Archive for Wild Non-Flowering Plants

Weathering August

August 31, 2021 at 1:08 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflowers: Orange ·Tagged , , , ,

Sign of a Soggy Season: Ringless honey mushroom, Armillaria tabescens
(NYC 08 2021)

Sunny or cloudy, dry or damp: extremes of one or the other usually mark the last weeks of the summer season. The key variable is whether or not the given hurricane season is an active one, or not.

The passing presence of Henri and now Ida has brought an impressive amount of water to the New York region this August. The flora blooming most vigorously in response have been those types that drink it up.

One variety seen in abundance now is not a flowering in the specific sense at all, but a fruiting. The fungi known as the ringless honey mushroom, Armillaria tabescens, appears in large clusters wherever lawn and wood meet. The base of trees is one such spot.

Ringless honey mushroom is often found on or near wood.
(NYC 08 31 2021)

A species of true wildflower that thrives in the wet weather of August is the orange jewelweed, Impatiens capensis. A plant of stream sides and pond borders; it’s bright, speckled blooms, each suspended on a fine succulent stem, resemble a trumpet.

Jewelweed in full bloom.
(NYC 08 31 2021)

This flower is a touch-me-not. Agile bumblebees and hummingbirds love its nectar, but in rougher hands, like those of a human, even a light brush will cause the plant’s seed pods to burst, a type of dispersal known as explosive dehiscence.

Orange jewelwood reveals exquisite coloration.
(NYC 08 2021)

August days may be muggy, but such interesting plants are worth some outdoor time spent on a wildflower walk.

— rPs 08 31 2021

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Bed Time

November 30, 2019 at 10:58 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflowers: Green ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Bed Time . . .

Underfoot: colors as savory as those on a Thanksgiving table.
(NYC 11 2019)

The still damp days of October are long gone, as are the bright autumn leaves illuminating the trees. The deep freeze and stiff winds of November have brought down the golden crowns and where rake or leaf blower hasn’t reached there lies a bed of brown oak and others where a few hardy perennial remnants remain nestled in bloom.

One is the bright green of onion grass:

Genus Allium
(11 29 2019)

Another is the rich brown of the boletus mushroom:

Genus Boletus
(11 29 2019)

The overall palette resembles the colors on a Thanksgiving table. Savory to contemplate before the sun makes an early exit.

Up Above: the brown, white, and blue season has returned.
(11 29 2019)

— rPs 11 30 2019

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Flores de Mayo

May 6, 2018 at 7:17 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: Purple, Wildflowers: White, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Flores de Mayo . . .

Viola sororia
(NYC 05 06 2018)

Instant summer temperatures in the center heart of the spring season have made Manhattan bloom at the start of May.

Just a few days of sun and shower have combined to turn the blue, white, and brown tones of the cold season into a multicolored outdoor scene anchored in green:

Dandelion

Taraxicum officinale
(NYC 05 06 2018)

Dead-nettle

Lamium purpureum
(NYC 05 06 2018)

English Plaintain

Plantago lanceolata
(NYC 05 06 2018)

Garlic Mustard

Alliarim petiolata
(NYC 05 06 2018)

And one for the late Gary Lincoff, mycologist, guide, and author, who left us in Manhattan on March 16th:

Order Agaricales: for Gary
(NYC 05 05 2018)

Memories remain as May flowers on the West Side of Manhattan.

— rPs 05 06 2018

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Teasel Season

October 24, 2017 at 4:14 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: Pink, Wildflowers: White, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

Teasel Season . . .

Thistle Season For Teasel
(pencil on paper)
(NYC 10 2017)

I have been drawn, pun there yet unintended; I have been drawn to draw, sketch, the crown of the teasel this season.

family Caprifoliaceae

Along the way, to consistent degree in scope and scale, still bloom the:

Mallow

Mallow
(NYC 10 2017)

Lady’s Thumb

Lady’s Thumb: A Wild Buckwheat
(NYC 10 2017)

White Snakeroot

White Snakeroot
(NYC 10 2017)

Seaside Goldenrod

Seaside Goldenrod
(NYC 10 2017)

Ganoderma

Ganoderma
(NYC 10 2017)

Autumn Highlights Here, Now.

– rPs 10 24 2017

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Brown Flowers

January 23, 2017 at 4:46 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflower Related ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Brown Flowers . . .

Brown Flower (NYC 01 2017)

Brown Flower
(NYC 01 2017)

Winds like sudden change bring a dust devil three stories tall. The spiral appears, carries fallen brown leaves and other debris as it pauses, then passes through a rear courtyard in Manhattan. Yesterday there was rain, a week before, snow.

