Caught in their webs

All the way down the trail to my tree, I kept running into spider webs. That cotton-candy-stickiness grabbed me from every angle and at every height.

When I got to my tree, I noticed a small web that hung between leaves in the womb.  As I settled in with my camera – suddenly I saw a large drape of a web, at a 45-degree angle, connecting the tree and the rail of the boardwalk in front of it.

Morning sun caught the orbs, and a speck of black danced right in the center. I quickly changed lenses and moved in to have a look.

Whoa…..! What the heck was that!

At first, I thought it was a spider feasting on a fly. But when I accidentally brushed one spoke of the web, the spider scurried off in the other direction. That was no fly – that was the spider’s body.

My next theory was that something was wrong with this spider. Maybe it was a genetic freak, or malformed by exposure to chemicals.

From underneath, that body looked like it had been burst open in an explosion and then hardened.

How on earth does it manage to function? I wondered as I watched it work on its web. The body looked so bulky, and those spiked edges seemed like such a handicap.

But it moved as gracefully and worked as diligently as any spider does. Even with a cape of a body that looked like some super hero action figure.

Closest I could come to an identification was gasteracantha cancriformis, also called a spiny-backed orb weaver; though this spider was not a total match in color and form. [It is NOT a crab spider, which does not weave a web.]

I had to force my attention to the tree itself, and stooped to zoom in on the little spider tucked among the leaves which now protrude a good foot from the Womb:

Nearby, a chip of red caught my eye. It was a red velvet spider mite, posing delicately at the edge of a leaf.

And, on the backside of the tree, I found a tiny web laced in the folds of the bark, which seemed to be catching more dirt than food:

Scurrying around all over the tree – on trunk, branch and leaf – were the Daddy long-legs.

They are EVERYWHERE this year. I don’t remember even seeing them before, but since late spring they have been running across every surface I lay eyes on.

Don’t know if it was the heavy rains or some other nutrient feeding their reproduction, but there are so many of them this year that I feel like I’m in a science fiction movie.

I looked them up to find the scientic name, and it turns out that these things I’ve been calling spiders are NOT! They are arachnids (having eight legs) but they are not web-weavers. They are sometimes called harvestmen because they gather their food from surfaces; the scientific name is opilionid.

It’s hard not to be creeped out by arachnids of all kinds, but I try to be friends with them.

After all, I read “Charlotte’s Web” 26 times when I was a little girl. How could you not love a spider!

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And it don’t stop

About this time last year, I was already overwhelmed. The profusion of color in an Appalachian spring made me dizzy.

It still does. [See also the cloud tag – click on flowers]

Even the blooms that I know well, such as the Carolina allspice above, seem new when I see them in a different setting, different angle, different stage of blossoming, or at a different time of day…

Plus, I have the delights of my 50mm lens (purchased used from a dear friend) and a reversing ring.  Most of these shots were with that ancient lens.

Like this wild geranium:

The Catesby’s trilliums have grown in number, though still unusual enough to warrant a close look:

And then a new drooping trillium that I do not recall ever seeing before – —!

Be still my foolish heart…. and there is a native azalea:

And just for that final perfect color contrast, the glory of a crested iris.

Best of all – I came home and discovered a flurry of them in my own yard, clinging in their rooted web to the side of the steep bank next to the natural water drainage.

Flowers like these make me feel like a little kid. Better than a carnival. Hooray!

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Leaves alone

It’s hard enough to identify flowers… but this time of year, you see some pretty interesting leaves, too.

I’m pretty sure this one is a cinquefoil…

I can identify a few, the most obvious ones like rattlesnake plantain. But others, well, I am just not that good yet.

Ok – it’s a really small fern?

Any naturalists out there want to enlighten us?

Looks like a sweet potato to me. Mystery leaf #1.

I know… it’s…. a weed? Mystery leaf #2

Looks a little rusty, but it’s new. Mystery leaf #3.

