The Urban Pantheist

One of my good zookeeper friends left a year or so ago to become the director of the Quincy Animal Shelter. Yesterday I visited her, and the animals there.
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Alexis amid the sunflowers and phragmites. I took a very similar picture almost exactly one year ago.


This polypore was growing on the dirt nearby. Hidden in the soil is the wood of a long-dead tree. If the tree was a broadleaf, this mushroom is Ganoderma lucidum; if it was a conifer, the mushroom is G. tsugae.

Across the river
A white pink ghost smiles hello
Does Maggie know spring?
( two more, you write the poems )

A young woman photographing something in the park.

This almost nsfw flower belongs to a native North American climbing legume called Apios americana. Both the seeds and tubers were eaten by Native Americans. I was astonished to discover it while doing my 365 urban species project, partly because it was blooming so late in the year (October) and partly because I assumed (since it was an urban plant growing in a waste area) that it was an alien or even invasive. This group was growing on the Phragmites on the Boston side of the Riverway near Landmark Center.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Black nightshade.