A Few Observations for Today

Now that I'm back at this, I'll try to choose a few things each day to focus on when I'm in town.  The temptation to write about everything that's happening all at once is great, and choosing just 2 or 3 things is terribly difficult given how many things I'm not choosing...

One of the most noticeable things out on the trails today isn't one of the many flowers blooming, but these hawkweeds that are done doing so.  This photo doesn't convey what makes these seedheads so noticeable -- their size.  Each globe is about 3 inches in diameter, a perfect sphere of parachute seeds waiting for the wind.  The plants are 2 to 3 feet tall, so at this time of year, they hang above most of the surrounding foliage. 

The flowers are all but finished blooming... there were hundreds of seedheads and this was the only bloom I found still in the flowering phenophase:

Astute observers will notice the similarities in flower and seed structure to its cousin the dandelion.  These yellow hawkweeds are also not native, but they don't colonize lawns and gardens the way that dandelions do, and in my world they don't cause a problem -- though some would disagree.

Bindweed, on the other hand, most definitely causes issues.  These morning glory relatives are problematic weeds in the garden world... the flowers -- whether the smaller, white variety on the left or the larger pink variety on the right -- grow from these skinny, string-like vines.  They wind around and around plant stems, making themselves inextricable from the desirable plant.  Often, I end up sort of following the vine down tot he ground and pulling it out from the root, and just leaving the vines wrapped around the other plants to die there, as they presumably will with no connection to the earth.
 
Bindweed is just one example of where, sometimes, I hate knowing things.  I mean, in general I like knowing about the natural world and what's what, and I don't think I fall prey to the pitfall of mistaking naming it with knowing it.  (Many people, I find, once they learn the name of a species, check it off some sort of list as a plant or animal that they know, and they're done with it.  No more to learn, no more observations needed.  Of course, the name tells you very little about the species... doesn't tell you what eats it or what it eats, what niche it holds, how it reacts to wind, the patterns in its veins, or what light makes it look the lovliest, or any one of a million things you can learn about something beyond its human-given name... but I digress.)  My actual point was, there was a time in my life whan I could have looked at those flowers and just seen beauty.  I remember (long ago) a time when a buckthorn forest was an awesome place to hide or play or build forts or follow deer trails.  Now I tend to see the problems in every landscape, and I can't get past the negative impacts.  A lot of people just look out at the field and it's green and waving in the wind and there are colorful flowers and it's beautiful, and I just can't divorce myself from the knowledge I have to not see what's problematic.  Ah, well... I guess when I see a place with a balanced native community, I appreciate it all the more.

I can't end on a nasty note, so here's a lovely indigo, displaying the typical branching pattern of Baptisia alba (white false indigo), which stands out in the prairie.

We typically see three species of Baptisia in this area, and they are all early blooming (with the white being the last).  Cream wild indigo (B. bracteata) blooms first... it's probably finished now, though there was a ton of it in Rollins Savannah just a couple of weeks ago.  It's got a much different habit, arching toward the ground and therefore never getting tall.  The flowers are creamy in color (thus the common name) and larger than the other species and have the typical irregular shape of legume flowers.  (Being legumes, all three species are nitrogen-fixing, and therefore do great things for the soil in the prairie!)

The next to bloom is the blue false indigo (B. australis).  These are almost finished blooming (and some have started to form their seed pods, which are pretty cool) but I found some still in flower.  The blue indigos gow quite tall, where they're happy, form a big closter that looks like a small shrub. 

(See how I did that?  Got to write about three plants for the price of one!)
Until tomorrow, then...

Pretty Prairie

I thought this photo showed just how lovely the prairie is at the beginning of June.  

The cast of characters is changing... shooting star has left the stage.  As you can see above, spiderwort and indigo have become numerous and prominent.  

In addition to the foxglove beardtongue pictured earlier in the week, other new flowers include wild quinine, shown here:

This I think is a smooth phlox, which was blooming last week but I didn't include a photo.  I said "I think" because I don't think phloxes usually have those pretty spots around the center, but I can't figure out what else it would be.

This flower is a mystery to me.  I spent a while with guide books, and Chris with a computer, and we didn't figure it out.  Might be we could with the actual plant, but with only a photo, no luck. 

I saw this huge snapper laying eggs.  And when I say I saw it, I mean, I actually saw the white, golf-ball sized eggs dropping from her body into the hole she dug.  It was really cool.  Unfortunately, my trigger finger doesn't have the luck or skillful timing to catch that in the photo. 

