Picnic crumbs

One day, two parks, two mysteries to bring home.

At Queen's Park, in New Westminster, we sat at a picnic table having lunch. A young tree provided shade, and provided the first "What's that?".


There were only a dozen or so of these flowers on the tree. Here's a closer look:


It's a "Handkerchief tree," we discovered after going through a stack of books. Otherwise known as "Dove tree" or Davidia involucrata. It's an import from China, and still relatively rare here. The flowers are in that little cluster in the centre; the white things, always one larger than the other, are bracts.

We had supper under another tree, in Central Park, Burnaby.


This is just the lower branches; I really should have backed off to get a full-scale photo. We were not able to identify the tree.

What intrigued us was this:


Little red spikes growing straight up from some of the leaves.


Leaves with too many "spikes" get all wrinkly.

Some sort of a leaf gall, possibly caused by an insect.

I forgot to turn the leaf over to check the bottom. I didn't think to bring one home. In my defense, I will say that the entire family was congregated, and the food had just arrived. First things first!
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Standing on the corner

Hanging under the eaves of a garden shed, I found this abandoned flower pot:


Moss. And segregated; tall spore cases on the "front", short, flowering stems in "back". ("Back" and "front" defined by the photo, not by the round pot.)

What is it? Two species or one? I took a couple of dozen photos. At home, I consulted my Plants of Coastal British Columbia. A simple search, this time; it's the second entry under "True Mosses". Polytrichum juniperinum, Juniper Haircap Moss.

The two distinct expressions are sexual; the short individuals are male, the tall ones female.

So here are the males:


These upside-down umbrellas are the male "flowers" (properly called antheridia). They grow on a short stem with spiky leaves right to the base of the "flower". In this photo, you can see a couple of females who have invaded the male territory, but mostly they keep to their own company. This holds true to most populations of the Polytrichidae.

The female mosses have work to do; they can't just sit there and look handsome, like the males. After a rainy day, once sperm from the males has migrated across the wet surface and fertilized the young female plants, they develop sporophytes, long stems topped with spore cases.


The community forms three levels; at the bottom, the leaves, next the tall stalks and the ripe and empty spore cases. At the top are the capsules (sporangia) containing spores.

The leaves are folded towards their centre; if you look closely at the first photo, you can see the line where the two sides meet, and at the base of the leaf, the triangular gap between. This is a defining characteristic of the Polytrichidae.

The name, Haircap, or Polytrichum (many hairs), comes from another feature; the hairs that coat the capsule from bottom to tip. Look at this photo below full-size to get a good view of them.


The spores are formed inside these capsules, and held in by a lid, or operculum, the whole covered by the calyptra, the long-haired blanket that gives us the name.

When the sporophytes are mature, the lid pops open, displaying a toothed "mouth" (peristome); the spores are shot out of this when conditions are right.


Emptied, dried-up, wrinkled capsules.

More photos can be found at Biology 321, UBC, and Terry Thormin galleries.
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Morning Paper

Meow!

(Just testing the postdate function.)
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Little Miss Muffet likes spiders!

Grandmas are made to be bossed around. Little Miss Muffet here wants me to find her a butterfly.


Done. Three cabbage whites.

"Bumblebee." Done. And a half-dozen wasps, which she calls "bumblebees".

"Snail." Done. Plenty of those.

"Where is spider?"

Zebra spider, Salticus scenicus.

Here he is! Isn't he pretty?

He was quite a jumper, and very curious. He kept turning towards me while I tried to maneuvre him into a good position for his portrait. When I brought the camera in close, watching him through the viewfinder, he disappeared all of a sudden. I thought to look at the camera itself; sure enough, he was on the extended lens.


Angled up to look at me. Those headlight eyes give these spiders excellent binocular vision (the better to jump at you, m'dear) and they can distinguish prey as far away as 30 cm. (1 ft.)

Back to work, Grandma! Snookums wants another snail!

I found her a pillbug, the kind that rolls up into a ball. When it unrolled, it frightened Miss Muffet away. Turns out spiders are ok, pillbugs are not.

Bonus, and this one wasn't scary at all: a nice, popsicle-green stink bug.

A dramatic head shot.

Then we went inside and drew pictures of butterflies, spiders, snails, and the pill bug.
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Fanning the flames

Summer weather! At long last! Yesterday was suddenly warm, bordering on too hot. (It takes me a while to acclimatize again.)

I was babysitting all day, after end-of-school-year events the night before. By the end of the day, I was too tired to blog until today.

Standing on the back porch of my son's house, I saw, on a roof a block away, this starling. He was waving his wings rapidly, as if flying against the wind, but anchored in one spot. He sang loudly all the while. I watched for a couple of minutes, not wanting to miss the show. He kept it up, though, so I went inside for my camera.

Fanning his wings a bit more slowly now. Still in full song.

A brief flight, still singing.

Back on the roof, calling, calling.

I saw no interested female. I hope he found one, though.
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Wordless ...

... but beautifully perfumed.

Sorry I can't reproduce the scent here.
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Seek ye Love, ye fairy-sprites?

Most of the vegetation in Burns Bog is small-leaved; evergreens with needles, mosses, Labrador tea, bog blueberries, and so on. But one plant breaks the rule; the skunk cabbage. The acid soil and deep shade of the bog is very much to their liking, and where the surface of the soil is wet, they settle in and fill the space with two-foot leaves.


A small patch.


Skunk cabbage flowering. We smell them before we see them; like skunks, but not so acrid. The bugs find them by the smell, too.


