Pines cones open and close in response to moisture. Above, a closed Norway spruce cone. Below, an open one.
If a cone is closed is it wetter than one that’s open?
On Throw Back Thursday find out in this quiz: Which Cone is Wetter?
Or bypass the quiz and watch this video.
(photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the captions to see the originals)
On a walk last week I encountered two plants with poison ivy’s telltale three-leaf arrangement including a long stem on the middle leaf. One was poison ivy, the other was not.
Here they are, shown at top and below. Which one is poison ivy?
Here’s another clue in two more photos — leaves and fruit. One is poison ivy, one is not.
Poison ivy bears fruit in berries that turn white in the fall. The mystery look-alike plant bears fruit as samaras.
Quiz! For each of the four photos tell me if it’s poison ivy. (Use photo# in the caption.)
Bonus: What’s the name of the not-poison-ivy plant?
(photos by Kate St. John)
In September porcelain berry’s (Ampelopsis glandulosa) beautiful porcelain-like fruits show why the plant was imported as an ornamental.
Unfortunately this Asian vine is terribly invasive, engulfing small trees and draping itself over large ones.
Some people call it “wild grape” but you’ll never see grapes on it. Just porcelain berries.
This month you’ll find common evening primrose (Oenothera biennis) blooming in meadows, along roads and bike trails. The name implies that it opens only in the evening but I photographed these at midday. The flowers are 1-2 inches wide. The plants are hard to miss at six feet tall.
Meanwhile, bug love continues. This pair of goldenrod soldier beetles (also called Pennsylvania leatherwing (Chauliognathus pensylvanicus)) are perched on a flower in the Aster family while working to continue their species.
Spend time outdoors this week while the weather is good. Autumn is beautiful and all too short.
p.s. Thank you to Monica Miller and John English for correcting my bug identification mistake!
p.p.s. Did you notice that Pennsylvania is misspelled in the bug’s scientific name (only 1 ‘n’). This is not the only species with this misspelling. Can you name another?
(photos by Kate St. John)
On 29 August I posed the question “How do wild senna flowers become shiny green bean pods?” Last week I decided to find out.
Wild senna (Senna hebecarpa) flowers grow in bunches on a tall stem.
Each flower holds the secret to the bean. In the closeup below you see irregular yellow petals, stamens with brown anthers, and a tiny green stem with fuzzy white edges — the pistil. Instead of a single ovary at the base of the pistil there’s apparently a row of ovaries inside.
When the flower is fertilized, the yellow petals fall off. The stamens and pistil remain.
As the fuzzy green pistil grows the anthers fall off
Though still fuzzy, the former pistil begins to look like a bean pod.
The remaining twigs fall off, the bean pods lose their fuzz and Ta Dah!
The secret is that row of ovaries.
(photos by Kate St. John)
29 August 2020
It’s beginning to look like fall is coming though it hasn’t felt that way. This past week was hot and muggy yet spicebush leaves are starting to turn yellow and many flowers have gone to seed.
Wild senna (Senna hebecarpa) now has long green bean pods.
How did these flowers transform into beans?
Meanwhile at Frick Park the goats and their guard donkey are back in the large enclosure at Clayton East, munching away at invasive plants. The black goat at the fence is eating mile-a-minute weed on the fencing. Yay!
For more information about the goats see this month’s announcement. If you’d like to see the goats at work here’s a map of Frick Park’s Clayton area and the goats’ approximate location.
(photos by Kate St. John and from Wikimedia Commons; see the captions for photo credits)
This week brought a profusion of August flowers and very localized rain.
Above, tansy’s rayless flower heads look like daisies without petals. Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) has only one kind of flower — the small yellow ones in the central disk. Daisies have two kinds — the central disk plus white flower rays.
Below, cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) is blooming in Schenley Park showing off the cupped leaves that give it its name.
Spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe) is invasive but the flower sure is pretty.
Asiatic dayflower (Commelina communis) can be invasive, too, though the flower lasts only a day.
This week brought rain to our new home north of Schenley Park and continuing drought just south of here. At home on 11 August it rained so hard that a bug took shelter on our window. Its location 70 feet off the ground explains why chimney swifts fly so high.
While the bug was avoiding rain north of Schenley, no rain fell in the park just a mile away.
It’s a very localized drought.
(photos by Kate St. John)
Seven years ago yellow (Impatiens pallida) and orange (Impatiens capensis) jewelweed were so plentiful in Schenley Park that their flowers attracted bumblebees, hummingbirds and my own curiosity. I often blogged about them as in this August 2013 article: Experiments with Jewelweed.