Prime Prairie

I'll admit it... There are times of the year when the prairie isn't the most aesthetically interesting ecosystem. But she is coming into her own now, and from June through October, the prairie will display staggering biodiversity.  A slowly but constantly changing cast of colorful characters will appear in the endless sea of waving grass.

Here is a partial (because I won't remember them all) list of what I saw blooming in the prairie today:

Shooting stars (still holding on!), golden Alexander, spiderwort, cream false indigo, wild indigo, wild roses (pictured below), lupine (pictured below below), wild hyacinth (pictured way below), wild geraniums, Canada anemone, daisies, fleabane, mustards -- yellow, white and garlic (I didn't say all the flowers were desirable), cow parsnip, bladder campion, hawkweed, irises, a patch of something bright red and far off the trail in a wetter area, no idea what it was... That's all I'm remembering at the moment.  I'm sure there was more, but I probably got the best ones. Even so... That's a lot!

Purple (with an Orange Topper!)

Spiderwort is blooming.

Look at these spectacular indigos!

Purple irises by the pond, with yellow ones blooming in the background.

Also sighted today: my first monarch butterfly of the year!  Too much moving to get a good photo, though. 

Back in the Swing (For Now)

Between last week and this week, some things I've missed photographing:

• mayapples blooming
• wasps making nests everywhere
• assuming last frost was last week -- 5/14 was in the 30's -- SUPER COLD -- we planted all the vegetables in the garden this weekend.  I did hear Tom Skilling say on the radio this morning that he thinks the warmth is here to stay.  Now if he could take the thunderstorms out of the forecast for my last camping trip, that'd be good. 
• pretty much all trees have leaves now, including ashes and oaks, our late leafer-outers
• I saw a really beautiful wood duck yesterday, just floating along by the boardwalk at Rollins Savannah

And here are some observations from the actual May 23:

Spittlebug spittle is quite common now.

Cream False Indigo blooming:


Daisies:

Slow and Steady...

Turtles are laying eggs!

Here are things in full bloom in the prairie today:

Golden Alexander and spiderwort color the prairie with yellow and purple...

Cream Indigo

Wild Rose

Canada Anenome

Columbine

Prairie Alumroot

Phlox

It's Just Galling!

This is one of my favorite periodic occurrences because it is just so strange. The cedar trees which, for most of the year have unremarkable brown growths on their branches, suddenly look as though they're carrying bright orange, slimy pompoms. And right now, they look like their game got rained out, because the recent rain has bogged down the usual gelatinous koosh-ball appearance of them. They are cedar-apple rust galls, but these galls are a totally different animal than the goldenrod and oak galls about which I wrote in the fall. Actually, these galls aren't an animal at all. But they are still called a gall because they, like the insect galls, cause the plant itself to form growths of its own tissue. Technically, cedar-apple rust galls are a pest and bad, but I think they are fascinating. This orange phenophase is when the rust is sending out spores into the wind... where they land on an apple (or similar) tree and infect it. On these hosts, they cause bright orange leaf spots, and eventually, later in summer, they also bear spores, which in turn land on cedar trees and cause their branch growths. Quite a life cycle!

Also just starting to bloom:
cream indigo, and
bladder campion.

In sad (for Naomi) news... some of my carefully cultivated Jewelweeds have bitten the dust. This is through no fault of their own, or nature, or me... I have these neighbor kids. They are nice, curious, and sometimes mischievous children. They play outside a lot (of which I approve). They play in my yard more often than I'd approve of, especially on the day when one of them ate a poisonous jack in the pulpit berry because it "looked like red corn"... but that's another story for another day. Anyhow, we've had many chats about not stepping on plants. Well, yesterday, the area between our two houses was a lake from all the water, and on my side of the lake is where the jewelweeds grow among the daylilies. They were playing in the lake with boats or somesuch and needed to go on my side. The daylilies are quite large, the jewelweeds still small spindly things... so they very carefully stepped around all the daylilies. They were actually so proud of themselves they called me over. "Look, Ms. Naomi, we didn't step on any of the plants!" Well, OK... but these little ones were plants, too and you stepped all over them! I did show them; we'll see if it still happens again. Anyhow, I hope the remaining ones will spread a lot of seeds again, and eventually... those kids will grow up.

Seeing Seeds

Seed pods from indigo... some have opened and spilled their seeds, some are dry, with seeds rattling around inside, and others are still closed but make no noise... why? I'm not sure, but little bugs inside may be the key to the answer.

This is a busy, crazy week!...

