Posts Tagged Upper West Side

Mild Winter Early Birds

February 29, 2020 at 7:58 am · Filed under Wildflowers: Green, Wildflowers: White ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Mild Winter Early Birds . . .

Forsythia in February!
(NYC 02 12 2020)

You can tell a winter season is a mild one when the mourning dove wakes you with its morning call as early as the middle of February.

Rain rather than snow with plenty of sun in between has brought early flowering greens along with the songbirds. Leap year adds an additional day to the second month of the year, and what’s become clear is this one has been warmer just as Punxsutawney Phil predicted. A brief walk in the park or down a garden block encounters:

Bittercress

Cardamine hirsuta
(02 28 2020)

Chickweed

Stellara media
(NYC 02 23 2020)

Grounsel

Senecio vulgaris
(02 28 2020)

Birds and blooms already in February may forshadow a healthy 2020 growing season for New York City, and a hot one, too.

— rPs 02 29 2020

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Reason for Hope

January 31, 2020 at 7:34 pm · Filed under Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: White, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Reason for Hope . . .

First Snopdrop Sighting:
Galanthus nivalis
(NYC 01 31 2020)

January is either a damp cold colored brown, white, and gray during a walk outside, or the sky above is a transluscent blue lens magnifying sun and wind into a bright frigid bluster.

Life greets first losses of the year especially hard. Hard to lose a personal hero, Neil Peart, who was quite clear and correct in the title track from the Rush LP Presto: “I radiate more heat than light.”

Peart was an avid cyclist and birder in between life as a recording artist and author. He inspired (the “heat” to create). Role models as such it follows I am an avid cyclist and documentarian of urban flora, indiginous and immigrant, in between life as an author.

Sad, too, to lose one who makes us laugh (Monty Python’s Terry Jones) and who’s sheer elevation of life lifts us (NBA and Oscar winner, Kobe Bryant).

Saying goodbye, letting go, tasks in life always never easy. The reason for hope in all that can be found; it emerges like a snowdrop from the remnants of last year’s leaf fall. The first flower of the year near month’s end is like a lawn bathed in January sun. Bright and alive, the thaw, temporary perhaps, but a reminder new life follows from the former; everything continues.

Winter Season Variety:
Groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, and others.
(01 2020)


— rPs 01 31 2020

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Ever Greens

December 30, 2019 at 1:42 pm · Filed under Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: Green ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ever Greens . . .

Xmas Moss
(NYC 12 2019)

Brown, white, and gray dominate an outdoor day explored after Solstice past. A setting reminiscent of Poe’s bleak December can get cultivated along the Hudson when the cold rain falls heavy and straight on a still, chilled day. The poet did know the local atmosphere; he wrote the poem here on the west side of Manhattan, after all.

The living color contrast to be found like an ornament nestled deep within the tree are the ever greens, the lichen and the moss. Both plants savor the cold damp days of December and decorate the more sober wood and stone. Their colors are barometric, the verdant reflects well on the health and vigor of the local air and water.

Welcome news, for those who reside here, or visit often to soak up the season’s songs and lights.

Yule Lichen
(NYC 12 2019)

Season’s Greetings . . .

— rPs 12 30 2019

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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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Hudson View: “Usher Ulalume”

October 30, 2019 at 12:08 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Hudson View: “Usher Ulalume” . . .

Mallow, Malvaceae
(NYC 10 2019)

The morning commute made in mist, the grey above and down to the ground drawing all its fire into tree leaves gone gold to red. The lower edges remain green for the last in the return of the damp season switched on following after the dry bluebird skies of August and September.

Dew on the rejuvenated grass sports oak, beech, and elm leaves. The locust trees add a crown of yellow as gold as ripe corn. The gold coins of the ginko are to follow, later, into Thanksgiving.

The scene now on the ground with turf and leaf are fungi. Large mushrooms stand confident in the muted morning light.

Vigorous Fungus
(NYC 10 2019)

October brought to you by the letter M? Add the Mallow, the cheeseplant, Malvaceae, continues to bear its gorgeous pale stripes. Find the flowers nestled beneath the spread of clustered leaves held by long petioles.

City never silent still during some stretches blends into a symphonic whole rather than chaotic scramble. By the fence, in the park, the sound of the hardball hitting the grass, often heard here, ceased after the Yankees bowed out in early October. The same sound now drops when the fruit of the Osage Orange, Maclura pomifera, lands in the grass.

Colloquial: “Monkeyball”
(10 30 2019)

The view beyond, the shallow fjord of the Hudson, presents like a line from “Ulalume” or the grounds of Usher as documented in description by Edgar A. Poe.

Hudson View: Usher Ulalume
(NYC 10 2019)

— rPs 10 30 2019

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Autumnal Apiaceae

September 23, 2019 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: White ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Autumnal Apiaceae . . .

