will too, and some equilibrium might be restored.

But I digress. The nearest oak trees are two yards away, and yet squirrels have seen fit to bury enough acorns in my yard that I've pulled six or eight of these saplings already, and discover one or two more every day. I love Northern red oak, but I don't want any in this yard. They provide great habitat for wildlife, and become very impressive trees, but I simply don't want to deal with the acorn clean-up.

Oaks can be broadly divided into the white oaks, with rounded lobes on their leaves, and the red oaks with pointed lobes. This sapling has pointed lobes, and the nearest oaks are Northern red oaks. I have pulled some that look like pin oak saplings as well. Northern red oak appears frequently on this blog, mostly accounting to the large numbers of huge specimens in The Riverway and in Franklin Park. It was 365 urban species #277

The Riverway at night.

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Mouse-chewed acorns found in a shed.


Leverett Pond.

Norway maples in the Riverway. These trees make a living fence along the top of the berm that separates the trolley tracks from the rest of the park.

( more Riverway )

Another big acorn year. That means more mice and rats, as well as squirrels and chipmunks.

( and of course, more mushroom pics )