hidden

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We are always surprised when a post from the past sudden gets a lot of visits. We don't know why or from where, it's just that the visits shoot up. So we decided to repeat it. This one is from 2009 and it's just as true today. 



Camouflage works both ways.

Not only does it allow a mousy gray-brown prey animal hide on the forest floor, but it helps a motionless tree-toned predator blend into the barren canopy.

If you have ever wondered why a barred owl is colored and patterned the way it is, one picture is worth a thousand words. What first appeared to be an oddly shaped tree at Ijams Nature Center, proved to be more. Bright yellow works for a goldfinch, but an owl of the same color simply would not blend in.

The opposite is true for that poor goldfinch. He is right yellow to attract the attention of a female, but that means a Cooper's hawk can see him as well. 

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grand flora

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Somehow, you know summer is almost here when the Southern magnolia begin to bloom.

In East Tennessee, we have seven species of magnolia: cucumber, umbrella, bigleaf, Fraser, sweetbay, Southern and tuliptee, but it’s the Southern magnolia with its enormous (up to 12 inches in diameter) citronella-scented white flowers that is so associated with the Deep South and sultry, hot afternoons; it's the polished, aristocrat of Southern trees. The evergreen with large glossy leaves was often planted near the house, where with a pitcher of fresh-squeezed lemonade, it could be admired from the shade of the front porch.

In 1703, Charles Plumier described a flowering tree from the island of Martinique. Plumier gave the species, known locally as “Talauma,” the genus name Magnolia, to honor renowned French botanist Pierre Magnol from Montpellier, thus establishing the generic name for the group.

Three decades later, in his “Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands,” published between 1731 and 1743, English naturalist Mark Catesby writes about a tree he found in his travels in the New World. He called the tree Magnolia virginiana. Today the Southern magnolia that grows from coastal Virginia to Florida and across the Gulf Coast states is known as Magnolia grandiflora, or "Magnolia with the large flowers." Simply put.

Indeed, no other tree in this region has a flower so enormous and satisfyingly grand.


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poor Sam?

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The temperatures have chilled.

An early harbinger of winter is the arrival of white-throated sparrows in late October. They spend the cold weather months here in the Tennessee Valley but nest to our north. (Great Lakes and New England into southern Canada.)

Likewise, as spring nears, I begin to hear their plaintive song more often as the birds tune up, practicing the proclamations they'll need to claim territories on their breeding grounds. Longing for home, they supposedly sing "pure-sweet-Canada, Canada, Canada." In the fall, they seem to be looking for a "poor, Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody."

But who is poor Sam?

- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center


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red white oak

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Yikes. It comes down to this. Most of the fall color has come and gone. The golds and yellows of October have given way to deep crimsons, maroons and scarlets.

This white oak--note the rounded lobes--with red leaves has become the focal point of the parking lot at the nature center.

One of the most famous white oaks in the country was the old Charter Oak that grew in Hartford, Connecticut until 1856. The name “Charter” comes from the local legend that a cavity within the tree was used in late 1687 as a hiding place for the Constitution charter.





Historic Charter Oak in Connecticut.






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mantid mating

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Praying mantises are the largest insects found in the Tennessee Valley and this is their mating season. (They already know this; I'm just letting you in on their secret.)

Once mated, the females can lay as many as 400 eggs depending on the species, perhaps even more. Who has time to count things as small as mantid eggs? The hardened egg case is called an ootheca. (Great Scrabble word! Four vowels, use it sometime.)


Praying mantises are also predators. Sometime next spring, the eggs hatch and the tiny mantids begin to prey on whatever insects they can find including their brethren and sistren.


- Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center

Mantid ootheca

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the color of sky

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A fortnight ago, we had two weeks of snow and ice. A last slap of winter.

On a walk at the nature center yesterday, I found several clusters of a low-growing speedwell in bloom.

Although they appear delicate, they are blooming in the cold and damp of late winter, official "calendar" spring is a few days away. I was lightly bundled; they were not. The flowers are tiny, the size of crowder peas, easily overlooked, just little splashes of color as though dropped from Claude Monet’s brush. Middens from one of his masterworks.

