Nigh Noon on Nippenicket

Loaded up Musketaquid (skin-on-frame kayak) and Guppy (possible name of tiny new plastic kayak) for a couple of hours on favorite nearby pond.  First time paddling in weeks.  Left shore elevenish.  No agenda.  I said, "I'll follow you."  Son said, "no, I'll follow you."  So we followed each other vaguely in the direction of the far end of the mile-long pond, making discoveries as we went.  

 

Red-winged blackbird repeating unfamiliar call 

that kept me guessinguntil I got a clear look at him.

 

Nippenicket's shoals and islands make it more interesting.

 A tiny "cove" has white waterlily (Nymphaea odorata) and pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata)

in the foreground, while royal fern (Osmunda regalis center left) peeks from the shadows ashore.

 

Stephen among the water shield (Brassenia shreberi),

easily identified by shield-shaped leaves with leaf stems in the center.

  Scattered white flowers at the surface announce the flowering of the underwater plant fanwort

(Cabomba caroliniana) with its finely-divided, dichotomously branching leaves.

Herbivores busy everywhere, but the white water lily leaves first got my attention by the uniformity of the holes, then focused it when I saw that the holes were being cut out as if with scissors!  No idea by what.

 

 Perfect weather: enough cloud to make sky interesting, 

enough wind to keep us cool without making paddling difficult.

The whole northern end of the pond is choked with water milfoil (Myriophyllum)--another alien invasive--and we passed up a closer look at a marsh to get ourselves disentangled.  

Ashore later at the Harry C. Darling Wildlife Management Area, we stretched our legs and poked around.

 Musketaquid ably bears my weight in its 12 foot length,

while 8-foot Guppy rides high with Stephen.

Pickerelweed up close.  (I tried without success to catch a visiting bumblebee in the photo.)

Alder (Alnus), with its double-toothed leaves and fruit ("cones");

below are last year's cones, long ago opened but still hanging around.

Sweetpepperbush (Clethra alnifolia)--a very common shrub of wet places--in flower.

The toothed leaves are wider toward the tips.  The dried fruit will look a bit like peppercorns. 

On the way back to the launch area, we stopped at a little islet we'd never been to. 

 View looking westward.

Purple loosestrife, an alien invasive.

Looking south toward the launch ramp a quarter-mile away.

We raced informally back to the launch.  Stephen's smaller boat's lower wetted surface (friction) and lighter weight was trumped by my boat's longer waterline (higher top speed) and stronger arms.  --not to mention that winning meant more to me (an official Old Guy) than him.  So I beat him handily.  We were back on the road before 2pm.

Eastern Hemlocks and the Threat of Woolly Adelgid

Full-grown.

Undersides of flat needles are striped.

Spring growth.

Young cones.

Mature cones.

From the spindly trees folks grow around here, and the way they crowd them and torture them into HEDGES, for all love, you'd never know that the eastern hemlock(Tsuga canadensis) is a majestic member of late-stage successional forest here in New England. 

I have been collecting locations of eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) on my neighborhood perambulations over the last month or so, and have a nice list of trees I look at regularly.  I was moved to do this less because of its iconic status--the third most prevalent tree in Vermont--than because of the danger eastern hemlock faces.  This tree is endangered by yet another of our many alien invasives: the woolly adelgid.  

Our local trees range from sad and tortured to moderately majestic.

 

 

Woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) was imported accidentally from Japan, and was first noticed in the US near Richmond, VA in the 1920s.  It is now affecting eastern hemlocks as far north as Massachusetts.  Woolly adelgid is an aphid-like "true bug" (insect order Hemiptera) that sucks the sap and starch from hemlock twigs, reducing their food stores.  This weakens the tree, allowing other insect, disease and drought stresses to overwhelm it.   

Wooly adelgid spreads short distances mainly by wind, and by birds and other animals the sticky egg sacks cling to.  Transport of infected nursery trees can spread the insects more widely.  

 

Each cottony mass tyically hides an individual and its several hundred eggs.

You will know you have this on your hemlock tree if you see the cottony egg masses on the undersides of twigs.  Affected trees will gradually lose needles, becoming more "transparent" and turning grayish.  Trees here in the north typically die four to ten years after infestation.  If allowed to expand unchecked, the woolly adelgid could doom so many of these beautiful trees that whole forest ecosystems could be irrevocably altered. 

