Slatsz' Wildflower Walks 2012 - two: June 30, 2012 - Shaggy fleabane, Showy Milkweed

Two hours fifteen minutes walking the wildflowers. 172 images. 59 keepers [plus 49 unprocessed photos for shrub-study blog].

I made a major blood donation to the mosquitoes. The afternoon was muggy and dark, seldom a draft of moving air. There was occasional sprinkling rain.

Talk about problems with patience! I had to go right into the homeland of the mosquitoes for the photos of Iris Pseudacorus. I didn’t stay there long. I wish I had more Iris images to work with but just being there was quite unpleasant.

Mosquito bites don’t trouble me long. They are hot for an hour or so, then they are forgotten. Even so they are annoying, a distraction.

One objective for the day was a major contribution to the ‘shrub study’ blog. That was aborted with the discovery of agressive mosquitoes and with finding several new blossoming plants and with running into unexpected plant identification ambiguities.

I won’t publish the shrub study photos here.

I won’t even work them up till I can put more thought into it.

I was looking for fruit on the shrubs. I stopped at the east end of the park to photograph the unidentified shrub there. There is a good variety of shrubs nearby but they are not all the best quality. I took the best specimens I could find to photograph later.

It was immediately clear that the mosquitoes were going to be a problem. Even so, they were not the swarms I expect from these vernal ponds.

I drove around to the fireplug to check the domestic cherry, cruising the corner slowly as I always do, hoping to see the fleabane I believed to be Erigeron speciosus, showy fleabane. I have supposed the noxious weed people killed it with their poisons but I keep looking anyway. There are lots of dead plants about where I thought the showy fleabane should be.

I saw Erigeron pumilus, shaggy fleabane, quite near the curb maybe 50 feet from the corner on Euclid.

I couldn’t bring myself to take a ‘limb’ of the plant for better close-ups as there is only one plant I know of in the park. I didn’t want to damage it.

I’ve been looking for Lepidium virginicum, Virginia pepper-weed, which is also called Idaho pepper-weed. As I walked away from the fireplug toward the domestic cherry I saw seedpods on an herb I thought could be Virginia pepper-weed. The stem of the plant was nearly leafless. I see Lepidium campestre, field pepper-weed all over the park but its stem is enclosed in leaves.

It isn’t a good match for any of the Lepidium in Burke, Carr or Turner.

The domestic cherry is quite near the south edge of the south pond. I only found one cherry. I photographed it and ate it. It was nearly tasteless. I had already eaten a few service berries and golden currants.

I decided to pull a cherry photo out of the shrub-study group for you to see.

The mosquitoes by the cherry shrub were very happy to greet me. And I couldn’t escape! I saw a very interesting herb below me, even closer to the pond. I’ve tried to prove that it is Rumex sp but I can’t.

And creeping through the cherries is a ‘creeper’ … Parthenocissus sp. It’s either Virginia creeper or a thicket creeper. They are said to be identical except for the tendrils. The Virginia creeper has sticky pads and can climb a wall. The thicket creeper doesn’t have the pads and can only climb through thickets. I’ll have to check the tendrils. I think the thicket creeper is native as far west as Montana but I’m not sure of that.

[I checked what I presume to be Virginia creeper trying to climb a cedar tree, later that evening. I didn’t find adhesive pads. Maybe they are hard to see. Maybe the vine wasn’t Virginia creeper. The vine was attached to the cedar’s rough bark in a few places but I couldn’t tell for sure if it was held up by mechanical action or adhesion. I didn’t want to ‘do violence’ to it.]

I walked around the cherry thicket to see if I could find a better view of the ‘creeper’ and failed.

But I did see a Centaurea cyanus, bachelor button that seemed to me to be especially beautiful. I may have got improved detail in my image.

The seep west of South Pond is full of Vicia villosa, hairy vetch. A few showed white blossoms. Burke’s text description didn’t mention white blossoms but the photo section showed a plant with white blossoms. Carr showed no white blossoms. Turner’s text mentioned white blossoms but the photos showed no white blossoms. Common names varied with each ‘author’.

I had a belly full of mosquitoes already. I wanted to quit but I wanted to check the Asclepias speciosa, showy milkweed buds. I didn’t expect to find blossoms but there they were!

Turner says it has “ … 5 corolla lobes reflexed back …”. She says a lot more but I can’t follow it. Strange looking beast.

Before I got to them I stopped to check the area alongside the main trail that seems to have a great variety of tiny herbs, many mudflat herbs even though it’s dry.

I ignored the apparent Lotus unifoliolatus, American bird’s foot trefoil for awhile but finally decided there was something strange about it so I photographed one. When I got it into the computer I saw that it was very hairy.

I forgot to put my measuring tape in my pocket that day. [And, worse, I didn’t expect to go far on this particular search and didn’t take my water bottle. I missed it.]

Even without the measuring tape you can see from the tufts in my black towel that the trefoil plant is very small. The question is, does it look especially hairy because it is a very small plant?

Lotus micranthus is called ‘mostly glabrous’ in Burke. Glabrous means smooth, hairless. ‘Mostly glabrous’ suggests some hair.

Lotus unifoliolatus is called ‘villous-pubescent’, with minute hairs.

I think the plants I thought were L. unifoliolatus in the past were ‘mostly glabrous’, if not completely smooth. The images are not adequate. I’ll photograph them again.

I’ll try to get comparison photos to see if I can establish that there are two species, one ‘minutely’ hairy, one with [relatively] smooth leaves.

Even these open areas were not mosquito free but the attacks were reduced. I decided I had to walk the North Pond mudflat for any possible changes.

If you look at your feet walking the mudflat it is a little like looking down on city lights at night. It’s lighted mostly by Navarretia intertexta, needle-leaf Navarretia’s white blossoms but it is colored with creamy yellow Castilleja tenuis, hairy owl’s clover. I didn’t catch many hairy owl’s clover in my photo but there are a couple.

The Navarretia intertexta is still soft but it will be cactus-like soon. It will live up to its name, needle leaf.

The patience problem was serious trouble. I thought there might be petals on the Gnaphalium palustre, marsh cudweed I took but I didn’t actually see them till I got them into the computer. I have to keep trying for better images of their crown of petals.

The patience problem continued. I had started on around the pond before I remembered to check the patches of Geranium carolinianum, wild geranium for blossoms. I didn’t get good images.

I decided I had to walk through the heart of mosquito country, the dry bottom of South Pond, to see if Iris pseudacorus was in bloom. It was. I spent very little time there.

Looking at the five leaf creeper, earlier, I was fairly sure it was a creeper, not poison ivy, but now that I know there is poison ivy in the park I wanted to be sure. I wouldn’t touch it to improve my photo.

I thought I remembered the poison ivy was three leaves but I wasn’t sure.

I went into the south pond thicket to get the photo of Toxicodendron rydbergii, poison ivy leaves. I didn’t stay there long either.

I walked the southeast corner of the park searching carefully among the poisoned plants hoping to find last year’s showy fleabane, dead or alive, but saw nothing.