Garden Walk

Purple-flowering raspberry

Today was spent at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, a lovely but crowded place to spend a summer afternoon. Of course, they have tons of exotic plants meticulously cared for, but for the most part I am going to focus on natives (and insects). I sat and sketched a purple-flowering raspberry... the type of native that you almost never see in the actual wild. Then I took pictures of the flowers (above) and spent flowers (below) to show the color and texture, which don't come across in the sketch. About an inch across, the flowers are strikingly lovely, and they grow in the woodlands, where so many flowers have already bloomed (and are white, anyhow). It's nice to see color there in July.

This little damselfly is called... ready for it?... an orange bluet. Yeah, I kinda think that's a stupid name. I mean, why not an oranget? (I know... it's to communicate its close relationship to the blue ones. But it still sounds silly to me.)
We have already seen the blue dasher (remember the female is not blue at all, but rather stripey and black and yellow). But normally the odonata pictures have whatever possibly ugly background the thing will sit still on for a moment. It was a treat to find one sitting still on such a pretty lily.

Black walnuts are forming walnuts. I have 2 small black walnut trees in my yard, but they are both young, and both the product of squirrel-plantings. Although one is taller them me, it hasn't yet produces any nuts. I'm not sure how old they have to be. Plus, walnuts only produce their nuts every other year, so...
Green Dragons are closely related to Jack-in-the-pulpits. I think they have a great shape and I really, really want one in my yard. But I have never found one available in a nursery or native plant sale. So I guess I have to be content with looking at other people's when I see them.
False Solomon's seal getting some berries.
This plant was in the native area at the gardens, but I'm not sure if it is one -- I've never seen it before. It was vining and acting as a fence cover. It's common name is Dutchman's pipe. Can you see why? (And why do the Dutch always get these common names? I mean, do their pipes look more like that than other people's pipes? I would call it detective's pipe, a la Sherlock Holmes.)
Indigo, already getting seed pods at the bottom of the flower stalk there...
Solider beetle marching on.
Purple coneflower close-up. You can see that a few of the flowers are displaying pollen near the purple petals. Coneflowers, like daisies, dandelions, sunflowers, and many others, are composites. People think of them as individual flowers, but actually they are clusters of many, many tiny flowers all working together. The flowers on the inside (like the yellow part of a daisy) are the disc flowers; the ones with the large petals surrounding them are the ray flowers (the white part of a daisy). Each individual flower has one pistil, connected to one egg, and will form one seed. If you pull one out, on most species, you can see its one petal, pistil, and tiny stamen. The flowers bloom in succession -- there will be rings of them that show their pollen, and as time goes on, the blooming ring moves. That's why a lot of these flowers (or clusters of flowers, really) bloom for so long. When I teach students about composite flowers, I always tell them they now know something about dandelions and daisies that their parents and most people they pass on the street don't know!
This is not a native, but I thought it was pretty neat so I'm including it. I like how it gradually changes color from bright orange to white. This was in the bulb garden, where I don't believe I had ever been before today despite many visits to the gardens.
Also not native, but I thought I'd include a rose. I used to dismiss roses as common, the flower you'd see everywhere and give for every holiday. I wanted something with more character and more local to my place. But honestly... I see the attraction. They're beautiful, they smell delicious (they're also edible) and they bloom for a long time. They come in all sorts of colors; I am attracted to the orange ones like this one. I have 2 rose bushes in my yard, which I didn't plant and do not care for at all. And yet, one of them blooms from June to September. (The other is sort of buried in queen of the prairie and goldenrod, and maybe won't survive too much longer with the neglect I heap upon it.)

It is HOT. And? Humid. That's all I really have to say about today. Yesterday, I spent about 4 hours doing yard work, and probably sweat about 5 lbs. off. (Also, I got several mosquito bites, including 2 on my face, despite using spray; and strange sunburn stripes in little odd places that I missed with sunscreen. Plus, I discovered that spiderwort at this stage in its life (slightly past peak bloom) seems to have a deep blue sap, which is actually beautiful but stains clothes and skin. So I looked pretty beat up at the end of yesterday. This morning, we went strawberry picking with some friends, and despite the fact that we were done before 10 am, I still sweated buckets. Oy.

This picture, taken from the car window, shows some early coneflowers. None in my yard are blooming at all. They are close, but not that close.

Juneberries (Serviceberries)... will they be ready

in June?

Some are reddening, but they need to be deep purple

before they should be harvested.

Almost-flowers on basswood/linden tree.

Also noted but not photographed:

• thistles are blooming (have been since about Saturday).
• wild indigo is blooming, but not in my yard, as I can never get it to take very well, and it comes back, but small and stunted...
• a lot of almosts right now... almost false sunflowers, almost coneflowers in my yard, almost milkweed, almost queen of the prairie...

Stay cool!!!!