flowers in November, seed dissection, wrecked mushrooms: a good day

Attentive readers may have noticed that I’ve been a bit glum about the onset of fall this year – certain that the fun was over, there’s nothing to see here, move along, move along, see you next spring. Fortunately, the woods behind our house have been whispering to me over the past couple of weeks. “Pssssst.  Lady. Up here. Mushrooms. Mosses. Things you haven’t seen lately. Pssssst.”

(Am I the only one out there who perceives life this way?) (Oh, right: doesn’t matter. You’re in charge of your perceptions; I’m in charge of mine.)

Anyhoo, I wandered around today, some in the normal spots, and some up in the woods, attentive to those little whispers. Here’s the haul:

Pachysandra, invading the woods from its homebase around the magnolia tree. We last saw pachysandra on May 6th, when the flowers were forming and dare I say it, swelling.

Asters continue to delight with their fuzzballs.

The pieris bush. This is the one whose flowers look like spider-infested barnacles. And there is a bug, of some kind, right in the middle of the picture. Thank you, O Macro Lens, without thee this bush would just be a blob on the edge of the lawn.

Would somebody please tell the vinca that it’s friggin’ November already?

Screw you, says the vinca. I can do this all week. I’m not proud…or tired.

Spider sez, mind your own business. See that little thingy in the lower right? Stay tuned. Those things are EVERYWHERE.

I came across a lobelia, of the Indian Tobacco flavor (Lobelia inflata), on my way up into the woods.

Lovely inflated calyx, to use the verbiage in my flower guide.

No wait, really? You didn’t get the memo, either, huh? Wow. I’ll keep an eye on this, because I’m not sure if it’s just opening up, or just closing down. When open, the lobelia flowers I’ve seen around here look more like this.

Remember the mushrooms growing in a stump up the hill? Well, someone went to town on them. I am not sure if mushrooms spontaneously fall apart, or if critters are involved, but at any rate, check this out:

Carnage, either way.

I spent a fair amount of time sussing out the mystery of a tiny turkey-foot shaped object that I have noticed in the bazillions over recent weeks. They’re everywhere – on the deck, on leaves, on our shower mat…

Here’s one.

I have suspected the birch trees, just on general principle. But I’m not sure if it’s yellow, gray, or white birch. (We have all three. Plus there’s black birch generally around here, but not in my usual wanderings.)

Look, another one.

I finally figured out that that’s probably the conveyance part, and the actual seed is this thing:

(A double-duty photo. Please to admire the fantastic shroomage.)

I also discovered that if you take an innocent birch catkin…

…and rip it to shreds, you’ll see that my theory is more-or-less right.

Here we have the two bits still stuck together.

As exciting as this is (and isn’t it?) the best part was when I came across a stump I visited earlier in the summer. It’s completely covered in moss and canada mayflower. I realized that even though the mayflower has long since produced its flowers and berries, it’s still around, and once I knew what to look for, I saw the evidence everywhere.

 

Translucent white leaves are all that remain.

On the way back down to the house, I found the first gentian I ever saw – here’s what it looked like back on August 9th – it didn’t have flowers yet.

And here’s what that baby looks like now:

I’m not dead yet!

The running report: Achilles tendonitis notwithstanding, a girl’s got to run, and the next half marathon is coming up in a few months. Which reminds me, I should probably register for it before it’s too late. I knocked out what passes for a long run these days – 5.3 miles – and right around now, the cats are starting to pester me for dinner. So, sports fans, I’ll see you tomorrow.

insert creative post title here. or not.

Long time blog readers will know I went through a complete phase of infatuation with dandelions over the summer, documenting every micro-stage of their going to seed.

I got a whiff of that project this afternoon. This here beaut is that tall blue lettuce I just posted on the other day – the one that grows up to 15 feet tall, but is named for its teensy blue stamens.
The seeds of the lone fertilized jack-in-the-pulpit left to me – the others were destroyed by the Irene flooding – are ripening.

July 13

today, August 31

Here’s some trippy aster action for you. In this one, the outer flowers (remember, this is a composite flower – there are numerous flowers inside that circlet of white rays) are open, but the inner ones are still closed.


This one has been at the party a bit longer. All of ‘em are open.

I don’t know what kind specifically this is - – there are many to the nth kinds of asters. Some day!
No clue who this next one one is. Stay tuned. Behaves like an aster, but suspiciously yellow.


Here’s a common evening primrose – the petals are the ones who look at their watches and leave the party at 8:45 pm.  The stigma and stamens are going to be up all night:


I came across a Virginia creeper-type vine that I’ve heretofore ignored (so don’t quote me on that ID), much to my chagrin, because look what it’s been doing lately:

I’ve seen this strategy before, in the anemones. Little spiky clusters.
Some of them are dried up already. How did I miss this? I guess because it’s over by the pole barn – there’s a lot of stuff over there I’ve missed.
One last burst of purple – gentian – is going to be opening up soon:

What a treat.
A tiny mystery blob on a log, 1/32” across:

fungus?
I surprised what I think might be a pickerel frog in the grass

I didn’t want to disturb it by getting too close, because by now both the cats were following me around. Nothing like a little frog appetizer.
Here’s Maggie messing up my attempt at getting a shot of the underside of this mushroom.

This led to some hilarity.



Ah, there we go. Damn cat.

new things happen all the time

I found something I’ve never seen before – which feels like a treat at this point in the year, as I ready myself for fall and the inevitable fading away of All Lovely Newness. I’m always happy to be proved wrong, as I was in spectacular fashion:

Waaaahhh!! How cool is this? It’s groundnut, also called wild bean (Apios americana). Its flowers have a “distinctive, sweetish odor” – amen to that. It’s a vine – here it is ambitiously scaling a tree:

It’s irregular flower day around here. I found a new stash of butter-and-egg (Linaria vulgaris) flowers:

How does this thing even get pollinated? The darker yellow part looks like it’s obstructing access to the nether regions of the flower. Hm.  Somehow fertilization must happen, because here we see what I’m assuming are the stigma, after all the petal-like parts have given way.
 
In other exciting news, I found what I thought at first was an adult ladybug about to emerge from the pupa. Imagine my surprise when it started walking around and flew away!

It turns out that this is a tortoise beetle. That name makes sense, given that it looks like it has an extra shell over its shell. God, being the beetle fiend that s/he is, made a bunch of these: there are 114 species of these in North America and Canada alone, according to bugguide.net. I was happy to make the acquaintance of just one of them, since this morning, I didn’t even know these existed. I’ll bet you didn’t, either, right?
I had some fun observing a musk mallow (Malva moschata). First, on one of the leaves, we have this awesome pair of whatevers (snails?) (but they have pointy shells. Do they still count as snails if their shells aren’t the classic snail shape?)

They were perched over the volcanic abyss of the the nearest flower blossom:


Peering into the depths of said volcano…

oooohhhh…
Meanwhile, the sepals that enclose the flower buds stick around after the petals fall off, and then start to fall apart, thusly:

Presumably there’s a seed or two enclosed in that basket-like structure.
They’re still blooming, though:

Oh! there’s another new species! I actually saw it the other day, but didn’t post about it because all the yellow flowers were clamoring to be featured, and this flower is white.

This is virgin’s bower (Clematis virginiana). I love how you can see, in the bud just opening up in the lower right of the photo, all those stamens raring to go.
And, another new species showed up in my awareness today. I believe it’s a gentian, but I’ll have to wait til the flowers open to confirm:

That looks promising, doesn’t it?