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New arrivals

It seems the mayapples multiply by 100 every visit. There are whole fields of them now, their umbrella heads popping up everywhere.

The rue anenome, star chickweed and various violets continue to blossom in profusion…

And though I am just as confused as ever about the dog and blue, still I feel drawn to photography their pretty faces:

The foam flowers at the base of my tree are doing nicely, and they’ve been joined by many others, too.

The phlox has grown even more beautiful, if that’s possible, since my last visit:

But it’s yellow that is the color of the week.

In addition to the green-and-gold (of which I saw only a single blossom before)

there is also the humble buttercup

and what I think is some type of hawkweed

and an as-yet-unnamed cluster, maybe kidney-leafed buttercup?

Meanwhile, the False Solomon’s Seal is getting ready to flower, showing those green clusters like tiny grapes.

I saw a Catesby’s Trillium posing daintily right next to the sign indicating its presence, with the characteristic drooping that makes it appear shy… but the blossom was not yet open.

But as I scurried up the trail, huffing to get to my gallery space on time, I spotted a single Catesby in full bloom.

It was poised on a slope that required me to crawl and slide backwards on my belly in order to shoot it at the correct angle.

I know there will be other Catesby’s trillium to shoot. I know I should get to the gallery on time for the posted opening hour.

But there is something about the first of the season…..

Needless to say, I was late to the gallery.

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Canada bird sweet dog?

I used to think that a violet was just one of those little purple flowers. Period.

Come to find out, there are LOTS of violets. And some of them aren’t even violet.

There’s yellow ones, white ones, white-and-purple ones, purple with white and dark lines, even a GREEN violet – and some that they call “blue,” even though they are no more blue to me than a dog is.

Oh, oops. There’s such a thing as a “dog violet,” and that’s where my confusion started.

I posted a photo of a violet here that I confidently labeled a dog violet (viola labradorica), based on a photo in my National Audubon Society’s Field Guide to Wildflowers (Eastern Region).

But today I saw the same violet (I think), labeled a “Longspur Violet” – viola rostrata, at the Southern Appalachian wildflowers site.

I have figured out how to tell them apart from a Birdsfoot Violet (viola pedata): the latter has “conspicuous orange anthers in the throat,”  says Audubon. This shot from March 28 seems like it fits the bill:

(Hmmm… was that a bit of orange in the March 19th sighting of the dog/longspur violet?)

But on the same day I shot another violet…. this one, though has a hairy throat:

Well, those are, at least, clearly different from the “common blue violet” (viola sororia) that has cropped up in my yard like a batch of dandelions. Underprivileged things, they’re just plain violets.

me too me too

There are also the problems of sorting out one white violet from another.

Took forever to figure out the difference between a Sweet White Violet, a Canada violet, and a Northern White violet, other than their names. But the Canada is taller – 8 to 16 inches, as opposed to 3 to 5 – and more importantly, the flowers and leaves grow off the same stem.

Trivia: Many violets appear to be a on stalk that is entirely separate from the leaves. But these violets ARE actually growing on the same stem as the leaves. It’s just that the stem is underground, and the stalks are runners from it.

As near as I can tell, there is only one yellow violet, the viola pubescens (Downy Yellow Violet). Until I looked at the SA flowers site again… uh-oh…. smooth yellow, round-leafed yellow……

This is why I am a poor naturalist. I just like the pretty flowers. All of ’em.

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This week’s specials

Before I even got to the river, I had to drop to my knees to shoot – and I don’t even know what it is… some kind of aster – or robin’s plaintain (Erigeron pulchellus)?

Then a surprise, single green-and-gold (Chrysogonum virginianum) –

Seems to be fighting for its meager life… but it’s that time of year when everything is devouring everything else, in hunger for survival.

Two other lovely surprises – the lousewort (Pedicularis canadensis)

and the blue phlox.

