Bloomlist July 4, 2019

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

Wow, does the Northeastern Rose (Rosa nitida) love its environment this week. These were near the birdblind, but the one on the Island, which we thought we had lost to the beavers, is also blooming on the edge of the lake. And catch another one of them just as you step onto the bridge to the Island out of the gatehouse, on the left behind the Buttonbush (which are not yet blooming).

Across from it is that Azalea-type shrub I still can't identify from last week, still blooming — see right. I think the leaves are too narrow, and maybe the stamens too short, for the Swamp Azalea, but it's more open this week (right). By the way, a slug is enjoying the tube of the bloom at 4 o'clock.

A close-up of the Swamp's rounder leaves on the GoBotany site left, which match all of the leaves on our Island's Swamps.

In that same area is one tiny little bit of Climbing Nightshade (Solanum dulcamara), which we thought the beavers had entirely obliterated.


The Island is decked out in Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata, below left), and I love Bonnie's picture of the American Bur-reed (Sparganium americanum) peeking through the other swamp greenery (below right).

 

What looks like Cleavers or Madder at no.9 is probably Fragrant Bedstraw (Galium triflorum). Apart from the smooth stems that do not cling, there are 4 white petals, whorls of 6 chubby leaves and groups of 3 blooms. According to GoBotany, the fragrance comes from the dried leaves, which smell like vanilla. Gotta try that out. 

Check a possible Bartonia (Bartonia virginica) below left, which I put at no.22, and for that strangely contorted group of what I think are Swamp Candles right next to it. I had expected these to unfold by this time, but they never did. So are they what I think they are? Have they been disturbed by something botanically hurtful, or are they a different variety of this Loosestrife? Help would be good on this one. 

 

Also check for Indian-pipe (Monotropa uniflora), which we didn't notice today but was there last week.
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Just as you enter The Woods from the upper parking lot, there's a wonderful grass, which I think is Bottlebrush (Elymus hystrix), described by GoBotany here.  Didn't have my graminoid books with me, so I'm working from what Bonnie caught in her picture.

There's some Goutweed still blooming up there next to it, though the rest of the patch that's more visible from the path has pretty much gone to seed.

Catching the early morning sun were some Spotted Touch-me-not (Impatiens capensis) by the birdblind boardwalk. In Bonnie's fabulous picture of them, you can actually see sap oozing from the points on the leaves. That's why you're supposed to rub this plant on your hands if you accidentally touch poison ivy or nettles. According to the Forest Service, this plant 

. . . has a long history of use in Native American medicine. When applied topically, sap from the stem and leaves is said to relieve itching and pain from a variety of ailments, including hives, poison ivy, stinging nettle, and other skin sores and irritations. The sap has also been shown to have anti-fungal properties and can be used to treat athlete’s foot.

Urushiol is the name of the annoying sap in poison ivy and sumac, among others.

Hello to the Fringed Loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata), which is blooming more than a week earlier than in more than 5 years, according to our notes. I think the Curled Dock has pretty much gone to seed, though I've included it in the Highlights.

A note about Hairy-rosette Panicgrass mentioned in the past couple of weeks but gone to seed by now. The plant is mostly hairy — stems and leaves —  but as shown in the picture below, grabbed from a Virginia Tech post, the top surfaces of the leaves are actually hairless.


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I'm throwing in something here that we didn't see on the Island or in The Woods today, but you might run across them around these parts. Both Quackgrass (or Couch Grass, Elymus repens) and Perennial Rye (Lolium perenne) have a single, narrow inflorescence at the top of the stem*, but note the striking positioning of the florets in relation to that stem. In the Rye, each little floret is lying in the same plane as the stem, as if you stepped on the thing and flattened it out, while in the Quackgrass, the back of the floret, which is still flat, faces the stem. The picture of the positioning is captured so well in this Eurofins webpage above right, but there are some other great close-ups at Life on an Oxfordfordshire Lawn and GoBotany.

* I should be using the term "culm" for the stem, but this blog is not meant to be too techy.

