-
Hedge Apple
The fruits of the Osage Orange are falling. They are sap-sticky and alien-brainy when fresh.
-
WTF?
Is it the curse of Backyard and Beyond? Today I walked by the site of the Chinese persimmon I photographed Tuesday and blogged about yesterday. It was gone. Uprooted, like the Billionaire Mayor wants to do to the Occupy Wall Street movement. There was a hole in the soil in the large wooden planter, a…
-
Iceless Age
My apocalyptic post on the acidification of the seas, complete with junior home science experiement, turns out to be old news. Earth has been there, done that. Fifty-six million years ago, to be somewhat exact about it. This month’s National Geographic details the PETM: the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, in which a huge influx of carbon…
-
Bergen Persimmon
Seen yesterday on Bergen Street, a persimmon. Diospyros kaki. A common name reported by Sibley is “tomato tree” and this un-ripened fruit shows why. The Chinese or Japanese persimmon is obviously native to those parts of the world and is the source of commercial persimmons, a delicacy, I’m told (they don’t travel well). Now, there…
-
“Why are there so many dragonflies in prospect park this year?” asks a Googler. Are there? Populations rise and fall through the years, depending on weather, food supplies (adult dragonflies eat other insects), disease ~ the usual ebb and flow of expansion and contraction amid animal and plant populations. (Only we humans have managed to…
-
Hairy Larva
As much as we love the great outdoors here at Backyard and Beyond, we don’t neglect the mysteries of the interior. Wildness is also here, inside, with us and amongst us.A tiny larval something or other in the bathroom, using the edge of the tiled wall as its path. I could not help but think…
-
Thorn Apple
At Tsankawi, our guide pointed out the distant Datura, flowering with large, gaudy, trumpet-shaped flowers. These were the largest blooms for miles around in the arid region. Jimsonweed is another name for it, and we have it here in Brooklyn. Some snuck into the Back 40. This is its ripening seedpod. Beware: the plant is…
-
Nuts! Conkers
The Horse-chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum, a native of Eurasia, is a relatively common tree in the city, having long been a popular ornamental. This is its seed, or conker. The Yellow Buckeye, Aesculus flava, meanwhile, is a native of the Ohio River valley and other Appalachian valleys, and is seen much less frequently in the city.…
-
Nuts! Beechnuts
General Anthony C. McAuliffe Week continues….We have two kinds of beech trees, genus Fagus, in our midst: the European F. sylvatica and the American F. grandifloria, with numerous cultivars, including cut-leaf and copper, and several subspecies to mix it up even further. Sylvatica was often planted in parks, where the smooth gray bark attracts the…
-
Waiting for me in the warmth of the hallway.I plead self-defense.
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Backyard and Beyond 