Honewort at Conemaugh Trail, Indiana County, 20 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
25 June 2022
This week was pleasant, then hot, and always buggy in the woods. A few flowers were blooming and berries are ripening.
Honewort’s (Cryptotaenia canadensis) tiny flowers are blooming in both Washington and Indiana Counties. The plant at top was along the Conemaugh Trail, site of the lone and rare Swainson’s warbler which was heard but not seen. More mosquitoes than flowers.
White mulberries (Morus alba) are ripe and ready to eat.
Forget-me-not, Conemaugh Trail, 20 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Click on the image below to see a photo of the entire rock.
A rock made of sand and swamp lines, Schenley Park, 24 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John) Indian hemp in bloom, Frick Park, 23 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Click on the fruit photo below to see the branch where this mulberry came from in Frick Park.
As we walked the trail we encountered cow parsnip whose identity I had forgotten yet again. When Dianne Machesney reminded me of its name I remembered blogging about it after another Wissahickon picnic. When was that? 2013!
In the two photos above I am standing next to cow parsnip at Mingo Creek on 1 June 2013 (left) and 18 June 2022 (right).
I have aged in nine years but some things are the same. I’m still using the same binoculars and walking stick and I’m wearing the same pants and shirt, unseen under the jackets. (My hiking clothes are rugged.)
This year’s cow parsnip is shorter than the one we found nine years ago and it has gone to seed, perhaps because we came 2.5 weeks later or because climate change has advanced it.
Chicory with fly, Schenley Park, 15 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
19 June 2022
Wildflowers bloom in two spurts in southwestern Pennsylvania: Woodland wildflowers in April before leaf out, “field” flowers in July-August after the solstice.
May and June are practically flowerless except for a few non-natives blooming in Schenley Park last week. Some are invasive. They thrive because deer don’t eat them.
Serviceberry on Ellsworth Ave, 5 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
11 June 2022
Fledge watching the Pitt peregrines absorbed so much time this month that it’s a wonder I noticed anything else. Here are a few things seen in early June.
Eye-catching fruit on a garden tree on Ellsworth Ave. Mark Bowers says it’s Serviceberry.
Poison ivy blooming in Frick Park on 3 June.
A ladybug crawling on fleabane in my brother’s Charlottesville backyard, 10 June.
Smartweed blooming near the ladybug, perhaps “pinkweed” or Pennsylvania smartweed (Persicaria pensylvanicum)
Poison ivy in bloom, Frick Park, 3 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Ladybug on fleabane, Charlottesville, VA, 10 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Smartweed in bloom, Charlottesville, VA, 10 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
p.s. All three Pitt peregrines fledged as of midday on 10 June.
Japanese tree lilac, Schenley Park, 2 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
4 June 2022
This week in Schenley Park I was impressed by a cascade of white flowers drooping over the Lower Panther Hollow Trail. The individual flowers and their arrangement in panicles reminded me of lilacs.
Japanese tree lilac, Schenley Park, 2 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
The leaves are opposite on the stem, the flowers smell like privet hedge flowers, and the bark has many lenticels.
Diagnostic lenticils on stems of Japanese tree lilac, Schenley Park, 2 June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Putting these clues together I found a match: Japanese tree lilac (Syringa reticulata), an ornamental in the same genus as sweet-smelling common lilac (Syringa vulgaris).
Why does Japanese tree lilac smell ugly like privet instead of pretty like lilacs?
Privet, native to Asia, is probably the most common hedge in Pittsburgh. It’s blooming right now and I hate the smell, it makes me sneeze. When I took a whiff of Japanese tree lilac my reaction was “Eeew! Like privet.”
Buttercups on Laurel Mountain, 30 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
31 May 2022
Yesterday I went birding with friends on Laurel Mountain near Spruce Flats Bog. The top of the mountain is always colder than Pittsburgh so the wildflowers bloom later or are specialists for the mountain’s climate zone. Here’s what was blooming on Memorial Day.
A patch of buttercups glowed in the sun while dwarf ginseng (Panax trifolius) bloomed in the shade, viewed from above and side.
Dwarf ginseng, 30 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Dwarf ginseng, 30 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Canada may-lily (Maianthemum canadense) is a native plant just 2-6″ tall that resembles lily-of-the-valley. A tiny spider draped this one in sticky filaments.
