Explore Outdoors ~ Wallflowers

I'm always amazed at how persistent plants can be. They'll find a foothold just about anywhere! I once found a sunflower sprouting in the nook of a tree branch...

 

 

Where's the most unusual place you're found flowers growing in your neighborhood?
 

Explore Outdoors ~ Spittlebug Season

 

The other morning I headed out to take photos of all the spiderwebs in the "tall grass" - a section of lawn we've let grow. It's not so much grass as it is a mix of wild flowers and plants that have grown up. Along with the numerous webs, I noticed lots of spitballs ...

 

Yep, it's that time of year again: spittlebug season! Spittlebugs are juvenile "froghoppers" that suck plant sap, spill it all over themselves, then blow air out their butts to create a froth of bubbles.

 

 This is what they look like if you wipe some of the spit off their faces. Cute little buggers, aren't they?

 

 I see them on so many different plants, but I've never taken the time to make a list of:

• what plants do I find them on?
• do they prefer mid-level living or top floor?
• are there any plants they won't choose?
• how many spittlebug friends share the plant?

 This week head out on a Spittlebug Search!

Explore Outdoors ~ Seeds of Flight

 I find dandelion puffballs fascinating. The seed heads look like a constellation of stars. Then, as they are blown by the wind, it begins to look downright scraggly. What amazes me is how dainty the fiber parachutes look, and how sturdy the little seeds appear. 

 

 

 

If you've ever wondered how far a dandelion seed can travel, the best time to find out is when they go to seed. Pick a dandelion seed head (no one will yell at you for that!), mark a launch zone, and pull off a few seeds with their parachutes. Then hold them up as high as you can and let go. Follow one (or more) and put a marker down where they land. Then measure the distance. Sometimes they fly so far you have to count "giant steps"...

 

Check out the dandelion seeds in your yard... 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ a foggy morning walk

 Some mornings the fog rolls in and sticks around for a couple of hours. It's still cool, and the perfect time for a nature walk. Not only that, water droplets in the air stick to spider webs and make them stand out.

 

 

What cool things do you find on an early morning walk? 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ hairy leaves!

 

My garden is full of wild flowers this spring: dandelions, violets, deadnettle, speedwell, and these rosettes of fuzzy leaves that will grow into mullein plants as tall as me.

The fuzz on the leaves is soft, like velvet.  Some folks describe it as feeling like wool, but it's so soft...

The hairs help the plant conserve water by blocking the sun's rays and keeping wind off the leaf surface.

This is what they look like close up:

I wondered what other plants might have hairy leaves. 

Dandelions? Nope.

Violet? No hair there.

No for clover and speedwell as well. But the deadnettle leaves looked a bit silvery.

So I took a close look at their leaves... why yes, those are hairs. But whereas the mullein hairs stick out at wild angles, the deadnettle hairs look neatly combed.

Take a close look at leaves this week. 

See any hairs?

Explore Outdoors ~ portrait of a dandelion

 I just love the curly hair on top of this one! OK, in reality I know those are sticky stigmas sticking up - awaiting pollen carried by bees, flies, wasps - all three of which I saw in the garden on dandelions.

This week catch a close-up of a flower in your neighborhood.

Explore Outdoors ~ Logan Hill Nature Preserve

 

 

 

This past Sunday, Mothers Day, was perfect weather for a walk. So we headed to the Logan Hill Nature Preserve, a Finger Lakes Land Trust preserve located in Candor, NY.

 

 

 

 

The preserve is a mix of field and woods, with vernal pools and a pond. It's perfect habitat for bobolinks and woodcocks. On Sunday we heard  a medley of birdsong: hermit thrush, robins, sparrows of all kinds. We also heard the low humming of bumble bees and carpenter bees checking out the flowers.

 

Speaking of flowers...

 

 

 The overwhelming color this time of year was green ~ with highlights of muddy brown.

 

 Fortunately, there were stones across the muddy spots. Even they were part of the natural wonder! Who can resist stopping to look at fossilized brachiopods in the path? 

