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A flooded parking lot makes a good setting for some puddle trees.

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Kambiri, our littlest gorilla poses with a big tree made of cement.

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An animal I forgot we had, a day gecko. I guess it's never come through the hospital when I've been around.
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Our golf cart has been repaired, and it's back on the road--covered with ice, but it works.

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Ice grows down, tree grows up.

Big Beech

Feb. 8th, 2014 07:10 pm
urbpan: (dandelion)
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My dad visited today, and among other places, we visited the Longwood Mall. This is a linear park studded with dozens of specimens of European beech trees. This species (Fagus sylvatica) is cultivated into many different ornamental varieties, and several are represented here.

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This individual is one of a few that is heroic in scale--by itself it would be the most impressive tree in a given town but Brookline has literally dozens of them, survivors from an original planting of more than 10,000.
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Then we went and found Six Mile Cypress Slough, not far away. It's all boardwalks through cypress swamp. This great egret was right by the gate, sort of a wildlife emissary for the place.

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The first time you see a white ibis in Florida it's shocking and magical--aren't they African animals? Didn't the ancient Egyptians mummify them by the million? Then you see a flock of 20 in a drainage ditch. Then you realize you're seeing them basically anywhere there's water. Then, if you're me, you hand-feed them cat food at the zoo.

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That office window view, now with weird reflections and lily of the valley.
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Wisteria in heavy flower at the Kalahari Kingdom.
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Oh god this is a huge pile of photos. Don't worry, after this is the snapshots, then the rest were taken when my camera was acting weird so only a few of them are any good. Enjoy a wide range of pics of Antigua!

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There are several kinds of dove and pigeon in Antigua, this one is the white-crowned pigeon Patagioenas leucocephala. These birds are suffering from the disappearance of their breeding habitat, mangrove swamps.

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Tar spot fungus Rhytisma acerinum grows on a Norway maple Acer platanoides leaf.

Forgive me for not presenting a picture of Norway maple in full. Any wide angle photo of my yard is likely to feature them, and you can click the Norway maple link to see dozens of photos of this common naturalized alien. Norway maple is an attractive shade tree well suited to the city and suburbs. It is also a pernicious invasive species, threatening to invade our forests and transform them into barren monocultures. I have cut down all the Norways small enough to yield to hand tools, but several large specimens still dominate the property. The small ones cut down in spring have sprouted fully viable shoots of leaves, and if I didn't continually strip them they would come right back to be giant trees.

Another risk presented by Norway maples is its susceptibility to tar spot, a parasitic fungus that affects only maple trees. It causes no great harm, but can ruin the appearance of foliage (a major part of the New England tourist industry) and potentially weaken vulnerable trees. Norways are so common and so frequently infected, that they must be spreading this fungus to native trees; no alarm has been called, to my knowledge, but we shall see what the next few years brings us.
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It wasn't until I posted this pic on Facebook (begging the author of this book for ID help) that I realized the caterpillar is in the picture. The animal that made this beautiful S curve is at the bottom of it, camouflaged by color and body shape. It's an almost imperceptibly small caterpillar. I verified this yesterday by going out to the little tree and finding more caterpillars, now fatter and larger from nine additional days of eating. I also assumed that the little tree was a chokecherry, but I was coached to properly identify it as a black cherry. So much to learn.

EDITED TO ADD:
SO much to learn. This "caterpillar" is very likely a sawfly larva, which is to say, not a caterpillar at all. Stay tuned.
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I went for a perfectly pleasant walk in the Dedham Town Forest today, but I got home and looked at my pictures and some of them are pretty off-putting. This first one is just an old sign indicating part of the "fitness trail," but it feels very foreboding to me. Be warned, this series includes at least one very unpleasant photograph.

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Five years ago today I posted a bunch of beautiful pictures of snowy Drumlin Farm, while back in the city it was ugly and slushy. I should go back and ogle this sexy tree:





Speaking of those who I miss and am fond of (awkward!) I really miss my friend [livejournal.com profile] rockbalancer, and here she is with the dogs.
urbpan: (dandelion)


At one point I figured we'd seen about all that we could in the botanical garden, but my dad wanted to keep walking. We found this little pond, and there was a couple on a park bench by it. Just a couple feet in front of them was another (maybe the same?) great egret. This was a pretty imperturbable bird! We moved quietly closer, and saw that there were also ducks and at least one gallinule near the couple. They were eating, and tossing some bread crumbs to the birds. The ducks and gallinule were happily eating the bread. They tossed some near the egret, which took a predatory pose and struck, and came up with a big fish! When my snapshot alarm went off I set the self-timer so that I could get a shot of my dad and myself, with this story in the background.

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In Ponce, my dad stands near one of many big and weird fig trees we found.

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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
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This darling little weeping Japanese cherry (Prunus serrulata or P. subhirsuta) is the main feature of our front yard, at least in May.

"Cherry" is a tough concept to nail down, botanically. Everyone agrees that plant in the genus Prunus that produce small edible fruits with a single large seed are cherries. Likewise many plants in the genus Prunus that produce copious pink or white flowers in spring are agreed to be cherries. Other plants in that genus that produce smaller less tasty fruit or less impressive flowers may also be called cherries. Botanists have divided Prunus into several Subgenera to help sort it out, and plants called "cherries" still make up several dozen species in at least two Subgenera.

Most cherry trees grown for the beauty of their blossoms appear to be different varieties of the Japanese cherries P. serrulata or P. subhirsuta. The "weeping" is a trick of cultivation to encourage the genetic traits to make smaller branches soft and droopy, and to endear us with their unusual shapes.
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The previous owner of the house planted this little Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) just alongside the driveway.

The 'Bradford' strain of the Asian callery pear is one of the most common urban street trees, and it's not hard to see why. It explodes with a beautiful inflorescence in spring, provides decent shade in summer, and retains gorgeous autumn color long into November. It's tolerant to the various stresses of urban life (pollution, poor soil, compacted roots), and has few drawbacks. The fruit is an unimpressive little pebble that resists mammalian attempts to make food of it.

I have featured this tree several times in this journal, including its appearance as 365 Urban Species #324.
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Honeylocust at the edge of the Franklin Park golf course.


My view as I left work this afternoon.

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