Magnolia cucumber fruits, green and ripening (photos from Wikimedia Commons)
There’s a cucumber in the woods but you won’t see it until it falls.
Native to the Appalachians, Allegheny and Cumberland Plateaus, the cucumber magnolia (Magnolia acuminata) produces an unusual fruit that starts out green, ripens to dark pink, then its red-orange seeds pop out. (The one on the right isn’t fully ripe yet.)
When the fruit falls in autumn it’s quickly gathered by squirrels and chipmunks. You’ll find the ones they miss on the forest floor.
Learn what it looks like in this Throw Back Thursday article: Cucumber of The Woods.
Spray of white oak leaves found on the ground, Sept 2018 (Kate St. John)
In September I often find sprays of oak leaves littering the woodland trails. I used to think they fell in windstorms but I’ve discovered a more common reason. In autumn it’s squirrels at work.
Gray squirrels build leaf nests high in the trees for shelter in winter, nests for their young, and for sleeping at night. The outer layer is composed of leaves and twigs that make a water resistant blob about the size of a beach ball. The inside is lined with moss, grass, shredded bark and other soft vegetation. The entrance faces the trunk.
Squirrel nests can be as much as 70 feet off the ground. Here’s what one looks like.
Gray squirrel nest (photo by Marcy Cunkelman)
To gather building materials, the squirrel gnaws near the branch tip — often an oak — until the spray of leaves comes loose. If he isn’t careful to hold the twig, it falls. Oh well. The squirrel gnaws another one.
You can tell when a spray of leaves is a squirrel’s handiwork. The tip of the twig looks chiseled. Teeth made this mark!
Tip of a white oak twig chiseled by a squirrel (photo by Kate St. John)
Last week I found many leafy twigs on the trails in Pittsburgh. After four days of cold rain the squirrels were making nest repairs.
As winter approaches you’ll find them, too. The squirrels are fortifying their nests and they don’t have much time. The leaves will be gone in November.
(photos by Kate St. John, Marcy Cunkelman and from Wikimedia Commons; caption has a link to the original)
Have you seen big webs in the trees lately? If you haven’t, you will soon.
These are the communal homes of fall webworm caterpillars, the larvae of the fall webworm moth (Hyphantria cunea).
Each colony hatched from an inconspicuous egg mass, then the caterpillars built a web to protect themselves from predators. As they grow they expand their web.
Because this is the end of the growing season, the webs usually don’t hurt the trees. Meanwhile the caterpillars are tasty treats for migrating songbirds.
The fruit is sweet like mango with a creamy texture like ripe banana. Despite its sweet addictive flavor, pawpaws aren’t in widespread commercial production because the fruit is so ephemeral. Some would say it’s finicky.
Pawpaws ripen only once a year — in September.
They ripen only on the tree. They can’t be picked in advance.
The fruit bruises so easily it has to be shipped in expensive padded packaging.
In the old days, people would gather fallen pawpaws as they walked in the woods in September. This practice eventually disappeared and most people forgot about the fruit until a dedicated group of pawpaw enthusiasts and Andrew Moore’s 2015 book, Pawpaw, made it better known.
Want to taste a pawpaw? The best place to do it is at a pawpaw festival. Eat them raw or in ice cream, pies, popsicles, and even beer!
There are three pawpaw festivals within driving distance of Pittsburgh.
The 20th Annual Ohio Pawpaw Festival in Albany, Ohio, September 14-16, 2018. Three days! The biggest pawpaw bash you’ll ever see!
Before you go, this 2014 video from Connecticut shows what pawpaws look like and how to eat them.
p.s. Don’t eat the seeds. They are emetic.
(photo credits: pawpaws on tree by Rebekah D. Wallace, University of Georgia, Bugwood.org. Range map and sliced fruit from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the captions to see the originals)
American hazelnuts, Schenley Park, July 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
In late July, you may find nuts wrapped in papery green husks.
They’re American hazelnuts, Corylus americana, so closely related to the beaked hazel-nut Corylus cornuta that the two species can hybridize. The nut wrappers tell them apart.
The husks on C. americana’s nuts are two leaf-like bracts with ragged tips. This photo by Paul Wray at forestryimages.org shows hairy leaf bracts and an unwrapped nut.
American hazel nut (photo by Paul Wray, Iowa State University via Bugwood.org, Creative Commons license)
Beaked hazel-nut (C. cornuta) husks are so long and thin that they look like beaks, as seen in this photo from forestryimages.org.
Fruits of beaked hazelnut (Caleb Slemmons, National Ecological Observatory Network, Bugwood.org, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License))
The nuts I found in Schenley Park don’t have long beaks but they aren’t quite the same as the C. americana photo above.
I wonder if they’re hybrids.
(two photos by Kate St. John. photo number 5556599 by Caleb Slemmons, National Ecological Observatory Network, at Bugwood.org)
Balsam cones, La Manche Trail, Newfoundland, July 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
Did you know that the immature cones on balsam firs are gray-blue? I didn’t because …
I see balsam trees every year in Maine but I’m only there in September when the cones are ripe and brown and about to disintegrate to release their seeds.
Where I live in western Pennsylvania there are no balsam firs (range map below) but eastern hemlocks are common. Hemlocks have some traits that are similar to balsam firs, so …
Balsam fir range map (image from Wikimedia Commons)
… when I saw balsam firs (Abies balsamea) in Newfoundland I misidentified them at first. 🙁
The balsam’s lower/newer twigs have flat needles on flat-looking branches. Eastern hemlocks do, too, so I called this a hemlock. (wrong!)
Balsam fir, symmetrical flat lower branch (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
Balsam needles have two white stripes on the underside. So do eastern hemlocks so I said “hemlock” again. (wrong!)
However, the needles curled on the higher branches. Hemlock needles never do that.
Morning dew on balsam fir needles (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
In the end, the cones are the easiest way to identify balsam firs. The cones stand straight up and in summer they’re balsam blue.
Tamarack cone in Newfoundland, July 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
This month in Newfoundland I found a rose on the tamarack.
Tamaracks (Larix laricina) are North American larches whose name means “wood is good for fence posts” in Algonquin.
The “roses” are their immature cones. In summer the needles are green and the cones are red.
Tamarack branch with cones, Newfoundland, July 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
In autumn the needles turn yellow and fall off the tree.
Tamarack in autumn (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
And the cones turn brown and dry out. They persist on the tree all winter and are still present when the needles grow again in the spring.
Mature tamarack cones in spring with young foliage (photo from Wikimedia Commons)
You have to look in the summer to see a tamarack rose.
(tamarack immature cone photos by Kate St. John. Yellow tamarack and mature cones photos from Wikimedia Commons; click on the images to see the original)
Black locust flowers, 17 May 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
This week the air in my neighborhood smells so sweet. The black locust trees are in bloom.
Black locusts (Robinia pseudoacacia) are common in Pittsburgh because they’re one of the first trees to grow in poor, disturbed soil. Our area has a lot of habitat for them, generated by people and nature — bulldozers and landslides.
Black locusts are ugly in winter with gnarly bark and twisted branches but they are sweet in May. The trees are in the pea family and it is evident in their flowers. Here’s what they look like in bloom.
Black locust tree in bloom, 16 May 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
The flowers are attractive to bees and birds. I’ve seen rose-breasted grosbeaks use their large beaks to grab the base of the flowers, then twirl to make the petals fall off. They swallow the nectar end.
Black locusts usually reach their peak on May 12 but they’re late this year. Look for these beautifully scented trees before the flowers fade in about 10 days.
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