Flooding a Wetland

By Mary Beth Pottratz

An Eastern kingbird calls “tswee tswee” in quick, high repeated whistles at the entrance to wetland at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Just inside the fence, a sign declares, “Spring Peeper Meadow – A Wetland Restoration Experiment.”

I wonder how the wetland is faring after all the recent rains. Is it flooded? Are plants washed out? Did the frogs, birds and other wildlife survive the downpours?

Vegetation is only knee-high, making it easy to see down into the wet meadow. Cup plants are a mere foot tall. I catch the sweet scent of clover between windy puffs. A song sparrow hops along the mowed trail behind me, warbling between servings of worms and caterpillars.

Canada anemones hold their inch-wide flowers atop a stem that

Canada Anemone

sprouts right out of the middle of a round, lobed leaf. Golden alexanders bloom in bright yellow drifts at higher elevations of the basin. Other flowering plants are close behind.

Horsetail

Horsetails shade the spongy ground with their unusual “leaves” called strobili. Overall, it resembles a pine seedling. Horsetails are said to date back to prehistoric times, and certainly look the part.

Hummock sedges are forming small grassy-looking mounds. Giant bur-reeds in full bloom dot the wetland. Their zigzag flower stems sport yellow-tipped flower balls. The topmost part of the stem has smaller, green and brown balls.

Common milkweed, that most valuable of plants to the monarch

Giant Bur-reed

butterfly, is starting to set its buds. Monarchs literally don’t put their eggs all in one basket. They usually lay only one egg per milkweed plant if there are plenty of plants.

An egg is a tiny white dot, usually on the underside of the leaf, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence. When it hatches, the larva will dine on the host plant. It is the only food the larva can survive on.

Blue flag iris is in full bloom, its lavender petals with purple veins and bright yellow tongues on the falls. Slender rushes bend in the breeze, each topped with a graceful upward spray of brown flowerets.

At the opposite waterline, a pair of hooded mergansers are instructing a brood of 10 ducklings in the fine art of diving. I giggle aloud as the little heads pop down underwater, then up with a bounding splash.

Others are enjoying this wet meadow as well. A lone runner huffs by, a small family group plays along the boardwalk. Water boatmen spin crazy circles on the water’s surface, like bumper cars at the fair.

Audubon members Rob and Sue live nearby and bird often at the Arboretum. We compare notes, and I later confirm their sighting of a kingbird. We spot finches and sparrows. A mysterious yellow bird the size of a robin flashes overhead and into the treetops.

As the day heats up, so do the insects! Tiny blue butterflies flit by, and we wonder if they are Karner blues. Rob finds a ten-spotted skimmer dragonfly; I follow a blue darner. Next I’m distracted by a Red admiral butterfly. Heads turn this way and that with each bird, butterfly, moth, damsel and dragonfly crossing our view.

At this higher elevation, alkali buttercups wear five yellow petals around a green cone.  Marsh hedge-nettle spikes are topped with white tubular flowers decorated with purple veining.

Sticky-willy bedstraw sports its tiny white blossoms and bristly fruits. Rough cinquefoil is also in bloom, its bright yellow stamen showing up its five tiny petals.

At the far end of Spring Peeper Meadow, I watch a muskrat busily building its lodge. Two mallard drakes preen on shore. A second family of hooded mergansers drills its brood of ten in the fine arts of paddling and feeding.

I hear a Western chorus frog ribbit, and recall my concern for the denizens of the wetland. I need not have worried!

Mary Beth Pottratz is a Minnesota Master Naturalist Volunteer

Life and Death in the Garden

By Greg Lecker

Red and purple tulips at the entry drive make me question my calendar – is this April or the latter half of May?  How wonderful that late-blooming cultivars and staggered plantings extend springtime!  Today’s 82 ^oF weather and tomorrow’s forecast of 90^oF are rushing a season of birth and renewal that is running nearly a month ahead by some accounts.  One finds much new life throughout the Arboretum and especially within the native ecosystems of the Grace B. Dayton Woodland Wildflower Garden and Capen Prairie Garden.

Within a few easy steps from the Sensory Garden parking lot, I enter the edge of the woodland.  Directly adjacent to a sloping asphalt path and so easily accessible to eye and camera are the delightful Small Flowered Yellow Lady’s Slippers.  How appropriate that their maroon and gold blooms celebrate the school colors of the University of Minnesota.

