Crow's Path and brief break

Beaven celebrating spring with a melodica

What: This week is super hectic for me, and then I'm leading an 8-day trip based on the adventures of John Muir (we're hiking to the highest point in Vermont, then paddling the Winooski River to the lowest elevation). As the semester ends and I wrap up other programs, I'll be taking a little bit of a break from posting.

Poison ivy, yet again

What: The above is an amalgamation of 23 photos I took of poison ivy leaves last fall (the three leaves are actually leaflets and collectively form a single leaf). I then put the transparency of each image at 1/23 to get the final result. I got the idea from visual artist Jason Salavon.

Last year in my post I wrote about eating the young leaflets as they got bigger and bigger. This April I got a little rash on my wrist (same spot as 2 years ago) and so I decided to try the treatment again. I started as the leaves were first bursting open 2 weeks ago. Each day for a week I ate a tiny leaflet (progressively bigger, starting with a piece about half the size of my pinky nail). I then moved to about once every other day. Plants are less potent when they're young (why you harvest medicinals later on in their life cycles when they can put more energy into their chemical defenses). So as I developed a defense to the urutiol by ingesting the plant, the dosage was getting more and more concentrated as the leaves get older. It's probably too late to start this year if you're interested in this treatment, but maybe next year. And some people have much much worse reactions than I do so I would strongly suggest doing lots of your own research on folk remedies and this type of tolerance-development before trying on your own. You run a risk of having a severe systemic reaction.

Commas and cloaks

Adult Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma)

What: It's been a busy couple of weeks wrapping up my semester at CCV and starting to wrap up at Crow's Path for the Spring. Today I did find a cormorant skull, that I'll post photos of in a few days. In the meantime, enjoy these photos of an eastern comma and a mourning cloak. They're among our first butterflies to emerge in the spring. Now with the prolonged warm weather and appearance of more and more flowers (how about all that celandine along the bike path, marigold along mucky drainages, and gorgeous and subtle green flowers of striped maple?) there are many more adult butterflies and moths appearing.

Overwintered adult mourning cloak (Nymphalis antiopa)

Ecological notes: While out in Centennial Woods a couple of weeks ago I was watching a couple dozen or so mourning cloaks flitting around. Occasionally they'd come into another's territory and they'd spiral whimsically up into the sky together. It was elegant and graceful and then the awkward comma would get all huffy and jump into the mix. At first it seemed confused, like it didn't know that the mourning cloaks weren't possible mates. But then it seemed more like it was getting angry that the mourning cloaks were in its breeding area and was just trying to chase them away. The tiny drama was endearing in that condescending, anthropomorphic kind of way.

Both species breed in the spring, and this is the only time of year this territorial behavior is observed. Apparently my theory of defending breeding areas has largely been dispelled in recent years according to a local entomologist, but it seemed the easiest and most obvious explanation. More appealing than, "the commas get confused and can't tell the mourning cloaks from a female comma").

Where: Centennial Woods

Bud scales & the most adorable leaf ever

What: The forest is mostly green now that all the buds have opened or are opening. While out in Centennial Woods the other day I was collecting leaves of all different sizes from Norway maple (Acer platanoides). Like other maples, the scales on Norway maple buds open and form these elongate leaves that subtend the normal leaves (seen as the plus sign in the photo below). Buds are made out of modified leaves and these are deciduous once the normal leaves (there's probably a technical name for these) are more fully developed.

Something must have gotten messed up somewhere along the way on one of the branches I was looking at. It appeared that the bud scale decided that it was going to get back to its roots and form a leaf. In the photo above, the mini leaf was actually attached to the tip of the bud scale leaf.

Poppies

Cut stem of bloodroot oozing red sap

What: With all the bloodroot coming up in our woods, I got curious what other poppies we have here in Vermont. And it doesn't look like much. Magee and Ahles's Flora of the Northeast, which is a complete record of all vascular plants in NE and NY, lists 6 genera and 9 species. Only two of these are found in Vermont, bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) and celandine poppy (Chelidonium majus). I posted about bloodroot last week. Celandine is an extremely abundant plant, at least in Burlington, growing in sandier, but moist waste places. It has beautiful yellow flowers and super furry stems/undersides of leaves. I've used the sap as a dye and got a yellowish-orange color.

Bloodroot rhizome cut in half to show showing "blood" beading up on surface

Ecological notes: I was mostly curious because things in the poppy family exude a milky sap that has a yellow/orange/red hue to it. The sap of poppies (family Papaveraceae) contains isoquinoline alkaloids, which are narcotics. These compounds are largely toxic to animals and have a fowl smell. Morphine comes from opium poppy (Papaver somnifera). I'm not sure exactly why the sap is pigmented, but it may serve as a visual warning to would-be-predators not to eat the plant, as any broken part of the plant will readily ooze the brightly colored sap.

Celandine leaf stem broken to show yellow sap