Property owners can spray their smaller infested trees yearly with a non-toxic insecticidal soap or horticultural oil; these smother the insects.  Tree foliage insecticides will keep on killing for several years, but are more toxic.  Trees too large to spray can be treated with soil drenches or other chemicals that are absorbed and transported throughout the tree, but are not safe applied near bodies of water.  For whole forests, several insect species that feed exclusively on wooly adelgid were deployed beginning in 2002 in hopes of bringing the pest population down to manageable levels over the long term.  

A nice video pulls all this (and more) together here.

  

 

My own little darling at about ten years old is almost chest-high, and free of adelgid.

There are a dozen or so stands of eastern hemlock around my neighborhood, many consisting of several trees.  (Probably thirty or more trees of all sizes could be counted if including individuals in hedges.)  Of these, three stands have obvious signs of woolly adelgid.  There may well be more--I cannot closely examine trees in other people's yards.  My own was a tiny individual transplanted to the woods behind our house; ten or so years later it is only waist-high, but free of insects.  If landowners keep an eye on their own trees and treat them if needed, I have hopes that the spread of the insect can be slowed--at least locally. 

What can you do?  If you have any hemlocks, watch them.  If you find woolly adelgid, consult with state agencies on what treatment would be best.  If you see the insect on your neighbor's tree, let them know.  Don't move an infected tree to a new location.

Spring 7: Lotsa things jumpin

April vacation is my traditional start to the boating season, and everything else takes a backseat to the trip and its preparations.  But now I'm back, and catching up with what's been going on.  

Before it gets too much to keep track of, here's what's jumping now.

The black cherry whose leafing-out led the charge into spring
(at least for native trees I saw), is preparing to flower.  Photo May 1.

The red maple around the block had flowers with winged seeds (aka "keys") just peeking out; 

now the keys have grown to dominate, the flower petals now merely fringe at their bases.

Photos taken April 19 and 24, and May 3.

The Norway maples have leaves emerging behind the flowers from the same buds.

 

The sugar maples around the block are blooming and leafing-out at a great rate

--racing the Norway maples.  Photos April 28, May 3.

The red oak around the block from me has gone from this to this.  The flowers and leaves are 

emerging together, even though they come from separate buds.  Photos April 28, May 4.

The big paper birch around the block went from having only male flowers blooming (long hanging catkins), 

to having female (up-curved catkins) and very young leaves, which are emerging from the same buds.  Photos April 28, May 1.

Some blueberries have young leaves, and flowers preparing to bloom.  Photo May 2.

Staghorn sumac, a weak-stemmed shrub or small tree that grows abundantly at the high school, has leaves just emerging.  (It's name comes from the resemblance of the fuzzy stems to a stag's horns.)  Photos May 3.

Spring 4: Animals can "spring," too!

My free period today was at 1pm--late enough, I decided, for the weather to be warm--so I ventured out in shirtsleeves, learning too late that the temperature was in the forties.  I walked almost entirely around the school, looking for new things, catching up with old.  Wandering in a little clearing, I was startled by the sudden crashing of a large animal through the woods a dozen yards away.  The poor thing--a deer, I assume--was as taken aback by my presence as I was by its.  In its haste it knocked down a little rotten tree, bounded across a path (a barely-seen blur of brown), and then splashed clumsily through a series of little vernal ponds.  No photo, of course.  

Certainly deer do pass through parts of Brockton and may even live in the wilder parts, but I somehow never imagined seeing one at school.  Probably because I am seldom there without a few dozen kids accompanying me.  

 

This rotted old birch tree made a lot of noise when the deer knocked it over.

 

The male flower are beginning to fall from some trees; their lives are nearly over.

This image is clear enough for you to see a little of the history of this tree: 

 three seasons of growth, marked not only by changes in the color of the twig segments,

but also scars encircling the twig where it ended the summer before.

(Such a scar is clear between the buds just left of the flowers.)

 

I thought this was another alder, but the fuzzy male catkins now whisper, "willow."

 

This oak's buds have barely expanded yet.

 

The rose leaves are becoming big enough to be recognizable.

 

The velvet leaves of this common mullein (Verbascum thapsis) 

were probably already growing when there was still snow on the ground.

 

A couple of mystery plants; I'll probably be able to identify them in a few weeks.

 

I tend to ignore cultivated plants, but my wife's beloved lilacs are well along.

 

This pignut hickory is one of the trees I'm keeping a "professional" eye on

for the Nature's Notebook project of the National Phrenology Network.