Coreopsis, campion and clover, oh my!

These coreopsises (which is an interesting word to make plural... coreopses?) are in full bloom, their bright yellow cheering up another grey day. They are another one of those flowers with color so pure it looks like you could just jump right in to a pool of it, and it's about my favorite color.

Rushes and sedges of many varieties are currently bearing seedheads. I can't even pretend I'm good at IDing them -- other than being able to categorize a plant as a rush, a sedge or a grass... using, of course, the old sing-song mnemonic that botany students everywhere learn: Sedges have edges, rushes are round, and grasses have asses [nodes] down low to the ground.

Note: I would love to be able to differentiate them accurately; I have a book but it isn't great. Any suggestions welcome!

Anyhow, here is a rush to represent them all.

Bladder campion (and also daisies) are lining roadsides everywhere. Despite their weediness and the fact that they aren't native, I quite like the bladder -- really an inflated, purple-veined calyx sac -- for which they are commonly named.

And this is the almost-blooming blanket flower that grows all over at school, though it is technically native to slightly more western prairie areas.

In the world of weeds (which sometimes seems to be the entire world), here are 4 that are in full bloom: orchard grass, yellow sweet clover, vetch, and red and white clovers intermingling together.

Blahs

Another cold, cloudy, intermittently rainy day. Is summer ever really going to come? According to the Daily Parker, it's been the coldest June on record. I believe it. I am sticking out my tongue at the weather.

Hey... at least I don't have to water anything.

Hey it's good to be back home again...

Bottlebrush grass has made seeds in my yard -- although they are green and new, unlike the haiku describes. Not ready to be harvested at all.

But the most notable advances that occurred while we were away were in the garden. Strawberries are ripening and I got to eat one! One, ironically, that was almost ready to eat when we left, rotted on the plant, a few more did get eaten by birds, and a LOT look ready to eat tomorrow... I hope.

Cucumbers have yellow flowers. Melons are getting larger... they have been waiting for some warmth! One potato plant also has purple flowers and the sugar snap peas seem to be fully flowering (no fruits yet).

The basil seems to be looking a lot better but we're not totally out of the fungus woods yet.

Weeds are doing GREAT so there's a lot of work to do now!

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.

Fungus Among Us at Starved Rock

The trails at Starved Rock are extremely well-traveled and impossible to leave -- many of them actually have railings on the side, and many others are guarded by a poison ivy army that hangs over onto the trails. Still, I was able to see a lot of awesome fungi; I saw so many I didn't even include them all here. I can only imagine what you could find if you went off the beaten path. (Which I would never do, if you're reading this from the DNR!) :)

So here are some of the cooler, more colorful or interesting fungi and molds we found.

Garden Phenology: Strawberry Wars

As a mostly-locavore, I have been eating preserved or frozen fruit since apple season ended in the fall. Sure, there have been some exceptions, at other people's homes, but winter fruit, imported from California or even the southern hemisphere, isn't the same. It's not the same at all. Those of you who know, don't need me to describe it. And those of you who don't, wouldn't get it from my description anyhow.

And so the first strawberries of June are an incomparable treat. When the hard white berries began adorning the bushes in May, I was excited. When they started to turn pink, I could almost taste them. When I ate a bunch from my Mom's CSA box earlier this week, I was so happy... but not at all sated. This is why the birds, with their plot to destroy my strawberry crop entirely, are driving me nutters. You see, a few days ago, the first strawberry in the garden started to look red; it got to the point where we knew that tomorrow it would be ready. One strawberry. But tomorrow we looked, and found only the green cap. Berry all gone. And another strawberry, looking like it would be ready tomorrow.

But the next day? Same thing. No berry. The birds, seemingly excited as we, were taking our

i crop one little berry at a time. Now, I really am willing to share with the birds. But they don't

want to share. They want them all. I mean, they couldn't leave one red one as a good faith gesture? Plus, there's a whole patch of wild strawberries in the yard... And so, we dug in the shed for a net that had served this purpose in the past, and covered the berries with a net meant to keep the birds out. Well. This morning, I went to look and see if any were close (the closest is pictured at the top of this entry.) What I noticed right away was the severed strawberry on the

path (pictured right). It lay there, decapitated, as though a message: "Your silly net won't stop us! We can still get your strawberries!" And they left this non-ripe one just to prove the point. Like a Godfather horse head.

