This week’s bloomlist for Wildflower Island is at the end of the post, and Bonnie’s pictures from
about the same time in late May 2018 can be found HERE and in early June 2018 HERE.
Peterson names are used for consistency wherever possible, and comments and clarifications
are welcome in the comments section. Slightly revised towards the end...
The Pinxter Azaleas Rhododendron periclymenoides still blooming, but you have to look hard for the few clusters of Flame Azalea R. calendulaceum and Cumberland Azalea R. cumberlandense that were given a reprieve by the beavers.
I’m waiting for the deliciously rich smelling Swamp Azaleas R. viscosum, but have no problem settling for the sweeter Multiflora Rose Rosa multiflora.
So much work has been done in The Woods that’s it’s worth taking a moment to report on what’s going on and consider some names. Here’s the Woods habitat map Danielle Begley-Miller sent me in May of this year:
I was sent something similar years ago when I started bloomlisting The Woods, and the sketch I posted in August 2018 (below) was based on that aerial view. The unfamiliar names like “Spruce Oval” are my own creations and, as far as I know, used by no one else, but I thought I’d need them for this blog:
I recently wrote Teatown again for the names they’ve been using for the new wetlands work, and Rebecca Policello sent me a delightful revision of my sketch:
She added:
We don’t have any official names that I know of, but I use the same general names as the landscape architect who assisted us with the restoration. The blue area: wetland pools, purple: open marsh, yellow: basin, red: swale. I don’t have a specific name for what you call Witch Hazel Hill, and general refer to it as “the hillside”.
Here’s what I’ve gleaned from discussions with Teatown staff and volunteers. The drainage from upper parking log is going down now into the new pool (yellow), where sediment is collected. It then flows down through what they’re calling the swale (red) under the new Birdblind boardwalk and into the lake through a trench. The swale and the wetlands areas either side of it (purple) were created essentially for education, and as such, many new flora have been planted there. Some of the water will drain out throught the trench (red), and some of it in the purple section closest to the lower parking lot is just expected to evaporate. At some point the dam will be fixed and the part of the lake between Birdblind and the Gatehouse will be dredged.
I have second thoughts about the name I gave the hillside back in 2018 — “Witch-hazel Hill — because the whole section of the Woods going up to the rocky ridge is so lush with vegetation that the newly planted, once prominent Witch-hazel trees have more or less disappeared into the general greenery.
It’s strikingly different from other grasses, with it’s pudgy florets. The individuals I saw didn’t have much in the way of awns (bristles), which can be very long or not there at all. Illinois Wildflowers says:
Occasionally, Wheat escapes from cultivation and self-sows. However, such escaped plants do not persist in the environment for very long. . . Wheat thrives in highly disturbed areas with exposed topsoil.Also in The Woods are some sedges, which with trepidation I’m thinking are from the left in the picture below: Eastern Narrow-leafed Carex amphibola, Rosy Carex rosea, and Oval-headed Carex cephalophora
You can of course get better shots of these in Google searches, but these are ours.
There's some talk each year on what's a Solomon's-seal and what's a Great Solomon's-seal. I used to think the difference was hanging double florets for the latter, and anything more than two for the latter. But it's more complicated than that, as described in the Missouri Botanical Garden's website:
Both a smooth small Solomon's seal (to 3' tall) and a great Solomon's seal (to 7' tall) are native to eastern North America. There is unanimous agreement that the smooth small Solomon's seal is P. biflorum. There is considerable controversy, however, as to what to call great Solomon's seal. Current trends seem to be to include great Solomon's seal as a variety of P. biflorum, namely, as P. biflorum var. commutatum. However, the small and great Solomon's seals do differ considerably (e.g., plant size, flower/fruit size, leaf vein arrangement and number of flowers per axillary cluster) so that a number of authorities have assigned great Solomon's seal separate species status, to wit, as P. commutatum, P. canaliculatum or P. giganteum, all of which are varyingly considered to be synonymous with P. biflorum var. commutatum.
I've seen those gigantic ones in a botanical garden, they're amazing. So I think what we have in so many places on the Island and in The Woods is just plain Solomon's-seal, whether it has two or a few hanging florets hanging from under the leaves. Here's a picture of one of them Bonnie took a while back:
We met Charlie Roberto yesterday who told us there was a cowbird’s egg in the phoebe’s nest. He suggested that if you come across something like this not to remove it altogether, but blow out the contents and and replace the shell, so mom doesn’t know what you’ve done. One website says that laying eggs in the nests of other birds is called “brood parasitism,” and that the brown-headed cowbird is the "North American champion" of this practice. Charlie also said the Baltimore orioles are around and that we should keep an ear out for them.
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