flora – Page 13

Green Christmas trees

Since we’ve been together, Dan and I have always got a real Christmas tree for our place at the holidays, usually on the first weekend of December. This year was no different in that respect. We both love the smell of evergreens, and the Christmas tree is probably one of my favourite things about the holidays. We decided not to do a gift exchange this year, since finances are tighter while our careers are in transition, opting to spend some time doing things together instead. One of the things I really wanted to do was cut our own Christmas tree.

I have this vague memory from when I was young, probably less than ten based on the haziness of the recollection, of going out with my family to a cut-your-own-tree farm and trudging through the snow looking for a nice tree. Actually, most of what I remember is sipping hot chocolate from the store after returning, and a general sense of having enjoyed the outing with my family. Perhaps the memory never happened, but in any case I have this notion about going out to cut your own tree. I persuaded Dan that this year, instead of just going down to the tree lot in town, we should take the dog and go out to the local cut-your-own farm. I could only find one in the listings for the area, with the next closest being nearly an hour away. Surely there had to be more than that, but if there were, they were being very secretive about it. So we headed down to this one.

We initially missed seeing the sign, propped as it was against the side of the building on the ground. The main sign (and presumably their main business most of the year) was for a fishing and hunting supply shop. It seemed busy, though, with well over a dozen cars parked in the lot outside. We had trouble finding a spot.

It wasn’t immediately obvious which way we were supposed to go, so Dan went in to ask someone in the store. They indicated that we should catch a ride on the horse-drawn wagon that would be leaving shortly from just outside the store. We’d seen the horses harnessed up to a long red hay wagon when we pulled up. Two beautiful black percherons, stout and powerful. I’ve always had a soft spot for draft horses, and large horses in general. If I were ever to get a horse – which I probably won’t, unless it lived at my sister’s place and I rode it when I visited her – it would be a grey thoroughbred draft cross. My favourite horse I ever rode regularly was a tall, retired grey thoroughbred gelding at the stable where I took lessons. I loved his character, and the two of us got on fabulously.

We climbed on the wagon along with a couple other families. Raven sat at our feet on a small pile of hay that had come loose from the bales. She wasn’t sure what to make of this, as the wagon bounced along over the uneven ground. Dan kept a hand on her in case she took a notion to go visit with some of the other wagon’s passengers (people are her favouritest thing, after food), but she probably would’ve been fine, so focused was she on keeping her balance, and watching the landscape roll by.

We weren’t actually taken very far, and could probably have walked there on our own in less time than it took to wait for the wagon and be driven there, but it was still fun. It’s not every day that I get to ride on a horse-drawn wagon. In fact, I can’t recall the last time. Dan commented that they ought to be charging more for their trees if they’re giving free wagon rides and free hot chocolate in the store. I suppose what they save by not having to cut the trees themselves and drive them out to a lot somewhere they can put toward these things. It was a nice touch, and I think the kids, especially, enjoyed it.

We all hopped off the wagon when it arrived at the back tree fields. The horses and wagon waited there for a bit so that people could load up their trees and have them driven back when they’d found one. I suspect for a family with kids this would be a perk, although, as I said, it wasn’t all that far. I had called ahead of coming down to make sure we could bring Raven, and the guy who answered said, “Sure! Bring your husband, too! The dog’s welcome to run around, but your husband must be leashed.” We made the mistake of letting Raven off her leash before we were sufficiently far from the other families, and she immediately dashed over to say hello to the kids. She sees other people so infrequently that while she doesn’t jump up on us anymore, we haven’t really been able to train her not to jump on others, either, and she gets so excited by new people she just can’t help herself. Fortunately the kids took it well and the family were good sports (I always worry about that).

We wandered out through the stands of evergreens. Pines were the predominant species, probably because they grow easily and quickly. Dan and I both prefer the shorter needles of spruce, so we walked past all the pines without looking at them too closely, hunting for the scattered groups of spruce trees. We examined a few in the field where we were dropped off, then moved back in the direction of the store to walk through another field. It looked like perhaps the farm hadn’t been in the habit of pruning their trees into the stereotypical Christmas tree shape, as there were a lot that would do Charlie Brown proud. Finally we spotted some good-looking trees set away from the other fields in their own little patch. Not sure if they were fair game, Dan returned to the store to ask if they were cutable. Getting the okay, we returned and walked through.

