Today marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. It’s worth acknowledging all the positive changes that have been enacted over the last 50 years – the enacting the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, endangered species like the bald eagle have rebounded from the brink of extinction, rivers are no longer on fire and don’t run the color of whatever the upstream dye factory happens to be producing on a given day, and renewable energy options…
Sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) is a small shrub with leathery, evergreen, narrowly-oval, whorled, light-green leaves. The leaves often turn reddish-green in the winter. A low growing shrub, sheep laurel rarely grows more than 2 or 3 feet high. Sometimes called Lambskill or Sheepskill, this shrub is poisonous to livestock, due to a glycoside it contains. All parts of the plant are also highly toxic to humans. Small, saucer-like, magenta flowers are arranged in clusters and bloom in early June. The…
The false indigo bush (Amorpha fruticosa) is known by many common names, including desert false indigo, dull-leaf indigobush, leadplant, and river locust. There are also other local plants with similar sounding common names, such as wild indigo (Baptisia tictoria). This is a prime example of the importance of scientific names in accurately differentiating between species. The leaves of false indigo bush, when present, are alternate and compound, with blunt oval-shaped leaflets 1 to 1.5 inches long. In May and June,…
Despite its diminutive size, pipsissewa (Chimaphila umbellata) can be found in the Peterson Field Guide for Trees and Shrubs. This subshrub, which grows only 4 to 10 inches high, is described as a “creeping evergreen” (it spreads through underground runners), and as “hardly woody”. Pipsissewa can be identified by its whorls of leathery, shiny, coarsely toothed leaves. The dried 5-capsuled fruits produced by its stalked flowers often remain on the plant throughout much of the winter as well, providing additional…
The name “sumac” often evokes thoughts of poison sumac and general itchiness. But poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) is actually more closely related to poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) than staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) despite the shared common name. Staghorn sumac can be differentiated from poison sumac through a variety of characteristics. Both can grow fairly tall (~20 feet) and have pointy, alternate, compound leaves, however, they have very different habitat needs. You’ve most certainly seen large stands of staghorn sumac with…
When asked to picture a New England salt marsh, most people would likely think of large expanses of salt marsh grass, such as smooth cord grass (Spartina alterniflora) and salt marsh hay (Spartina patens). However, at the upper edge of most marshes, where only the highest high tides reach, is a thin strip of short shrubs, dominated by marsh elder (Iva frutescens) and/or eastern baccharis (Baccharis halimifolia). In fact, due to its placement on the landscape, marsh elder is also…
Earlier this week I completed my second state (Connecticut), in an effort to ultimately complete the entire Appalachian Trail (AT) in sections. (Click here to read about my ~100-mile Massachusetts section hike from 2017). While Connecticut was a little less rugged than Massachusetts (with the exception of Bear Mountain at an elevation of 2,326 feet, the rest of the Connecticut AT is under 1,500 feet), it had beautiful open forests, very few “road walks”, and numerous wide sweeping views of…
The diminutive flowers produced by many tree and shrub species in the spring are often overlooked relative to the showiness of flowering plants like trailing arbutus, purple deadnettle, and pink lady slippers, but the delicate details are worth taking a moment to slow down and notice. The female flowers of beaked hazelnut (Corylus cornuta), for instance, are little more than a cluster of fine red “hairs”, which are actually the flower’s pistils. Beaked hazelnuts are native to most of North…
While birding along the Cape Cod Canal on Saturday, I noticed a fairly large clearing filled with green, densely branched low-growing shrubs. Upon closer inspection, the stems were strongly angled with alternately arranged pinkish-brown buds. Even without leaves or flowers, it did not take long to identify this shrub as Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius). This non-native shrub flourishes in full sunlight in dry, sandy soils, making it no surprise that it was so abundant in this Cape Cod clearing. Scotch…
This is the time of year when I start looking for signs of spring: black-capped chickadees singing “spring’s here”, skunk cabbage flowers poking up through the ground, and buds swelling on trees and shrubs like this swamp azalea. But I can still appreciate the benefits of winter, namely that I can easily traverse a frozen swamp (rather than sinking into shoe-sucking mud) without getting devoured by mosquitos. During yesterday’s frozen swamp exploration, I ran into one of the many evergreen…