And just at the base of my beech tree, so small that I nearly missed it – the smallest foam flowers (Tiarella cordifolia) I have seen :

That, then, drew my attention to the fuzzy leaf that nearly got lost amid the spring splendor:

All those fine fine hairs on the edge…

Then I spent a long time scrutinizing the calligraphy of the buds, the textured painting of the bark and the sculpture of the trunk.  (but that’s another post)

And on the way out, there was the yellow root nodding at river’s edge, like it knew.

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and then, the more obvious ones

[a PS to previous post]

Of course, some creatures just position themselves to get your attention…

Or they sneak up on you …. like this garter snake. I’d just finished answering the call of nature, when I zipped up and turned around – and there he was right on the path, flicking his forked tongue in the air. I guess he was trying to figure out my scent… but that was a little too close to my extremities.  yikes!

Once I saw he was harmless, I stood appreciating those pretty checkerboard markings. I like garter snakes. This one was a bit larger than the usual two-footers. And I don’t think I’d ever noticed before – they have tongues that are red, forking into black:

Here’s some trivia: of all the snakes in the Southern Appalachians, only the rattlesnake’s bite can be fatal, and only if it goes untreated.

The copperhead bite is unpleasant but not deadly. The cottonmouth, Georgia’s other truly toxic snake, is not found this far north.

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Appalachian Spring: the movie

It’s the time of year when there is something new blooming every day…

Toothwort

Some standing alone, as though to call attention to themselves. “Eh-hem…. look this way, please.”

Others have cascades of little blossoms and curly-haired leaves to go with, like the vetch:

Some as though they were hiding, like the pennywort:

I guess the pennywort is antisocial, I never see it in great crowds like those promiscuous rue anenomes.

And I think the yellow root congregates – especially at the edge of water – just so that there’s a slim chance that someone will notice those dainty rows of dark blossoms:

The bluets are masters of shyness – so small that it is hard to get a proper focus on them, even with a macro lens:

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the mayapples (aka Podophyllum peltatum) – great hoardes of them with their umbrella of leaves popping up,  taller even than the toadshade trillium, the bud poised to flower next month:

They’re competing with those flashy wild geraniums, who are hooting their hooters:

And the yellow flashes of whatcha-ma-callit:

Meanwhile, the fungi harrumphs in the background like an angry tuba:

Appalachian Spring: that wild symphony, explosions of life – and I don’t mean Aaron Copeland.

But if you can’t make it to North Georgia this year, try the Copeland. It really is a close approximation of the uplift you feel when the colors are rising.

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Replanting the Appalachians

By ROGER ALFORD
The Associated Press
Friday, March 27, 2009; 4:08 AM

BLACKEY, Ky. — Sam Adams laid his tools aside and gently pushed fresh dirt around an oak sapling he hopes one day will be part of a hardwood forest high above this Appalachian community.

He was one of about 70 people gathered in Blackey last week to plant thousands of trees on the barren grasslands left behind by mining companies that have ripped the mountaintops apart to unearth coal, decimating entire forests.

“We’ve got an estimated 741,000 acres in Appalachia that are barren,” said Adams, the Kentucky coordinator for the conservation group Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team. “If we put

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First blood(root)

I saw the leaves first. Bloodroot leaves have a distinct scalloped edge and palmate shape, so they are easy to spot even when small.

But the further down the trail I got, the more flowers I saw….

Great clusters of the toadshade trillium that I anticipated last visit:

Some of it was quite tall already – which makes it easy to see why it’s called “toadshade”

Three white flowers that often appear about the same time:

The rue anenome

The star chickweed

And one climbing across a rocky outcrop, which took a bit of research for me to identify as Early Saxifrage:

The violets were there too, of course – they are usually the earliest flowers.

both the Dog violet

and the downy yellow violet

When I got to “my tree” I was pleased to see that there were lots of trout lilies at the base of it. Glad that the tree isn’t too big to share the space.

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