When my camera couldn’t capture this horizontally, I turned it sideways to photograph the trees.
I like them this way better than in the “normal” orientation.
Put your left ear on your left shoulder to see what I mean.
p.s. I took this photo four years ago but didn’t label it. Based on their bark I think these are sugar maples … but their branches don’t look right.
(photo by Kate St. John)
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18 March 2015
When the trees leaf out six weeks from now we’ll once again hear the sound of rustling leaves. Did you know that trees also make secret sounds we cannot hear?
Last year an article by Sarah Zhang in Gizmodo caught my attention. Eavesdropping On The Secret Sounds Of Trees describes the art and science of a Swiss research team, headed by Marcus Maeder, who recorded the internal sounds of trees.
The project, fittingly called trees, attached sensitive microphones to trunks, branches and even leaves, then recorded the sounds and analyzed them in light of simultaneous environmental factors such as drought. Click here to hear the clicks, pops, hisses and taps made by a Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris).
Closer to home our trees are getting ready for spring, the sap is running, and it’s maple sugaring time in North America.
And so I wonder …
If we had those special microphones could we heard the sap rising in the maples?
Yes!
In 2010 Alex Metcalfe installed headphones on a copper beech at Oakville Galleries in Oakville, Ontario. Anyone could listen to the tree using his installation — and so can you with this video. Wow!
(photos from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the images to see the originals)
Yes, last Thursday’s snow was pretty.
It coated the trees like a winter wonderland outside John English’s apartment window (above).
And I found close up beauty in Schenley Park.
In December I’d be thrilled by snow but within a few hours I was heartily tired of this beautiful event.
Fortunately it will go away this week.
(photo of snowy hillside by John English. Closeups by Kate St. John)
Golden beech leaves in Schenley Park.
(photo by Kate St. John)
These very different leaves came from the same tree.
Sassafras turns red and yellow in the fall showing off its unlobed leaves, two-lobed “mittens” and three-lobed “paws.” All three shapes grow on the same tree including both right and left-handed mittens (I checked).
Sassafras (Sassafras albidum) is a medium-sized tree native to eastern North America from southern Maine to Florida to eastern Texas. In Pennsylvania it grows everywhere except on the central high plateau of the Northern Tier.
The tree’s roots, bark, shoots and fruit were used directly in many foods, drinks, perfumes and medicines (think “root beer”) until the essential oil, safrole, was discovered to be carcinogenic and outlawed by the FDA in 1960. Sassafras by-products can still be used in food and cosmetics as long as they’re certified safrole-free. Safrole is used in pesticides.
In Europe people plant sassafras as an ornamental for its aromatic scent and unusual leaves.
I found these in the wild in Harrison Hills County Park.
(photo by Kate St. John)
American witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is blooming in southwestern Pennsylvania. Look for small yellow flowers clustered on the stems of a shrub or small tree.
Its four petals resemble lemon peel and are slightly hidden by the leaves right now but they’ll persist into November when they’ll be easier to see.
Witch-hazel is the only tree I know of that blooms in the fall, September to November. It has other odd traits, too.
I found this one blooming in Schenley Park along the Lower Panther Hollow Trail.
(photos by Kate St. John)
p.s. Check the comments for Sally’s question about pollination and the fascinating answer.
Though it’s been cold and snowy I found signs of life in Schenley Park on Thanksgiving Day.
Above, witch hazel is blooming along the Lower Trail. The yellow flowers don’t stand out but once you notice them you’ll see several trees sporting lemon-peel petals.
Below, bush honeysuckle stands out green against the snow. This out of synch condition reminds us that this plant is from another country.
When you see green deciduous plants in the snow, check them out. They’re often imports.
(photos by Kate St. John)
27 October 2013
Here’s something I literally stumbled on in Schenley Park: shagbark hickory nuts (Carya ovata).
The big round balls, which cradle easily in the palm of my hand, are husk-covered nuts. They’re green when ripe but turn brown with age (bottom right). Their four sections naturally come open as the nut ages and sometimes burst when they hit the ground.
I didn’t need any special tools to open the husks, just my fingers. At first I didn’t realize they were merely husks so I thought it was odd that they didn’t protect the nut but…
The nutshell is another story (center of the photo). Irregularly shaped and slightly larger than a quarter, I tried to open it by cutting and other gentle means but it was impossible. The meat inside is reputed to be sweet but I had to destroy the nut to taste it.
Hmmm. Get out a hammer or hire a squirrel.
I got out the hammer.
The first nut had very shriveled meat inside. Perhaps it had been attacked by a bug.
The second and third nuts looked promising except that the meats resembled dried Chinese wood ear mushrooms and they tasted like nothing. (My photo doesn’t do this justice.)
Either I was doing something wrong — quite possible — or these nuts are not as good as described.
I wonder how many nuts the squirrels spend time opening only to find that the meat inside was not worth it.
(photo by Kate St. John)
Last weekend I found these twisted trees in Moraine State Park.
It’s unusual to find trees like this — even more unusual when they’re two different species.
A black cherry (left at base) and a red oak (right at base) germinated next to each other. At the ground their trunks touched and melded. As they grew they twisted around each other.
Amazing.
(photo by Kate St. John)
3 October 2013
Stop and listen in Schenley Park right now and you’ll hear acorns falling, blue jays calling and squirrels scurrying. It looks like a bumper crop for acorns in Pittsburgh. (*see p.s.)
Right now the red oaks are putting on a show. Acorns in the white oak group mature in the same year they flower. Acorns in the red oak group take two years to mature so those falling now were formed in the hot spring and summer of 2012, influenced by spring precipitation, summer temperatures and the date of the last killing frost.
Though we (usually*) don’t eat them, acorns are a key link in the woodland food web. They’re so popular that oaks have evolved an abundance-scarcity strategy to throw off their consumers. In some years acorns are so abundant that the crop overwhelms the acorn-eaters. In other years they’re so scarce the consumers go hungry. To further confuse things the oak groups cycle on different schedules: white oaks have a bumper crop in 4-10 years, red oaks on a 3-4 year basis.
Who eats these acorns? Squirrels and chipmunks are the obvious consumers but plenty of other species depend on them including white-footed and deer mice, blue jays, red-headed woodpeckers and wild turkeys. Deer, ruffed grouse, bears, mallards and wood ducks eat acorns, too.
The bumper crops have a ripple effect. A 24-year study, headed by Clotfelter and Pedersen in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, followed the effects of acorn crops on rodent abundance, raptor abundance and the nesting success of ground-nesting birds. They focused on white-footed mice, deer mice and dark-eyed juncoes and found these amazing acorn effects:
And then, this information from PLOS links acorns to Lyme disease: Lyme disease increases predictably two years after an acorn bumper crop because white-footed mice are a main reservoir for the Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria.
Don’t blame the acorns.
Everything is connected to everything else.
(photo from Wikimedia Commons. Click on the image to see the original)
*p.s. Is this a bumper crop year? I wrote about acorns because I’ve been dodging them in Schenley Park as they fall, but not all the trees are prolific. Hmm….
*”We don’t usually eat acorns”: Well, we can if we put a lot of work into it. See kc’s comment!