This time of year we like to get out and explore the remaining wild or re-wilded areas near us. Today’s walk was in the Skunknett River Wildlife Sanctuary, a Mass Audubon property off Bumps River Road in Barnstable. There are a few different trails but I love the pond loop, which takes you through thickets of inkberry (Ilex glabra), pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia), and young white pine (Pinus strobus), with intermittent pockets of red oak (Quercus rubra), scrub pine (Pinus rigida), and American holly (Ilex opaca). This property feels quite ‘wild’ with evergreen inkberries towering 6-10 feet tall. and stands of young white pine providing additional year round greenery. There is also a spectacular dense stand of Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides) rooted in the pond’s swampy edges.
There has been some trail maintenance and new signage has been added, but thankfully no major ‘improvements’ that I’ve seen on some other Audubon sites. The pond loop (officially West Pond Circuit Trail) can be walked in 30-40 minutes and at times it feels like you are threading your way through tunnels of greenery. Some of the higher elevations provide some views of the pond.
Just a week or two after emerging from the ground, the plants have produced a singular flower. This bloomed for a few days and has now disappeared, and the beginnings of a fruit are starting to show (it is May 19th and the picture is about 10 days old)
Goldenseal is used in tons of herbal supplements, which has unfortunately led to overharvesting in the wild.
This plants is a foot tall perhaps a bit more. I added it to the mix about 3 years ago and this year I am starting to see new plants pop up, so it is definitely starting to spread throughout the garden. I love the leaves that are tinted grayish green, and this year the flowers are abundant compared to years prior. Male and female plants are different in this species: Male flowers have yellow stamens and the female plants have flowers with purple pistils.
The plants are just now past blooming peak. While they deliver beautiful hues of color early spring, they will a memory by Memorial day – the flowers will be gone and the seedpods will start drooping off the stems. Within another month the plants will wither and disappear altogether. Virginia bluebells do well in the woodland garden, but they do like it a bit moist as they are best suited to flood plains, so if you have a more arid sandy plot they may need some help with watering and shade. Blue may be the most prominent color, but I have white and pink hues as well.
Plants are popping up vigorously everywhere, and they are adding inches of growth almost overnight. This is a special time when the early bloomers are not yet shaded out by the eventually much taller summer perennials and leafing trees. Below sessile bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia), twinleaf (Jeffersonia dyphilla), mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) run the roost. In another month cardinal flower, blue lobelia, wood aster and many others will gain the height advantage and start to take over.
Not to be ignored are the Virginia bluebells (Mertensia virginica) and wood poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum). They are gradually becoming omnipresent and expanding their reach to all corners of my yard.
Mayapple has really taken to this particular area that will eventually be shaded out by the tree canopy. They are starting to form an impressive colony, but by mid summer the leaves will have wilted and disappear from sight as other perennials go for their moment.
Foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia), goldenseal (Hydrastis canadensis), and geraniums (Geranium maculatum) are not far behind – I expect them to be in their full glory by mid May.
The new year started off with an unseasonal day – almost 40 degrees and sunshine. By now we would be expecting things to be encased in ice or some amount of snow, and the garden thoughts would be reserved for browsing seed catalogs and planning the spring.
Not that there is a lack of yard work to tend to – the yard is a mess with leaves and downed branches everywhere still. On a positive note all trees and shrubs were planted (I usually end up overwintering many plants as I don’t get them in the soil before first frost), but additional work was needed to secure the saplings from rabbits, and I have been wrapping them in wire cages. There has been no shortage of these grazing herbivores all of this past year, but the real damage is being done now as the feeding options are reduced to young bark and stems.
While the nesting season is a few months out for most bird species, there is some activity already with a tufted titmouse pair investigating housing options by visiting some of the several nesting boxes I have throughout the garden. Some are occupied with mice and in one box, flying squirrels, but there are plenty of empty ones that never saw activity last year. I guess optimizing nest box utilization is something I still need to figure out – at most 25-30% of the nest boxes are being used by song birds, year to year.