Drop. Drop. Drop. A spot here, a spot there, sprinkled on beds of verdant green. It's a watery shade of blue known by some artists as the color of the "sky after a rain."

Need I say more?

Monet's painting "Impression, Sunrise" led to the term for the art movement he founded: impressionism. Note the same blue.

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social mixers

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They’re congregating again; holding their conventions. Swapping stories, gossip, smells, locations of succulent trees, who knows what?

Box elder bugs.

They gather this way winter through spring: large masses of the striking red and black insects. They’re true bugs along with cicadas, leafhoppers, spittlebugs and aphids in the order Hemiptera: from the Greek hemi (half) and pteron (wing). This refers to the forewings of many hemipterans which are hardened near the base, but membranous at the ends.

Why box elder bugs gather is something of a mystery to me. Often it's on the side of a building where there is no food. They seem to be just hanging out.

The red and black hemis feed on the softer plant tissues: leaves, flowers and new twigs of female box elder trees, shunning the male trees (another mystery to me). They also dine on other types of maples and ashes but cause little damage to the trees.

One source noted that after the gatherings, the mated pairs leave the groups to mate. The females then disperse to lay their eggs in the trees, so perhaps these clusterings are like social mixers where unattached males and females can meet and get to know each other. (Pure speculation. If there's an entomologist out there, I could use a little guidance.)

I took this photo near the Visitor Center at Ijams after a rain. It looks like a pomegranate exploded. It appears to be mostly immature nymphs (the solid red ones) in various stages of development. The few adults in the picture (there's one in the upper right hand corner) have blackish wings.

-Photo taken at Ijams Nature Center.

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fading colors

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Skewered like a loggerhead shrike's grasshopper, this sweet gum leaf is impaled on a rose's thorn.

The sweet gums are some of the few trees that are still hanging onto a few of their leaves, their colors. But that will soon change.

After Thomas Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase that, in effect, doubled the size of the United States, the new territory had to be surveyed. All of the territory east of the Mississippi River had been plotted and four meridians established. Surveyors Prospect K. Robbins and Joseph C. Brown were sent to establish the Fifth Meridian. 

At a site located in a black water swamp that was ninety-one degrees, three minutes and forty-two seconds West of Greenwich at a latitude of thirty-four degrees they established a starting point. This spot originally marked by two sweet gums is the beginning for all lands in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, the Dakotas, Nebraska, and most of Kansas, Colorado, Montana and Minnesota.

Today the location is marked by a rock in Louisiana Purchase State Park near Blackton, Arkansas.

- Photo at Ijams Nature Center.

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vivid secret

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Today, we turn to Diane Ackerman:

“A turning leaf stays partly green at first, then reveals splotches of yellow and red as the chlorophyll gradually breaks down. Dark green seems to stay longest in the veins, outlining and defining them. During the summer, chlorophyll dissolves in the heat and light, but it is also being steadily replaced. In the fall, on the other hand, no new pigment is produced, and so we notice the other colors that were always there, right in the leaf, although chlorophyll’s shocking green hid them from view. With their camouflage gone, we see these colors for the first time of the year, and marvel, but they were always there, hidden like a vivid secret beneath the hot glowing greens of summer.”

- From “The Natural History of the Senses” by Diane Ackerman

- Photo of fothergilla taken at Ijams Nature Center


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loaded

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OK. Perhaps we all should stop watching television and go outside for a walk. The news from Washington is starting to scare me.  Trouble tends to trickle down.

I’m a writer/naturalist, which means I already live pretty close to the bone. (I actually think we stewed the bone and served it with rice last week.)

You might think that during nervous times nature would become a bit more parsimonious, hunker down and produce less fruit. Nay, nature don't read the news.

Yet, one remarkable thing of note, a Carolina buckthorn at Ijams Nature Center is loaded with fruit. Also known as Indian cherry, these small fruits that will turn dark purplish-black when ripe, are highly prized by berry-eating birds, so at least the mockingbirds will eat well if even we do not.

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mockingbirds' delight

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Much to the delight of the local fruit-eating birds, another native berry producing shrub is now in full display, loaded with ripe red fruits.