 

 

Explore Outdoors ~early spring

 

 This year spring seems to be slow in coming. Sure, we've had rain and the occasional sunny day. But it's been such a cold winter, and the last couple weeks have felt cold and gray.

 

Still, there's a bit of seasonal change happening in the garden. The spear-like leaves of the garlics have been up for a couple weeks, as have the irises. Pear and plum blossoms have added sprinkles of color to the landscape, and some kinds of maples have already let their samaras fall to the earth.

 

The first flowers blooming in  my garden - and in my lawn - are violets and dandelions. I love the contrast of purple with cheery yellow.

 

I'm not the only one - plenty of tiny bees were out in the dandelions!

 

What colors do you see blooming around your neighborhood this week?
 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ flower watching

 Spring comes in its own time, sometimes in a flurry of flowering and sometimes a slow opening of a bud. While visiting Boston, I walked around the neighborhood every day just to watch this magnolia wake up from winter. 

This Earth Day, what's blooming in your neighborhood?

April 1

April 6

April 11

April 14

 

Explore Outdoors ~ a tree museum

 Last week a friend invited us to stroll through the Arnold Arboretum. It's Harvard University's "tree museum" and botanical research facility, and filled with birds and blooms that change with the season. In early April, our friend warned, we shouldn't expect to see a lot of flowers. Because it's still cold (indeed, it snowed for a few minutes that morning) and spring was still trying to wake up! But here, enough talk - come with us for a short walk...

Many of the trees in bloom were from China, Japan, South Korea - places where flowers are adapted to chilly spring weather. But, as we discovered, there's more to trees than their blossoms... 

Bark has wonderful texture, as do the sweetgum seedpods and the mosses and lichens growing on tree limbs.

Even so, the maples and magnolias were blooming (though the magnolias looked the worse for wear!)

And then, of course I just couldn't resist this splash of yellow!

This week, notice the trees where you walk.

Explore Outdoors ~ April Showers

 It's been a rainy spring here in the northeast - and some mornings are still on the cold side. (Snow, anyone?) But spring flowers are shaking off the raindrops and holding their faces to the sun.

 

What spring flowers are blooming in your neighborhood? 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ a salt marsh

 One of the things I try to do wherever I am is to find a bit of wild. Even if - especially if - I'm in an urban area. So the other day we drove down the shore drive to a small natural area in Quincy, MA: Passanageset Park at the Broad Meadows Marsh.

 

Passanageset Park boasts flat trails to and around the marsh, and signs that tell of the history of the Massachusett people who lived there long before European settlers arrived. Others describe the ecology and wildlife ... but on a windy day in late March there weren't any birds clinging to tall stems and calling.

A salt marsh is a coastal wetland that is flooded and drained by the tides. We were clearly there at low tide. 

 

 

 

This week find a piece of the wild where you are. 

 

Explore Outdoors ~ the last acorn

 

While walking around a park in Salt Lake City a couple weeks ago, I noticed all the scrubby oaks had empty acorn caps attached at the ends of the twigs. It makes sense - jays and other animals would have snacked on the yummy nuts all winter.

 

But why did the acorns fall without their caps on?

 

 

The oaks are getting ready for spring, even as this particular tree holds onto a few leaves and this one last acorn.

 

 

 

This week as you walk around your neighborhood, look at the trees. Are any of them still holding tight to last year's leaves or nuts?  

Explore Outdoors ~ More Galls!

 Last week I was hiking in Wasatch Hollow, a small nature preserve tucked behind a neighborhood in Salt Lake City. It felt like spring was nudging winter out, and we listened to the sparrows and a cooper's hawk. I'd noticed some interesting galls on the oak twigs and at the tips of the rose bushes. These are, as I understand it, galls caused by wasps. 

 

 

 

This one is called a mossy rose gall - and it does sort of look like moss growing at the end, doesn't it?

 

Now, before flower and leaf buds burst open, is the perfect time to see galls on bushes and trees. 

 

Can you find any galls in your neighborhood?

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Forsythia Galls

 Winter is a great time to take a closer look at shrubs and trees. You might find interesting fungi or lichens or... 

