ants in the plants?

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Trout lily (Erythronium americanum) is an early blooming perennial, a woodland wildflower that is on display now. It gets its odd name because the leaves are mottled and to some look like the sides of a brook trout.

But the cool thing is trout lilies grow in colonies and are examples of myrmecochory meaning that their seeds are dispersed and planted by ants, yes ants, like many of the other spring ephemerals. Needless to say, the ants do not move the seeds too far.

But why? 

The ants are only interested in the elaiosomes, the edible parts that are rich in lipids, amino acid and other nutrients. Then they toss the true seed aside underground. Win-win.

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Evangeline

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Yesterday was the March gathering of the Ijams Hiking Club. Our goal is to hike all 47 miles of trails in the Knox Urban Wilderness South Loop in 2018 to earn the Legacy Parks Foundation Patch. 

This time we decided to explore the trails on the eastern edge of the old Ross Marble Quarry, a former industrial site with homesites for the quarrymen and their families. All is slowly returning to nature since the quarry stopped operation in the late 1970s. That being said, almost everywhere you look you see signs of civilization slowly deteriorating.

This one broken figurine caught my eye. I took it as a wood nymph bidding us safe passage and in my mind named her "Evangeline," in honor of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous 1847 poem. Did the families of the quarrymen read the poem by candlelight in their small cabins? The faded figurine would have been a luxury, It is emblematic of the home life of the quarrymen at the turn of the century.

Paraphrasing Longfellow, "Listen to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest; Listen to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy."

And as a group, we were all happy. We were outside.

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what's newt with you

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If you would like to become an expert on one group of living things in our state, pick newts. Although there are over 50 known species in the world, only one species is found in Tennessee: the Eastern red-spotted newt. A trained herpetologist would point out that there are actually two subspecies that look very much identical, but for the sake of brevity, let's just focus on the principle species of the red-spotted complex.

Newts are salamanders that have an extra life stage. As juveniles, they turn bright red orange, leave their watery home and roam through the forest, hiding under logs and leaves for up to seven years. Because of their color, they are called "red efts." After their terrestrial travels, they find a pond, morph into yellowish olive green adults and begin to reproduce.

The newts in our local ponds can live up to 15 years: egg to larva to juvenile to adult. And that's a pretty long life for an amphibian.

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Mystery bug thingy

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Spring IS coming. The first mystery bug of the year has turned up. Or at least, it was a mystery to me. It knew what it was all along. Ijams Naturalist Christie figured it out for me because she is buggier than I am. 

But don't freak, even though that long snout contracts and expands, pretty creepy X-Files thing, but truth is stranger than fiction. It's the larva that grows up to be something you actually like.

A firefly or lightning bug. 

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screech-owl boxing day

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Few things look as woeful as an Eastern screech-owl caught out in the rain. And we have had a lot of rain. They need a place to roost, a hidey-hole.

March is also time for nesting. Mourning doves and Carolina wrens probably already have started. But screech-owls will be raising a family soon.

That's why yesterday afternoon, we held our last nest box building workshop of the season at Ijams Nature Center. And these over-sized boxes are designed for Eastern screech-owls, our smallest woodland owl that are even smaller when drenched with water.

Box em'. Keep your screeches high and dry.

Thank you, Anne et al.

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