Saturday, April 13, 2019

Bloomlist for April 10, 2019


     This week's bloomlist for Wildflower Island is at the end of the post.
     Peterson names are used for consistency wherever possible, and comments and
     clarifications are welcome in the comments section.




The new season started today with very few blooms but a couple of really nice surprises.

There are some lovely Bloodroot blooms walking down to the Island from the parking lot – go off the stone steps to the right, a little past the area where that big Red Trillium usually sits under the rockface.


Also in The Woods, there's a ton of Lesser Celandine around the stream and Waterfall Bridge (see the names of various locations at the end of this email). Strange that on WFI, though, not a single bud in the small patch of Celandine has yet opened…maybe by the weekend.

       
Red Maple florets are on the path in many places, Woods and WFI. The Hybrid Witch-hazel “Diane" (pink) is very much in bloom, and some of the Spicebush shrubs below them on the hill are blooming yellow and smelling great. I suspect more will be open by the weekend.

Welcoming us once again to WFI this season was this matron, who apparently does not “leave the nest, eat, drink, or bathe while the eggs are incubating” (28-30 days). She’s on the left at the end of the bridge to the Island.

It is definitely catkin time, but I am not willing to try and name any of them except for the American Hazelnut, which was backlit by the setting sun this evening and magical. There seems to be more than one these Hazelnut shrubs in that spot on the Island, which I had not noticed before now. There are also some red and yellow catkins at Stonecrop Point, more lovely than the normal yellow or yellow-brown ones we usually see. (Picture, below right, taken by Rachel, Bonnie’s friend. She and Phyllis supplied all the pictures today, thankfully.)

Phyllis and I were able to catch a female bloom next to the male catkins of what I believe is a Hazelnut near the Witch-hazels in The Woods. Ours is the one below left — so difficult to get a picture of it in the wind with smartphone. It’s the first time I’ve seen those red petals (filaments). The one below right is a Beaked Hazelnut, Corylus cornutaWiki says the Beaked kind "is named from its fruit, which is a nut enclosed in a husk with a tubular extension 2–4 cm long that resembles a beak. Tiny filaments protrude from the husk and may stick into, and irritate, skin that contacts them.” Maybe that’s what we have here, in which case, we might be able to add Beaked Hazelnut to our species list for The Woods.

  

Most delightful of all were the Trailing Arbutus blooms, stretching along a very small ridge in their normal place on the Island for about two feet. So sweet. I did not see any Mottled Wild Ginger.

I found something interesting in the shrub book in the gatehouse, which I’ve left open for y'all on the counter. The female flowers of the Smooth Alder apparently extend outward or upward from the branch (see left), while those of the Speckled Alder droop downwards (right). But the two kinds of Alders grow near each other and hybridize, so this is not foolproof — only interesting.





Here’s what a beaver did to a large tree on the northern path of WFI before you get to the Bayberry.


Link in the sidebar for a reminder of the names I gave parts of the island and Woods last year to make it easier to pinpoint where something was seen.


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