Leaf Litter – Tendrils

The Night of Frogs

The title of today’s blog post brings to mind a movie that I recently watched, “Frogs” which is a 1972 horror film that was shown on Svengoolie. Like nearly all of Svengoolie’s movies, this one was certainly not scary but then, I promise you, this post will not be scary either unless you are totally creeped out by my friends, the frogs.

The weather last night lived up to predictions with lots of high winds and eventually, rain. After climbing into bed I thought I heard a, “Clack, clack!” The sound of Wood Frogs (Lithobates sylvaticus). They’re charming little frogs with a bandit like masks. Their coloring varies from brown, red, green, or gray. That seems to be something that often happens with frogs. Look for their color pattern but not necessarily their exact color. Sure enough as the wind died down a bit and the rain started, I heard that, “Clack, clack!” more and more. Frogs seem to love getting rained on. On through the night. All night long. Into the daylight hours they sang their song.

Thus the start of mating season for Wood Frogs. Males seek out vernal pools with the hope that those pools will retain their water until their tadpoles can mature, till the end of June, which explains their early mating season. Their clacking is an invitation to females to come to mate. Out from beneath the leaf litter where both males and females have spent the coldest of the winter. Soon I’ll be seeing Wood Frog egg masses in my little pond.

Ticks in Winter

Today’s post is a collaborative endeavor between my treasured buddy/granddaughter, seven year old “Cherry” Jones and myself. I had mentioned to her that my subject was going to be ticks and that I had no photographs. She immediately suggested she could do illustrations, so here they are!

We were quite surprised just a few days ago, at the end of December to find that ticks are still active. It’s been much too warm for the ticks to seek their normal refuge in leaf litter or an underground burrow where they normally stay for extended stretches until temperatures warm again. So our warmer than usual temperatures this late autumn and winter mean we are out of luck. And the ticks are happy and active.

During the warm times when ticks are hungry, hoping for hosts, they sometimes take on a tactic called questing. They select the perfect blade of grass, or leaf of a low growing bush, and grasp its edge with their third and fourth pair of legs. Waving their front legs to reach out into the air waiting for that unsuspecting mammal to come by to provide the meal they need. In the illustration above you see a blade of grass with a tick perched on it, just waiting for a hiker to come by.

Little Wood Satyr

Little Wood Satyr (Megisto cymela). Not brightly colored. Not large. But this is not a moth but it is a butterfly. Its wingspan is 1.5 to 1.875 inches. They often perch with wings wide open on the leaves of trees or in leaf litter.

Larval host plants are sundry grasses such as Kentucky Bluegrass, Orchard Grass, Centipede Grass and some sedges. As adults they feed on sap, fruit, carrion, aphid honeydew and in unusual occasions nectar. Their caterpillars overwinter in leaf litter, emerging in the spring.

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Black Walnuts

Looking up from beneath a Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) reveals a splendid, captivating pattern against the sky. Now that pattern has an added element, a change in color. Each leaflet of every compound leaf is changing little by little. Emerald to chartreuse green to chartreuse yellow and everything in between.

Black Walnuts dropping everywhere staining hands that remove the outer husks. My Mom tells us of a time when as a child, she and her sister, my Aunt Kay, helped my Grandpa remove husks from Black Walnuts. Though they thoroughly washed their hands the stain remained. The next day at school my Mom got a failing grade in penmanship because of her stained hands. I guess that teacher didn’t know of the staining qualities of Black Walnuts.

Several times a week I see these Black Walnut trees outside the yoga studio where I am a student. Absolutely nothing growing beneath them but grass. This is because of allelopathy. Allelopathy is one plant limiting the growth of another through harmful chemicals. In the Black Walnut tree the chemical is juglone, which is found in the roots, buds, leaves and nuts. Some plants will not do well with exposure to juglone, other plants it does not phase.

During the winter one is left with little in the way of clues to identify a tree. One thing I depend on is the bark. Sometimes that works. Black Walnut’s bark is gray-brown and is the color of chocolate if cut. It has somewhat deep channels with ridges that often create diamond shaped motifs across the bark.

Soon all the color changes will have taken place. Patterns against the sky will be gone. Leaves will be on the ground, as leaf litter, becoming homes for various stages of insects to overwinter. And that bark will tell me the name of the tree.

Hackberry Emperor

Hackberry Emperor (Asterocampa celtis). A butterfly that lives in a broad swath of North America. Most of the eastern United States, central Plains states, and the southwest mountains; northern Mexico.

Its larvae survives exclusively on the many species of Hackberry trees, trees in the genus Celtis.

Hackberry Emperors over winter as larvae curled up in a Hackberry leaf, which falls to the ground in autumn becoming leaf litter. A good reason not to rake up that leaf litter!

As an adult the Hackberry Emperor Butterfly eats fermenting fruit (or corn as in this picture), dung, carrion, and sips tree sap. They also wouldn’t hesitate to sip sweat from your arm to consume the salt.

Cutleaf Toothwort

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.