trees
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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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Mulberry Overhang
We don’t have many trees or bushes that have differently shaped leaves on the same plant. Sassafras (S. albidum), with its three different leaf-shapes, is one. (The roots of these used to be made into sassafras tea and sodas; a crushed leaf smells like a soda fountain root beer and is immensely refreshing.) The mulberries…
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Three Gowanus Trees
The Valley of the Shadow of the Gowanus, as I like to call it, is the lowland between the ridge of Brooklyn Heights and the Harbor Hill Moraine. The western slope of Park Slope and the eastern slope of Punkiesburg (Cobble Hill) used to drain down into the marshy Gowanus creek, thought to have been…
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American Chestnut Check
With the trees in Prospect Park fully and lushly leafed, providing blessed shade, I thought I would check in on the American chestnuts there. When last we looked, the little leaves had only just emerged. This is what they look like now, 7-8″ long. The chestnut’s species name is dentata, which makes sense when you…
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Sapling?
I’m not the only half-assed gardener in the Back Forty (inches), my little plot of backyard concrete. The wind, the birds, and the squirrels have been known to plant things as well. In a weeding mind, I over-zealously pulled this out of a pot: Oops, hello, sapling! The seed here looks like a hazelnut or…
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In the woods
Maundsley State Park, in Newburyport, Massachusetts, is a former private estate. Many of its trees, therefore, escaped the usual rounds of woodland clear-cutting that characterized most of the northeast. The towering white pines, in particular, are a marvel to look at. There were plenty of mast-worthy trees there; I mean those straight, thick-boled beasts that…
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Cedar-Apple Rust
It’s been a good spring for cedar-apple rust. Two weeks ago during the great rain, I noticed several searches for the fungus, Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae, leading to my post of last year on the subject. This year I was on Nantucket to see the fungus in its blooming glory, all over the eastern red cedars in…
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Colors of Spring
Redbud. Orange fungus. American robin blue. Grey squirrel (black variant) & magnolia. Burnt orange fungus. Black dog, having a hell of a time trying to get out of the Lullwater.
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American Chestnut
Until recently, I didn’t know that American chestnut trees, Castanea dentata, were growing in Prospect Park. Turns out some were planted in 2004. Several of these have survived, but, like the 1,400 chestnut trees killed in the park in the early 20th century, they are doomed by the chestnut blight. This fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, was…
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Clinton Street Blossoms
The magnolias are starting to bloom, and this year, perhaps under the influence of the Japanese films I’ve been watching at Film Forum, I’m finding them a bit too rich for my blood. The ripe fleshiness is more blowsy than sensual. And the ghostly white ones nod towards the terrors of the “Whiteness of the…
Backyard and Beyond 