Category Archives: Plants & Fungi

plants & fungi

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)

On the way to somewhere else I found…

Plants & Fungi


…this.

I was Googling for a flower photograph the other day and stumbled on Flora Pittsburghensis, a blog by Christopher Bailey. 

For those of you unfamiliar with this blog — as I was until this week — it’s a great resource on the wild flowers of Pittsburgh.  Bailey photographs native and alien wildflowers in our area, then tags them by family and posts them with extensive descriptions, primarily from Gray’s Manual. 

This morning glory was his subject on September 1st.

Flora Pittsburghensis is a treasure chest of beauty and information.   Click on the photograph to read for yourself… and enjoy!

(photo by Christopher Bailey on Flora Pittsburghensis)