Category Archives: Phenology

Pawpaw in bloom

Phenology, Schenley Park, Trees
Pawpaw flower (photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Here is a most unusual flower that hangs like a bell, sometimes in rows.

It has three deep maroon petals, three green sepals, and if you look inside three curled maroon petals surround the pistil.  The flowers are small when they first bloom, but grow to two inches long.

This is the flower of the Common Pawpaw tree (Asimina triloba), blooming right now in western Pennsylvania.

Though named “common,” pawpaw is an uncommon understory tree that grows in hardwood forests and bottomlands.  I found pawpaw trees blooming last weekend in Schenley Park and at Enlow Fork.

Some people prize pawpaw for its 4-inch long lumpy fruit that has the consistency of mangoes and the taste of bananas.  I ought to like it, but I’m not fond those two tropical fruits.  If you try it, don’t eat the seeds (see the link above).

I was able to identify the flower because Marcy Cunkelman sent me this photo a year ago.  When I saw the pawpaw blooming I remembered her picture but not the name of the tree, so I looked it up when I got home.  Thanks, Marcy!

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

An April Hike

Phenology, Plants & Fungi

Last year, WQED’s Web Department made three videos for me to post on my blog:  An April Hike at Raccoon Creek State Park, the Pitt Peregrine Fledge Watch, and a third (not yet edited) film of Marcy Cunkelman’s garden in August.

Though it was filmed last year on April 23, the Web Department had to wait until their summer intern, Christa Majoras, was available to edit it.  Christa did a fine job and completed the video in July, but by then these scenes of April were out of season so I saved the video for this week.

My plan was to show you a preview of flowers-to-come but life is full of twists and turns.  Who could imagine we’d have a spring so warm that the plants would be two to three weeks ahead of schedule?  This video is again out of season — late by two weeks.

Use your imagination as you watch.  Go back in time to March 31 and remember what the landscape looked like.  Or watch this video for signs of just how far ahead this spring is compared to April 2009.

Sit back and enjoy An April Hike.

(video filmed by Joan Guerin, edited by Christa Majoras)

 

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Signs of Spring: Redbud

Phenology, Schenley Park, Trees


It’s been a spectacular year for redbud in Pittsburgh.

Eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis) is an understory tree whose flowers bloom in clusters from its leafless branches — even from its trunk.  Redbud is found throughout the eastern U.S. but hardly ventures north of Mason-Dixon in Pennsylvania.  Allegheny County is about as far north as it gets in the wild.  (See the Comments for more on redbud’s range.)

Redbud flowers are showy and attract bees who have tongues long enough to reach its nectar.  This floral strategy keeps carpenter and bumblebees very busy with a selection of complicated spring flowers: redbud, Dutchman’s breeches and Squirrel corn, to name a few.

After the flowers fade redbud’s large, heart-shaped leaves unfurl and long, bean-like seed pods form on the branches where the flowers had been.  By June the tree looks odd compared to its April beauty.

Take some time to look for redbud.  Right now it’s gorgeous in this too early spring.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

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And on the subject of Too Early Spring:  I saw my first tent worms in Schenley Park last evening, three to four weeks earlier than they normally appear.  Tentworms coincide with black-billed and yellow-billed cuckoo migration, but the birds aren’t due back until early May.  Will the cuckoos have enough to eat if our tentworms are past their prime?

Signs of Spring: Hepatica

Phenology, Plants & Fungi


The wildflowers bloomed and faded so quickly last weekend that it may be difficult to find this one in our area now, but it’s worth a try.

Hepatica is a delicate little white or lavender flower with basal leaves. 

The leaves grow directly from the base of the plant instead of on the stem.  They often hide under last autumn’s leaf litter but you’ll have to find them to know which variety of Hepatica you’ve found:  Sharp-lobed Hepatica or Round-lobed Hepatica.

(photo by Dianne Machesney)

Too Early Spring

Phenology, Plants & Fungi


When I took this photo on Saturday, I was excited to see Pittsburgh’s northern magnolias starting to bloom.  But now only four days later their flowers are full-blown, the petals are starting to fall, and this picture no longer applies. 

Spring is happening too fast this year.  The weather is too hot.  It will be in the 80’s again today.

