This month in Schenley Park I noticed lots of yellow hulls on the ground. Somewhat like pistachios, they were smaller and brighter with a ridge inside instead of on the edge.
Here’s what I saw when I looked down.
The hulls came from somewhere so I looked up to find the source: Oriental bittersweet.
Oriential bittersweet fruits, Schenley Park, 7 Dec 2015 (photo by Kate St. John)
Each berry was encased in a three-part pod that burst open to reveal the fruit. You can see three faint lines on the berries where the ridges made impressions.
And there above me, quietly eating the berries, was a big flock of robins knocking more yellow hulls to the ground.
Here’s a plant that’s quite visible in my neighborhood this month even though the growing season has ended. I don’t know what it is but I suspect it’s an alien and possibly invasive because it shows off a number of imported/invasive features.
Imported: Its leaves are very green, suggesting it’s winter light trigger expects a more northern location.
Imported: It’s still producing flowers in December, another indication that it believes winter hasn’t arrived.
Invasive: It grows in waste places, especially in disturbed soil at the edge of sidewalks.
Invasive: It can become very dense and take over the area where it’s growing.
Here’s a look at the arrangement of the stems. Notice that they’re hairy.
Unknown plant: a look at the stems (photo by Kate St. John)
And here’s the flower. I forced this one open.
Unknown flower (photo by Kate St. John)
One more look at a dense mat of it.
A dense mat of … (photo by Kate St. John)
Do you know the name of this plant? My guess is that it’s from Asia, perhaps Japan.
If you know the answer, please leave a comment!
LATER: Wow! You’re quick! Fran, Carolyn and Doris have already identified it as common mallow (Malva neglecta) or cheeseweed. Read the comments to find out why it has this unusual name. By the way, it’s edible.
Giant puffball mushroom, 18 Oct 2015 (photo by Kate St. John)
No, that’s not a soccer ball in the woods. It’s a giant puffball mushroom.
Giant puffballs (Calvatia gigantea) grow within a few weeks to become 4″ to 28″ in diameter. Really giant ones can be 59 inches across and weigh 44 pounds.
They’re edible while young (white inside), not edible when mature (anything but white inside; turns yellow then greenish-brown), and then they decompose.
White Snakeroot:
On the August walk we saw white snakeroot and we’re sure to see it this month, too. At the time I called it tall boneset, a confusing alternate name. What was I thinking?! I should have used its most common name.
White snakeroot grows 1 – 5 feet tall with opposite, toothed, egg-shaped leaves and branching clusters of bright white flowers. Each flower head is a cluster of very tiny flowers, shown above.
White Snakeroot in Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
The plant is similar enough to boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) that it used to be in the same genus, but it’s been reclassified to Ageratina altissima. To avoid confusion with unrelated boneset I’ll call it “white snakeroot” from now on.
Unfortunately “snakeroot” is confusing, too. White snakeroot (Ageratina altissima) is not related to black snakeroot (Actaea racemosa, black cohosh). Arg!
In any case, we’ll see it next Sunday.
(photos by Kate St. John)
UPDATE: 27 September 2015: We were a small group but we saw some cool things including this Best Bird: A red-tailed hawk hovered above Panther Hollow and then screamed in (silently!) with talons extended to catch something on the ground! But he missed it. We weren’t in the line of fire but we were certainly impressed!
Participants in 27 Sept 2015 Walk in Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
Asian lady beetles mating (photo by Kate St. John)
On my August 23 outing in Schenley Park, we found something near Panther Hollow Lake (pond) that we’d never seen before: a pair of Asian lady beetles mating.
Asian lady beetles (Harmonia axyridis) are the non-native species released in Pennsylvania years ago to control aphids. They’re now so successful that they’re annoying, especially when they invade our houses in the fall.
As the pair embraced on a plant stalk, we noticed the male was smaller than the female and that she stood still while he was rocking. They were mating when we found them and they continued after we walked away. Who knew that bugs had so much stamina.
Asian lady beetles mating, 23 August 2015, Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
The female beetle may have laid a lot of eggs afterward but we won’t be overrun by her offspring. The bugs were on the dirt pile created by Public Works when they fixed the pond overflow last spring. After a long hiatus the pond project resumed on August 24. Now the dirt pile and plants are gone.
These two are “lady beetles” but only one of them is a lady.
