Beachcombing often yields glimpses into ocean life, but rarely gives you the full picture. A washed up moon snail shell fails to show you the incredible span on the snail’s body when it’s alive. A gull feather is not only a poor substitute for the whole bird, but it is often difficult or impossible to decipher the species of gull from which it came. Similarly, finding the shell of a mantis shrimp’s tail hardly does justice to the living creature,…
The bright red berries of the highbush cranberry plant growing along the pondshore near my house seemed like an appropriately festive subject for a Christmas Eve blog post. With its coarsely-toothed leaves, which loosely resemble those of a red maple, long fallen to the ground, the bright red berries of the highbush cranberry are readily visible, and add a splash of color to the otherwise tan/gray landscape. But highbush cranberries, in the genus Viburnam, are not cranberries at all; true…
Although most people just notice a sea of grasses when they look at a salt marsh, there are many other organisms that make their home in and among these plants. While many of these animals, such as fiddler crabs and snails are less commonly seen as the weather gets colder, there are others, like the ribbed mussel (Geukensia demissa) that are not as mobile; once settled, ribbed mussels are very sedentary. Ribbed mussels occur in salt marshes along the western…
Anyone who’s spent any time beachcombing in Massachusetts has likely come across a shell riddled with holes, such as the quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria) shell I found recently pictured here. These holes are evidence of the Boring Sponge, Cliona celata. It’s worth pointing out that, although many people consider sponges a lump on a rock, or in this case a lump on a shell, the name “boring” refers to its ability to make a hole in something, not its lack of…
While in Oregon last week, I was able to take a day trip south to California and visit Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, the northernmost location in a string of redwood parks stretching up California’s northern coast. Most of the park consists of an old growth forest, which had never been logged, giving the forest a primeval feel. It is unsurprising then, that one of the park’s groves contains four of the ten largest coast redwoods measured, including one called…