Rose blooming in November, 23 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
30 November 2024
Even though it’s November and getting colder and darker by the day, I found some confused flowers this week. Imported trees and plants that should be dormant were in bloom.
A rose, above, and an ornamental cherry tree were beautiful in the rain.
Ornamental cherry tree blooming in November, 23 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Moth mullein was battered but blooming on an almost sunny day.
Battered but blooming, moth mullein in November, 23 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Northern magnolia buds were swelling in anticipation of spring … even though it was late November.
Fat buds on northern magnolia, 27 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Alas, these flowers will be no match for this week’s (finally normal) freezing temperatures.
Now that Thanksgiving is over turkeys can own the road again.
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a wild turkey cross the road in the City of Pittsburgh. Six years ago they were very common in Pittsburgh’s East End but there are gone now, perhaps because the City’s huge deer population eats all their winter food.
If you want to see a lot of turkeys visit Pittsburgh’s northern suburbs. In February I saw 20 cross the road near North Park.
Fortunately none of them wanted to challenge cars!
Forget the Thanksgiving turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, cornbread, and cranberry sauce. Let’s cut to the chase and eat pie today!
photos from Wikimedia Commons, linked in the list of fruits. p.s. …
A pumpkin, from a botanist‘s perspective, is a fruit because it’s a product of the seed-bearing structure of flowering plants. Vegetables, on the other hand, are the edible portion of plants such as leaves, stems, roots, bulbs, flowers, and tubers. Because pumpkins are less sweet and more savory from a culinary perspective, we categorize them as a vegetable.
November is a good time of year to look for hackberry trees in Pittsburgh and examine their fallen fruit. By now the pulp has worn off the pits, but unlike wooden cherry pits hackberries’ are like white seashells with a microscopic lattice of opal inside.
Common hackberry pits: one whole, one opened (photo by Kate St. John)
Learn about these amazing structures in this vintage article.
Then go find a hackberry tree (and an electron microscope).
Hackberry bark and bare branches make it easy to identify the tree, even in winter. The bark has ridges and the ridges have growth lines.
Hackberry bark has ridges. The ridges have growth lines (photo by Kate St. John)
Up in the bare branches, hackberry trees sometimes have twig formations called witches brooms “produced by the effects of an eriophyid mite (Aceria celtis) and/or an associated powdery mildew producing fungus (Sphaerotheca phytoptophila)” — from bugwood.
On 14 November The Allegheny Front described oil pollution on the Monongahela River that’s been happening for more than two years. Monitored by Three Rivers Waterkeeper since May 2022, an oil sheen sometimes covers the water from bank to bank for three miles, all the way to McKeesport. This can’t be good for our bald eagles who nest along on the Mon and eat fish from its water.
“These are pretty serious sheens,” said Captain Evan Clark, a boat captain for Three Rivers Waterkeeper. “When I’m boating around up there, my boat is running through a heavy rainbow sheen that can extend from one bank of the river to the other, literally for miles.”
In August 2022, an EPA inspector reported oil discharge from the plant’s outfall, or drainage pipe, and found “substantial rainbow sheening could be seen for approximately 3 miles downstream.”(*)
Last year the Pennsylvania Dept of Environmental Protection (DEP) determined the oil was coming from a USS Irvin Works outfall and “issued a compliance order requiring U.S. Steel to deploy absorbent booms, investigate the cause of the releases and implement a plan to fix any problems.” — The Allegheny Front
But a year later the problem has not been addressed and it happened again last month. DEP has proposed setting a water pollution permit level on that outfall. Three Rivers Waterkeeper wants real-time monitoring on it.
Meanwhile, oil-covered water cannot be good for our bald eagles who touch the water’s surface and eat fish and waterfowl captured in or on the water.
During an oil sheen episode the pair that nests at USS Irvin Works cannot hunt the Mon for three miles downstream of their nest without being exposed to the oil. This is a lot of territory to avoid with hungry chicks in the nest.