Rather than catching up on the many yard related tasks, we kicked off the new year with a walk around Cliff Pond in Nickerson Park in Brewster. We had not done this since last winter and it is a beautiful part of the Cape. This time of year you don’t run into crowds, and you can easily observe the many highbush blueberry and winterberry shrubs, which would be missed when everything else is in leaf. I was surprised to see the water being so low, despite there being plenty of rain this year. The shoreline has extended another 30 feet or so and is 3-5 feet below what I have observed in the past. I have visited and fished this kettle pond for at least 20 years and while there are always some changes, this seems to be a drastic difference from past visits. I wonder if the continued (and accelerated) development on Cape Cod is starting to affect the water table – we all share one aquifer after all.
It is now early July and flowers are starting to appear in bigger numbers. I feel this is a bit later than last year (that was a super hot and dry summer). I have yet to see monarchs in big numbers this year, the damp and overcast weather which we been having for a while might be delaying them a bit, or maybe the fact that the Cape is getting built up quickly, shrinking their habitat even more is really the underlying cause. Hopefully not, as this has been a banner year for one of their host plants, Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Despite rabbit grazing I have a hundred or so plants.
Another favorite of mine is Black cohosh (Actaea racemosa) – this one is frequented continuously by bumblebees who make the best of the miniscule flowers.
I love the smell of both of these, although they are quite opposite on the spectrum. The milkweed is quite flowery and comes at you in heavy waves, reminiscent of perfumes that were worn in the 70s. Actaea racemosa has a distinct mothball smell that you won’t notice until you are up close.
Unless you start off with a virgin barren plot of land, and radiate the hell out of it, you are going to be contending with other plants, whether you like it or not. Some of these could be have been planted by a former home owner, and these are now established and adding wild life value. Others blow in with the wind or are dropped by birds and mammals. In my woodland garden, I choose to keep an eye out for what is going on, but I mostly let things be. I try to promote native perennials as much as I can, but beyond removing oriental bittersweet and pulling Japanese knotweed wherever it pops up, I am not engaging in what I know is a futile battle. I also left some of the original plantings as they provide shelter and privacy. But anything that has been added in the last 15 years (wow time flies) has been of the native, close neighbor, and/or biennial/perennial kind. I also don’t follow the English garden plan of distinct marked plots. It’s a bit of a free for all, in a plant sense, and as the garden has matured, it has become more dense (visitors call my yard the ‘jungle’). One advantage is that there is less room for unintended plant visitors and they are kept in check by the plantings already duking it out for resources.
But, despite that, they manage to surprise me and pop up in unexpected areas. I know there are gardeners out there that would go in panic mode about these trespassing weeds, but some of these have aesthetic or wildlife value as well. One of them is Deptford pink (Dianthus armeria) (previously mentioned as a plant I noticed a town or two away) which has now taken up residence in the yard, in a spot where I did some clearing to make room for additional perennials. The seeds might have been there waiting for an opportunity like this.
Another one is the ox-eye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare). This is an early flowering plant and actually seems to coordinate its appearance with another white bloomer (Foxglove beardtongue – Penstemon digitalis), so much so that I can call this the ‘white phase’ of the garden, as most other plants are not ready yet to push flowers. This is also a Eurasian plant that has taken over this continent. I tolerate it as it is an early food source for bees and other insects while not much else is around. It is also easily identifiable by its rosette leaves when juvenile. So you can find it. move it, or remove it.
Foxglove beardtongue has been proliferating throughout the yard. The plants have numerous easily identifiable seedlings that you can transplant if you have additional space. But apparently it does not need our helping hand to do well
Another opportunist plant is native but is an annual – Erigeron annuus (annual fleabane). This member of the Asteraceae family has immense food value – The nectar and pollen of the flowers attract a variety of insects, including Halictid bees, masked bees, Sphecid wasps, Vespid wasps, Syrphid flies, soldier flies, blow flies, Tachinid flies, flesh flies, plant bugs, and miscellaneous beetles. Various insects feed on the foliage, roots, and other parts.