Here's a beetle.* An attractive little guy, wearing a brown jacket with black collar and patches.


Party time! A ripe, juicy flower spike, with plenty of food for all. The flowers themselves are tiny, either male or female, greenish-yellow, and without petals; that big yellow thing is a wrapper, or spathe. When the flowers are mature, the inviting (to insects) aroma is strongest. The flower spike in the background is not ready yet, and no bugs visit it.


And once the beetles have eaten and drunk their fill, what next? You guessed it! In this section alone, I count at least six mating couples.

Love among the skunk cabbages.

(Apologies to Lewis Carroll.)
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*It's a Rove Beetle, Staphylinidae: Omaliinae, according to Boris Buche at BugGuide. The smaller ones on the spike are a different species, not ID'd yet.
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Death and rebirth in Burns Bog

We don't get down to Burns Bog as often as I would like, even though it is just at the bottom of our hill. This is, in part, because we always tend to walk too far once we're there; it is hard to judge just how far we've come. And in part, because of the dogs. This is sensitive environment, home to many birds and animals, some endangered, and signs at the entrance ask walkers to leash their dogs. Most don't. It is discouraging to see the dogs dashing off into the undergrowth, or into the creek, muddying the water and silencing the birds. We went, this time, on a Monday, not the prime dog-walking day; we still met half a dozen large dogs, none leashed.

Still, this is a tiny corner of the bog; most of it is left to the wild species.


The Nature Reserve, where there is public access, is the part marked in yellow. Part of the rest is private farm land, part is left undisturbed.

We walk in, usually, from the south end. A straight, gravelled path leads along the creek, parallel to the railroad track; from here, raised boardwalks lead off into the trees. This time, we took the #4 entrance, missed our turn to the third entrance (exit, it would be, for us) and ended up walking to the far end, out the #1 entrance, then back along the creek. The photos here were taken somewhere between the Sapsucker Tree and the Cedar Grove. (I have never seen what they call the Bear Cave.)




Cedars, pine, skunk cabbage, ferns, assorted understory shrubs. A typical view in this section.

Laurie, off the boardwalk to look at a fungus.

The ground here is always littered with broken branches, fallen trees, dried evergreen needles. Even many standing trees are dead, or dying. This time, we found more than usual, probably because of last year's storms.


Sometimes the trees don't make it all the way down. Half-fallen, they become supports for whole systems of mosses and shrubs that take advantage of the height to reach for more sunlight.




Others, on the ground, rot into the surrounding peat, hosting mosses and transient plants as they go. A deciduous fern, a common wayside weed, and tiny seedlings share this one.


Dead branches are coated with blankets of mosses; these ones tolerate dryer conditions than the ground-dwelling mosses. In the shadier areas, they grow thick, draping and binding old dead branches, molding them into fantastic shapes, hinting at beasts and birds and alien monsters.



Other trees, without the moss covering, become board and room for insects and birds. I don't know what ate the lower portion of this dead tree. I've seen ants in trees like this; are they there to prey on the tree, or on the tree residents? I don't know.

When a large tree goes down, it often falls in one piece, ripping the roots out of the soft soil, turning them up to the air. I noticed, for the first time, how this clears a bit of land, opening up a window to the sky and making a protected nursery for tender seedlings.


New soil, at the base of a fallen tree. The bottom of the root system now becomes a garden wall.


Young skunk cabbages colonize the new space. Salmonberries take advantage of any gap in the roof that lets in sunlight. These small plants are blooming already.


This old root system has been upturned for some time now. The bare face is covered with some kind of slime or lichen, along with the moss.


And at the base are cracks in the soil, spaces where a root was wrenched out of place, but still forms a sort of roof. I have seen these used by squirrels; no telling what may be living in this one. Not the bear, though.

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Maps from Burns Bog Conservation Society.
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Does a turkey-tail count as a bird?

The birds were singing this afternoon in Burns Bog. High in the trees, we heard them. Chickadees, of course, calling, "Here, sweetie". Robins a-plenty; "Cheer up!". I heard a flicker a couple of times. The song sparrows were celebrating; so were a few red-winged blackbirds in the grasses by the creek. Something went"Chirrrrrrrr" in the underbrush; a varied thrush was shouting "Cheee!" There were chirps and tweets and rattles and trills all around us. Over the open areas, swallows sang as they ate mosquitoes. (Of which there were swarms.) At the end of the afternoon, a blue grouse boomed.

And we saw one distant song sparrow. And a robin. And Laurie saw a few goldfinches before we entered the bog. That's it.

Oh, well. We did see these:

Orange and white polypore on a dead stump.


Some kind of crust fungus, smeared and hardened on a log. This is a close look, to show the pores.


Turkey-tail.


More turkey-tails, with a colour variant.


A nicely-layered shelf fungus.


Tiny mushroom, mosses and ice-blue lichens.


And a humongous gall, bigger round than the tree plagued with it. For size comparison, that's Laurie's shoulder poking out from behind the tree.

We had gone down to the bog for a short walk; we came home three hours later. There was much to see; I'll have more photos tomorrow.
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Indian paintbrush, everlasting, and dandelion

Mothers' Day. I remember:

1953

2006

My granddaughter, 3, carefully searched out the dandelions that had already lost their little parachuting seeds, and harvested a fistful to take home to Mommy. Arranging them in a glass for her, I realized that they are beautiful, too, with their silky round stems, a neat little creamy cap on the top and a lacy fringe; how long is it since I had really looked at them?

2008

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