Here below are three samples from my street. The little florets of the two Rye cuttings on the left are opening flat in the same plane as the culms. The florets in the Quackgrass on the right are also opening flat, but they lie against the culm, not perpendicular to it.

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Bloomlist for June 27, 2019

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

Welcome to the Northeastern Rose (Rosa nitida) by the Birdblind in the Woods. Unfortunately we lost the one we had on WFI to beavers.

 

Patches of Swamp Candles as we've never seen in the past few years ...

It's possible that the pink shrub we couldn't figure out last week is a Japanese White Spiraea (Spiraea albiflora). It's a low shrub, and white. More about it at Gertens.

Re the Curled Dock from last week, Illinois Wildflowers says:

 ... each yellowish or reddish green flower is about 1/8" (3 mm.) long and consists of 3 inner sepals, 3 outer sepals, 3 styles, and an ovary. Perfect flowers also have 6 stamens. There are no petals ...

Each plant has perfect (bisexual) and pistillate (female) flowers; they are pollinated by the wind.

Referring to the diagram posted last week, I saw no stigmas on our plants in The Woods today, so am still not sure if our plants have gone entirely to seed or not, even though they don't in any way look as if they are wilting or on the way out.

Talking about stamina, the female Winterberries (Ilex verticillata) are gone, though the males are still blooming nicely in The Woods and on the Island.

I've put Doll's-eyes — the berry of the White Baneberry — on the list (no. 17) even though the fruits of our plant are still green. I thought people might want to see how they turn into the typical white "eyes" with black pupils over several weeks.

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There is a very strange flower in The Woods in the vicinity of the gate to the lower parking lot that looks like the Annual Fleabane (Erigeron annuus), maybe a Daisy F. (E. strigosus), but the white rays surrounding a normal size yellow center disk are extremely short - like chopped off all around with a scissors. I'm not sure if the plant is something we've never seen before, or if it's damaged or weakened in some way. If it's still there next week, we'll get a better picture of it . . .




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Bloomlist for June 20, 2019

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

Two pictures added since last night and some other updates in red ... 

A difficult day for us, as there were blooms we couldn't ID very well. I have to confess because of the rain, we did the list and the pictures at different times and have been trying to coordinate our best guesses much of the day.

I couldn't find anything in the books or online with that pink color in the plant above. Bonnie took it in The Woods looking up from the Waterfall Bridge towards the parking lot, uphill from the Privet.  I didn't see it at all in person.

Update: Danielle Begley-Miller a few hours ago pointed me in the direction of Spiraea. Both of us have come separately to the conclusion, though, that it cannot be S. japonica because those are more vibrantly pink. I'm thinking a variety of S. alba Du Roi, based on eFloras entry that says this species is sometimes "pink-tinged" in bud and that hybridizations "introduce intermediate forms that may be difficult to key." What's holding me back is the shape of the panicle, which eFlora says ranges from "narrowly conic" (this isn't) to "open, pyramidical" (maybe — will check again next week). That conical shape is seen in Lady Bird Johnson's picture on the right.

The Swamp Azaleas are in full bloom and smelling beautifully.

No.16 has not been identified because there aren't enough similarities to put it into either of the two genera that come to mind. For example, the Common and Wood Strawberries (Fragaria virginiana and  F. vesca) are hairy and have yellow centers and more pointy leaves. Blackberries have thorns.  If anyone knows what it is, please let us know and I'll update the list.




What I think is a very attractive grass can be seen at water's edge near the bench in the western flank of the island (no.24). I think it's Hairy-rosette Panicgrass (Dicanthelium acuminatum), but it might be a less hairy type of the genus, like the Small-fruited Panic Grass (D. microcarpon). I grabbed a picture of Hairy from iNaturalist (right).

Right around the bend at that point is an interesting patch of Yellow Loosestrife (Swamp Candles) (Lysimachia terrestris) unfolding. Note the circle of red dots at the base of each petal

Almost invisible in all the green is what I think is Blunt Spikerush (Eleocharis obtusa) on the left side of the Lizard's-tail swamp. They look like these at the right.