We found three that looked good and would do, but just as we were returning to the second one, which we’d settled on, we spotted a fourth a short distance away, tucked behind another tree so we’d missed it on the first walk-through. It had good colour, good shape, and good height (an important consideration), but when I walked around to check its other side…

…there was a bird’s nest nestled in the branches! It’s like it was meant to be. Dan sawed off the bottom, then collected the nest from the branch and handed it to me so he could drag the tree back without it getting damaged. We’re not sure what species built the nest, although an educated guess might be Blue Jay. It’s not a robin (no mud), or a catbird (no bark strips), but there are a few other species that size that would build similar-looking nests. There is a program in Ontario called the Ontario Nest Record Scheme that collects data cards from anyone in Ontario who wants to fill one out for a nest they find. It’s been running for several decades, and back in the 80s the organizers published a two-volume set of books on the characteristics of Ontario nests based on data submitted for the scheme. The descriptors for the Blue Jay (the average, of course; there are always exceptions) are primarily in evergreens, in small trees with narrow diameter trunks (4 or less inches; 10 or less centimeters), in crotches near the top of the tree, and placed near or against the trunk. This nest fits all these characteristics except it was midway up the tree, not at the top. It also says nests are bulky cups lined with plant rootlets, which this one is. So I’m thinking Blue Jay, but we won’t ever really know.

I went inside and paid for the tree while Dan secured it to the roof of the car (while I am normally not an advocate of SUV-type vehicles, Dan bought his Jeep with the intention that it may be used off-road during fieldwork; I do have to admit that it comes in handy when moving big or bulky things, and we’re appreciating the 4WD in the winter conditions on the slippery dirt road. Our next one will be electric). The nest sat on the floor between my feet. When we got home we pulled out the tree stand, sawed off an extra few inches so that it would fit without touching the ceiling, clipped a few of the branches on the backside (it must have grown during the drive home, surely, it didn’t seem that large when we cut it), gave it some water, set the nest back on the branch it came from, and are letting it settle in now before we decorate it. We had to rearrange the furniture a bit to accommodate its larger-than-expected girth. Next year we’ll have to take a measuring tape to check diameter.

After getting home and unloading the tree, we grabbed our skates and headed down to the lake for an hour or so. We had a few warm days last week, but the last couple have been below freezing and the lake in the vicinity of our little bay remains solid. There was a light dusting of snow on the ice this afternoon, but most of it is due tonight and into tomorrow. We’ll need to start shoveling our bay soon, and will be restricted to whatever area we clear, but today we were still able to skate freely on the lake. And once it started to get dark, we came back inside and curled up with a toasty mug of hot chocolate. It was a nice way to end the afternoon.

In behind the spot where we finally found our tree we noticed a field with Christmas-trees-to-be growing in it. These trees were young, perhaps only a couple years old. When we cut the base off ours I counted the rings; it was 13 years old. It’s a little sobering to consider that this tree, which has spent the last 13 years growing in that field, hosting bird families, watching the seasons pass, will spend just three or four weeks inside as our Christmas tree, and then be discarded. There was a time when people turned to fake trees instead, in part feeling that they were more environmentally friendly, less wasteful, than live trees. However, the pendulum is starting to swing back the other way now, with the general sentiment being the opposite.

Fake trees require a lot of petroleum to produce and then to ship around the world, fossil fuels that are irreplaceable and contribute to our greenhouse gas problem. Real trees, however, while they’re growing remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. They are generally (though not always) grown close to home, cutting down on transport fuel. The only fuel cut-your-own trees use is what you burn driving there to cut it. They are renewable, once all the trees from a field have been cleared new ones can be planted in their place. They provide homes for wildlife while they’re growing, as many species like these young habitats. And when the tree becomes old and ratty, as all Christmas trees inevitably do, real trees are biodegradable, and are often chipped into mulch, while fake ones sit for decades, not decomposing in a landfill.

Of course, the ultimate in green Christmas trees are ones with root balls still attached. These live trees spend their month in your home over Christmas, and then can be planted back out in your yard to continue growing, breathing in carbon dioxide, providing homes for animals. I don’t know of any places around Kingston that offer live trees, or that would have been my choice this year.

