potato time

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Shan yao (Dioscorea oppositifolia)

I've blogged about air potato—a.k.a. Chinese yam, a.k.a. Shan yao, a.k.a tater vine—before, when the plants were just starting to leaf out: small, heart-shaped, full of youth and vigor.

Now, the leaves are beginning to fade, and it's air potato time; tiny, little tater time.The fruits are actually called bulbils. (Don't you love that word?) I wonder if you could make small potato chips from these pea-sized spuds.

-Photo taken along Will Skelton Greenway near the Tennessee River in Knoxville

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sunny fields

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Cindy Spangler e-mailed me. She wondered: were the fields of sunflowers blooming at Forks of the River Wildlife Management Area?

And, yes indeed, they are. TWRA didn't seem to plant as many fields as they have in the past. But the one beside the Will Skelton Greenway at mile marker 2.75 is just beginning to reach full flower.

I took the above photo Wednesday after work. I also heard one white-eyed vireo and a lone common yellowthroat, but the two species still singing often and loud were indigo buntings and field sparrows. Perhaps the latter simply enjoyed the sunflowers, and was simply singing an "Ode to Joy."

And who could blame it?

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cockle bird

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It is always difficult for me to pass a common cocklebur and not think of the extinct Carolina parakeet. On the surface, the two species—one a bristle-seeded plant, the other the most colorful bird to ever fly through our skies—seem to have little in common. But the two are inexplicably linked because the spiky plant’s seeds were reportedly the birds’ favorite food. Go figure. But we all have to eat something.

Cocklebur invades farmlands and can be poisonous to livestock, including horses, cattle, and sheep. “Some domestic animals will avoid consuming the plant if other forage is present, but less discriminating animals, such as pigs, will consume the plants and then sicken and die,” reports Wiki. Poor pigs! And the seeds are the most toxic parts but the parakeets fed on them with no ill effect, yet they are the ones now extinct. But, something else did them in, not the cocklebur.

I wrote about the colorful member of the parrot family in my book Natural Histories.




- Photo of cocklebur taken along the Will Skelton Greenway at Forks of the River Wildlife Management Area.

- Painting of Carolina parakeets on cocklebur by John James Audubon.

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peakish color?

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Determining when the fall colors peak every year is a subjective, wishy-washy sort of enterprise. Peak suggests that there is an optimum moment, a summit, a climax, a crossing of a finish line with the popping of flash bulbs. It all depends on whom you talk to and where they are at the time. Last week, the Top of Ole Smoky had wintery weather, i.e. snow, while here in the valley, the season blessedly hangs on.

Early November seems a bit late to use the word peak but yesterday on a walk after work from Ijams west to Island Home Park along the Will Skelton Greenway, the colors certainly seemed peakish. The warm weather added to sense that all was golden (and tangerine and orange and crimson and maroon and lemony yellow) with the world.

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let's migrate

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“And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging its high-domed shell over the grass. His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along,” writes John Steinbeck in his 1939 novel "The Grapes of Wrath."

During October, the YWCA of Knoxville and Knox County Public Library are sponsoring “The Big Read.” Everyone is encouraged to read or reread “The Grapes of Wrath,” a work that won Steinbeck the Pulitzer Prize for literature in 1940.

In the novel, the Joads, a poor family of sharecroppers, are driven from their home by drought, economic hardship and changes in agricultural practices. The Joads are forced to sell most of their possessions, load their truck with what’s left and drive 2,000 miles from Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl to California’s lush, green central valley. Becoming migrant workers, they hope to start a new life. But, like the turtle, their journey is not easy. In fact, it's damn hard.

On Sunday, October 26 at 1 p.m., I will lead a symbolic migration along the Will Skelton Greenway to the land of opportunity, i.e. Ijams Nature Center. Along the way we’ll discuss flora and fauna both in the Tennessee Valley and the book. To make the nature walk even more memorable, period attire is suggested.

For more info or to sign up call Ijams Nature Center: 577-4717, ext. 10.

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mocha-like

Now that red buckeye’s flowering season is beginning to fade, another hummingbird favorite is starting to appear: crossvine, a native semi-evergreen, woody vine. It’s a climber generally found growing up a supportive tree.

Like most plants that use hummingbirds as pollinators, crossvine has tubular flowers that range from red to orange to tangerine in color. Also known as quartervine, the plant gets its name from its cross-shaped pith. If you cut a stem, you’ll discover it has four chambers that form an “x” pattern.

Crossvine flowers are noted for their curious fragrance, most often described as “mocha-like.” Growing up in Gatlinburg, I knew the smell was unique and would often give the flowers a hardy sniff, but since I had never heard of mocha, I had no point of reference. I couldn't compare it anything in this world. I'm still not even convinced that "mocha-like" is an accurate enough descriptor.

If you find some blooming along your favorite walking path, make sure to give it a sniff. Yesterday, I found this clump growing along the Will Skelton Greenway west of Ijams Nature Center.