The Urban Pantheist

As Alexis and I were walking the dogs through the Lost Pond Reservation last week, she stopped and said, hey, what are these flowers? I looked and said that they're kind of wintergreen. Then somewhere in the back of my brain the word "pipsissewa" spoke up. That turns out to be true, but since I didn't have conscious access to the process, I'm not sure I can use it to my future advantage with plant identification.


Pipsissewa is the name given by the Cree, indigenous people of what is now Canada. The plant, Chimaphila umbellata*, has a number of uses including treating urinary disorders and fever and to flavor root beer. Despite having chlorophyll in its leaves to photosynthesize, this plant derives some of its nutrients by parasitizing mycorrhizae, in the same way as strictly parasitic plants like monotrope.

* "Umbellate** winter-lover"

** Umbellate refers to a type of flower growth, ie: in umbels. Umbels are a type of flower wherein a number of flower stalks radiate from a common origin. The most familiar umbellate wildflower is Queen Anne's Lace Dauca carota***.

*** "carrot carrot"

Blue wood aster (Heart-leaf aster) Symphyotrichum cordifolium

In late September my deliberate neglect of the yard bears fruit. Tall rangy weeds in the shady corners and other places finally burst forth with bluish daisy-like flowers. This year one plant came up right in front of a frequently used gate--it took all of our collective patience not to pull the darned thing, but now it's made the transformation from weed to wildflower.


The side of the yard under the white pines is especially thick with blue wood asters.


Insects have eaten the foliage so thoroughly that it took me a while to find a heart-shaped leaf that was intact.

This species appeared on this blog as 365 urban species #269: Heart-leaf Aster.

Most of these Brooklyn Nature post pics are going to from Prospect Park, a nearly 600 acre Olmsted landscape, of which I explored a few hundred square feet. Alexis and I first looked at very early on Sunday morning, before the wreckage of Saturday night festivities had been cleared away. Here's the base of a planter, delightfully overgrown with moss and weeds.

( Read more... )

Ground Ivy (Also Creeping Charlie, Gill-Over-the-Ground) Glechoma hederacea

"You know that viney weed with the scalloped-edged leaves that takes over your yard? That one that you can tell is a long, climbing thing, but when you try to rip it out of your flower beds, just the part in your hands breaks off instead of pulling up the whole thing? The one that gets those pretty little purple flowers in the spring? Turns out Europeans brought it here on purpose, just like garlic mustard. It's a salad green. You can use it in soups. You can make tea out of it. The Saxons used to use it like hops in beer. It has medicinal properties. A 1986 study found it inhibits EBV and skin tumors. It's part of the mint family, and mints were traditionally used as all-purpose antibiotics." - gigglingwizard

I don't have much to add, except that it smells really nice when you mow it. It's a common urban and suburban plant, and first joined us as 365 urban species number 118.



But what the hell is growing on it?! I was just sitting in my yard when I saw this thing. I assumed it was a small lawnmower's mushroom and went to pluck it--to my surprise I pulled out a plant with a foreign growth.



I knew that it had to be a gall, but had no idea that any creature made use of ground ivy for this purpose!


Ground Ivy Gall Wasp Liposthenes glechomae

I cut it open to see a single wormlike larva inside, very much like an oak apple gall. Wormlike larvae are usually the babies of wasps or flies, two groups known to produce galls. At least mites and pathogens were eliminated as the causal agent. I searched the index of my copy of Tracks and Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates but ground ivy was not in the index, nor its scientific name. I posted pics here, on facebook, and on bugguide. One of the authors of the above book chimed in to identify the gall as belonging to Lisposthenes glechomae, a tiny wasp in the same family as the one that causes oak apples. He also pointed out that this gall appears in his book (p. 395--it's in the index under galls, ground ivy).

The gall protects the developing larva from predation while providing a food source for it. The insect causes little to no damage to the plant. This wasp is native to Europe, and was translocated inadvertently with its host.

This month I want to make up for missing an Urban Nature Walk in February by having an extra one in March. That extra one is today, an easy stroll through the Arnold Arboretum, our local tree museum. The next one is March 31st at Quincy Quarry.


