flowers
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Spring Beauty
For many people this is, I realize, appealing. But let’s look beyond the lurid gaudiness to the more subtle spring ephemerals down on the forest floor. Like bloodroot.And spring beauties.And trout lilies. (Plus some mayapple.) All on the grounds of the Morris Arboretum or nearby Wissahickon Valley Park.
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Stink Cabbage
Some skunk cabbage, so called because of the smell, which attracts flies. Flies being some of the earliest pollinators in spring. The mottled curvilinear part is the spathe, a sheath-like bract that encloses the spadix. Unfortunately off the path, so couldn’t get closer. Through the magic of the internet, however, you can take a closer…
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Five Points
A late-blooming, ligulate-headed Asteraceae to grace your groaning board.
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Street Plants
In the July-September number of The Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society (145.3) there’s a survey of the vascular plant species of sidewalk plots in Brooklyn and Queens by R. Statler and J. Rachlin. Since most of you probably can’t get to the whole article yet, I’ll make a few notes about it. Over a…
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Details
Same patch, same day.Crab spider lurking… Another generation of something arthropod…
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Meadows
The protected grasslands at Floyd Bennett Field are looking fine in autumn.You can fill your screen with these by clicking on them. *** Much less of a pretty picture: on the rise of illiberal democracy there and here.
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Autumnal Flowers And Their Familiars
There’s only so much in bloom now.But there are still hungry insects.And insects that eat insects.The goldenrod smorgasbord.
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This Used To Be Turf
A meadow, a-roaring with crickets. Just listening was enough to be get through all the terrible noise of the day, the terrifying state of the nation, the unending human assault on the planet’s life. Get thee to a meadow these early autumnal days! Bonus here is that this hillside in Green-Wood Cemetery was reclaimed from…
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Second Magnolia
There’s a tendency in some of these exotic magnolias to bloom again in late summer. Should be a few metaphors in this, wot?
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Busy as…
“Moral anger against oppression needed to be matched by an understanding of how economic systems create and sustain that oppression” Two interesting historical takes at Little Sis (vs. Big Brother) on the importance of connecting the dots. On the military-industrial system, which of course never went away. And at SNCC, on the front line of…
Backyard and Beyond 