flowers
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Uneven Development
Forsythia blooming: the microclimate of a ESE-facing wall on Sydney Place intensifies the sun. Meanwhile, in Prospect Park:The trees bid their time.
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Brooklyn begins to bloom
On Clinton Street just now, incontrovertible spring. And in Prospect Park, several tree species are flowering. Most of these early springers make modest little flowers, emerging before leaves, which give the trees a fuzzy appearance. This Chinese, or hybrid, witch hazel, meanwhile, makes a showy, odd-ball flower. (The American witch hazels, H.virginiana are unique because…
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Jimsonweed
Know your poisons. This is Jimsonweed, Datura stramonium, also known as devil’s trumpet (from the flowers), thorn apple (from the fruit) and several other names. It’s a member of the nightshade family that happens, unlike its cousins the tomato and the eggplant, to be poisonous, deadly throughout, from root to seed. Cattle and sheep have…
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Wildflowers
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite overcanopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk roses and with eglantine. Iceland is full of desolate, hraun (lava) fields, some moss-coated, others bare as an outer planet. The southern sandurs, outwash plains, are dark deserts. But, with all…
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Poppy pollen
Another look at the California poppy now flowering out back. I became enamored of the wild versions of these north of the SF Bay several years ago. It’s the state flower out there.
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In the Back 40 Now
If you are new to this blog, the Back 40 (inches) is my small concrete backyard. From the top, left to right, we have California poppy, which came from seed; one of several ant condos, which came on their own; sunflower, self-seeded from last year; a volunteer aster of some kind, perhaps bushy; and marigold,…
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My Lady’s Slippers
In a white pine, hemlock, and oak woods in New Hampshire, we searched for lady slipper orchids, Cypripedium acaule. They had been reported there earlier in the week. We didn’t find any there, but based on a tip we found four at a nearby intersection. From the US Forest Service: “In order to survive and…
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Out at Jamaica Bay
“You must take the A train” — if you want to see the prickly pear cactus in bloom. Personally, I’d drop everything to go see it. It’s the only cactus in the region, Opuntia humifusa, and it loves the sandy Mid-Atlantic Plain, the outer lands, (of which portions of Brooklyn and Queens are included). Bumble…
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Field Trip: Tiny flowers
A chickweed, methinks. Some kind of violet? Both of these were found at the Lily Pond, in town. The ground was squishy: the water table all over the island was high. Which leads me to this: A sphagnum?
Backyard and Beyond 