This shrub has several common names: American cranberrybush, cranberry viburnum, highbush or high bush cranberry. Its berries have the look and taste of cranberries but the two plants are not related. Cranberrybush is really a tall deciduous viburnum. True cranberries grow on dwarf evergreen shrubs in acidic bogs but the comparison once made, still lingers.

Cranberry viburnum fruits are scarlet red berries, really single seed drupes that hang in festive clusters.

Native to North America, the Tennessee Valley is on the extreme southern limit of its range. You can find them growing and in full fruit along the Universal Trail at Ijams Nature Center.

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milkweed bug

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I have blogged about the milkweed bug before. They seem to always be at home on the annual milkweed colony in front of the Visitor Center at Ijams.

I have photographed them on the flower heads just before they bloomed, this one is on a ripening seed pod. My question is: Is this the same generation as before, or a new one?

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brilliance

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If you are out and about, there’s a large field of sunflowers, or as the French say "la tournesol," although the meadow loving flowers are decidedly American, growing at Forks of the River Wildlife Management Area one mile east of Ijams Nature Center in South Knoxville. If it's out of your way, it's worth the trip.

The bright yellow flowers are at their peak. They’re tall, some would say stately, meeting you eye-to-eye with their unabashed brilliance. Thousands of sunny faces. TWRA planted the field to provide food for wildlife, especially doves. The sustenance the sunflowers provide we humans is more ethereal, nourishment for the soul, not the belly.

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foundling

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Spectacular lepidopteran!

On a visit to Ijams, Johanna Neubrander from Greeneville found a female cecropia moth on the pavement near the parking lot. The moth was alive but seemed near death, perhaps exhausted.

One of the giant silk moths, the cecropia is the largest moth found in North America. Females have a wingspan of over five inches; that's as big as your outstretched hand!

The adults do not live long, days really. Their sole purpose is to mate and lay eggs. Johanna’s foundling had probably already accomplished her mission.

When walking, Johanna always looks for one unique thing to give the outing special meaning. On this day, it was the cecropia.

Seeing something this exquisitely beautiful will certainly make one's day.

Thoreau wrote, "There is elevation in every hour, as no part of the Earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from it." 

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sweet cedar

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Known as Chansha or "redwood" by the Native American Lakota, it’s pretty hard to go anywhere in the Tennessee Valley and not encounter an eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana).

In the Great Smokies, where the soil is acidic, cedars are virtually nonexistent. But here in the valley where the limestone bedrock weathers to yield sweet, alkaline soil, cedars are ubiquitous.

Cedars thrive in that limey sweetness. As the great tree chronicler Donald Culross Peattie once wrote, “No stone-walled hilltop too bleak, no abandoned field too thin of soil but that the dark and resolute figure of a Red Cedar may take its stand there, enduring, with luck, perhaps three centuries.”

Indeed. Often overlooked because they are so banal, don’t let that commonness dull your senses. They are simply grand, aromatic trees. 

At this time of the year, the female cedars develop a lovely glaucous hue from their tiny bluish "berries," a favorite food of birds such as cedar waxwings, hence their name. The fruits are not true berries but rather coniferous seed cones with unusually fleshy and merged scales, which give it a berry-like appearance.

Cedars can be found along the eastern border of Ijams Nature Center and at Mead's Quarry where the soil is crumbly sweet.

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most perfect refreshment

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"To sit in the shade on a fine day and look upon the verdant green hills is the most perfect refreshment."

- Jane Austen (1775-1817) English novelist

All of the trees in the Tennessee Valley seem to have unfurled their new leaves at the same time; the lovely fresh yellow-green of spring is everywhere you happen to look or sit.

Indeed, the most perfect refreshment for my tired winter-gray eyes, which brings to mind another woman of literature. Like the Baby Suggs character in Toni Morrison's novel Beloved, my eyes were hunger for color. The past two days, I've been drinking so much of it, I'm now drunk with color. 

Oh, the bliss.




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heft a gill for luck

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It seems that everywhere you happen to look there is something historic in bloom. Ahhh, but that’s spring.

