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Category: Plants

Wildflower Wednesday: Pink Lady Slipper

Wildflower Wednesday: Pink Lady Slipper

The Pink Lady Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), sometimes called the Moccasin Flower, is one of the largest native orchids in eastern North America, and is fairly common in the woodlands in Bourne. In fact, I have some growing at the wooded periphery of my yard. Each Pink Lady Slipper plant has two basal leaves with conspicuous parallel veins and a center stalk with a single hanging bulbous pink slipper-like flower. The pouch formed by the flower’s petals is actually an ingenious…

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Wildflowers: Canada Mayflower and Starflower

Wildflowers: Canada Mayflower and Starflower

There are two abundant but potentially easily overlooked wildflowers blooming in the forest right now. Both are relatively small plants with simple white flowers, but both can be found in relatively extensive patches on the forest floor if you look around. The first, and one of my personal favorite wildflowers, is the Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense).  Canada Mayflower, also known as False Lily-of-the-Valley, is a small plant between 2 and 6 inches in height.  It begins with just a single…

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Dandelion Wine

Dandelion Wine

Dandelions are a common wildflower in New England.  Although native to Europe, they have spread nearly worldwide.  Common dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) have bright yellow flowers 1 to 2 inches wide on top of hollow stalks, which extrude a milky latex-like liquid when broken.  The stalk is surrounded by a ring of basal leaves that are variously cleft and lobed.  While many home owners consider them unwelcome in their lawns, other seek them out as an early season wild edible. Due…

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Wild edible: Japanese knotweed

Wild edible: Japanese knotweed

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) is one of the most invasive weeds in the world.  Native to Asia, It was introduced to the United States in the late 1800s as an ornamental plant.  Although its delicate flowers are attractive when in bloom, they are rather too small to elicit much praise for their aesthetics today.  It was also originally touted as being useful for stabilizing eroding roadsides and creating windbreaks due to its rapid growth habit.  Japanese knotweed produces thousands of…

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Wild Edible: Beach Pea

Wild Edible: Beach Pea

Every day there are new signs of spring. In addition to the three pairs of Piping Plovers and a Killdeer (both first of year for me this year), while walking on the beach on Friday, I also noticed a number of new plants, flowering and leafing out, as well as new growth emerging from herbaceous plants.  This new growth greatly expands the options for foraging.  One such edible plant is the beach pea, which was sprouting in numerous places at…

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Red maple (Acer rubrum) flowers

Red maple (Acer rubrum) flowers

When people think of flowering trees, species with showier flowers, like cherries, magnolias, and redbuds, probably come to mind.  But there are understated flowering trees that are worth a look as well.  For example, the red maple (Acer rubrum), one of our more common trees, is currently flowering. Its name actually derives not only from the red buds and flowers the tree produces in the spring, but also from its red leaf petioles in the summer and its brilliant red…

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Oak apple gall

Oak apple gall

This time of year, with the leaves still absent, it’s hard not to notice the tan spheres attached to the ends of some oak branches.  These ball-like objects are oak apple galls, and can range in size from 1 to 2 inches in diameter (approximately golf ball sized).  A “gall” is a general term for a plant deformity caused by an insect or a fungus.  These oak apple galls are caused by gall wasps in the family Cynipidae. Female wasps…

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Swamp azalea (Rhododendron viscosum)

Swamp azalea (Rhododendron viscosum)

In recent walks through the forested wetlands surrounding the Quashnet River in Falmouth, as well as along the edges of the marsh fringing Allen’s Pond in Dartmouth, I came across a handful of shrubs tipped with large bright yellow and red buds.  Although most plants are not flowering yet, the buds of many trees and shrubs are enlarged. These particularly noticeable buds belong to the swamp azalea. The swamp azalea (Rhododendron viscosum), also called the clammy azalea, is a medium…

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Book Review: The Hidden Life of Trees

Book Review: The Hidden Life of Trees

I was given this book, The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben, as a gift from my aunt who over the years has introduced me to many of my favorite books. This one was no exception. This fascinating work turned out to be an unlikely world-wide best seller. For one thing, it was originally written in German, a language in which few people outside of Germany are…

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Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

It’s only February, but already signs of spring are emerging. The red-winged blackbirds are calling in the marsh, I saw a honeybee on Saturday pollinating the crocuses in my yard, and the skunk cabbage are flowering in forested wetland areas.  Skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) flowers, and the structures that surround them, are fairly strange looking as far as flowers go.  The outer sheath, called a spathe, is purplish with yellow-green streaks and is roughly teardrop-shaped with an opening where the…

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