A friend asked me beforehand, what's in bloom at the Arboretum? Well, it's very early in the year still, but the skunk cabbage is blooming!
( more arboretum )

Back in April of 2010 I went to Fannie Stebbins Wildlife Refuge. My post from that trip included the following photograph, of an unidentified plant that I thought might be related to lady's thumb.


"If you haven't already ID'd that as Polygonum virginianum -- Jumpseed, then I am pointing you to look there. I regularly encounter this plant in the shady, wooded areas of the park near my house here in Baltimore City. See: http://milwaukeeriveradvocates.org/?cat=10 - Tom of Baltimore"

That message was in my email this morning. Thanks Tom!

I like the fact that LiveJournal posts are up forever. I celebrate my 10th anniversary here this year--someone suggested that I duplicate the journal somehow, in case the KGB or whoever knock it offline entirely some day. Anyone else done this, or know how it might be done?

Dwarf Alberta spruce Picea glauca variety albertianica Conica


The dwarf Alberta spruce is a cultivar of the white spruce, a massive tree of the North American boreal forest. Mature white spruces are a hundred feet tall or more, while a typical dwarf Alberta is a four to six foot pipsqueak. Cultivation has chosen individuals that grow very slowly, never get very tall, and maintain the thin soft needles of a sapling. It's as if we kept little orcas in our koi pond or tiny house giraffes. The little trees are hardy and long-lived. They don't seem to be crucial participants in the suburban ecology, but they probably provide cover and shelter for small animals, and add color and geometry to the winter landscape.



The thin soft needles of the perennially infant dwarf Alberta spruce--the perfect little living xmas tree.

Virginia creeper Parthenocissus quinquefolia

People with tidy property will not tolerate Virginia creeper. It climbs up fences and walls and even spreads across insufficiently mowed lawns. But it's a good native New England plant that provides berries for birds to eat in the winter, and a dazzling fall display for humans in the fall. I've been carefully tolerating it in various locations of the yard in order to ensure its survival, while diligently removing oriental bittersweet and poison ivy. Virginia creeper appeared in the fall of 2006 as 365 urban species #264.


This vine is crawling up the fence between our little side yard and the front yard.

Our pitcher plant's "lid" opened up further, and Alexis dropped a dead moth into the plant's mouth.

Pumpkin Cucurbita sp. Probably C. pepo but possibly C. pepo x maxima

Last fall, shortly after Halloween had passed, some farm donated a huge amount of pumpkins to the zoo. Pumpkins are fun novelty enrichment items for the zoo but they have to be judiciously used because they are relatively high in calories and sugar. There were so many donated that before they could be all used, they began to decompose and create a mess (to say nothing of the potential pest problem) in the area where they were stored. I took home a few, to use as fun novelty enrichment items for our home animal collection.

The dogs ripped them apart and carried them around and had a grand old time with them. Visiting wildlife foraged on the seeds, scattering them about. This sprout underneath our picnic table was a complete surprise. It's nice to see a native cultivated food plant volunteering in the yard.

The pumpkins we used were squat dense things that would require the skills of a stonemason to make into jack-o-lanterns. Smooth-skinned sugary pumpkins for carving and pie making are cultivated from a wild squash Cucurbita pepo. Massive, bumpy, state fair, Cinderella's carriage pumpkins are cultivated from a relative, Cucurbita maxima. Pumpkin cultivation, like all plant cultivation, involves selecting strains and hybrids with desired traits. The pumpkins growing in my yard were almost certainly chosen for decorative traits--unusual skin color and texture--but the flesh and seeds are still edible (we roasted up some of the seeds).

While researching this I discovered that there was a recent kerfuffle regarding warty pumpkins. One seed producer developed a strain of consistently and copiously warted pumpkins and applied to patent it. (This strain was named "Super Freak" by the seed company.) Rival seed producers came out of the woodwork with their catalogs and documentation to protect their own specialized lines of bumpy gourds. The trait of warts on a Cucurbit was thought to indicate a distinct strain dating back to the 18th century. The patent was rejected in 2009 so if our yard pumpkins turn out to be warty we won't be risking a lawsuit.