Canada mayflower, 30 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Lycopodium or tree groundpine is another “living fossil” that does not bloom as a flower. Instead it reproduces asexually via spores from the strobilis (cone) or sexually via underground gametes. The strobilis on this one is past its prime.
Just banded: female red-winged blackbird in hand, Frick Park, 14 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
21 May 2022
Seen this week in Schenley and Frick Parks:
At top, bird bander David Yeany holds a recently banded female red-winged blackbird at Frick Park on Migratory Bird Day, 14 May 2022.
On 17 May we looked for warblers along Nine Mile Run’s boardwalk and found many black walnut flowers fallen on the railing.
Old flower from black walnut, 17 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
I would have brushed this one away until I saw an insect hiding on it. Do you see the juicy caterpillar, below? This is warbler food!
Warbler food! on an old black walnut flower, 17 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
In Schenley Park a carpenter ant examined fading pawpaw flowers that smell like rotten meat, if they smell at all. No rotting meat here. She left.
An ant leaves after exploring fading flowers on a pawpaw tree, 13 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Mystery flower of the week was a non-native with thin basal leaves found blooming in the woods in Frick Park. How did star-of-Bethlehem (Ornithogalum sp.), a native of southern Europe and southern Africa, get into the woods? Is it invading?
Star of Bethlehem blooming in the woods at Frick Park, 14 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Many of us are familiar with horsetail (Equisetum) because it looks so unusual. Its hollow stems are ridged and jointed and grow in dense clumps as much as three feet tall. None of the stems have apparent leaves but some have a knob on top, a stobilus, that produces spores for reproduction.
Equisetum is so weird because, as Wikipedia explains, it “is a living fossil, the only living genus of the entire subclass Equisetidae, which for over 100 million years was much more diverse and dominated the under-story of late Paleozoic forests. Some equisetids were large trees reaching to 30 m (98 ft) tall.”
251.9 million years ago the Permian–Triassic extinction event wiped out all the Equisetidae except for Equisetum which is now 359 million years old, older than the dinosaurs.
Equisetum species have two methods of reproduction: sexually via spores and asexually by spreading rhizomes in clonal colonies. The hybrid can only spread asexually but that’s enough to keep it thriving in limited locations.
Viburnum plicatum beginning to bloom, Frick Park, 3 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
9 May 2022
In early April in Frick Park I noticed many woody saplings leafing out ahead of all the other plants. They were everywhere sporting dark green pleated leaves while the rest of the woods were brown. They looked invasive. I took a picture.
One of many V. plicatum volunteers leafing out, Frick Park, 13 April 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
In early May the older ones started to bloom. Viburnum. But which one?
Viburnum plicatum beginning to bloom, Frick Park, 3 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Viburnums are hard to identify so I asked my friends from the Botanical Society of Western PA, Mark Bowers and Loree Speedy, who identified it as Japanese snowball (Vibrunum plicatum) and remembered it from a survey in Frick Park a few years ago.
When Frick Park was established in 1919 its grand entry was landscaped with beautiful plants from around the world, available from catalogs such as this one from 1910 showing Viburnum plicatum var Tomentosum.
An abundance of the plant formerly known as squaw root, Schenley Park, 5 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
8 May 2022
The first week of May was full of new flowers, leaves, birds and insects. Here are just a few of many sightings.
The ground in Schenley Park is dotted with abundant clusters of cream colored leafless flowers poking up like corn cobs beneath the oaks. Conopholis americana is a parasite on oak roots so we never see the plant itself, only the flowers. Fortunately it doesn’t harm the trees.
Formerly known as squaw root, Conopholis americana has many alternate common names. The accepted name now is “American cancer-root” but that sounds scary and can be misleading. I prefer “bear corn” because it looks like a corn cob and bears do eat it.
While the bear cone bloomed below them, the oaks flowered and leafed out above. This drew in migrating birds to eat the insects that hatch among the leaves.
Red oak flowers and new leaves, Schenley Park, 5 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
May’s tiny green caterpillars are too small for me to photograph but here’s what they look like in June, munching on an oak leaf. This is warbler food!
Caterpillar on oak leaf, June 2020 (photo by Kate St. John)
At mid level in Schenley Park the pawpaws (Asimina triloba) opened their bell-like flowers.
Pawpaw in bloom, Schenley Park, 5 May 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
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