youth to old age, in a single day; the virtues of a good book

We have a lot happening simultaneously these days.
1. withering.  As the our northern hemisphere tilts away from the sun, more and more plants are closing up shop for the season. Are the ferns as beautiful as they wither as they were in the spring?

Today.

May 21

You tell me.
2. making babies as fast as they can I went into the Mystery Woodland – scene of many an early-spring flower – this afternoon. I’d neglected to visit it for quite some time: I’ll have to do better next year. Lo and behold, I found some helleborine (Epipactis helloborine) and its fatty seeds. I wanted to linger but the mosquitos (again: WTF?!) were killing me.


Also in this category: wild grape, species unknown, irritatingly out of reach high up in an apple tree.


Next up: plantain. A lawn weed to most, but remember, this is the one with the fantastic purple flowers.

The awesome flowers, a month ago today, as it happens…

…are now getting alarmingly ready to pop.

3. Still flowering – as I’ve mentioned recently… there’s always the asters. This time, the “little purple kind” as opposed to yesterday’s “big purple kind”. I love how some are yellow in the middle, and some are purple. Seems to be a reasonably common feature of asters.

Also, a common-enough little guy I’d kinda been ignoring, but it’s one of the few spots of color left these days:

This is wood sorrel – probably Oxalis europaea. This is the one I always thought of as related to clover (same three-cute-leaves) except for those leaves look like they’re been folded in half. Mother nature sure does love the five-petaled-yellow-flowers.
Remember vinca? It’s a ground cover with shiny dark green leaves. It was flowering back in May. I managed to completely forget to look for what its seeds look like. Well, I may yet get my chance, because I found a few flowers today. Today! Late September!

Oops, that was a little blurry.
And the foliage of primrose looks practically edible, it’s so fresh. It hasn’t gotten the memo yet about winter being on the way.


I have to confess: I spent more time on the couch, doing this:

Happy sigh. This is one author whose stuff we automatically buy, in hardcover, the second it comes out, sight unseen, advance reviews unread. He wrote it, we’ll read it. Pretty simple. Were that all of life were that simple.

destruction in the name of science; beauty as antidote to tragedy

Part I: Innocuous Preface.
I went out into the woods this afternoon in the fading light and found the following:

Wha’? Are those the petals?! They look like mini-leaves. Maybe it’s already flowered and those are the sepals.

The one above seems to have gone almost to seed (see how it’s bulgy under the petal-like thingys?) so maybe those are indeed sepals. In which case, good luck identifying it. The leaves are so shiny…Here’s the plant as a whole:

Is it vinca on steroids? Hm. I dunno.
Meanwhile, here’s a helleborine (Epipactis helloborine) in shade…

…and going to seed.

I saw a ton of jack-in-the-pulpits as well, a couple of which had gotten lucky in the reproduction game:

See how this plant has been forming its seeds in kind of an uneven way? Some berries never really got going…others are squashed and small, and only one is really booming? This seems to happen here and there across different species. To wit: remember the anemone?

How it’s supposed to happen

Versus how it sometimes happens

Hold that thought. We’re coming back to it in a minute.
Part 2: destruction in the name of science
In the meantime, do you remember the deranged magnolia alien madness from the other day? Thinking possibly a gall was involved, yesterday I snapped off one of the weirdo growths and put it in a jar to see if anyone (midges, perhaps, was the thought) would eventually emerge.

I was advised by the friend of a friend, a bug dude who co-authored a whole book on tracking insects (who knew that was even possible?), to do either that, or to cut it open and see if any larvae were inside.
Today, I saw that there are plenty of others on the tree:
So I picked another one, and performed surgery on it on the balcony railing with a kitchen knife:

Um. Those look like…seeds. Then I googled “magnolia fruit” images and realized that all these weird things are, are unevenly developed magnolia fruit. I don’t know if I have the terminology right or not, but once I thought over the jack-in-the-pulpit and the anemone, I’m fairly sure that’s what’s going on here.
I wish I hadn’t had to destroy two instances of fruiting activity to reach this conclusion. I normally don’t mess with anything I photograph – this was a rare exception. Sigh.
Part 3: beauty as antidote
In other news, there was a terrible tragedy in Bratt today – a shooting, at the food coop; one employee shot another employee and killed him. I should be correct and say “allegedly”, but apparently the shooter turned himself in to the police, so… Anyway. The coop is one of my personal touchstones around here, and I feel just…sick to my stomach about it. This is why I headed outside as soon as I got home from work this afternoon (that’s correct; “work” – I started a new job today) – I needed to find some beauty as an antidote.



It’s worth being here, right? Right.

four new species, and burgeoning ripening all around.

For someone who delights so much in spending time outside, I’m something of an agoraphobe. Whenever I come home from a trip, even as one as brief as a couple of days, it takes a crowbar to get me out of the house. I like to stay close to home after I’ve traveled because I’m waiting for my soul to catch up. (My soul dawdles and does not make good time.) Nonetheless, I ventured forth three times today. First was my run. That was interrupted by a 5:30 am lightning storm. Let’s try that one again tomorrow!
Then I went blueberry picking for the second time, and came home with 13 pounds, bringing the current season’s haul to 18 pounds. (Twelve more to go and I’ll call it good.)
And THEN…THEN…I went to check up on my friends. Because of the recent heat wave, travelling, and other excuses, I hadn’t actually checked up on these guys for ten – whole – days – which is like a lifetime for some of these species.
The purple-flowered raspberries are still flowering, although not as many of them. I’ve covered raspberry flower development before, but every so often, I happen across another half-stage that I feel compelled to capture:

does this not look appetizing? no? Well, right next door to that one, we have…

This one. That looks more like food, right? None of these have ripened all the way to tasting, unlike the nearby black raspberries.
The first Queen Anne’s Lace plant to jump up along the edge of the driveway is also the first to collapse in a bird’s nest of mystery. The rest are still opening up or are hanging out at the flat disk stage:



The sarsaparilla [Editor's Note: previously incorrectly identified as wild ginseng - this is probably actually wild sarsaparilla - Aralia nudicaulis] at the base of our driveway has taken advantage of the heat wave to ripen:

The tall anemone, commonly known as thimbleberry, has largely gotten to this stage of tall – up to an inch and a bit – flowerheads:

I had fun trying to get a good shot of a little red bug on one of these:

Probably not a good enough shot to submit to bugguide, so we’ll just leave it at “little red bug” for now.
New Species #1: Helleborine (Epipactis helloborine)
I first spotted this ten days ago, but the flowers hadn’t opened up yet…

…so I couldn’t ID it. I was surprised to see that it’s an irregular flower:

This is the orchid family, of all things. And as usual for shots taken in this shady spot in the driveway, my apologies for slight blurriness…
New Species #2: flat-topped aster (Aster umbellatus)
Sneaky question: how many petals does this have?

Answer: five. The petals are the little yellow things…

The white things are rays, not petals.

Here’s one that’s just opening. This reminds me of the black-eyed susan I was so enamored of the other day, whose rays were similarly tubular as they opened up>
New Species #3: Enchanter’s Nightshade
…and prizewinner for the coolest name.

Another trick question: how many petals, this time?

I thought “four” at first – when I looked at it with just my eyeballs. It’s really two.
The seeds of this plant are another candidate for something Charlie the Wonder Cat gets covered in each summer.

Actually, come to think of it, my curiosity about just what that boy rolls around in is one of the inspirations behind this whole project of mine to document each and every naturally-occurring plant on or near our property…
New species #4: Eastern Joe-Pye Weed (Eupatorium dubium)
On July 7th, when this plant was still flagged with a question mark, this is where things stood:

and today…