But all that has changed. In the last seven years the deer population in Schenley Park has exploded. Without predators deer can double their population in just two to three years. Two deer became 16 … and Schenley started with more than 2.
Meanwhile, edible plants have not increased exponentially and they can’t keep up with the heavy browsing. Jewelweed is a deer favorite so it’s routinely “mowed” to ankle height.
A few individuals are able to sprout new leaves while the deer consume other areas but these recovering plants are few and far between.
This summer it’s hard to find a complete plant.
The situation bothers me but has posed real problems for Andrea Fetters of the University of Pittsburgh who is studying pollen-associated viruses in Impatiens capensis and Impatiens pallida. She has so few study objects in Schenley Park that she’s had to add study sites north of Pittsburgh where jewelweed thrives because deer aren’t so plentiful.
Unfortunately the number of deer in Schenley Park is not going down any time soon. Predators, other than cars, would solve the problem. My friend Andrea Boykowycz suggests cougars, the “Pitt panther” mascot. It would be fitting to have two in Panther Hollow. Well, we already do but they’re frozen in place.
Meanwhile, the ravagers of jewelweed keep eating.
(photos by Kate St. John)
If you’ve been to Frick Park’s Clayton Hill lately you’ve seen a plant blanketing the open area down east of Clayton Hill Loop. Invasive mile-a-minute (Persicaria perfoliata) was thick on the ground and climbing every upright when I took these photos in July.
Even if I wanted to walk through this area I wouldn’t. The plant has thorns.
Invasive plants are discouraging but I have hope they’ll be gone some day. The Allegheny Bird Conservation Alliance (ABCA) is conducting a multi-year project to remove invasive plants from Frick Park.
ABCA partners — Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and Western Pennsylvania Conservancy — are working with Allegheny GoatScape to remove invasive plants like bush honeysuckle (Lonicera spp.) from Frick Park at Clayton Hill to restore native forest habitat for birds and other wildlife. Goats will be “working” areas around Clayton Hill during summer and fall 2020 and again in 2021.
— ABCA Ongoing Projects
The restoration area is shown on the ABCA map below.
What’s hard for us to do by hand is easy for Allegheny Goatscape’s goats. They eat anything. Here’s how it works.
Prior to bringing the goats, Allegheny GoatScape clears a fence line and sets up the fencing and a shelter for the animals. The herd arrives at the site and immediately goes to work eating the vegetation. … Once the goats eat through the vegetation on site, they are transported to their next [assignment] location.
— Allegheny Goatscape: How It Works
I haven’t seen goats at Frick but the fenced area at Clayton East looks like goats have been inside it. There’s a lot less mile-a-minute inside the fence.
Now that the goat project is underway ABCA wants to know how the birds respond and is asking birders to count birds in the four restoration zones per hotspot in eBird. Observations are especially needed during August and September fall migration.
Let’s see how goats have helped the birds. Find out more, including the eBird hotspots names, at Allegheny Bird Conservation Alliance: Ongoing Projects.
Bring on the goats!
(Mile-a-minute photos by Kate St. John. Goat photo from Allegheny Goatscape. map from ABCA)
The weather was lovely in Schenley Park last week when I found Joe-pye weed (Eutrochium purpureum) and Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus) in full bloom.
Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) hasn’t bloomed in five months but the leaves are still growing. Some are now three times the size of a real colt’s foot.
Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana) is blooming and developing fruit.
But some plants are not faring so well. This porcelain berry has chlorosis, a condition that makes its leaves turn white. This plant is invasive so I don’t feel so bad.
Get outdoors today before the weather gets hot. It will be in the 90s next week!
(photos by Kate St. John)
Last week in Schenley Park I stopped by the Westinghouse Fountain to see swamp milkweed and a photogenic bumblebee.
My cellphone camera was able to capture it in flight!
As I left the fountain a doe crossed W Circuit Road and walked between parked cars to the woods beyond. A fawn soon followed but jumped back in fear before the cars and stopped in the road. Fortunately there was no traffic. It was joined by a second fawn.
The two approached me (I missed that shot) then turned away …
… and were joined by a second doe.
Eventually they all walked between parked cars and caught up with the first doe.
Schenley Park’s numerous deer aren’t afraid of people but they learn to fear cars at a very young age.
p.s. My cellphone can take nice closeups of bumblebees but fails on deer at a distance.
(photos by Kate St. John)