Spring’s true ephemeral flowers have come and gone, and with them, their foliage.  A few Trillium flowers remain; their blooms faded to pink.  Woodland (Celandine) Poppies either bloom or pendulously dangle their bristly seed pods.

Small flowered yellow Lady’s Slipper

After a month’s worth of rain falling in early May, it’s been a week without meaningful rain.  So, deeper within the woodland, Arboretum staff have erected a high-powered sprinkler centered on the area of the garden’s Showy Lady Slippers, thus ensuring spectacular blooms. The buds are large but not yet showing any hint of color within the oval carriage that transports a slipper – not of glass, but a pale ruby and white.  When is the ball?  Certainly within the fortnight.

Walking through the upper woodland garden on our way to the prairie, we smell the distinctive odor of skunk – but there is no sight of Pepe Le Pew.  The umbel flower clusters of Pagoda Dogwood offer a more pleasing fragrance.

On my walk through the shade tree collection, I see a flying flash of blue dart by; then I notice the nearby bluebird house.  What a cheery fellow – the Eastern Bluebird.

Prairie Smoke Flowers and Seed Heads

In the Capen Prairie Garden, Prairie Smoke Flowers and their showy seed heads coexist.  While their flowers appear to be mere buds, it is their seed head that dazzles us with wind-tousled headdresses – pink hairy filaments glistening and dancing in the beams of the setting sun.

Pasque Flower Seed Head

A lone Pasque Flower bloom stubbornly remains.  Its neighbors have cast off their robe of petals to display a radiant seed sphere.

On my return trip through the woodland, I note that the Kentucky Coffeetree buds have erupted and their large compound leaves are unfurling.  The new foliage is washed with shades of yellow-green and orange-brown – similar to young oak leaves.  A lifelong native gardener once told me that this false color helps to camouflage the delicate new leaves from pests who are confused, expecting to see medium green foliage.  Can this be confirmed?  I wonder.  Viewing the current leaf length of six inches, I find it hard to believe that the mature leaf will span up to three feet long – that’s one giant leaf!  Looking quickly at a Kentucky Coffeetree foliage, one thinks “many, small leaves”; and one would be wrong.  Forty or more leaflets make up one pinnately (feather-like) divided leaf.

Speaking of feathers, a special sight greets me on my return trip through the woodland.  A Red-tailed Hawk rises from a fence post, a gray squirrel in its talons.  It appears to struggle somewhat to hold onto its limp but substantial parcel.  As I wend around the path for a better view, the bird disappears amidst plants and brush on the hillside.

Red-Tailed Hawk and Squirrel Remains

But for human and bird alike, good things come to those who wait.  About fifteen minutes later, with much of its prey remaining, the hawk flies from the woodland to a northern red oak branch near the Sensory Garden restrooms.  For fifteen minutes, the hawk picks at the flesh and bone, its crop bulging with its large meal.  The feathered form finishes its feast, forcing down the final furry flesh.

I’m awestruck and reflective, realizing that the carnivore that captured and consumed this meal was not a human, canine, or feline hunter, but a bird not unlike the seemingly gentle Northern Cardinals and American Robins that dwell in my backyard.  One creature’s death provides for another’s life.  It is the natural way and neither good nor bad.  And it can be witnessed amidst the cultivated beauty of the Arboretum as sure as in the wilderness.

Greg Lecker is a Minnesota Master Naturalist Volunteer

 

Leaving the Nest

“Leaving the Nest”

By Boak Wiesner

May is the time of fecundity around these parts. (Metaphorically, a “Sea of Fecundity” came to mind but it was inapt as, of course, the Mare Fecunditatis is a lava flow on the southeast part of the Moon. And hardly visible today as the Moon wanes.)

It is the time of year of nestlings and fledglings and me, as a teacher, I see this year’s crop of seniors coming soon to graduation, ready to leave the nest, try out their wings, and fly away. Have they learned the lessons that I have taught them? How is knowledge transmitted from one generation to the next? How do young birds learn how to find food, to find mates, to make nests themselves?

