12 October 2024

This week’s biggest Seen event was the aurora borealis which I wrote about yesterday (Northern Lights Last Night in Pittsburgh), but there were also subtle changes in the landscape that prompted a few photos.

Cold weather brought foggy mornings and sun rays burning through the mist in Schenley Park, at top.

It’s a big mast year for Schenley’s red oaks. These shallow, tightly scaled cups are the easiest way to identify red oak versus white oak.

It was hard to find two acorns that still had their cups. These two are intact because a worm drilled into the nuts. I searched through lots of cup-less acorns to find them.

For decades I’ve walked past these trees without thinking about their odd looking trunks. The trunks have hips because …

… these ornamental cherry trees were grafted onto healthy trunks of (probably) native trees. This is usually done because the non-native tree roots are likely to fail in North America.

Fall leaf color is not brilliant yet but burning bush berries are ready to entice birds. Euonymus alatus is a pretty plant but is officially a Noxious Weed in Pennsylvania since January 2023.