Category Archives: Plants & Fungi

plants & fungi

Not A Good Sign

Deer, Phenology, Plants & Fungi


Despite the cold and potential for snow I keep looking for signs of spring. 

There’s not a lot out there.  I found small bittercress and coltsfoot blooming on south-facing slopes last Sunday and I found rosettes of these leaves, noticable because they had a purplish tinge all winter (photo at left) and now they’re turning green (photo at right).

This is Garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) a biennial plant native to Europe, Asia, and Africa.  Whether it hitchhiked to North America or was intentionally imported as a culinary herb (it tastes like garlic) it hasn’t been here all that long.  It was first recorded on Long Island in the 1860s.

Since then garlic mustard has invaded the ecological niche occupied by our favorite spring plants.  It easily becomes the dominant plant of forest and floodplain because:  

  • It starts growing in the spring before our native plants dare show their heads. 
  • Its seeds are viable for five years.
  • It produces allelochemicals that suppress the good fungi our native plants rely on, and
  • Deer don’t eat it.  🙁

So though I’m usually happy to find green leaves in March, these are not a good sign.

For more information on garlic mustard and what you can do about it, click here.

(photo on left by Marcy Cunkelman, photo on right from Wikimedia Commons.)

Now Blooming: Snow Trillium

Phenology, Plants & Fungi


Despite the cold snap, here’s a happy sign of spring.

Yesterday the Botanical Society of Western PA hiked in the southeastern corner of Allegheny County and found snow trillium in bloom. 

Snow trillum (Trillium nivale) is a small plant only 2-4″ tall that is so hardy it will even bloom in snow.  It’s quite rare throughout its range and is considered vulnerable in Pennsylvania because it requires undisturbed habitat.  Logging and mining threaten its existence.

This data sheet about snow trillium indicates it only occurs in our corner of the state. 

We are lucky to have it.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

A Spot of Warmth

Phenology, Plants & Fungi


Yow!  It’s cold this morning!  18oF!  Even so, there’s a spot of warmth in the woods.

Though it looks weird and smells bad, this plant is exciting to find because it’s one of the first to flower in the Spring.

This is eastern skunk cabbage, a wetland plant that’s found in northeastern Asia (Siberia to Japan) and northeastern North America (Quebec to Minnesota to the mountains of North Carolina).  

Skunk cabbage has many names but most of them refer to its smell, a fetid odor that’s sure to offend if you break or tear the plant. Foetid is even in its scientific name:  Symplocarpus foetidus.  It smells awful to us but it’s attractive to scavenging insects who pollinate the plant and possibly seek it out for warmth.

Warmth?

Yes, skunk cabbage’s other claim to fame is that it generates its own heat, a talent called thermogenesis.  The skunk cabbage spadix (the flower spike inside this purple spathe) can maintain a 60oF temperature while the outdoor temperature is 5oF.  Scientists have theorized that the warmth attracts insects to come inside out of the cold.

Look for skunk cabbage now and remember where you find it.  In late spring the flower disappears and in its place will be huge, bright green leaves that look so different that the plant is almost unrecognizable!

(photo by Sue Sweeney from Wikimedia Commons.  Click on the photo to see the original)

Galling

Plants & Fungi


Now that we’ve had a hint of spring it’s tempting to look for signs of it in the garden even though our calendars and today’s weather still say “February.”

Pussy willows are a good place to look because they’ll soon have fuzzy buds, soft as kitten fur.  But don’t be surprised if you find some odd growths on the willow branches.  Here’s one of them.

This is a willow beaked-gall caused by the Willow Beaked-gall Midge, a fly as small as a gnat.  The gall is a malformed willow growth, the beaks are the willow’s buds poking out of the gall.

Nearly a year ago the female Willow Beaked-gall Midge laid her eggs in the willow buds as they began to open in the spring.  The chemicals produced by her eggs and by the larvae that hatched from them caused the willow’s cells to grow into this misshapen ball.

At first the gall was green but later it hardened and turned red.  Meanwhile it houses the Willow Beaked-gall larvae over the winter.  In early April they’ll emerge as adults to start the whole process over again.

These galls don’t hurt the plant but they sure are ugly.

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Biofuel Affects Bird Diversity

Musings & News, Plants & Fungi


If you garden for birds you know that what you plant has a huge effect on the variety of birds in your yard.  This applies on a larger scale as well.