I don’t keep an accurate record of blooming times but it seems to me that all the flowers are early this year.  Have you noticed it? 

Can you tell me how many weeks ahead the blooms are? 

(photo by Kate St. John)

Misty morning coots

Phenology, Water and Shore

American Coots on a misty morning, Moraine State Park (photo by Brian Herman)
This was the month that broke winter’s grip.

In early March the lakes were ice-covered, no water birds at all. 

A week later, open water.  The tundra swans passed through.

Mid March, ice free.  Huge flocks of ducks stopped over on their way to Canada’s lakes and bogs.

Now the ice is just a distant memory.  The long range migrants are nearly gone and in the misty mornings coots splash and feed.

March goes out like a lamb.

(photo by Brian Herman)

First Leaves

Phenology, Plants & Fungi

29 March 2010

I’ve been watching carefully and now I’ve seen them.  Our post-winter landscape is dotted with blotches of pale green.  The first leaves! 

What plants are these that sprout first?

In my neighborhood they’re bush honeysuckle, an invasive woody shrub that thrives almost anywhere.  I haven’t bothered to determine the species, there are so many: Amur (Lonerica maackii), Morrow’s (Lonerica morrowii), Tartarian (Lonerica tartarica) and more.  All of them, alas, are invasive.

Non-native plants often thrive because they’re out of synch with our seasons.  They’re the first to produce leaves and the last to drop them because they’re responding to the amount of daylight in their place of origin.  Bush honeysuckles come from Asia, Turkey and southern Russia so they open their leaves just after the spring equinox, at least a week ahead of our wary native plants.  They’re not hurt by being early because they’re hardy enough to survive a late frost or snowstorm.

Knowing all this, I should be upset that the bush honeysuckles are leafing out.  But I can’t help it. 

We have leaves!

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

Signs of Spring: Spicebush

Phenology, Plants & Fungi

Here’s a flower that’s one of the first signs of spring in Pennsylvania’s woods and it’s blooming right now.

Northern spicebush (Lindera benzoin) is a native shrub, 6-12 feet tall, that grows in moist locations in woods, valleys and along streams.

In March and early April its small yellow flowers bloom, clustered on the stems before the leaves emerge.  There are so many flowers that the bushes look showy in our otherwise brown landscape.  Don’t be fooled by this close-up, though.  The flowers are quite tiny.

Spicebush is the host plant for the Spicebush Swallowtail, a beautiful butterfly whose caterpillar form looks funny with a huge, fake face “painted” on its back.  You can find these caterpillars eating spicebush leaves in the summer.  (Click here to see.)

By fall the flowers have become small red berries, called drupes, which provide good food for birds.  Robins and catbirds are particularly fond of them.

When you’re out in the woods, look for spicebush.  You can identify it by smell — that’s how it got its name.  Just run your fingernail along the bark and smell it’s spicy, aromatic scent.

(photo by Marcy Cunkelman)

November: The Month For The Ax

Phenology, Schenley Park, Songbirds, Trees
Male Pileated Woodpecker (photo by Dick Martin)

In his Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold called November “the month for the axe.  …In winter, when we are harvesting diseased or dead trees for our fuel wood, the ring of the axe is dinner gong for the chickadee tribe… Every slab of dead bark is, to them, a treasury of eggs, larvae, and cocoons.”

Dead trees are treasure troves for woodpeckers too, and in the bird world they wield the ax.  Though the leaves have fallen the weather is still warm, the larvae are still active inside the bark, and the woodpeckers can hear them.

This weekend I found a pileated woodpecker excavating a dead tree in Schenley Park.  Among birds, the pileated’s beak is about as close as you can come to an ax.  The bird itself is the size of a crow with a beak 1.5 to 2 inches long.  That may sound small but his beak hits the wood at 13-15 miles per hour so the woodpecker experiences 10G’s of force at each blow.

It would kill you or me to slam our heads against trees but the woodpecker’s head is designed for the work.  His neck absorbs the impact and his brain is cushioned by a network of flexible cartilage and spongy air-filled bone.  His tongue is very long for probing the openings he creates — so long that it retracts inside to the back of his skull.  It’s the right equipment for chopping trees.

Keep a lookout this month for pileated woodpeckers.  November is the month for the ax.

(photo by Dick Martin)