With their dominance in our Cape Cod forests, it’s hard to miss the oaks unfurling their leaves and sending forth their flowers. Interestingly, what we see are the male flowers, which appear as obvious hanging catkins; the female flowers, on the other hand are much more difficult to observe with the naked eye, particularly from where we stand on the ground. However, it is much easier to overlook the spring emergence of some of our common understory trees, like sassafras…
On most of the beaches I frequent, Common Slipper Shells (Crepidula fornicata) are by far and away the most common seashell I encounter. Each shell is an oval, approximately an inch to an inch and a half long. But on some beaches, particular those along Buzzards Bay, these relatively small shells can be so numerous as to form significant mounds covering entire areas of the beach. Although usually referred to as slipper “shells”, while the animal is still alive I…
Wood anemones (Anemone quinquefolia) are low-growing delicate perennial herbaceous plants with three leaves arranged in a whorl below a solitary five-petaled white or pinkish flower. The leaves are actually divided into three parts, but with the deeply lobed lateral leaflets, it often appears as though there are five distinct leaflets. In fact, the appearance of five separate leaflets is sometimes so pronounced that when Carl Linnaeus named Anemone quinquefolia in 1753, he described the plant as having leaves with five…