Today is the first day I’ve seen forsythia blooming. In my enthusiasm I snapped this picture with my cell phone.
(photo by Kate St. John)
Category Archives: Plants & Fungi
Signs of Spring: Crocuses
Crocuses blooming at Schenley Plaza, March 11, 2009.
(photo by Kate St. John)
Winter Hike
24 November 2008
I like to hike in winter when it’s not too cold. The woods are open after the leaves have fallen and I can see new places to explore. Even better, I can go off trail without worrying I’ll get lost because I can follow my own tracks in the snow back to the car.
Yesterday I explored Porters Cove at Moraine State Park. Most of the time I stayed on marked trails (shown here) but I was tempted to follow someone else’s footprints into the woods. Where were they going? And why?
The tracks looked to be a day old and they went both ways – out and back – so I knew I wouldn’t encounter the person if I followed them. There’s no hunting on Sundays but I put on my blaze orange vest and hat just in case and set off.
From the start the tracks wove in and out. The man was hunting. Perhaps he too was tracking something but what I could not tell. His wanderings were tiring me so I made my own straight trail. That’s when I discovered something the man didn’t see – a coyote’s den in the hollow of a huge old oak. The animal had left the den at least a day before the man walked by. Eastern coyotes survive by carefully avoiding human contact.
As I examined the coyote’s tracks I smelled a skunk. What’s this?! Just a patch of skunk cabbage I’d inadvertently crushed underfoot. Skunk cabbage not only survives the winter but is one of the first to sprout in the spring because it can generate inner temperatures 35 degrees warmer than the air. Each plant in this patch had melted the snow around it.
I resumed the hunter’s trail. At this point he was walking straight through the woods and had made the trip twice. I paused at the edge of a copse of trees. For some reason I didn’t want to proceed. I looked ahead and saw his tree stand erected for deer season. Best not to go near it. Interesting that my intuition said “stop” before I got there.
On the way back I took a detour to walk near the lake. As I approached I heard a hissing, pinging sound. The lake had started to freeze and a thin layer of clear ice rolled on top of the waves. The ice was “singing.”
Way cool.
(photo by Kate St. John)
Cardinal Flower
Yesterday I went to Jennings prairie in Butler County on a quest to see flowers. In July and August it’s the place to be.
The weather was fine and the prairie was beautiful with dense blazing star (for which Jennings is famous), goldenrod, tall coreopsis, swamp thistle, tall sunflower, Joe Pye weed and ironweed. There were more flowers than I can name.
Goldfinches and indigo buntings sang across the prairie and paused to feed fledglings. Common yellowthroats and song sparrows warned their young in the thickets as I walked by.
I extended my walk to the woodland trails and found bee balm and wild bergamot. When I reached the stream at Oakwoods Trail I had to stop – the cardinal flowers were absolutely stunning.
Lobelia cardinalis grows in North America from Canada to Florida and south-westward to California. French explorers sent samples to France in the mid-1620’s where it became known as the cardinal flower because its color is like the Roman Catholic cardinals’ miter. The northern cardinal (bird) is so named for the same reason.
Cardinal flowers are favorites of people and hummingbirds precisely because of their deep red hue. I looked at their velvety petals long enough that my eyes drank in their color. Nearby, ruby-throated hummingbirds drank in the nectar.
It’s wonderful that a flower so noticable and appealing to hummingbirds is in bloom while they migrate south.
(photo by Chuck Tague)
More Signs of Spring
It was almost 60o today in Pittsburgh. When I got home from work the crocuses had started blooming in my back yard.
Marcy Cunkleman’s yard in Indiana County gets more sun so her flowers started blooming last week. And with the flowers came the honeybees.
Thanks for the photo, Marcy.
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Participate in Project Budburst
I’m going to take a brief side trip today and discuss plants and a very cool project you can participate in.
Last Saturday I listened to the radio show Living on Earth. Here in Pittsburgh it’s broadcast at 6:00am on Saturdays on WDUQ so you have to be up early to hear it.
The segment that intrigued me was about Project Budburst in which volunteers help scientists track climate change by reporting when plants bloom or leaf out.
All you need to do is sign up online here. Then, just record when a plant blooms or leafs out and where it was when you saw it. Project Budburst does the rest. They collect the data and correlate species, blooming time and location to chart the effects of climate change.
The project is interested in all kinds of plants. The plants don’t even have to be native species. You can report on lilacs, forsythia, dandelions and common weeds in your back yard. Now, that’s easy! Even I can do that!
I know that many of you spend time outdoors and in your garden. Even if you only report once, it will improve the data.
Read more about the project – and the science of phenology – at the links above. Or click on the columbine picture from the Project Budburst website and it’ll take you right there.