It may not always be from parents or teachers but sometimes from others. For me, rather like a young wolf, it was none of these but first my brother-in-law that passed the spark of nature knowledge on to me. Seeing Maidenhair Fern reminds me of him. It was the first fern I learned to identify. I can hear him now as he quizzed me: “You want your bride to have this.”

One lesson I endeavor to pass on to my own students is to use all the senses when outdoors “experiencing” nature. As luck would have it, I forgot my binoculars at school today so I was provided the opportunity to use all the senses myself as I went into the ravine and listen for whatever presented. Since it was rather breezy in the forest today, the susurrus of the wind in the trees combined with the background thrum of the evening traffic on the highway and the jets setting up for landing overhead let only the “rowdy” birds get heard. “Here I am, over here, see me!”

Red-eyed Vireos were calling as well as Goldfinches, Crows, and Great-crested Flycatchers: “Wheeeep!” A buzzy “Zzzzzzt” and oak trees around let me know Blue-gray Gnatcatchers were back. We are indebted to Roger Tory Peterson for creating human speech phrases to learn bird songs. A Harvard audiologist once tested Peterson’s hearing and declared it the most acute he had ever encountered. Really!

On the forest floor, trillium (trillia?) are just a bit past peak but still, knowing that their presence indicates that the forest is healthy, and not overrun by invasive earthworms, makes me glad.

A glance upward revealed an Indigo Bunting. As I had no binoculars, my students would’ve called me out: “How do you know that?” Hence, 1. Hardwood trees – preferred habitat; 2. A  small bird that looks from below all-over dark, which is what a dark blue bird  would look like from underneath, because as nearly all animals are light below and dark above, called countershading, this is rare; 3. A smidgen of lighter tan on the edges of the tail. Voila! An Indigo Bunting!

Mourning Cloaks have hatched out so look for many of them winging around the woods. There are way fewer butterflies to learn in a given place than birds so if you have a limited time for “nature”, go for them. A county in Minnesota usually has fewer than 40 species.  Monarchs, Viceroys, Whites, Sulphurs, Red Admirals, and Azures: use those binocs, when you remember them, of course, to identify these.

Boak Wiesner is a Minnesota Naturalist volunteer.

Natural Wonders

By Mary Beth Pottratz

Rain-fresh air carries wisps of a scent too light to identify. The deluge of water from recent storms and rains fills the ponds and bogs and overflows into low areas. Barn swallows dip and play over the water.

In the open, branches have already shaken the rain from newly

Pastel Rainbow

opened leaves. A tree frog trills from an oak nearby, and tree swallows dip and cavort overhead. People are strolling everywhere. Like me, they are probably escaping from the springtime form of cabin fever induced by a series of rainy days.

The birds, too, enjoy a rest from rain. An eastern phoebe, American goldfinch, and many red-winged blackbirds call around Green Heron Pond. Delicate new purple pine cones and tufts of soft chartreuse needles sprout from tamarack branches that were rough, bare, dry and knobby just a few short weeks ago. Only the late Kentucky coffeetree has yet to show leaves, but its topmost buds are already swollen.

Wild geraniums & Virginia Waterleaf

But in the woodland, rain still drips from plants, runs down pathways, and gurgles through the little stream, emptying into the pond below. Wild geranium, bluebells, phlox, violets, Virginia waterleaf and pink and white large-flowered trilliums glow in pastel rainbows against a sea of green in the diminished light. I wonder at the profusion of color, form, and intricate flower parts.

Nuthatches laugh from overhead branches, and cardinals whistle insistently in the forest. Fern heads coated with peach fuzz unfurl amid blooms of sweet cicely and trilliums. The umbrella-like mayapple protected its waxy white flower from the rain, and dozens of them peek out shyly.

Both the yellow lady’s slipper and its timid cousin, the small yellow

Yellow lady’s slipper

lady’s slipper, are in full bloom. Starry false Solomon’s seal, blue phlox, wild ginger, and Jack-in-the-pulpit also sport flowers. I am amazed to see golden Alexanders blossoming at the woodland edge so early in May.

Small groups of students are scattered throughout the woodland, identifying wildflowers and making notes on clipboards. The students tell me they are in conservation studies at Gustavus Adolphus College. Their instructor, naturalist and author Jim Gilbert, discusses natural history with his very engaged group. How fortunate they are to learn from one of Minnesota’s long-time phenologists!

