Brenda is a certified Virginia Master Naturalist, a Habitat Defender for Shenandoah National Park, and a devoted fan of Mother Nature. She lives in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Shenandoah National Park, and hikes up to the higher elevations of her mountain often to see what nature is up to. Her constant hiking companion is a camera that captures nature as it unfolds through the seasons. It’s her goal to share the natural world around her through her photographs.
Many of you know that I love winter, my totally, over the top, favorite season. But I also delight in the seasons changing. If the seasons stayed the same, day after day after day after day I wouldn’t be content. I think the world of CHANGE.
Sometimes even Mother Nature just doesn’t want to let go. To let the seasons do their things. And she brings us surprises. These images are from April 15, 2020. I think this was one of those times when she felt, if nothing else, mischievous.
For the winter lover in me, I’m certainly at an advantage being at a slightly higher elevation than those in the lowlands of Virginia. Mountains have their benefits. That elevation helps create snow, when otherwise there might not be any. For sure it was the case on this day.
Blooms of Redbud (Cercis canadensis), and Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida), and new unfurling fronds of Christmas Fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) all got dumped on with a fair amount of wet snow. But they are native plants and can take what is dished out.
A few hours of sunshine and things were back to normal. And we all were quite content.
One week later, another native plant, Dwarf Crested Iris (Iris cristata), was up and blooming as if it was a perfectly normal spring.
At my cabin there are so many blueberry bushes. So many, if I had to guess, that guess would be maybe twelve mature bushes. Maybe.
By the Fourth of July every year my freezer is filled with quart sized bags of berries to provide muffins, pies, pancakes, toppings for ice cream, scones and more pies. To last throughout the entire year.
Cedar Waxwings with such panache. They love to come by to help harvest the berries.
And I sure don’t mind having them here. I wonder how they know that I’ve got blueberries growing here. Does word get around? Can they SMELL them? Do they just pick up blueberry vibes?
Whatever magic they may use to find these berries, I sure am glad I get to see them as they wolf the berries down. And here, a perfect picture of panache.
Perhaps you’ve seen this photo in the past. It’s one of my favorite images of the many many that I’ve taken. Surely I’ve used it before. These Cedar Waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) are performing a mating ritual in which the pair pass a treasure (in this case a sumac berry) back and forth. No telling which is the male and which is the female in this image since their markings and plumage are the same.
A pair of Cedar Waxwings are monogamous during each breeding season and both parents participate in nest construction and rearing activities. Incubation of the two to six eggs takes two weeks.
Born blind and helpless the nestlings grow quickly and learn to fly in another two weeks. The bird above is a juvenile who has yet to grow adult plumage. Juveniles do have the yellow tail tip, although not the red wing tips, yet.
The bird in the center of the photo above has an orange tail tip. That orange coloring is due to the diet of the bird. In the late 1800s the bush, Morrow’s Honeysuckle (Lonicera morrowii), was unfortunately brought to this continent. I say unfortunately because it is an invasive. The berries of this bush contain a red pigment. If enough of these berries are eaten by a Cedar Waxwing during feather formation the tail tips will be orange rather than the usual yellow because of that red pigment. This unusual coloring began to be noticed in northeastern U.S. and southeastern Canada in the 1960’s. Unusual but no other consequences as far as is known.
These elegant birds are irruptive and gypsies wandering from fruit supply to fruit supply throughout the year. They’ll also eat insects when they’re available. They love the sound of running water and enjoy small streams, or bird baths that have drippers or as in the case above, a puddle in the middle of a lane.
They travel in bands and normally when I see them they’re with their friends the American Robin. And in case you are trying to get your terminology just right, a group of Cedar Waxwings is called an “ear-full” or a “museum” of Cedar Waxwings.
Such a sophisticated fashion statement the Cedar Waxwing makes. And what of those red wing tips? They are a waxy secretion called astaxanthin – a carotenoid pigment. Don’t worry, there won’t be a test on this. As the years go by the number and size of the tips get larger. It is believed that these appendages are used as status symbols in mate selection.
I was surprised last spring to see several Cedar Waxwings eating petals off the apple blossoms in my tree. Now I know, they eat berries and fruit, insects AND flower petals. Who would have thought?
A spring ephemeral, a perennial native to eastern North America. Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata).
The “toothwort” of its name is thanks to the appearance of its rhizome.
The Cutleaf Toothwort likes woods with mesic soils covered with lots of leaf litter. This certainly must be the description of the woods where I live. Many of these plants greet the spring each year up here, including a few spots where colonies have formed.
Buds protected by four pale green sepals open to reveal four barely pale pink petals. At the center of each flower is a style with a sphere topped stigma which are surrounded by stamens with green filaments of varying lengths topped by yellow anthers.
