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Featured Flora
Featured Fauna
April's Featured
Flora: Skunk
Cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus
By
Ranger Gene
You can
find one of my favorite spring flowers, Skunk Cabbage, currently in bloom,
though not for much longer. It
likes it wet so look for it in the swale areas of the forest.
However, you might not realize that you are looking at a flower at first.
The first thing that you see is
the fleshy, ovate shaped, pointed spathe. This
is a specialized leaf that protects the flower.
It will be about 4 to 8 inches tall and reddish in color. People, who are brave enough to stop and look inside the hood
of the spathe, will see a yellow, finger-like structure. This is the flower head, a specialized structure which
botanists call a spadix. Once the flower is fertilized, the spathe will
disintegrate and the spadix will bend down to the ground.
At this time, the plant begins to develop its huge leaves that can reach
three feet tall!
The species name foetidus
means “strong and evil smelling”. A
good name for a plant that smells so much like a skunk!
This odor gives away its secret strategy to pollinate itself.
In the early spring most of the usual pollinators are not yet active. Flowers that use sweet nectar to attract pollinators would be
out of luck. However, flies and
carrion beetles are already actively cleaning up the animals that did not
survive the harsh winter. By
smelling like something that died, the flowers can trick these scavengers into
crawling around on them. The poor
scavenger, looking for a good meal, moves from one flower to the next as they
fall for this deception. In the
process, they pick up the pollen from one flower and then rub the pollen off to
fertilize another plant.
One of the things that I find most fascinating about this plant: it actually produces its own heat! Don and Lillian Stokes report in their book “Enjoying Wildflowers”, in the late winter and early spring, the developing flower bud begins to form causing the cells to respire and heat the flower to about 70 degrees F! The spongy spathe surrounding the spadix (flower) is spongy with lots of air pockets to insulate the flower from the near freezing temperatures around it. Thus, it can even melt its way out of the snow!
Skunk Cabbage can live for
several hundred years. Its
worm-like roots pull it down as they grow so it stays low in the ground.
The leaves have the chemical calcium oxalate that discourages deer, cows
and other herbivores from chomping away on it.
About the only animal that does feed on it is the garden slug which make
round holes in the leaves.
April's Featured Fauna: Wood Frog, Rana silvatica
By
Ranger Gene
A
frequent early spring question is, “What is that duck with the hoarse quack?
I tried to locate it but I could not see anything!”
People
are amazed to find out that they were NOT listening to a duck. In fact,
the animal making the sound is not even a bird. It takes a leap of faith
to believe it is actually the Wood Frog, Rana
silvatica.
This is because these frogs are very secretive and will dive to the bottom at
the first sign of the approach of a human. The only way to see them is to
sit very quietly and wait for their heads to poke up out of the water again.
The
Wood Frog is usually the first frog to declare the onset of mating season in the
spring, even at times when there may still be ice in the swales and shallow
ponds. With the onset of warmer temperatures, the racket can be quite
deafening. If a cold snap comes along (as we have had this April), they
will quiet down for a while but be back at it as soon as the water warms up
again. They have to be quick – the whole breeding season is usually only
a few weeks. Once they have laid their eggs, the females leave the pond
and begin roaming the woods (hence the name wood frog). The male wood
frogs will remain for a few weeks before taking off to the woods as well.
I have found wood frogs at least a quarter of a mile from the nearest water.
If
you are familiar with the adult wood frogs’ raccoon-like, dark brown mask
across the eyes and the light tan body, you may not recognize them in the
spring. They actually change color during the year. Because they are
cold-blooded and can not make their own heat, they are very dark in the spring
to soak up as much heat from the sun as possible to warm their bodies. As
a result, the eye stripe does not show up unless you look very closely. As
the late spring and summer temperatures warm, they do not need to absorb so much
solar radiation and their bodies become lighter and lighter until they reach a
tan color.
During
the spring mating season, the male wood frogs do not establish a territory.
Instead they just float on the surface of the pond and call. They make
their call by blowing up two air sacs. If you think the males’ calling
would be easy to do, guess again. Two scientists, Taigan and Wells, at the
University of Connecticut, did studies of the aerobic output of calling tree
frogs. The researchers found that during the normal calling, the
frogs have an Oxygen consumption rate of an ultra-marathoner (about 60% of
maximum capacity). When a female approached, they jumped that rate to
almost 100%, but just as a sprinter can only go all out for a short distance,
they could not keep up that level of calling for long.