As usual, it has been quite some time since my last post, and at this time of year that means I am outside. The garden is doing well although we already had several drought spells. We will see what July brings. A mid summer drought that lasted almost two months last year is still impacting plants in this season. Several shrubs had dead sections or flowering was stunted, but let’s be patient and see if this is to be repeated. Weather has become unpredictable but the benefits of a woodland garden with mostly perennials is that you can let things happen. I don’t care much about the remaining lawn and we’ll see who the winners and losers are in the long run. In the meantime, local wildlife is enjoying the abundance of asters (common wood aster in particular and new england aster as a close second) and I am somewhat helpless against the rabbits that have come in to graze. The plants are still able to recover and push new growth but a little help from the coyotes I hear nearby would be welcome. Wildlife has been continuously on the move over the years (some years no rabbits but wood chucks, some years it is the pet category coming through (neighbors’s cats which have potentially met their match in a coywolf or more likely an SUV this season) but I think additional pressures of incessant land grab and development are putting these creatures in closer proximity in the remaining open spaces.
I had not seen wood cocks (Scolopax minor) in quite a few years (I wrote about them in a blog here at the time), and was surprised to literally stumble on a nest of 3 chicks and a adult just last week. The nest, if you can call it that, was inconspicuous among the leaves and brambles in an area of the woodland garden I had ignored for some time. They did not mind the neglect, that was clear. I was even more elated when not a week later I saw 3 more adult woodcocks pecking and traversing another section. The chicks could not have grown that fast so I likely have several breeding pairs setting up residence this year. But I am not going to go look for them and disturb them in the process.
Just today I had another unusual visitor seeking shelter among the perennial sunflowers and asters – a weasel (most likely a short tailed weasel – Mustela richardsonii). Showing the two color pelt (light on the bottom and grey-brown on top and a black tipped tail). The tail does not seem long enough for it to be a long tailed weasel, but I am not a weasel expert, although I have worked with some in the past) I had seen minks in the neighborhood near the water but this little guy was new to me.
Following up on my weasel friend – who seems to be a resident and not merely passing through as I have had sightings every day. The local bird population is aware of this little predator too as they announce the whereabouts with frenetic alarm calls. The weasel came up to me but realized my hand was not prey – I am not sure about their eyesight, and darted off. I have not seen the rabbits since his arrival. He is significantly smaller than the old rabbit but apparently they will go after them given the chance.
Well, not exactly, as white oak is really the dominant species where I live. But there are other trees in the understory and for the longest time I could not identify this tree with a smooth grey bark. I finally figured out that it is a Pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica). It is classified as an early succession tree so I was puzzled at why it would be in my established woodland garden, but in a way it made sense as they were all located on a hill bordering a kettle pond – there is a good amount of erosion and other tree species have not made any inroads. This is a much prettier tree than the more abundant black cherry (Prunus serotina) that I have all over the garden, but that assessment might be because all of these black cherries have Black knot – the fungal disease that causes black, swollen knots to form on the branches and twigs of the tree. The knots can eventually girdle the branch, causing it to die.
Pin cherry is a small tree that grows to a height of around 30 feet, while black cherry can grow up to 100 feet tall – my neighbor across the street just had one taken down that was immense – I could not get my arms around the trunk.
Pin cherry has a more slender and open growth habit, and the leaves are smaller and more finely toothed. Black cherry supposedly has a denser canopy but due to Black knot I could not verify this. Black cherry leaves are larger and have a more pronounced serrated edge. They are also more oblong in shape and have a dull green appearance.
Both produce cherries that are edible to us, but that is purely anecdotal as birds get to these as soon as there is a hint of color.
Update: I found an additional cherry species among a stand of pin cherry trees, namely sour cherry (Prunus cerasus). This one is native to Eurasia but has been introduced and escaped in the wild quite some time ago. The leaves are rougher than the other cherry species. The fruit is edible, so much so that they are quickly disappearing off the tree, but I haven’t seen the culprit(s).