(photos by Kate St. John)
p.s. Here we are before we went down to see the lady beetles.
Participants on the Walk in Schenley Park, 23 August 2015 (photo by Kate St. John)
Though many people have hummingbird feeders, feeders alone aren’t enough to support the birds on migration. What do ruby-throated hummingbirds eat on their way south?
“Overland migration in North America is nearly synchronous with peak flowering of jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), suggesting this flower is an important nectar source during this time and may influence the timing of migration.”
This month orange jewelweed is thriving by the creek and wetland in Schenley Park. That’s where I found Soji Yamakawa with his camera last week, spending many hours photographing hummingbirds before his work resumes at Carnegie-Mellon’s Mechanical Engineering Department this fall. Click on the photo above to see a slideshow of his favorite shots.
Soji and I chatted about the birds and noted there were no adult males in the group. Most adult males have left our area by the second week of August but look closely at the throats of these birds and you’ll see faint stippling or a small patch of red feathers. They’re immature males, just hatched this spring.
If you want to see hummingbirds in the wild this month, stake out a patch of orange jewelweed and watch for movement among the flowers. You’ll get a bonus, too. Rose-breasted grosbeaks forage among the stems, eating the jewelweed seeds.
p.s. That white patch just above the hummingbird’s bill is jewelweed pollen.
Just a reminder that I’m leading a bird and nature walk on Sunday August 23, 8:30am in Schenley Park.
Meet at Schenley Park Cafe and Visitor Center where Panther Hollow Road meets Schenley Drive. (No confusion this time. We’ll meet at the regular place.)
Dress for the weather. Bring binoculars and field guides if you have them.
Purple loosestrife blooming on CMU’s campus, 2 July 2015 (photo by Kate St. John)
When I saw this plant blooming in Schenley Park the other day I made sure to point it out to participants at last Sunday’s walk. Most people aren’t aware that purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) is highly invasive.
Purple loosestrife came to North America from Europe and was established on the east coast by the mid 1800s. It grows 1.5 to 5 feet tall with opposite or alternate untoothed leaves and a spike of pinkish purple flowers. Here’s a closeup of the flower.
It spreads by seed and by massive woody roots in ditches, wet meadows and wetlands. Once it takes hold it out-competes native plants and creates a monoculture that lowers the biodiversity of the site. Amazingly it even affects ducks because, though dense at the top, it’s open at water level and provides no cover for nesting.
Purple loosestrife is listed as invasive in 27 states, including Pennsylvania, but many garden stores and garden websites still sell it to those who are unaware of the danger. When its seeds get into flowing water, watch out!
Fortunately years of research found a beetle that eats it. In the video below, Donna Ellis from the University of Connecticut Cooperative Extension describes purple loosestrife and how the Galerucella beetle is an effective biological control agent. (Birders, listen to the audio track. If I’d been standing there I would have been totally distracted by those upset birds!)
I found only a single loosestrife in Schenley Park and an Urban Eco Steward pulled it up (yay!) but on Thursday I found two clumps on Carnegie Mellon’s campus. Uh oh!
Harvestman with mites on its legs, Schenley Park (photo by Kate St. John)
We’re used to top predators eating small prey but the world is far more complicated than Big Eats Little. Small things can weaken a predator or bring it down.
Harvestmen (Opiliones), also called daddy long-legs, are omnivorous ‘bugs’ distantly related to spiders. They are harmless to humans but can be dangerous to small insects. However they can be weakened by even tinier parasites.
See those two red dots on the harvestman’s legs? They are parasitic mites sucking the harvestmen’s “blood.” Bugguide.net identifies them as a species of Leptus (family Erythraeidae) whose larvae parasitize North American harvestmen.
Just two mites are probably not a problem but a large infestation on the body weakens the harvestman. If seeing bugs-on-bugs doesn’t bother you, click here for an example.
Harvestmen clean their legs by drawing them through their jaws so it’s a wonder the mites remain in place. Obviously there’s been a long mutual evolution of cleaning and clinging that brought these two species to where they are today.
No matter how small the predator, there’s always something smaller to oppress it.
Just a reminder that I’m leading a bird and nature walk on Sunday August 23, 8:30am in 
Just a reminder that I’m leading a bird and nature walk on Sunday July 26, 8:30am in 