Most of the Fringed Sedges have had it, but a couple look still to be in bloom.  There are additional grasses on the Waterfall Bridge in The Woods, but I can't ID them. Pretty, though.


At the southern point of the path where the Stonecrop usually is there's a clump of individual slender grass culms spreading wide that's worth looking at for its sparseness. I think it's Poverty Oatgrass (Danthonia spicata). Again, we didn't get a picture of it, but see on the right (from the Texas database) for what it looks like. At the base are some curled up leaves from this year and last.

See below right for the scan I just made of it.

Doll's-eyes, the fruit of the White Baneberry, are worth noting, though they're not in their full-blown white-eyeball look this week.

It would be good to have some more input on the Bluets patch by the Great Rhodo, which we've been calling Large Houstonia (Houstonia purpurea) for a couple of weeks. A new patch of them came up this week which in some ways looks more like the Long-leaved Bluets (Houstonia longifolia) in Peterson, and we've run into this problem before trying to figure out whether the difference in leaf shape, size, veining is the result of not getting enough sun or hybridizing. But there do seem to be two kinds of them at that spot.


I think Teatown cleared out most of the Curled Dock, but we saw one of them in The Woods on the way to the Bird Blind. GoBotany's illustration below left (taken by Arieh Tal), is really good, but the one we saw today didn't have that rich red coloring yet. Maybe next week. There were, however, a few white bits on our plant — see close-up of Bonnie's picture below right — so I'm guessing it could be "in bloom," but I should have looked more closely because it's hard to believe those white bits are stamens.

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Bloomlist for June 14, 2019

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

Update:  We missed the Shinleaf that was blooming in the patch of Hay-scented Ferns.


A much greener day in the Woods today, with a lot of the colorful plants gone and the soon-to-be colorful ones not yet blooming. Only a few things to mention... The Goutweed just as you come into the Woods from the parking lot gave us pause. Most were in full normal bloom, but a few were not so rich. This one has both inflorescences on the same plant.

Deerberry gone, Maleberry in.

Here are the two side by side, where you can see styles peeping out of the florets of the Deerberry, and blueberry-looking florets on the Maleberry:

 

By the way, an interesting article on Maleberry poisoning in dogs here.


The only other thing I wanted to mention today is the Privet situation, one small shrub of which is by the Waterfall Bridge marked on the map. Here's a picture of it, but I didn't look closely at it today:



GoBotany lists three kinds around here. I'm assuming ours (above) is the Common Privet (Ligustrina vulgare), for which they say:

introduced as a hedge planting

strongly-scented flowers

anthers shorter than surrounding tube of white petals

leaves glossy, produced in dense ranks

considered invasive in parts of New England range

Picture from Discover Life

GoBotany's description of the Border Privet (L. obtusifolium) includes:

Foul-smelling, downy white flowers 

Anthers nearly as long as the petals (corolla tube)

Densely-branching, fine-leaved shrub

Potentially invasive

Picture from SEINet

Their description of the third type, California Privet (L. ovalifolium) includes:

Leggy shrub

Glossy green, oval, opposite leaves

Connecticut considers it potentially invasive

Picture from IPANE

I should have said "greener and whiter" day today, because apart from all the white flowers talked about above, there were a slew of others. New are the Swamp Azalea (Rhododendron viscosum), Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens), Rough Bedstraw (Galium asprellum), and Honeysuckle, but hanging on from last week are all these:  Canada Anemone, Multiflora Rose, Galax, Southern Arrowwood, Thimbleweed, Bowman's-root, a single Cream Violet, Bluets, Large Houstonia, Foxglove Beardtongue, Mountain Laurel, American Bur-reed, Shinleaf, and Ox-eye Daisy.


And then of course, some quintessential whites and their baby.

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Bloomlist for June 5–6, 2019 revised

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

[Updates in red]  I think that it's an Southern Arrowwood peeking out from the side of the gatehouse, but couldn't get close enough... [It was confirmed on Sat. that it is an Arrowwood, and PS:  I'm going to use the Peterson name for this viburnum species from now on.]