Employees at USS Irvin Works are so proud of their bald eagle pair that the company installed an eaglecam to watch them at the nest. Surely USS Irvin Works will clean up this outfall to protect everyone who uses the Mon including their favorite eagles.
Read more about the issue here at The Allegheny Front …
Charity Kheshgi and Jon Woon joined me yesterday at Duck Hollow where we looked for birds under extremely overcast skies. Unfortunately the ducks were so far away and the light was so poor that we have no photos to show for it. Instead I’ve embedded look-alike photos from Macaulay Library.
Best birds were these very distant ducks.
1 Canvasback female (sample photo above): We pondered this bird for a long time because she was paired with a male ring-necked duck. Yes, she was a canvasback. We were witnessing future hybridization within the Aythya genus.
The Ring-necked Duck entry in Birds of the World includes eBird records with photos of hybrids between Ring-necked Ducks and Canvasback, Redhead, Tufted Duck, and Great and Lesser Scaup.
You may have noticed that the price of eggs went up … or is going up again. The rise is directly related to dead birds.
It’s been only three years since the highly contagious avian influenza H5N1 arrived in North America on the wings of migratory waterfowl in autumn 2021. Though not dangerous to humans it easily kills poultry and ripples through waterfowl and raptor communities.
Among wild birds mallards are particularly susceptible and lead the infection rate in many places.
When waterfowl are sick, peregrines die after eating them (hence the peregrine photo at top). Avian flu kills so quickly that in some cases dead peregrines have been found at the nest. The peregrine population at both coasts has declined in the past two years as described in Audubon Magazine: Why Are Peregrine Falcon Numbers Falling in the United States Again? … and at…
But by far the greatest effect is on domesticated poultry. From 2022 through 20 November, nearly 110 million farm birds have died because H5N1 is so contagious in crowded conditions.
In the past six weeks alone, avian flu has hit five large egg farms in Washington, Oregon, California, and Utah. More than 6 million hens have been culled because of exposure to H5N1 and certain death.(*)
Fewer hens means fewer eggs. So the price of eggs goes up.
Producing billions of eggs a year is an inherently messy business. Just 200 or so farmers control almost all of the nearly 300 million egg-laying hens in the United States.
“Monkey balls” = fruit of osage orange tree, Schenley Park, 20 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
23 November 2024
Now that the leaves have fallen fruits and seeds are prominent in the landscape.
Osage orange (Maclura pomifera) trees have prolific fruit this fall but nothing eats the “monkey balls” so they just lay on the ground to rot. If you crack one open it has sticky latex inside. Who would eat this fruit? The answer is in the video at the end!
The fruiting body of a shaggy mane mushroom (Coprinus comatus) poked up among the leaf litter near Five Points at Moraine State Park.
Fruiting body of Shaggy Mane mushroom, Moraine State Park near Five Points, 18 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Red fruits of oriental bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus) are a favorite food of migrating American robin, protected by a hard yellow-orange skin that pops off in sections. It looks like a squirrel gnawed off this branch and lost his meal.
Fruit of oriental bittersweet, 18 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Late boneset has gone to seed in Schenley Park.
Late boneset seeds surrounded by fluff, Schenley Park, 20 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Just a few trees still have leaves. I found this colorful sweetgum along a sidewalk at CMU. Someone ripped a piece off the yellow leaf.
Colorful leaves on sweetgum, 20 Nov 2024 (photo by Kate St. John)
Female spicebush with berries, 25 Sept 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
21 November 2024
In the garden we often grow “perfect” flowers such as roses, lilies and tulips with male and female parts in every flower. However, many woody shrubs and trees have single sex flowers. Some species grow both sexes on the same tree, others have only one sex on an entire plant. And so, some plants are simply female.
Monoecious species have both flower sexes on the same plant. Examples include hickory and pecan trees, cucumbers and pumpkins, cherries, common grape vine and corn (maize).
Dioecious plants produce only male or female flowers on individual plants and only the female plants produce fruit. Examples include gingkos (stinky fruit from female trees!) …