Marsh marigolds are already done blooming, now hoisting pointy little green pod-balls atop the stems. Gone is any vestige of the ephemeral flowers like trout lilies, Dutchman’s breeches and toothwort I admired only three weeks ago; the forest has leafed out and is now shading the ground.

But spring is still unfurling. Early meadow rue, taller than my knees, is in bud, as are false Solomon’s seal and bedstraw. Showy lady’s slippers have broken ground, and most wetland and prairie plants are still just sprouting.

It’s nature’s promise of still more natural wonder to come!

Mary Beth Pottratz is a Minnesota Master Naturalist Volunteer

Earth Day 2012

By Boak Wiesner

Schedules have been on my mind of late as well as the proper “times” at which things are supposed to happen. To everything there is a season, it is said, and a time for every purpose, and the cycles in the natural world continually show this. For example, I, like many people, keep phenomological lists of “first’s” for the year. Today (April 22) I saw my first 13-lined ground squirrel. I remember the first time I saw one chow down on grasshoppers half again as big as he was; I gained a whole new respect for the multi-striped little beasts.

The record-setting and unseasonable warmth of March gave way to a much more normal April, with perhaps too few of the showers that are supposed to happen. Despite that, the normal progression of flowers in the forests and fields is in full swing. Get into the woods and look for anemone and rue anemone and dog-tooth violets of various colors. Lot of folks were out along the roads and trails today enjoying spring’s abundance of blossoms on apple, crabapple, redbud, and magnolia trees

What a fitting way to spend Earth Day. Some of the west prairie area had just been burned. (Interesting to be reflecting on the prairie at a place dedicated to trees.) Shortly after a burn, nearly 100% of the biomass is in actual living material as the nutrients that have been locked up in the dead plants are released to be absorbed freshly into new growth. It’s amazing how rapidly green shoots poke up above the black – a vivid contrast! It is such a short-lived phenomenon that I know the next time I’m back all traces of the fire will be gone.

Bur oaks, the “shock troops” of the eastern forest, have bark that can stand up to the fire. Along with the dry climate due to the rain shadow effect of the Rockies, the main abiotic factor creating the prairie is fire. Once the winter is gone, last year’s dead grasses provide ample fuel for lightning-caused fires. Once European immigrants began to suppress the prairie fires, the forest moved west and, where open oak savannah might have been found, denser copses of trees began to take hold. To reflect on the fact that all together the prairie area of North America was once that largest contiguous biome in the whole world and that it was so rapidly reduced to mere fragments of its former area makes me glad that Senator Nelson had the foresight to get Earth Day started.

Boak Wiesner is a Minnesota Naturalist volunteer.

Ephemeral Dreams

By Mary Beth Pottratz

Why is spring so alluring? Do you love the relief from winter’s icy temperatures? Maybe you savor longer days, tree buds or other signs of new life? Do you look for migratory birds or nesting and baby animals? Or the fresh spring hues after months of drab?

At the Arboretum today, bright swaths of spring bulbs paint the landscape. There are hillsides of gold daffodils with orange or yellow throats. Tall tulips are blooming in masses of white, purple, deep pink, cherries and magentas, red and yellow. Even lilacs are starting to bloom.

But I pass them all without stopping on my way to the wildflower garden. Here I find flowers that will sprout, bud, bloom and die back to the ground over a few weeks – or even days. Soon there will be no visible evidence that they were even here at all! These are spring ephemerals. These are what make spring so alluring to me.

No large masses of bright colors here! I have to pause, look down, and survey the ground every few minutes as small clumps of dainty flowers – just inches above ground – come into view.

The pasque flower buds I photographed three weeks ago are now in full bloom. These are a deep purple species, in contrast to the pale lavender that grow wild in Minnesota goat prairies and bluffs.

Prairie smoke, or purple avens, line the walk towards the Wildflower Garden. They nod from fuzzy purple stems, their tempera-pink buds barely starting to open. After its petals drop, its stems will straighten, and the styles will grow straight up in feathery plumes, looking like puffs of purplish smoke.

A white-breasted nuthatch laughs from the woodland garden, calling me on. Tall trees are beginning to bud and cast a shadow in the forest already. The ephemerals must bloom, quickly storing the sun’s energy before the forest floor is shaded by the trees.