Addendum: Evergreen ferns

While out walking Raven this afternoon I had another, closer look at the ferns that were mentioned in yesterday’s post, specifically the Marginal Shield Fern, Dryopteris marginalis. When I took the first set of photos, I hadn’t thought to check the underside of the fronds for the spore pores, so I did that today. One of the references I used for the last post was A Field Guide to the Familiar by Gale Lawrence. In it she indicates that an easy way to tell the three species apart is by the patterns of the spore cases on the underside of the subleaflets. The pattern of these dots – actually called sori (singular sorus) but also commonly referred to as fruitdots, which I find inexplicably amusing – is unique to each species (at least each of these three). As I stated yesterday, those of the Marginal Shield Fern are lined up along the margins of the subleaflet, giving the fern both its common and scientific names. You can see that in the photo above. The fruitdots are empty now, the ferns having cast out their spores to the wind in late fall, but the cases remain affixed to the evergreen fronds. Not all species of fern have fruitdots, some curl over the edges of the subleaflets or other means of protecting the spore cases.

Winter green

It’s getting harder to spot things in the woods to write about. From spring through fall life is so abundant and so vibrant that you could write five posts a day and still not run out of subject matter (true, four of those five would be about plants or invertebrates, but that’s beside the point). Come winter, though, things slow down. Animals migrate south or go into hibernation. Herpetiles bury themselves in the muck, fish swim down to the deeper parts of the lake. Insects die off, leaving just their eggs or cocoons to carry on the species come spring. Plants die back, trees and shrubs lose their leaves, and non-woody plants disappear altogether. What remains in January is just an empty shell of what was here in July.

That doesn’t mean, however, that there is nothing here. Although the winter complement is a far cry from the 100+ species recorded around here during the summer, our winter bird list will probably include some two dozen species. If we’re lucky, we may record half a dozen mammal species. Herpetiles and fish are in hiding, of course, but there is still evidence of insects if you know where to look. Woody plants – trees and shrubs – are easy to find, even if they have dropped their leaves. And, there are still some green plants around.

It’s an interesting juxtaposition, seeing perky green leaves surrounded by snow and leafless trees. It wouldn’t be too abnormal if this was an early snow in fall, when there were other plants that were still in the process of winterization. But the rest of the forest was barren and quiet, and the green leaves seemed somewhat out of place. These are evergreen ferns. Like in trees and some other types of plants, there is a subset of ferns that remain green year round. Here in the northeast there are three such species. The little ones in the above photos are Rock Polypody, Polypodium virginianum. It’s sometimes also called Common Polypody, but this is more often used for P. vulgare, a species of the Pacific northwest. The name Rock Polypody comes from the species’ habit of growing primarily on rock surfaces covered with a thin layer of soil. Indeed, virtually all of the plants I saw were on exposed rock surfaces or the sides of rock piles.

The lower fern in this photo is Rock Polypody, but the upper one is Marginal Shield Fern, Dryopteris marginalis. Like fungi, ferns reproduce through spores rather than seeds, and the pores that release the spores are found either on specialized spikes that the plants put up, or on the underside of the plant’s leaves. The pattern of the pores is often helpful in identifying the species. In the case of the Marginal Shield Fern, the first part of its name comes from the arrangement of the pores along the margins of the fern’s subleaflets (the frilly edges on the sides of each of the fern frond’s “fingers”). In fact, at this time of year it’s difficult to confuse it with anything else. The only other commonly found evergreen fern to grow around here is Christmas Fern, Polystichum acrostichoides, which resembles a Boston Fern in the long, narrow shape of the fronds.

Evergreen ferns have an interesting adaptation that allows them to remain green all winter without the leaves freezing and dying. While most plants will pull the sugars out of their leaves and into storage in their stems and roots, evergreen ferns do the opposite, instead packing the leaves with extra sugars, which act as a sort of anti-freeze, protecting the cells of the leaves from freezing and rupturing by ice crystals. A thick blanket of snow helps provide snug insulation against the dessicating effects of the cold, dry winter wind (although the species are also remarkably resilient to drying out, able to revive even after losing over half of their internal water content). By remaining green over the winter they extend the period that they’re able to photosynthesize, taking advantage of late fall sun before the snow falls, and getting a head start on other plants in the spring. Generally speaking, ferns aren’t a favourite foodstuff for many wild animals, but in the winter when food can be harder to find some animals, including deer, turkey and grouse, will nibble on evergreen fern fronds for nourishment.