Many different pollinators visit these blooms. Fruit of the Toothwort is a slender pod about an inch long containing a single row of tiny seeds.
When the invasive, Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata), starts growing in the area of a population of Cutleaf Toothwort its numbers soon decline. A good reason to fight those invasives.
It’s the middle of March and the first of my daffodils are up and blooming. Looking so lovely as they trumpet the arrival of spring. Don’t get too confident though you golden beauties. Mother Nature has a way of bringing surprises. Surprises like SNOW, even in the middle of APRIL!
There are so many awesome treasures to be found in the woods. One of those treasures that is right up there near the top of my list is Bear Corn (Conopholis americana). It’s a native to eastern North America.
This is a plant that doesn’t have a speck of the color green because Bear Corn has no chlorophyll. Normally plants use chlorophyll and light to make food. But this plant isn’t able to perform photosynthesis. It’s a parasite on the roots of oak trees and perhaps beech trees as well.
These pinecone looking arrangements are the flowering structures that are sent up after four years of taking in nourishment from the oak or beech roots.
Four years underground taking in sustenance. The flowers emerge in the spring and bloom in a similar manner to other flowers.
Bear Corn is pollinated by flies and bees and is also capable of self pollination. After pollination the blooms are replaced by fruit containing seeds.
In the Shenandoah and Smoky Mountains Bear Corn represents a surprising percentage of the diet of bears, ten to fifteen percent. Deer, raccoon and coyote also eat these plants.
By autumn the fruit which has not been eaten will wither and drop, leaving the seeds to return to the soil to again seek out the oak or beech roots. This Bear Corn plant will continue sending up flowers each year for as many as six years.
Along the trails here in the Blue Ridge, come April there will be green leaves peeking up through the earth.
Take your time as you hike. There’s so much out there to see. Like patches of Wild Ginger(Asarum canadense).
Each plant sends up two heart shaped leaves that split at the soil’s surface. At the axis of those leaves the plant’s single flower appears and reclines on the forest floor. You’ve got to really look for the flower to see it. It’s under the leaves.
These blooms are maroon and the aroma is more like spoiled meat than a blossom ought to be. The pollinators these flowers attract are flies that get the job done.
I’m looking forward to finding these flowers, and after their bloom, finding their seed capsules. My camera needs to capture an image of the seed capsule of a Wild Ginger.
I’ve written about Wood Poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) before but I enjoy the native flower with its happy yellow so much I’d like to tell you more about it.
The deeply lobed green-blue leaves of Wood Poppy are poking up from the surface of the soil here in the Blue Ridge now, as the month of March approaches its midpoint.
By the beginning of April, I expect I’ll be seeing some woolly buds ready to reveal their four golden petals.
As the flower opens the two pale green sepals that protect the bud soon fall away.
The flowers of Wood Poppy provide pollen but not nectar to their visitors. Those flowers have many stamens that are topped with rich yellow anthers surrounding a pistil, style and stigma.
After insect or self pollination a seed capsule is formed which eventually hangs below the leaves.
Many seeds are released from the capsule. Seeds which are distributed in a process called mymecocory, or in simpler terms, seed dispersal by ants. These seeds have nutrient rich appendages called elaisomes. Ants collect the seeds so that their larvae can be fed the elaisomes and the remains of the seeds are tossed away in the ant colony’s “trash room.”
That trash room in an underground ant colony is the perfect place to start growing seeds. Of course the ants aren’t aware of it, but they are perfect little ant farmers. Starting a new cycle of Wood Poppies.
This native perennial is found in southeastern Canada, eastern North America (as well as New Mexico and Colorado) and eastern Mexico. Wood Betony (Pedicularis canadensis).
The first time I ever saw this plant was along a trail here in the Blue Ridge. As is often the case, I took a picture of the flower, went home and found out what it was by paging through my wildflower books.
Wood Betony is an interesting plant, aside from looking like a collection of cute little turkey heads, it is a hemiparasite, meaning it is partly dependent upon other plants as a source of water and nutrients. If there are no plants available around it, it will get by using its own resources to obtain water and nutrients. Exactly which plants Wood Betony parasitizes is not known for sure but it is thought to be native trees such as oaks and native grasses.
Bumblebees are a major pollinator of Wood Betony. And after the flowers fade, seed capsules grow in their place. Seed capsules that burst open explosively to scatter the seeds across the nearby landscape.
Since my first sighting of Wood Betony I have found a nursery that propagates its own Wood Betony. And now I’ve added a few plants to my garden. I’m looking forward to seeing them in bloom again come the middle of April.
