Today's Discoveries

We had a lovely day at the gardens today, hot and summery but not unbearable, before the late afternoon storms swept through.

Water lilies are in full bloom, where they have them in all sizes and shapes and colors -- purples and yellows, peaches, pinks, whites. The insides fascinate me, they seem to transition from petal to stamen gradually, as though some petals are made of pollen.

Blue dashers were everywhere today, but they didn't especially want to be photographed. They still sat better than all the other odonata we saw, which I didn't stand a chance of capturing with my point-and-shoot.

Rattlesnake master... the plant with some of the most interesting leaves in the prairie, makes up for it with some of the most boring flowers...

Purple flowering raspberry is a lovely color and has fascinating fuzzy stems and buds. It also shows quite clearly how raspberries are, indeed, members of the rose family. But is sure seems a shame to have these huge raspberry bushes that don't produce edible berries!

Pipevine is pretty neat, no? I wonder if I could get some, put it in my morning glory fence instead of them?... Then I could get swallowtails, too, maybe...

This coneflower has just the oddest curly petals, I quite enjoyed looking at it. Like ringlets.

Trip Journal: Devil's Lake

Last year, upon returning from Devil's Lake, I wrote an essay about how I felt travelling, as an adult, to a place that was an integral part of my early childhood. Having already written about that, I think this year, I'll just show some plants I saw there.
Bunchberry... a northwoods favorite of mine. I planted some at my house and it does come back, but it has never flowered... I should have put it under my evergreens, as a lot of things won't grow there and bunchberry does seem to grown by pines quite often. If I ever find more...
Canada lily, its flowers so tiny most people say "where?" when I point one out...
Neat wrinkly fungi growing from a log.
Black raspberry, or blackberry.
The grass has eyes... and they're yellow! (Yellow-eyed grass.)
This lichen was such as spectacular color, which really doesn't translate here. It gradually went from a pale mint green to a dark army green...
These tent caterpillars -- not the invasive gypsy moths, but a native -- were everywhere, defoliating trees, especially cherries.
I sketched this mayapple flower but I didn't have the time, while the kids were working, to really do the leaves... Oh, well...

YUMMY!

Sweet and seedy, dying your teeth and tongue purple, the black raspberries are ripe on the canes, falling off easily into your hands if you can stand the thorns and skeeters to get there.

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.)

How can a Rock be Starved?

Spent the weekend at Starved Rock -- about 100 miles south -- with my entire extended family. Here are some of the interesting plant and arthropod discoveries there...
Sumac Catalpa flowering. Up close, the flowers are about 1.5 inches, irregular, and stunning.

Black raspberry ALMOST ready to eat...

Hazelnut (on which hazel) not nearly ready to eat, but formed!

Some sort of hawkweed-like thing. Goat's beard?

Poison Ivy -- easily the most common plant at Starved Rock -- this one is hanging form a vine and its flowers are visible under the leaves.

Bell flower.Berries on a cedar.

Lungwort? Some sort of non-vascular plant clinging to the sandstone cliffside...

I have no idea what this is. But it's cool.

Ditto. This flower is TINY.

Another hawkweed-esque thing, this one a perfect yellow-orange color.

One of many millipedes, about 3-4 inches long.

With its wings spread, this butterfly was blue; closed, they look grey. Maybe an Azure? Saw several other varieties of butterfly as well.

Mayflies Turn into Junebugs (Kankakee River Part 2)

I spent three more days down south in Kankakee River State Park.  Not a lot had changed, but, as the title jokingly suggests, I saw a lot fewer mayflies (and more junebugs, although in this instance that means I saw one).  Here's some of the other things I discovered... 

As at home, the foxglove beardtongue is making its floral debut, with the first pinkish blooms opening. 
Kankakee River has a lot of butterflies.  I saw painted ladies and monarchs, blues, ones I didn't recognize without the aid of a book, and this lovely swallowtail.  It's about as large as my  hand.  I had to take about 25 pictures before I finally got this one, as it was not sitting at all still!
I first noticed these yellow irises at home on Saturday, 5/30, but this one is the first I have photographed.  While these wetland flowers are quite lovely, they are not native irises, but rather garden escapees.  
We saw many turtles on this trip.  This one, away from the river, was quite large.  
Last week's black raspberry flower becomes this week's tiny green raspberry.
A crazy stinkhorn!
Lichen and moss growing together on a rock cliff.  Perhaps not phenologically significant, but I do love these nonvascular plants (or, fungi+algae, in the case of lichens) and their ability to grow right out of a rock.  
And speaking of growing right out of rocks -- this fern has found itself a cliffside home, as well.  Pretty impressive, if you ask me.