Lichens are interesting shapes if you look closely enough.

Two weeks ago I found these tiny green trumpets in the pine woods at Moraine State Park in Butler County, PA.  I don’t know much about lichens but a Google search placed them in the Cladonia genus.  The best photo match was the trumpet lichen (Cladonia fimbriata).

Here’s a closer view.

What are the cups for?  New Hampshire Garden Solutions explains them for  the Cladonia chlorophaea species:

Mealy Pixie Cup (Cladonia chlorophaea) lichen look like little trumpets from the side but from the top they look like tiny cups. The cups are where the spores form and this lichen relies on raindrops falling in them to disperse its spores. This lichen is called “mealy” because of the grainy reproductive structures (soredia) covering its outside surface.

Do you know the name of this lichen?

(photos by Kate St.John)

An early jump on Throw Back Thursday:

Tomorrow will be a big day for cranberries, but how did they they end up in this form?

Learn more in this 2013 article: Unnatural Shape

22 October 2016

What’s the name of this vine?  I ask because I don’t know the answer.

The vine was relatively small when I took its picture in June in Schenley Park.  Now it’s draped over two small trees and climbing a third.  It’s probably an alien invasive.

If you know its name please leave a comment with your answer.

Thanks!

UPDATE at 9:20am:  Thank you, everyone.  Many have commented that this is Canada moonseed (Memispermum canadense).  I’ll go check the vine and its fruit today to see if the rest of it matches up.  I expect to find purple-black berries.

UPDATE at 7:00pm: The vine at Schenley Park has no berries but everything else matches up.

(photo by Kate St.John)

Last weekend Bob Machesney and Mike Fialkovich were hiking near Slippery Rock Creek in Lawrence County when Bob found some unusual flowers growing on a gravel heap.

Mike knows a lot about plants but these flowers were new to him so he took some pictures — the first two photos shown here — while Bob collected an identification sample for his wife, Dianne.

Dianne identified the plant as wild mignonette (Reseda lutea) and Bonnie Isaac, Botany Collection Manager at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, confirmed that this is indeed a rare find in western Pennsylvania.  It’s a County Record for Lawrence County.

Resada lutea is a biennial or short-lived perennial native to Eurasia that grows in well-drained chalk or limestone soils.  It can spread by root cuttings or seed but it won’t start to grow until the soil is disturbed.  At full height the plant is one to two feet tall.

Blooming from June through September, the flowers have unusual shapes as you can see in this Wikimedia close-up.

Wild mignonette is rare in western Pennsylvania because we don’t have well-drained limestone soil.

It found a home on a gravel heap in Lawrence County, the only well-drained limestone for miles.

(photos by Mike Fialkovich. Closeup from Wikimedia Commons; click on the image to see the original)

This week there’s a lot of fluff in the air from flowers gone to seed.  In my neighborhood it’s from a plant called American burnweed or pilewort that grows on burned sites and waste places.  It loves the urban setting.

Though it’s a native plant in the Aster family, pilewort (Erechtites hieraciifolius) is far from beautiful. Two to eight feet tall it looks very weedy, even ugly.  Each branch tip ends in a long green capsule that looks like a seed pod.

Are they seeds? No. I learned more when a bee paused to nectar on top of one.

A very close look revealed that the tip is a cluster of tiny flowers.

I opened the capsule and fanned its contents. Under magnification you can see the tiny white, almost translucent flowers with five petals, a protruding split pistil, and lavender centers.

They’re hard to photograph but here are two of my best attempts.

Most of the capsules have yellow tips.  Probably stamens, but even harder to see.

After the flowers are pollinated the green capsules split open and the long white filaments carry the seeds through the air.

Ugly from afar, pilewort’s beauty is microscopic.

(photos by Kate St.John)

From a distance the flower head on wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) looks like a pin cushion or a sea urchin dog-ball.

Close up you can see that each “spike” is a small flower with a pistil that splits in two curls at the top.

How fancy!

(photos by Kate St. John)

Here’s an orchid that’s blooming now in western Pennsylvania.

Slender ladies’ tresses (Spiranthes lacera) grow in open habitats in eastern North America.  They’re found in both natural and disturbed areas.

Marcy Cunkelman was mowing when she saw two of these flowers growing among the grass.  Wow!  She stopped the mower and protected them with stakes and bright pink ribbon.

Dianne Machesney’s photo below shows that the entire plant isn’t very large and could easily be overlooked in the grass.

Without the pink ribbon it really blends in.

(photos by Kate St.John and Dianne Machesney)