In recent years our government has encouraged the development and manufacture of biofuels to replace our dependence on foreign oil.  The typical method is to grow corn and refine it into ethanol.  This has spawned a debate on the wisdom of converting valuable farmland into acreage devoted to fuel instead of food and using the corn supply to feed our cars. 

But corn, a labor intensive crop that must be planted every year, is not the only source of biofuel.  Perennial grasses like switchgrass work as well.

When our government provides subsidies to grow biofuel feedstock, even marginal land will be converted to this purpose.  Does it matter what we plant?  Indeed, it does.

Last month two researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison published a study on the effect of bioenergy crops on bird diversity in the Upper Midwest.  Using bird surveys and land use maps, Claudio Gratton and Tim Meehan calculated the change in bird diversity when marginal land is planted in annual monocultures (corn) versus a mixture of perennial prairie plants and grasses.

Their results are shown in the maps above.  Brown is bad — species decline up to 50%.  Blue is good — species increase up to 200%. 

Can you guess which map is which? 

The lefthand map shows bird diversity declines up to 50% if we plant monocultures of corn for biofuel.  The righthand map shows that bird diversity doubles if we plant diverse grasslands.

It’s no surprise that monocultures are bad but the results are frightening.   Click here to read more about this in Science Daily.

(image linked from Science Daily.  Click on the image to read the article.)

Berrylicious

Plants & Fungi, Songbirds, Trees


The trees and shrubs are all decked out in fruit right now.

Each fruit is a cunning seed delivery system.  On the surface its beautiful color lures animals and birds to eat it.  Under the skin is a tasty treat, the reward to the consumer.  Inside that is the payload, the seed.

It’s quite an ingenious system for long distance propagation.  The plants are rooted to the ground and would only spread as far as the wind moves their seeds unless they arranged for someone to carry them.  Their solution is to offer their fruits in pleasing packages to hungry hordes of migrating birds.

This common grackle, feasting on dogwood berries in Marcy’s yard, may migrate 30 miles to his next destination where he’ll cast the seeds.  In this way Marcy’s dogwood may have offspring near Maryland.

Viburnums and pokeberries, mountain ash and dogwoods offer their fruits in the hope that the birds will eat every last one of them.  They’re berrylicious for a reason.

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Which Purple Aster?

Plants & Fungi


Asters are hard to identify.  There are many species and many look alike.  Knowing this I mentally gave up on trying to figure them out long ago — and now I’m sorry.

During all my recent bird walks I’ve seen beautiful purple asters blooming among the goldenrod but I don’t know their name.  To make matters worse, I haven’t carried my Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide and I haven’t stopped to key out the flowers for later identification.

The asters pictured here are New England Asters (Aster novae-angliae) but the ones I see in the field might not be.  All I know is that the flowers are deep purple — sometimes deep reddish-purple — and the plants stand about two feet tall.

Have you seen purple asters blooming in southwestern Pennsylvania recently?  Do you know what species they might be?  If so, please leave a comment and enlighten me.

p.s. on October 9:  Today I examined the asters closely and keyed them out in my Newcomb’s Guide.  They are indeed New England Asters, planted by the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy in the wildflower area.

(photo by Mrs. W. D. Bransford from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.  Click on the photo to see the original.)

Chicken-of-the-Woods

Plants & Fungi

23 September 2010

Chicken has been a theme this week, but where’s the bird in this picture?

There isn’t one.  Chicken-of-the-woods is a mushroom.

Otherwise known as Sulphur Shelf (Laetiporus sulphureus) chicken-of-the-woods grows on dead trees.  In many cases it’s edible — but not always.  When it’s edible, people say it tastes like chicken.  When it’s not, those who eat it are probably too sick to describe what it tastes like.

I found a huge patch of Chicken-of-the-Woods growing on the trunk of a fallen sycamore at Raccoon Creek Wildflower Reserve last Sunday.  The patch was so huge it could have covered my desk.  I didn’t remember its name but someone else certainly did and they knew it was good to eat.  Two big chicken-sized chunks had been sliced off the back of it.  Someone had eaten Chicken-of-the-woods for dinner.

No way was I going to be that brave.  I couldn’t identify the mushroom and I knew that even edible mushrooms are sometimes poisonous.  Chuck Tague helped me identify it and sent me this picture.

You can learn more about this mushroom here.  When you click, the author will warn you with a preliminary pop-up that you had better read the whole description before you try this “chicken” for dinner.

(photo by Chuck Tague)