January Snow (NYC 01 2017)

January Snow
(NYC 01 2017)

Temperature. Precipitation. Wind. — The planet has a trio of tools to modulate the weather. This new year has experienced all three in just as many weeks. Climate changes almost day to day with a strobe effect at this local level.

January began with snow under the clearest, cleanest blue and white sky, the nested web of tree bark browns giving glimpses of rows of great buildings beyond.

Snow does not linger under rain. White turns into the waterlogged tans and yellowed green of the unconstructed ground when the fog rolls in with spattered showers. Park turf begins to feel like marsh. Even cross-country runners stick to the hard paths.

January Rain (NYC 01 2017)

January Rain
(NYC 01 2017)

This marks the peak season of the brown flowers. Skeletal remnants of several species continue to covey beauty. There remains a multiplicity of forms to compensate for less diversity of color.

Asteraceae. Brassicaceae. – Asters. Goldenrod. Thistles. Peppercress. – Their upright tresses stand symmetrical, architectural.

There remains a multiplicity of forms to compensate for less diversity of color.

Wildflower beauty endures all kinds of changes in the weather, so far.

– rPs 01 22 2017

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Ten Days in August

August 30, 2016 at 4:22 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflowers: White ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Ten Days in August . . .

Ganoderma (NYC 08 19 2016)

Ganoderma
(NYC 08 19 2016)

Time enough makes enough time past for the passing eye to perceive a growth surge in a fresh Ganoderma attached to a tree on a Manhattan side street.
The bracket fungi generate and expresses a repeated series of shelves ascending or descending . Rippled by the environment, these waves of growth are beautifully expressed. The sharp color contrast of the edge to the body clearly communicates an understanding of balance. Each one may be likened to the ring on a tree. The cycle appears more frequently than a year and may mark dry and wet periods of slow or vigorous growth.

Ganoderma (NYC 08 29 2016)

Ganoderma
(NYC 08 29 2016

This time marks the middle age of summer. Green has gone to the tired end of the spectrum as if some gray had been added from age, dust, a face exposed to the city. The bright and dry days of summer’s middle age give clearance at the end of a serious wave of high humidity in increased heat.
Clear air gives the spread of an individual Marestail grace to remain green from the available water. Individual Conyza canadensis hold beauty upright in tall symmetry dressed in green stalks and a filigree of white.
A clear face as the milk white Convolvulaceae. Bindweed sits bright before leaves sharp as a lancet, another allusion to Ages Middle like time Yore and ways Olde.

– rPs 08 30 2016

Postscript: More on Marestail: https://wildflowersofthewestvillage.com/2010/11/09/the-mares-tail/
and Bindweed: https://wildflowersofthewestvillage.com/2010/10/08/blooms-that-bind/

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February Flowers Green

February 22, 2016 at 4:13 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflowers: Green ·Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

February Flowers Green . . .

Manhattan Lichen 02 2016

Manhattan Lichen,  Candelariella and Cladonia. (02 2016)

Wind may be heard in the ears on the first afternoon, followed by daylight hours of stillness. Snow melts under scattered showers over a few overcast February days. Water, cold and clean, drips and drops over rocks, down trunks, and brings early green into bloom in Manhattan.

Soft light from a variegated gray sky gives conditions bright for the Lichens, Candelariella and Cladonia. The wash over stones swells cracks as well as sustains the Moss, Leucobryum:

Leucobryum Moss 02 2016

Pin Cushion Moss, Leucobryum, NYC. (02 2016)

 

Some views are so rendered by nature to appear as Art in itself that should be viewed but not walked upon. Take in a lawn sprinkled with the bristled iron brown fruits of the Sweetgum, Liquidambar, then move along. The Path: the fact, like the philosophy, when followed keeps the pristine that way.

Sweetgum Grove 02 2016

Sweetgum Grove, NYC. (02 2016)

 

Wet and gloomy, perhaps the middle of Winter can affect some psyche’s in that manner. The difference comes as the following days see a break, often bright and breezy, marking the conclusion of a February rain cycle, as did this one in 2016. Afterward, bedded in oak leaf litter, the Onion Grass, Romulea, stands refreshed, as does the viewer, the person turned away from interior and exterior screens and instead focused on the living open air found outside during February in Manhattan.

Onion Grass 02 2016

Onion Grass in the Oak Leaves, NYC. (02 2016)

 

– rPs 02 22 2016

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October Ghosts Are Not Green

October 14, 2015 at 4:06 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflower Related ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

October Ghosts Are Not Green . . .

Amanita Which One? (NYC 10 2015)

Amanita
Which One?
(NYC 10 2015)

There is a brief hour or so in morning and in evening both where a walk in the park feels shadowed. Time good to run.