The white flower of twinleaf is not quite fully open, its single leaf still folded at the middle. Twinleaf is similar to and often confused with bloodroot. The bloodroot here is nearly done blooming, and the two make nice companion plantings to extend the bloom time.

White Trout Lily

Trout lilies are scattered throughout the forest floor. This delightful bloom is named for its two mottled leaves resembling trout. Each lily nods downward with recurved tepals.  Six golden-yellow stamens extend down like clappers from a bell.

 

Suddenly, the prehistoric call of a Pileated woodpecker makes me jump! Its call echoes away as it flies off into the woods. Robins fill the silence with their “Pip, pip, cheerio!” calls.

There are still some scattered hepaticas and Dutchman’s breeches in bloom. Violets are everywhere in white, blue, and yellow shades. The dainty, blushing white petals of cut-leaf toothwort spray from atop its filigree leaves.

Nodding yellow petals of large-flowered bellwort contrast with its green leaves and the tans and grays of the forest floor. Nearby, groups of mayapples are just starting to set their buds, and large-flowered trilliums sport white trumpets.

Round clumps of marsh marigold hold glowing golden flowers above deep green leaves, as though shouting to the woodland, “Spring is here!”

Marsh Marigold

Virginia bluebells are bending heavy with pink buds transitioning to blue blossoms. I am surprised to find wild blue phlox already in bloom. A chipping sparrow sings its staccato notes, and then chips its sharp note at me in alarm until I move on.

It’s hard to leave the woods, knowing that in a few short weeks these flowers will be just a dream of next year’s spring.

 Mary Beth Pottratz is a Minnesota Master Naturalist Volunteer

Metamorphosis

By Boak Wiesner

Coming east into the Arboretum, a Sandhill Crane flew over my head and the topic for this entry came to mind: changes, especially metamorphosis. Being outside for any length of time these days is, for the most part, to experience major transitions: the return of the birds and butterflies back from the South, the breathtakingly rapid changes in the weather, the emergence of spring’s first flowers.

Not so very long ago, cranes were rarely seen around these parts but now can be found all over. I heard them this morning through the bedroom window! Bald Eagles, Trumpeter Swans, Osprey, Wood Ducks, beavers: all these have come back from minimal populations over the last several decades, despite more and more people moving into the area. Things do change for the better over long periods of time.

While many butterflies migrate back from the south like birds, some like the Mourning Cloak overwinter here as adults and so are ready to fly again during the first warm spell. Red Admirals, whose caterpillars can be found later on Stinging Nettles in moister areas, are all over nectaring on plum blossoms. Spring Azures and Whites flit around. It’s a good way to practice your moving binocular skills to keep them in view.

When one has occasion to think of things that are truly near-miraculous in nature, take as a prime example the metamorphosis of butterflies: An egg is laid.  A caterpillar hatches. Several sheddings occur as each instar outgrows its former skin. (Since insects are arthropods, like crayfish, their exoskeletons don’t enlarge once formed, so to get larger, caterpillars have to crack out of their old skins and expand into new ones.) Then consider pupation. Really stop and think about it: the larva’s final skin splits open and the next “skin” down underneath forms the chrysalis. Then inside of that, the pupa digests up all of its former self and, using the same biomolecules already in there, resynthesizes them into the wings, legs, proboscis, eyes, antennae – all of the parts of the adult butterfly. Imagine! Then out it pops, pumps “juice” from its big abdomen into the veins of its wings, lets them dry a bit, and flies away! And, think of it!, the great-grandchildren (at least) of last season’s Monarchs will migrate all the way back to the middle of Mexico come fall!

One of the first wildflowers to appear in the spring is the Bloodroot, named for the sticky, burning, red latex that oozes from the rhizomes when they’re cut open. The products of last year’s photosynthesis have been stored in the rhizomes so the plants, like pupae, digest the carbohydrates and use the smaller pieces to synthesize the new new leaves and flowers. Bloodroot blossoms have no nectar and hardly any smell, yet bees come to them anyway – they’re the only game in town!

As is typical for me, some Aldo Leopold comes to mind: “The months of the year, from January up to June, are a geometric progression in the abundance of distractions.” As well as natural phenology to witness and write about.