Bonnie got a few nice pics of the baby swan.

Because of traveling and the weather, the bloomlist and pictures were done on two different days. The four of us who did the bloomlist on the 6th did not see nos. 34, 39 and 40 (maybe they were hidden, or the blooms fell off in the rain), and the emerging Galax (no. 10) was perhaps not open at all on Wednesday. One of the interns who were with us today for the list spotted a very hidden Spiderwort at no. 26, which we would have missed altogether. Most of them are further along the path.

I can't tell which panorama is the most spectacular, the Stonecrop (Sedum sarmentosum):

the Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora), which stretches for forever in The Woods and smells achingly, especially on Waterfall Bridge:

or the fantastic spread of Bowman's-root (Porteranthus trifoliata) between nos. 36 and 37 on the Island.

There's a lot of confusion with the naming of our supposedly "Great" Solomon's-seal (no. 36), which we've seen many times with multiple florets rather than just pairs. The internet sources are so contradictory with themselves and with Peterson, which calls the Great one Polygonatum canaliculatum and the normal one P. biflorum. What he describes as "Great" is "taller and coarser [with] flowers usually in larger clusters (2-10) and leaves with 3 or more strong veins each side of the midrib. Usually over 4 feet."

What the USDA calls "Smooth Solomon's-seal" (P. biflorum) has the same kind of strong veins each side of the midrib (left).

Complicating the issue, Wiki says that the P. biflorum "is now regarded as including a number of other species and varieties, e.g. P. biflorum var. commutatum or P. commutatum." It also says that P. canaliculatum is just a synonym for the same P. biflorum plant.

Here's another description of the confusion, from the Missouri Botanical site:

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.

By now everyone should see the problem naming this plant with certainty ...

The Illinois Wildflowers article on "Solomon's-seal" (P. commutatum) says the "Great" version of the plant has clasping leaves. It also mentions a "Small" one (P. biflorum) with sessile, but not clasping leaves. The picture below (from the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden) shows clasping leaves.

I don't think we have the Great one, though the leaves do have 3 or more strong veins each side of the midrib. I also don't see "clasping" leaves, or the greater height.
I am comfortable with regular Solomon's-seal (P. biflorum) for no. 36.
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Here on the left is Bonnie's excellent picture of the Common Cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex).

Look at the difference between the pointed tips and leaf edges fully toothed of this species, with the leaves of the Dwarf Cinquefoil (Potentilla canadensis) below, which has more wedge-shaped leaves lacking teeth in the bottom half (picture from GoBotany):





Peterson says the Foxtail Beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis) is the most widespread of the Beardtongues in this area.

Fun fact from NY Botanical regarding the name "beard-tongue": it refers to tufts of hair that emerge from the sterile fifth stamen of certain species. You can see some hairiness in Bonnie's great close-up, but you'd have to get down on your hands and knees to look inside the corolla to see the hairs on the stamen: 

Introducing two interns doing a project on our WFI species: Sylvan and Will. When they walked with us this week, Sylvan was drawing these lovely pics —  what a nice surprise:

Artist: Sylvan Cummings

A lot of Dragonflies on the bridge to the island, so a few words about them from an Audubon article:

Dating back more than 250 million years ... were around long before the dinosaurs appeared ...
You can tell a dragon from a damsel by its wing position when perched: Dragonflies hold their wings straight out to the side, while damselflies partly spread their wings or fold them together behind them ...
federal and state agencies use the presence of certain species as indicators of clean, highly oxygenated waters ...
They need pristine, fast-flowing water ...
They fly at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour, zip forward and backward, pivot in a flash, and hover with ease. They prey on live insects in midair, snapping up small bugs with their mouths or grabbing larger ones with their legs, then perching to devour them ...
They don’t sting or bite—they’re flying around trying to eat the bugs that will bite you ...
And while the variety is great, the number of species isn’t overwhelming. There are more than 450 bird species in New York, versus 50 to 60 species of dragonflies in any one area ...

And a nice post about how they differ from the Damselfly at this entomologist's site.

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