urbpan: (dandelion)
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Without a daily blog project I've been letting photos build up a long time: these are from a walk we went on in the Stony Brook Reservation on July 8th. This is one of the only mushrooms I've seen all summer.

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Not far away, feeding on the sugars shared between tree and fungus, are a group of ghost flowers, or monotrope.

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These parasites need no chlorophyll, so dot the forest with ghostly white instead of green.

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A distant relative in the same family, striped Pipsissewa is found from Canada to Panama, but is endangered across some of its range.

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The plant is sometimes called striped wintergreen, or more confusingly, spotted wintergreen. Some government agencies have taken to calling it "striped Prince's Pine" in the misguided idea that this is somehow less confusing.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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Eastern prickly pear (Opuntia humifusa) is a surprising sight for most people who don't expect to see a cactus in New England. This plant seemed abundant on this Cape Cod visit, but is state listed as Endangered.

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Considering the long dry period we've been experiencing this summer, the last thing I expected to see was mushrooms. Instead I was greeted with these fresh but very sturdy polypores--in fact a species I had never seen before, Cryptoporus volvatus, produced by a fungus that feeds on dead conifer wood.

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I don't have an identification for this dragonfly, but I could tell she was female, because she kept dipping the end of her abdomen into the water--a sign that she was releasing eggs.

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And on a little black cherry tree, these fingerlike projections are galls that protect minuscule Eriophyes mites.

Plant ID

Jul. 5th, 2015 08:50 pm
urbpan: (dandelion)
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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.

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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"
urbpan: (dandelion)
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Like most of the things in this post, these mushrooms are unidentified. They are polypores--which is a bit like saying an animal is an arthropod.

Read more... )
urbpan: (dandelion)
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One of the nice things about autumn is the blooming of asters. This one is probably blue wood aster Symphyotrichum cordifolium. These look like rangy weeds all summer long, then burst out in lovely unkempt daisylike composite flowers.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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Snowdrops have come and gone, but these are first showy WILDflowers of the year, dwarf cinquefoil.

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And in the front yard, ironically the least kempt part of the property, a garter snake basks on the leaf litter.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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urbpan: (dandelion)
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After getting run out of the Edison/Ford house (It was xmas eve, and the staff probably wanted to get to see their families) we poked a finger at the map and found this state park. We hiked blindly, deeper and deeper into sandy soil, palmettos and scattered pines. I kept expecting to find the bay, but we headed in exactly the wrong direction. We'll have to take another whack at it next time we're in the area. Not that it was totally wasted, we saw...

Read more... )
urbpan: (dandelion)
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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.

Read more... )
urbpan: (dandelion)
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There came a point in the "trail" where the palmetto crowded in providing an obstacle which I was happy to avoid. Some of the plants were sharp and pointy, and pushing through those palmetto fronds was one step more adventuresome than I wanted. My friend maintains hiking trails in Massachusetts and took a picture to share with her supervisors.
Read more... )
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On Sunday morning I led an Urban Nature Walk to Malibu Beach in Dorchester!
Read more... )
urbpan: (dandelion)
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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.

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

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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.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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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." - [livejournal.com profile] 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.


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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.


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

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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.
urbpan: (dandelion)
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I'd like to imagine that The Halfmoon and Mockingbird is a pub that smells of Nag Champa.

Read more... )
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I didn't take as many pics on the 20th, so I can share all the good ones, even though they are exceptionally random. Here's a big green tree lizard--another species of anole Anolis leachii.

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urbpan: (dandelion)
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If you've been following my journal, you know that the night before this picture was not good. The short of it is that I tried to visit with my friend and ran into two road closures due to one serious and one fatal traffic accident. This is the glorious sunset at Ventura Beach, complete with full moon. We stayed in Ventura because we were to spend the next day at the Channel Islands National Park. These islands are across the Santa Barbara Channel from LA (as opposed to within the English Channel, where the other Channel Islands are).

Come to the island )
urbpan: (dandelion)
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The first thing I noticed about Los Angeles was the birds! (Actually, the first thing I noticed was the weather--good February temps between 65 and 80 and brightly sunny every day we were there.) This is a western gull: Large size, medium gray wings, pink feet, red spot on the bill. Larus occidentalis. By the way, this is Long Beach, which isn't even really Los Angeles, but it's close.

more Long Beach )
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Evening primrose Oenothera biennis

At the back of our yard, we allow the weeds to grow. In one corner they grow very tall indeed. When I featured this plant as 365 urban species #233 I said that it might grow as tall as five feet. The row in the back of our yard includes specimens that are easily seven feet tall.

Evening primrose blooms in the evening, and stays open until late the next morning. This allows it to be pollinated by day-flying and nocturnal insects both.

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Here's my brother and I after an impulsive walk in the woods turned into an extended adventure.

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Rough fleabane Erigeron strigosus

I should caution anyone reading this blog that my plant identifications, how you say, lack rigor. I used a combination of the Peterson's wildflower guide (my mom's 1968 edition) and the Go Botany website to eliminate the more commonly seen annual fleabane E. annuus.

Fleabanes generally bloom earlier than the similarly daisy-like asters. The wonderful name comes from the optimistic notion that the flower can be used to repel fleas. This species is known as prairie fleabane in the western states, and has been introduced into Europe, where it can be invasive.

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