superheroes in pink capes, purple grass, etc.

I will be out of town next week – hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire with an old friend – and I’m working like a crazed bunny to get everything I can wrapped up at work before I go. This afternoon, I staggered away from my desk, my head and body seemingly disconnected from one another, my spirit nowhere to be found. The perfect remedy: break out the hiking boots (gotta remind my feet about the hiking boots!), grab the point-and-shoot, and go for a four mile jaunt down dirt roads.
I found plenty of entertainment. It is just amazing how many more species there are to admire, just a half mile to two miles from the house. But I started with the locals. Remember those sleepy pink moths? They’re still around.

“Don’t worry, little lady.”

“I’ll save you.”
‘The aptly named primrose moth,’ I am informed. (Schinia Florida)
By the pole barn, where we store firewood, grass that has yet to encounter the lawn mower is in bloom.


Timothy grass, as yet not quite in bloom, with a visitor.

Later on, a mile away, the timothy grass was in full bloom. 

quack grass.
OK, now we’re venturing out away from my typical haunts of late.

Bittersweet nightshade, many of them already in full-on berry mode. These berries will turn yellow, then orange, then red. A veritable rainbow – as if the flower itself weren’t gorgeous ENOUGH.

Herb robert (yes, that’s its name) – I thought the sparkly velvet flowers were done for the season, but I’m pleased to see I was wrong.


Some kind of mutant, gargantuan dandelion-style flower. Sadly, they had ALL already closed up shop, so I don’t know what color the petals (well, rays, technically) are – still, though, I ought to be able to ID it. So far, no luck.

These seed clusters were the size of my fist.


Here’s a new one for me: bladder campion (Silene cucubalus). Later on this summer, I’ll show its cousin, white campion. It grows right next to our mailbox.


Common st. johnswort – which also tends to grow near our mailbox, but I haven’t seen it yet this year.


barberpole sedge. Bonus: see the spider? I didn’t when I took the picture!

Partridgeberry – a ground cover, with red berries in the fall. I laughed when I saw how the insides are fuzzy. Kevin said maybe it’s naturally-occurring velcro.

trillium seed. joy!


red baneberry is possessed of a certain in-your-face charm, no?


this is common comfrey.


a whole hillside of day lilies.

brand-new to me: motherwort (Leonurus cardiaca).
The hiking boots feel good. That’s a relief.

grasses, sedges, and spiders

This is yellow foxtail (Setaria glauca), a grass whose golden bristles give it a glow, as though it comes with its own backlight.

“All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up.”


You’ve probably seen plantain, a not particularly attractive lawn weed, and not given it much thought.

Think again. It’s flowering.

Proof that even the “blegh” species are anything but.
A grasshopper and I spied on each other.


Finally, s/he emerged, just a little.


Strange things comprise a meadow: check out this sedge, Carex flava.

It’s both bulgy, AND spiky! 

Or how about a sweet spider, watching me photograph her at home in the barberpole sedge (Scirpus rubrotinctus)?

I couldn’t get my trusty point-and-shoot to focus on her eyes, even though she apparently has plenty to choose from.

a grass, a sedge, and scary monster aliens (as usual)

Remember my project to learn grasses? <chuckle> Yeah, good luck with that. I have tentatively identified one of them, though. The one I called “green chevron”. It seems to be quack grass – Agropyron repens. This beauty has started flowering.

My guidebook says that the inflorescence (all-the-flowers-collectively) are flat (true), and that the flowers have their backs toward the stem (also true).

Yep!

This one seems to provide the framework for a spider web…and lo and behold, the spider’s quite visible, at the top of the picture. Naturally, I didn’t notice it while photographing it.

And here is some sort of little fly…

So pretty. Let’s move on and give other species a shot, shall we?

Queen Anne’s lace – there’s that little purple flower at the center again.
And now for the False Solomon’s Seal. I just wanted to see how big the berries were getting.