Darkness, the simple absence of sun, comes at a quicker pace in October. The bluebird sky with cirrus vapor trails glowing goes dim in almost a blink when our star dips rather than slides below the horizon. Branches above remain leafy, block the darkening sky, and make a roof. You find yourself feeling enclosed in the outside, feeling fun scared outdoors. Imagination takes the macabre, perhaps Gothic, trailing path within the confines of nature’s haunted house.

The space below the branches is a more quiet place. Scattered yellowed leaves grace the ground. Single crickets scrape out a weak, woody, tonal rhythm like a single string lonesome and slower in step with the cool temperature. The tremulous vibrato creates the scare soundtrack. Some wind in the tree tops helps as well. The leaves will always carry voices.

Progress forward and happen to contemplate how this year a space probe from Earth, New Horizons, encountered Pluto and Charon and revealed their faces. The Ferryman? He of Hades? Spooky times as we drift down a line through the days toward Halloween.

Ghosts along the way do appear more resolute now upon colder, damper, ground. The chilled white caps of the Amanita, the Death Angel, may appear. Perhaps that trio clustered at the base of the ivy? Huddled, it seems, around something hidden?

Jogging along now, faster of foot, find bracketing the paths (in a way that just demanded pun dropped), the shelf fungi. Bracket fungi like the Ganoderma sport high contrast stripes that act as reflectors when spotted and passed by head lamp. Trametes, known also as Turkey Tail, rippled and lined in white like the fins of the brook trout, the inner bracket concentric rings in a range of brown true to the bird. Equally; Autumnly: the match for any tale of spectres encountered along the path lit low.

Bracketed Path (NYC 10 2015)

Bracketed Path
(NYC 10 2015)

Turkey Tail (NYC 10 2015)

Turkey Tail
(NYC 10 2015)

That October evening run in the Manhattan green, remember it formed a loop, a circle, haunted by ghosts lost to the living, uplifted anyway by the living still. Like those white caps, which turned out to be Amanita citrina, the False Death Cap, an edible mushroom spared the table because it so closely resembles its fatal fellow.

New York City harbors paths, routes where ghosts remain to roam, and where that Earthy symbol from ghost stories, a kind of flowering not green, grows.

Ghostly Fungi Gravestone Log (NYC 2015)

Ghostly Fungi
Gravestone Log
(NYC 2015)

– rPs 10 14 2015

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One Day in Bloom

February 24, 2015 at 5:48 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants ·Tagged , , , , ,

One Day in Bloom . . .

Foliose Lichen in Bloom Manhattan, NYC. (photo taken 02 22 2015)

Foliose Lichen in Bloom
Manhattan, NYC.
(photo taken 02 22 2015)

Sunday. Everyone outside, on the streets, walking, or on park paths, running. One hiking along the tree’s edge of the city met perhaps the first bloom of 2015. One day of sun bracketed by single digits, one day that touched 44 degrees Fahrenheit, still and bright in the air, brought the foliose lichen to bloom.

The leafy thallus of this tough, enduring pant gorged on cold melt from white snow crevices around the trunk. Extended colonies of varying density bloomed in shades of yellow just bright enough to capture my eye, not yet bored with winter brown and white, just happy for the brief broader palate to contemplate.

Mountain and Cloud (photo taken 02 22 2015)

Mountain and Cloud
(photo taken 02 22 2015)

rPs 02 24 2015

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Snow Day(s)

January 30, 2015 at 2:37 pm · Filed under Wild Non-Flowering Plants, Wildflower Related ·Tagged , , , ,

Snow Day(s) . . .

Parallel (Manhattan Snowfield After the Blizzard of 2015)

Parallel (Manhattan Snowfield After the Blizzard of 2015)

Vertical whiteout, snowfall carried on a sustained, at times brutal wind, gave fresh perspective on the powers of Earth’s natural processes. Snow season, perhaps, was peaking. I dressed for a cross-country run that allowed me to pass through Riverside Park during the thick of it, the Blizzard of 2015.

The next day, songbirds conversed in bright sunshine. Sky blue and unbroken, breezes still persistent, yet sonorous, graced a day free with time to take a snow hike. The storm, though smaller than predicted, had shut down the city of New York, giving a holiday after the headache.

In park, the skeletons of asters, goldenrod, and white snakeroot stood above snow gardens sculpted by wind and what it carries through the trees, often oak leaves. Stumps off to the side and some thicker fallen branches added the brighter tans of bracket fungi. Most colorful were the birds. Song sparrows descended, perched sideways and twisted heads, to forage off the wildflower stems capped by seeds.

Snow Stump Brackets (NYC 01 2015)

Snow Stump Brackets (NYC 01 2015)

– rPs 01 30 2015

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