Pinecone – Tendrils

Mercury Glass Ornament

Ten years ago, on December 9th, there was a remarkable ice storm here that entertained me for hours as I roamed with my camera. These images are just a very small look at the many pictures that I captured as I was wandering on Cloud Nine.

This first picture is a native shrub. Beautiful, particularly in winter, when it is without its leaves but, oh those wonderful scarlet berries! It is Winterberry (Ilex verticillata), a species of holly that is native to eastern North America in the US and southeastern Canada.

Ice, ice everywhere. Here it tries to drip from the yellow-green, twisted pairs of needles of a Virginia Pine tree (Pinus virginiana). Another native plant in the “neighborhood” here.

Ice dripping from the red branches of Blueberry (Vaccinium). Looking closely you can see the buds that will, in a number of months, turn into the flowers of the Blueberry bush.

My favorite find in all my strolling was what appears, to me to be a mercury glass ornament in the shape of a pinecone.

Why be normal. I adore ice storms and snow. Why be normal indeed!

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Bear Corn

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.

Hoarfrost

The cold temperatures of winter can create such works of wonder. Often so delicate they can’t be touched for fear of destruction.

Occasionally the beauty makes me forget that what I am looking at, such as these rose hips of Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora), is something that I work diligently to rid my woods of. A very aggressive invasive that has the nerve to mimic our native blackberries during their times of blooming. But frosted during the cold of winter it has its charm. AND take a look at that image again. There is an undulating line of frost that starts on the left, about 1/4 of the way down that goes to the right, from that first rose hip, on to the second and then the third as it drops and then ends. THAT is a spider web also decorated with frostiness.

The berries of Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra) with its frost rivals ANY image of a Cardinal in the snow. Glorious red with stark white. Perfection.

With the hoarfrost the needles of Virginia Pine (Pinus virginiana) each get their own personal set of needles.

The leaves of young White Oak (Quercus alba) don’t drop as most deciduous leaves do in the fall, but hang onto them until late spring. That gives them the chance to be dressed up. To be decorated by the spines of ice. The artwork of Mother Nature.