Glechoma is a low-growing, creeping ground cover in the mint family. I took the photo at Ijams Nature Center of it growing along the Universal Trail.

Native to Europe and southwestern Asia but introduced to North America, glechoma has now become common in most regions other than the Rockies. Its regional folk names include creeping Charlie, catsfoot, field balm, run-away-robin, ground ivy, and, perhaps the most widely used and my personal favorite, "gill-over-the-ground." But again a natural historian's query: What’s a gill?

Here’s one for my friends in the UK. The term can be traced back to the Saxons. They used the plant in brewing beer as flavoring, clarification and preservative, before the introduction of hops for the same purposes; thus the brewing-related name “gill-o'-the-ground.”

A gill was an unit of measurement as indicated by the chorus from the very old drinking song, “The Barley Mow,”

“Oh the quart pot, pint pot, half a pint, gill pot, half a gill, quarter gill, nipperkin and the brown bowl. Here's good luck, good luck, to the barley mow.“

That’s just great. But what’s a nipperkin?

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Wilderness Wildlife Week

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Cabin fever?

This year, Wilderness Wildlife Week in Pigeon Forge runs from January 12 through January 19. During that time, visitors choose from more than 100 presenters sharing their knowledge of the outdoors and Smokies' culture in more than 175 seminars, lectures and workshops. (Pack your lunch, Sunday, January 13 has 33 sessions alone.)

So much is crammed into the event’s eight-day run that it’s impossible to do it all. Perhaps this is what keeps people coming back year after year.

And even though it’s in January, all of the activities are not indoors. This year’s schedule offers many guided walks and hikes.

This will be the 23rd year of the event that has no equal in the country.

Below are a list of my talks, all programs are free:

Sun. Jan 13, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m. 
Chickadee: Bringer of Truth: 20 plants and animals important to the Native Americans of the Tennessee Valley.

Mon. Jan 14, 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. 
The making of John James Audubon's monumental Birds of America 

Tues. Jan 15, 3 - 4 p.m.
Identifying Local Birds of Prey 
Is that a hawk or a falcon, a golden or bald eagle? How many species of owl can be found in the Tennessee Valley? Join me for some quick tips on how to identify the local birds of prey.

Plus, attend the talk by my friend, Paul James.

Sun. Jan 13, 5 - 6 p.m.
Explorers of the Smokies in the 1920s. H.P. Ijams, Carlos Campbell, Dutch Roth, Paul Adams, Jim Thompson, Brockway Crouch and Camp Margaret Townsed, all had a role in the early days of the national park. Want to learn more?

All four programs are at the Music Road Hotel Convention Center in Pigeon Forge.

Don't forget to stop by the Ijams table in the Exhibit Hall. For a complete list of all programs go to: WWW.

- Photo of a red-tailed hawk

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dazzling

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The American beautyberries at the nature center have been most munificent in their fruiting this fall. They are quite dazzling.

At the bases of the leaves, this fast growing shrub produces clusters of magenta berries with a metallic sheen. The berries turn black and last well into the winter, long after the leaves drop off. They are an important survival food for birds, deer and other animals, although they generally do not eat them until other food sources are depleted. 

Who knows, if times get bad, we may be eating them, although I’ve read they are not particularly agreeable to human stomachs.

The shrub is native to the Southeast: Maryland to Florida and west to Texas.

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a rich jewel

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“Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear; Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!”

For some reason, when I first downloaded this photo, that famous passage uttered by Shakespeare’s Romeo as he watched Juliet on her balcony came to mind.

A buttonbush flower looks like a globular star cluster rotating slowing out in space, a rich jewel.

Buttonbush or Cephalanthus gets its botanical name from the ancient Greek: "cephalo" meaning head and "anthus" meaning flower. Head flower? Those Greeks must have had spiky looking heads.

The species found in our part of the world is Cephalanthus occidentalis. (Occidentalis means "of or from the west" as opposed to the east where the Ethiops live.)

It’s a deciduous shrub that likes to grow in wetland habitats including swamps, floodplains, mangroves, riverbanks and moist forest understory. The shrubs are now in bloom locally at places like Ijams Nature Center and Seven Islands Wildlife Refuge.

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