First Bees

 

Wednesday 3/18/2025

Gorgeous sunny day in SE Massachusetts, currently 52° on the rooftop.  Lazily venturing into the backyard this afternoon, I was surprised by dozens bees.  They cruised within a few inches of the bare and leaf-strewn ground in search, I think of nest sites.  (From one anthill-like mound the head of a busily digging bee protruded.  Much later there were other mounds.)  The calling of spring peepers – which I heard Sunday behind Christ Congregational Church – and the nesting flight of unequal cellophane bees are the earliest native sign of spring I'm aware of.  (Crocus and grape hyacinth aren't native.)

 

To be sure these were the same "unequal cellophane bee" I began noticing a few years ago, I put my insect net together and snagged one.  That iNaturalist’s leading possibility was Unequal Cellophane Bee (Colletes ineaqualis) was good enough for me.  

 

(Amateur tip: an inexpensive net that folds small enough to fit in a daypack isn't expensive.  Getting close-up photos is a lot easier if you chill a critter in the fridge for ten minutes or so.  This one flew off unharmed after her brief star turn.)

 

It's a little difficult to see the many cruising bees.

My chilled bee got back on her feet, then recovered enough to fly off after a few more seconds.

My equipment.  The inexpensive net packs small but is slow to unfold,

so you won't catch an insect if it isn't already put together.  

This busy bee will soon begin laying eggs in individually provisioned chambers

walled off with cellophane-like material produced by her body.

Attending to Grasses

Today, our first good walk in three days (the dogs and I a bit rain-shy), I made a mental note to mow the front lawn.  But first I needed to take a better look at the grasses before mowing them down.  That led to the idea to attend to grasses on our walk.  A fair number of grasses are in flower, and more have finished flowering and are setting fruit. 

 The grass above is still in flower; you can just make out the stamens dangling from diminutive flowers.

The grass below is finished flowering, and its fruit developing.

Passers-by watched a strange guy crouch on the sidewalk with a camera intent on who-knows-what, while two small dogs tugged at their leashes.  The movement of the delicate stalks with the slightest breeze made the photography challenging; and I quickly decided on plan B: pick a few stalks of whatever looked different, and add it to the growing bouquet in my shirt pocket. (The stranger with camera and dogs got stranger still.)

I lay my finds on the kitchen table, trying to eliminate repeats.  I still find it a little amazing how many different grasses my little suburban neighborhood hosts.  Even the most manicured of lawns usually has a neglected corner--a bit of wild that begins to redeem the property in my eyes.

 The entire pocket collection.  A dozen-odd species, I think.

 Close-ups.

What are their names, you might ask?  I don't know myself.  Call them Tom, Dick, Harry, Hermione...  Their being matters more than their names, after all--just as yours does.  But familiarity is difficult without a "handle"--just as it is in learning people.

So it might be time to brush-up on grass ID.  Subject for a future post, perhaps?

Spring 8

 New job is keeping me busier than usual.  Catching up on the last few days.

 Time to take a peek at some things I've been ignoring: the very cultivated, the very small, the very inconspicuous.  

Flowering dogwood (Cornus florida) is a favorite of mine, though I sometimes ignore 

the pink variety on the grounds that it is a cultivar. 

 

 

The flowers of flowering dogwood are actually small and inconspicuous--

it is the bracts (modified leaves) below the inflorescence that we first notice.

source: http://ohioplants.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Cornus-florida-floers.jpg 

 

This little red-flowered weed (whose name I"ll remember tomorrow) has halberd-shaped leaves that taste very like sour apple--very nice in a salad, I'll bet--making this fellow lucky to have a lawn so blest.

(It's Sheep- or Field-Sorrel, Rumex acetosella.)

Some small grasses, including some in my lawn, are in their glory right now.  Many people 

would be surprised to know that grasses have flowers at all, small and petal-less as they are.

Here is the first portrait of the red maple I have been following for Nature's Notebook and these pages.  

The fruit is almost ripe, having turned a rusty red different from the bright red flowers of April.

The fruit on its neighbor a short distance down the same street is still mostly green.  

Why? it may be that my maple, very near an intersection, gets more sun than the other.

Maples are supposed to be dioecious--the whole tree either male or female.  My red maple is this way--a vigorous female.  (Being all one sex is rather uncommon in the plant world, by the way, with most flowers bisexual, being both male [producing pollen] and female [producing ovules & forming seeds].)  Others are monoecious, with flowers either male or female, but both found on the same plant.  But most common are  bisexual (aka androgynous) plants and flowers.  What, then, to make of Norway maple, which has male and female AND bisexual flowers on the same tree, and even the same inflorescence?  Such plants glory in the term androgynomonoecious!

The flowers visible here are bisexual, having both pollen-producing stamens (little yellow structures 

on the ends of stalks inside the flower facing us) and a pistil (protruding from the flower's center, 

and ending in a double-curl) that contains the ovules and becomes the fruit.

Sugar maples have been revealing themselves; the ones I have been watching have at least two neighbors on the same street.  One of the two close neighbors of the tree I've been following turns out to be female: it is modestly hung with keys. 

Most of the keys are visible in upper center, marking this tree as a female.  The many holes in the leave tell us that insects are emerging. and that sugar maple leaves are tasty!

A Short Paddle in Nippenicket Pond

Bought a new plastic kayak a few days ago to replace the one I stupidly lost.  This new one is a tiny thing: under eight feet long, 20 pounds over its capacity with just me, my feet crowded into the pointy bow.  It has no place to keep gear dry.  It's a little less stable than my lost ten-footer, as well.  But its chief virtue outweighs all these vices: it is so small and light that I can toss it into  the back of my little hatchback and go paddling almost as quick as thinking about it.  (Boaters learn that smallest, easiest boats are oftenest used, and therefore oftenest enjoyed.)  I think I will name her Toy Boat.

This morning was my first chance to get it wet, in Nippenicket Pond.  Here are a few scenes from my half-hour on the pretty pond.

Just by leaning back, I can put the back end of the little kayak almost underwater.

 

A mix of spring shades.

 

Spotting these leaves floating on the pond led me to the silver maple (Acer saccharinum)

that lost them.  I hadn't known of one on the pond.  All the winged fruits ("keys") floating in the water

had one of the two wings aborted, and I wonder if that is why the tree dropped them.

 

Fern fiddleheads growing right out of the water yards from shore.  I can't identify them yet.

But I'm pretty sure they aren't specifically "aquatic" ferns.  The cabin standing alone on the point

 in the background would be a romantic getaway--if it were in good shape.  --and if it had tight bug screens.

 

I saw these colors from a little distance, and paddled over just to capture it in a photo.

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 5: Happy Easter!

Yup, I found time to check up on Spring even Easter weekend--the dogs need to walk, anyway.

Although nothing seems to be happening with the red maple flowers after a week of blooming, if you look closely you can see the tiny green "wings" just peeking out from the petals.  These will grow and mature into the winged seeds by which maples give their offspring a fighting chance at survival--carried out of the shade of the mother tree by the wind.  

Meanwhile, here is progress in some other species.  

 

Andromeda is an ornamental shrub of Japanese origin.

 

Vinca is my nemesis--but it does have pretty flowers, curse it!

 Paper birch is fairly uncommon around here; a native, but a more northern tree.

This beautiful big tree is in a suburban yard.  The dangling catkins bear flowers preparing to open.