The eggs develop quickly into tadpoles. The tadpoles eat by using their rasping mouths to scrape microscopic plants and animals off rocks and larger vegetation. The tadpoles develop quickly and become adult frogs in about 60 days. They have to be quick since they typically utilize ponds that are ephemeral (dry up during the summer). This is different from bullfrogs that can take as much as 2 years to mature.
May's
Featured Flora:
Canada Mayflower
Maianthemum
canadense
By
Ranger Ge
Well,
spring is finally here or so the calendar tells us. While the weather has
been unseasonably cool, the spring flowers are finally putting in an appearance.
Just in time to bring cheer to us winter weary souls.
One
of the welcome spring beauties is Canada Mayflower.
The scientific name says it all:
Maius for May, anthemon for flower and canadense for Canada.
It gets the Canada in its name because that is where a botanist collected
the original “type specimen” which was used to officially name the plant.
Some
people know this plant as false-lily-of-the-valley because it resembles the
domestic lily-of-the-valley in both form and dense ground cover.
In addition, both plants have a nice fragrance and are in the same plant
family.
You
will see only 1 to 3 leaves on the low growing plants.
However, you will not see flowers on the plants with only 1 leaf.
This is because they need at least 2 leaves to provide enough energy to
make flowers.
Below
is a listing of other flowers observed along Molash trail that were currently in
bloom or at least in bud as of May 22, 2005.
Wild
strawberry, Fragaria virginiana 
Rue
Anenome, Thalictrum thalictroides, 
Violets (white, yellow and
blue), Viola, 
Jack-in-the-Pulpit,
Arisaema triphyllum
Hepatica,
Hepatica acutiloba, 
Bead Lily
(buds), Clintonia uniflora, 
Gold
Thread, Coptis groenlandica, 
Marsh
Marigold, Caltha palustris, 
Star Flower
(buds), Trientalis americana, 
Starry Solomon’s Plume (buds), Smilacina stellata, 
Trillium,
Trillium, 
Juneberry (AKA Shadbush or
Service-berry), Amelanchier canadensis, 
Sand
Cress, Calyptridium monandrum, 
June's Featured Fauna: Ant Lion, Myrmeleontidae
By
Ranger Ge
This
past week I noticed that once again we have LIONS in the sandy areas of the
forest. These lions are voracious eaters that will tackle prey much larger
than themselves. We humans have nothing to fear from them. However,
we are safe only because we are giants in their world. I am speaking of
the antlions who are about 1/8 to ½ inch in length. The larva dig cute, funnel
shaped holes in the sand. The cuteness of the sandpit belies the danger
that lurks there.
Woe be it to the unsuspecting ant or other tiny critter that crawls across the pit. When they dislodge grains of sand, it alerts the ant lion that lies in wait at the bottom of the pit. The ant lion immediately reacts by flicking sand out of the bottom of the pit. This causes the sand on the side of the pit to slide downward like little ball bearings. The next thing the ant knows, it is sliding helplessly down to the waiting jaws. The antlion larva grabs its victim in its pincers and pulls it downward to trap it in the sand. At the same time, it injects its victim with digestive fluids. Once the ant is digested in its own body, the antlion then uses the pincers like a straw to sip out the liquid meal.
To see the larva, take a tea strainer along and scoop up the sand trying to get down below the bottom of the pit. Put the larva under a magnifying lens and you will find something that would do justice to a science fiction horror feature creature! The hairs on its body help anchor it in the sand so it can wrestle more efficiently with its prey.
When
the antlion matures, it changes from an ugly little larva into an awkward,
grayish brown insect that looks much like a damselfly. Besides color, you
can also tell the difference by looking for antennae. Damselfly antennae
are so small that they are very difficult to see, while the antlion antennae are
much longer – long enough to reach back to their wings. Antlion adults
also tend to hold their wings vertically over their backs while damselflies hold
theirs horizontal to their abdomens. The adult antlions are frequently
attracted to lights at night. Check out these over-night lights and you
may find more than just moths.
The best place to see the larval pits is along the sandy paths to the beach once you are clear of the woods.
If you would like to ask Gene a question regarding any of the flora or fauna in the Forest, you can email him using this link: Ranger Gene Tiser