To steal from a very cute children's book, THOSE DARN BIRDS!!!!! (Old Man Fookwire raised his fist...)

In other news:
Nasturtium almost ready to flower.
Seeds of shooting star.
Berries on the red baneberry.
These beetles seem to like my butterfly weed. I don't know if they're bad or good but they're pretty and haven't done much damage in several days, so I"m thinking they're OK. (But if anyone knows different, let me know!!!)

PS -- It looks like we might finally have some good weather today! After days and days of blah. Not sunny, not warm... Sometimes downright cold. Last night we went to hear the free in Millenium Park live taping of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me, and I think I was colder than I've ever been at Wrigley in April. (Course, I wear snow pants at Wrigley in April...) When will summer come?!?

Our Place in History

As it is somewhat of a slow phenology time, between the rush of spring flowers and the drawn-out bloom of the prairie in summer -- although there are still things to be observed... such as, there are cottonwood seeds blowing all over today, floating gracefully down and up and down again... But back to the point, in the absence of the laundry list of new blossoms of three weeks ago, I shall wax philosophical about our place in history.  

Several weeks ago, fivecrows gave me this book she had acquired sometime earlier.  It's a fascinating book, entitled Apgar's Plant Analysis, published in 1874.  The book, intended, according to the preface, for students of biology, contains several pages of botanical terminology, and then the bulk of the book contains blank pages for the student to fill in describing plants.  (There is also a page that advertises other botanical texts and materials, which describes a botany microscope, with 2 lenses, available for $2.00!!!)  One page, written in 1880 and describing a Uvularia, is shown above.  The pressed flower shown to the left was inside the front cover.  

Among the species described in the book are spring beauty, hepatica, bloodroot, rue anenome, violets, larkspur, trillium, pipevine, columbine, stonecrop, strawberry, phlox, buttercup, cranesbill, lungwort, toothwort, bittercress, Solomon's seal, plantain, marsh marigold, and more.  Many pages are left blank.  (I am sorely tempted to fill one out, but will resist.)

There is no name in the book, although I imagine the botanist was a woman.  This may be because of the extremely neat handwriting -- although I think this was probably typical of everyone at the time.  But it may also be because I relate with his person, I imagine her stopping, almost 130 years ago, in Mrs. Neel's yard and Gardener's Woods -- wherever those places are -- and sitting down to study those plants.  For homework or for pleasure... or both... who knows... Perhaps she sketched them, too, in a different book, lost to time or preserved somewhere else, treasured by someone else.  

I think about her records -- scientific, sterile, formatted, yest still somehow lovingly done -- compared to mine.  Whimsical, on and off, switching from poetic to scientific to plain mundane.  Her perfect handwriting on the lines of a book, tucked away on some shelf, sold eventually at a garage sale; my typing into blogger, out there for anyone to see, and who knows what will happen to it in the future.   How the times have changed, and how they have remained the same.

I suppose it was more common, then, to know the local plants.  It's a different world, a different understanding, for people who do and don't, in some ways.  I was talking to someone last week who said that when he walked in the woods, he saw a lot of green plants and trees.  None of them were different to him.  He didn't understand how people differentiated between them all, or why they bothered, or how they remembered.  To me, every plant is different.  Even if I don't know its name -- or especially then -- I am interested in its characteristics, and how it differs from others of its kind and why.  There are so many things to see, everywhere.  I sort of understand him, though... what if I could tell all those little brown birds apart?  Would the world look wholly different to me?  

What is it they found?  On average, children can identify over 1,000 corporate logos but fewer than 10 native species that live in their area.  (Read more.)  I'm guessing that back in 1880 there weren't so many corporate logos cluttering people's brains and more care was given over to what grew in yards and parks.  It's a sad state of affairs, but I'm glad I am connected to this glimpse of a phenologist's records from the 19th century.  I wonder what someone will say when they come across mine, someday...