... knobby galls on your forsythia twigs. What makes these galls form? It's a mystery, says Amanda Bratcher at North Carolina State University. As cool-looking as they are, they harm the health of the forsythia. So I'll be pruning those twigs shortly!  

What interesting things do you find when you look closely at the twigs and stems of trees and bushes in your neighborhood?

Explore Outdoors ~ Squirrel Snacks

 

I've read that rosehips make great winter snacks for rabbits and squirrels. Bears, too, though I don't expect we'll see any down at the County Courthouse gardens!

Rosehips are full of vitamin C, and they may be a great source of food when other stuff is scarce. But getting to them ... that's a prickly proposition.

If there are any rosehips in your neighborhood, do you ever see squirrels or birds eating them?

Explore Outdoors ~ Going on a Flea hunt ...

 ... snow fleas, that is. Monday it was so warm (40oF) that I decided to check out the old oak log behind my garden. It’s covered with moss and lichens, and on Monday the snow below it was covered with snow fleas!

Seen from a couple feet away, snow fleas look like specks of pepper. 

Up close, they look like bigger specks of pepper! Unless you have a hand lens, and then you can see their legs. They have six, but they aren’t insects. And they aren’t even fleas. They’re teensy arthropods called Collembola, or springtails. They’re a whopping 1/8 inch long and have two tail-like structures that are tucked under their belly – until they release and catapult the snow flea into the air, flinging them up to 100 body lengths away. It’s a great ride with one problem – the snow fleas have no control over where they land. 

Turns out snow fleas have been around a long time, at least 400 million years. By comparison, the first dinosaur didn’t show up until 240 million years ago, writes Judy Rosovsky. Check out her article at VT Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets.

Snow fleas have been found on Mt. Everest, so finding them in my backyard isn’t unusual. They’ve got a protein that acts as an anti-freeze to keep their cells from freezing, says Judy. And they don’t bite people – or pets. Instead, these tiny-but-mighty jumpers subsist on leaf litter, decaying plants, and fungi. 

This week, if you’ve got snow and a warm day, go on a snow flea hunt!

Explore Outdoors ~ almost a leaf skeleton

 Beech trees are notorious for hanging on to some of their dead leaves all winter. That trait is called marcescence (mar-SES-ents) . Beech trees do it; so do oaks. When I walk along the road on a windy day, I can hear the beech leaves rattle and shake. The other day I took a closer look at one of the beech leaves. It looked a bit like a stained glass window, but without colored glass.

Next time you're out walking 

look for leaves lingering on limbs. Notice their shape and color, whether they have jaggedy edges, and what kind of tree they are on.

Explore Outdoors ~ how snow sticks

 

Walking through the woods on a snowy afternoon I noticed the differences in how snow stuck to things. Tree trunks, for example. 

 

Some trees had thick scaly bark, and falling snow accumulated in the crevices around them. Trees with smoother bark had hardly any. But, given the wind, some had stuck to the tree trunks anyway.

 

 Winter weeds, on the other hand, ended up with Snow Hats!

 

Next Time it Snows: take a walk around your neighborhood and notice where the snow ends up on trees and plants. 

 

Further observation: does where and how snow sticks to trees and winter weeds vary with the water content of the snow? Powdery snow forms in cold, dry air so it doesn't have much moisture. Flakes that form when the temperature is near freezing will have more moisture. That makes them stickier - great for making snowballs - but also heavier.

Explore Outdoors ~ Lichens!

 Lichens are small and easy to overlook, but they are amazing. These tiny symbiotic communities of fungi and algae and cyanobacteria can weather the cold temperatures and dry air of winter. How do they do it?

 

 

 

They go dormant. Some have anti-freeze chemicals in their cells to keep from - well, freezing and bursting open. Their superpower: they can pick up with photosynthesis once the weather warms up and the moisture returns. Find out more about lichens here. 

 

Go Lichen Looking around your neighborhood. 

Check tree trunks and branches, rocks, stone walls - I've even found lichens growing on park benches!