The plump ones are maybe 3/16”. I didn’t see any more sawfly larvae eating them, but I did see this little inchworm…

…working its way around from berry to berry. I made a 30 second film of him, for which he stood on his back end, erect, not moving. It didn’t make for an exciting oeuvre, but the mosquitos sure loved that I kept still for so long.
Right next to this was one of the leaves of the plant. I noticed idly that they’re already turning a little brown around the edges, but then I looked more closely.

Gaagghhhh!  A scary spider. Shudder. I know, Little Miss Amateur Naturalist – but this one just looks like some kind of alien in rest mode, prior to attacking the ship.

So why don’t I mind the 1/8” baby grasshopper katydid nymph [thanks, BugGuide!] sitting on some flowering Timothy grass?
Here’s another one I think I identified – barberpole sedge (Scirpus rubrotinctus).

I ran into Best Beloved in the driveway – he has been feeling a little under the weather lately, perhaps because he is allergic to All Grasses, Trees, Flowers, and Pollinating Things, and hey, not a day goes by without some more pollen being released. (In fact, I actually saw pollen floating off some quack grass when I felt the stem to verify it was round.) He looked at this particular photo, and wondered, is that a spiderweb? a fungus? (It’s a little hard to see on the camera’s display.) I’m thinking, yeah, it’s a spiderweb... 
…because check out the upper left corner of the picture.

…more scary alien legs.

cluster bombs and flammable bathtubs

Today has been occupied by two projects: coming up with my own names for grasses and sedges, and adding things to the communal burn pile out in the meadow.

I’ve decided to learn about grasses.

The guide I’m using promises that I won’t need a hand lens or much experience with botany to identify species.  It will be a while before I manage to ID anything. For now, my tactic is just to discern what the different species ARE, and to give them homemade names, so that I can recognize them from day to day.

I call this one “chevron”, because of the herringbone pattern of the flower bits.
 

You know how you can buy a Christmas tree that’s been tightly wrapped in mesh, and you bring it home and clip the mesh off, and then the branches relax away from the trunk?

This one’s “honey bunches of oats”. My question is, is it the same thing as chevron, but it’s been around a bit longer and it’s relaxed? Or is it a different species?

What about this one? It seems like the middle point of chevron and honey bunches of oats.

Hm. I only just got started and already, I have no clue. Yay! The cognitive dissonance that is necessary for learning and growth! I alternate between being annoyed, and being delighted. Much like life itself. Let’s move on, shall we?

Here’s green chevron – not an imaginative name, but hey.

Here’s one that I think I actually may have correctly identified – I’ve posted about it before – Timothy grass (Phleum pratense)



Here’s golden christmas tree. I don’t think it’s the same as honey bunches of oats.

This delicate one is pretty distinctive.
Oh! Here’s one that I may have ID’d – barberpole sedge (Scirpus rubrotinctus). I prefer my name for it: cluster bomb.

Backing up for a broader view, check out the proliferation of cluster bomb in the picture below:

Interestingly, not 30 feet away, the species composition of the unmowed part of the meadow we’re in is totally different: ferns and milkweed.


Earlier, Charlie helped me read the intro to my new book.
On to the other project du jour.
Today I crossed the line from just blithely observing and appreciating Nature’s Bounty, to deciding to kill stuff. Enough is enough with the one-seeded bur cucumber. ‘Tis a vine, whose primary purpose in life seems to be to take over the universe, or at least, the hillside along our driveway – the scene of all the siberian iris, ferns, playtex tampon applicator flowers, spiderwort, wild madder, jack-in-the-pulpit, raspberry, black raspberry, and wild rose. 

I filled up the back of the Escape TWICE with great mounds of this stuff. I dumped it in the burn pile out in the meadow, which is very close to just looking like an impromptu junkyard. What with there being a bathtub in it, and all. I’m not sure how flammable that thing’s going to be.