Browsed by
Month: May 2018

White Mountains Spring Wildflowers

White Mountains Spring Wildflowers

On a recent hiking trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire over Memorial Day weekend, I was delighted to see flowers blooming everywhere. Below are a few of my favorites. Rhodora (Rhododendron canadense) Rhodora is a fairly low growing (up to 3 feet high) deciduous flowering shrub. In early spring, this shrub produces bright pink flowers in clusters of two to six. The leaves open only after the flowers have bloomed and wilted. Rhodora can survive in a range…

Read More Read More

Beach plum (Prunus maritima)

Beach plum (Prunus maritima)

Beach plums (Prunus maritima) are best known for the fruits they produce in August/September, which are popular in jams and jellies, but they are most easily spotted this time of year, even from a distance, due to their showy displays of bright white flowers. The flowers bloom in May before the leaves emerge. Although these short, densely-branched beach plum shrubs appear rather scraggly-looking prior to leafing out, they will soon fill in with alternate, simple, approximately 2 inch long leaves…

Read More Read More

Northern Cardinal Nest

Northern Cardinal Nest

Northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) are a common backyard feeder bird. But while the male’s bright red feathers make this a hard species to overlook, this is the first northern cardinal nest I’ve ever seen. This is likely due to the fact that although they tend to build their nests low to the ground (1 to 15 feet high), northern cardinal nests are generally wedged into a fork of small branches in a thick shrub or tangle of vines, where it…

Read More Read More

Purple Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum)

Purple Deadnettle (Lamium purpureum)

A common non-native wildflower, purple deadnettle (Lamium purpureum) is also known as red deadnettle or red henbit. Due to its propensity to spring up in lawns, it is generally considered an unwanted weed, and by some accounts is considered invasive in New England. Like other members of the mint family (Lamiaceae), purple deadnettle has a square stem and opposite leaves. The small tube-like flowers arranged in whorls at the apex of the plant range from pink to purple. The upper…

Read More Read More

Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)

Bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)

Saturday afternoon I came across a patch of flowering bearberry (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) in a sandy clearing that was absolutely abuzz with bumblebees. Its short, sprawling growth form seems vine-like, but bearberries are actually low growing, evergreen shrubs. The waxy leaves are 1/2 to 1 inch long and taper at the base. Bearberries  are a member of the blueberry family (Ericaceae), and like blueberries have small, hanging bell-shaped flowers. The white flowers, which are often tipped with pink, are pollinated by bees…

Read More Read More

Wild Edible Recipe: Japanese Knotweed Bars

Wild Edible Recipe: Japanese Knotweed Bars

Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica) is a widespread invasive plant in this area. By the end of the summer it will grow into large stands up to 10 feet high, but in early May it is just beginning to poke out of the ground. This early stage is the best time to forage for this plant. One of my previous post gave more detail about Japanese knotweed in general, but the main intention of this post is to provide a delicious…

Read More Read More