trees
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Oaken Sights
Yesterday’s log was at the base of a big old oak. The near-horizontal limbs were host to mosses and algae, which in turn host tiny invertebrates. This hole, too, looks like it has potential. Higher up, still another hole has become an airborne garden. Nearby, amidst the roots, a woodchuck den.
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Buckeyes
Alas, they shrivel up and darken, losing these lovely colors and stain-like patterns, in no time. Aesculus flava, or some cultivated form of it, I gather. “Aesculus Flava”, a hip-hop name for the taking.
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Acorn Drillers
As is my wont, I pocketed a red oak acorn recently. Almost a week later I noticed this: a little wormy something was cutting it’s way out! Note the frass pile. Perhaps a Curculio nut and acorn weevil. More here. Not pictured, but this also happened with a shingle oak acorn, which has a much…
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American Chestnut
Some earlier writing about American chestnuts in Prospect Park. *** Just in from the science desk: Zebra Finches dream very much like mammals. Like us. The authors extrapolate to song birds in general. They hypothesize that such shared characteristics are a result of our shared early ancestry.
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Galls of It All
So it seems we still aren’t quite sure how galls are created. Something irritates a plant; the plant responds by creating a unique growth. The hundreds of species of tiny gall wasps are the best known gall-forcers, but other insects (aphids, mites, others) and some microbial forms do it, too. But let’s stick with the…
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Cottonwood Air
There was so much Eastern Cotton fluff, it was easy to scoop up a handful off the ground. A single mature Populus deltoides can produce an estimated 40 million seeds in a season. The seed is inside the dried fruit or achene attached to cotton-like filaments that help transport it through the air.Here’s my attempt…
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Buds
Liriodendron tulipifera. And something in the Theaceae family… *** As you know, the well of the federal judiciary is being poisoned by reactionary ideologues, shoveled in by Mitch McConnell’s corrupt control of the Senate as part of the culmination of the Federalist Society’s long effort to return control of the law to the corporations and…
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Biodiversity Day
Well, the picture of the aphid on the street oak tree leaf that feeds the ladybug was too blurry to use, but you get my drift… . We certainly merit an extra post today for biodiversity. This is the husk of the larval stage of the Winter Firefly (Pyractomena borealis). As firefly maven Sara Lewis…
Backyard and Beyond 