Queen Anne’s Lace: Family Apiaceae
(NYC 09 2019)

Fall arrives late this year, the 23rd of September, on a sunny day as hot as July.

Although it doesn’t quite feel like it, day and night are in balance. Tomorrow begins the speedy transition to shorter days and fall season temperatures.

Meanwhile, the plant world remains green, for now, and the late season palate of white predominates among those still in bloom. The most visible examples are the broad umbels of the wild carrot, Queen Anne’s Lace, Daucus carota.

Living bouquet can be found in bloom throughout the NYC area along fences, beside lamp posts, and even sprouting from the spaces between the stone walls lining the Hudson River.

Lamp Post Bouquet
(NYC 09 2019)

— rPs 09 23 2019

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High Celsius Cirsium

July 31, 2019 at 5:02 pm · Filed under Wildflowers: Pink, Wildflowers: Purple ·Tagged , , , , , , ,

High Celsius Circium . . .

Thistle: genus Cirsium
(NYC 07 2019

July has baked in an actual sense. Hot days, humid, sun bright and still. New York City heats.

Somewhat in the shadows, ar the base of some shade trees, both native and immigrant thistle species of human stature may be found in vigorus bloom on the green West Side of Manhattan.

High Celcius Circium . . .

— rPs 07 31 2019

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Path and Pond

May 31, 2019 at 8:59 am · Filed under Wildflowers: Red, Wildflowers: Yellow ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Path and Pond . . .

Tulip Tree Flower
(NYC 05 2019)

Spring season stalwarts of the wildflower world are in full bloom throughoit the city as the month of May comes to a close.

Two of the most iconic can be found along two distinct spots: the shaded path and the sunny pond.

The park trail may well be lined by the subtle reds of the bushy wild red columbine, Aquilegia canadensis.

Aquilegia canadensis
(NYC 05 2019)

By the water, the full sun fuels the rich nectar of the wild iris Henry David Thoreau called the yellow flag, Iris pseudacorus.

Iris pseudacorus
(NYC 05 2019)

These are just two of the many wildflowers to be found flowering in the West Village and the rest of Manhattan during these salad days of spring. These living still lifes in situ make a great excuse for a walk in NYC’s park(s).

— rPs 05 31 2019

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Earth Day 49

April 22, 2019 at 10:58 am · Filed under Wildflower Related, Wildflowers: Orange, Wildflowers: Pink ·Tagged , , , , , ,

Earth Day 49 . . .

The author of Philadelphia on the Fly celebrates Earth Day “by the book” . . .
(Planet Earth 04 22 2019)

Earth Day has reached the cusp of a human’s middle age. The planet remains older, larger, and more important than all of us people put together. Let us try, at least try, to be stewards and gardeners and protectors rather than mere users of our one and only green, white, and blue home.

Trout lily and others spring into being.
(04 2019)

Earth Day 2019.

— rPs 04 22 2019

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Happy (9th) Anniversary

March 22, 2019 at 11:03 am · Filed under Wildflower Books, Wildflower Illustrations, Wildflower Related ·Tagged , , , , ,

Happy 9th Anniversary . . .

Lichen Spring
(NYC 03 2019)

March 22 on the calendar marks another year, nine (9!) years, of Wildflowers of the West Village.

Happy Anniversary . . .

The weather today, cold, wet, under a white lid of sky, matches the scene in 2010 when this monthly, sometimes more often adventure in urban botanicals began.

The blog format was a fresh, relevant way to spread one’s written words and images in 2010. Social media had yet to spread its petals in full. Outdoor writing from the perspective of sport had by then through two books established my published, authorial voice, a voice that enjoys harmony.

Wildflowers, such a part of the setting of fishing and birding, have always been in my sight, perceived by scent, and a favorite subject of line drawings. Wildflowers hold a diaspora of fascinations with the added advantage of statis for the visual artist. Fish and birds are difficult to capture. Plants, fixed, quiescent, make much more agreeable sitters for the still life sketch and the photograh.

The impact of one blog, one post to that blog, would be just like a snowflake stuck on a window if not for the incredible archival capability of this online internet format. The weight of nine years, some 165 posts, gives one the feeling some good natural fieldwork has been done. There may even be a book in there!

The year now sees the first snowdrops and croci have appeared along the Hudson. The first dafodils have already been sighted. Bright and dry, or white and damp, the sky and air of Manhattan again the freshest of the year. Again the pastel colors emerge to season the brown, white, and blue palate of the cold leafless months. Again another year of Wildflowers of the West Village.

Sprung!
(NYC 03 2019)

— rPs 03 22 2019

Postscript: Revisit the post that started it all by following this link:
https://wildflowersofthewestvillage.com/2010/03/22/welcome/

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