Backyard and Beyond

Starting out from Brooklyn, an amateur naturalist explores our world.

As John Burroughs said, “The place to observe nature is where you are.”

  • Lifelines

    The usual notion of a tree root is that it has a large root mirroring the trunk, running as deep underground as the trunk runs up into the sky. Or, like Tobin’s sculpture, it has a series of deep roots, but that’s his artistic license, not to mention a practical way of allowing people to…

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  • Inner Magnolia

    Like sea anemones, the hearts of magnolias. And from my archives, a shot from the NY Aquarium:

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  • View From the Back 40

    The Saucer Magnolia (Magnolia × soulangeana) in a neighbor’s backyard today: A busload of girls from St. Flora’s trying to keep their pink uniforms from blowing away in the March wind. The hazards of early blooming: tonight’s forecasted hard freeze may KO the ornamental fruit and magnolia blossoms that have run riot for the last…

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  • A Very Strange Crab Indeed

    A piece of barnacle conglomeration I found at Dead Horse Bay recently. Most species of barnacles need a surface to attach to, and sometimes that surface is other barnacles. These are a type of acorn barnacle, one of the two main groups. I understand differentiating the local species is difficult for the lay person. Give…

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  • Starling Excavation

    The European Starling, rather vulgarly branded by the taxonomists as Sturnus vulgaris, was introduced to New York because some idiot wanted to see all of Shakespeare’s birds in the New World. Cf. “I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak/Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him/To keep his anger still in motion.” ~ Hotspur,…

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  • Sparrow Duplex

    The House Sparrow, Passer domesticus, is an Old World sparrow unrelated to the numerous species of New World sparrows. The bird has spread around the world to general urban ubiquity; they were introduced to North America — among other places, they were let loose right here in New York City in the 1880s — initially…

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  • Spring Beauties

    We found two woodland wildflowers in bloom yesterday on Staten Island:Trout Lily, a.k.a. Yellow Adder’s Toungue (!) Erythronium americanum. Lots of these handsome, mottled leaves poking out of the carpet of leaf litter. Note that the particular plants above are single-leaf. It’s the ones with two leaves that produce a flower:A buzz of insects were…

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  • Skunk Cabbage, Take Two

    So I just missed the blooming of the skunk cabbage this year. In fact, I’ve never seen it. The photo in my previous post was taken in the Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden on Tuesday; there were just a few post-bloom leaves there. The pictures in this post come from today on…

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  • Skunk Cabbage

    Exciting news: the Native Flora Garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is expanding by two more acres, more than doubling the space. Think globally, plant locally. (But, erhm, what’s happening to the Rock Garden? I love those erratic glacial boulders, hardy pieces of the mainland.) I was in the 100-year-old original section of NFG the…

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  • Spring Loaded

    About two weeks earlier than last year, the fruity ornamentals amongst us have erupted. Genus Prunus of the family Rosaceae encompasses the cherries and plums, and cherry plums, and apricots, and quinces, and even peaches — Callery pears also blooming now are another genus w/in Rosaceae– and these small-blossomed beauties are out and about now…

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