flowers
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Spring’s sprung
Spring officially started early this morning, but it’s been bursting out for more than a month now. These pictures are from last week in the Brooklyn Bridge Park.
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Hellebores-a-poppin’
6th Street, Park Slope. Genus Helleborus was named after the Greek words for “killing” and “food,” since members of the family are often toxic. Also known as Lenten Rose. Much hybridized, popular as a very early bloomer. Another batch on Sidney Place, the Block of Perpetual Renovation, in Brooklyn Heights. The native wildflower False Hellebore,…
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Skene Amidst the Daffodils
This is Alexander Johnston Chalmers Skene looking out over the early daffodils in Grand Army Plaza. I assumed that Skene might possibly be the only gynecologist ever memorialized with a statue, but I would be wrong, as you’ll see in that informative Parks Department link: Central Park has J. Marion Simms, the, ahem, “father of…
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Pink, Yellow
Another flowering quince in the ‘hood. This one is on the north-facing side of the street, so it doesn’t get nearly as much sun as this south-facing one I photographed at the beginning of the month. And the crocuses are popping up. This patch was on Union Street.
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Februarius Mirabilis
Are you old enough to remember when winter used to be winter, damn it, and spring, spring? On the way to Prospect Park today, the second day of February, I saw the flowering quince on Congress St. in bloom:And then, in a tree pit in Windsor Terrace, some bulbs were pushing up into the light:In…
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G Train Roses
This morning, these roses at the corner of the patriotic intersection of Washington & Lafayette were still going strong. Ruins of Halloween in the background.
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Spiny-leaved sow thistle, Sonchus asper, in a Columbia Street tree pit. A non-native species, but well-settled. Judging from my dad, whose hair I inherited, this is what my head will look like some day.
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An Unusual Wildflower
One of the stranger wildflowers of the eastern forests is Conopholis americana, also known as squawroot, American cancer-root, and bearcorn. It looks like a fungus popping up out of the ground. But it’s a plant, and a good reminder that not all wildflowers are, well, wildflowery. This particular flower doesn’t photosynthesize; it lives by parasitizing…
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The Monarchs Are Here
A male monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus, in the Battery Bosque yesterdy. You can see some examples of monarch caterpillars in my post from last August. (And you can tell this is a male, even this blurry, because of the small spots in the hindwing veins.) The Bosque, named after the trees that tower over it,…
Backyard and Beyond 