Today not at Kingsford – British Soldiers

It seems I often find myself at my computer late at night, just starting to compose a blog post long after a reasonable person would have gone to bed. Part of this is due to not having to be up at a set time in the morning (for instance, to go in to the office), so I don’t feel the pressure to keep to a strict schedule in the evenings. The other part of it is that some cosmic process conspires to prevent me from starting any earlier. I went back up to Ottawa to take my sister to sign the paperwork for that car, and through one thing and another ended up leaving the city later than intended. And on the way home, it started snowing. Hard. Such that I was reduced to half the speed I would ordinarily drive on a clear night (it didn’t seem to phaze the locals, however, who breezed by me in their sporty Mazdas and hefty F150s. Part of me hoped they’d get home safely, but the other part of me hoped for the gratification of seeing their taillights in the ditch a few miles up the road). When I got home the one show I watch every week was just starting, and then my Mom called not too long after that. And, well, time just slowly slips away. So all that is a very long-winded way of saying that I had planned a longer post for today, but will delay it in favour of a shorter Today post (would you believe that my university professors criticized me of being too succinct in my term papers?).

Today’s subject is British Soldier lichen, Cladonia cristatella. My sister spotted this patch growing on a stump to the side of the trail. A week or two ago I wrote about Pixie Cup lichen that I found while hiking with Dan and Raven in Frontenac Provincial Park. While looking up the ID for the Pixie Cups, I ran across a few mentions of British Soldier lichen, a member of the same genus as and therefore closely related to the Pixie Cups. It has very distinctive bright red caps, thought to resemble the caps of the British soldiers during the American Revolutionary War in the late 1700s. It’s a relatively common lichen, so it’s somewhat funny that I hadn’t run across it before, especially since you would think the bright red caps would draw one’s attention. However, at least I already knew what they were when we found this patch.

Because lichen are a symbiosis of a fungus and an alga, the red caps are actually the fungus’ fruiting structure. The structure is similar to those employed morels and some other mushrooms, although they aren’t related. It takes a lichen anywhere from 4-8 years to reach sexual maturity and begin to reproduce, so up to that point the British Soldiers would remain capless. While the ones down here may not grow quite so old, lichens growing in the tundra of the far north can reach incredible ages, some anywhere from 1000 to 4500 years. They can survive this long because they are drought-resistant (the tundra is technically a desert, after all) and very hardy. Consider that the oldest of these may have started growing back when the Great Pyramids of Egypt were being constructed, and that really puts that 4500 in perspective. Generally, though, the lichens that grow in our temperate part of the world tend to have the same sort of lifespans as the trees in the forests.

Braving the cold

It was another busy day today, a follow-up to yesterday’s car-shopping. I took my sister back up to Ottawa so she could pick up the plates from her decommissioned car, and then dropped her off at her house before returning back to my parents’. The outing ate up most of the afternoon, and by the time I got back again it was already dark. However, I did take Raven for a hike before we left in the morning, so that hopefully she’d be tired enough for the afternoon she’d just spend it sleeping. My sister joined me, and the three of us hiked along the trails that circle the perimeter of the property. We walked back as far as the pond where I saw the Canada Geese last time I was here, now completely frozen in. The sub-freezing temperatures have persisted long enough that even the river is nearly completely frozen over now.

There are also a few trails that cut through the middle of their woods, but we didn’t have time for everything. Not to mention that it hadn’t warmed up significantly since yesterday, and so we didn’t want to spend an extended period outdoors. Yesterday when we were out hiking about, I noticed Raven was shivering. I can’t say I blamed her, since I was wearing my thick down jacket and was still on the verge of shivering myself, wishing I owned a balaclava, or at least had remembered to bring a scarf with me. She’s got a thin coat for a dog (at least the dogs I’ve known), seeming to have the unfortunate combination of thin, soft border collie texture with the shortness of the lab. Unfortunate for our Canadian winters, anyway – I do like how soft she is to touch, though. There was a time that I would probably have rolled my eyes at a dog owner who bought their dog an overcoat, but now I’m one of the ranks. Raven seemed not the least bothered by it, romping about like usual, and I think it kept her warmer. She certainly looked cute.

We saw a few interesting things while out. Everything is frozen now, there’s hardly a drop of water left liquid, and what there is is all running in the riverbed. The vernal pools of the forest are full, and frozen. I’m not sure just what process creates these air-bubble patterns in the ice, but they were several layers down. You see this a lot in shallow puddles and such, where there’s a pocket of air under the ice. The little bit of searching I did suggests it may be the result of a warm or sunny day melting the top of the layer of ice or snow, and causing cracks in the rest, then a rapid freezing seals over the top of the surface again; the water that’s trapped between ice layers then seeps through the cracks in the lower layer (liquid water is heavier than ice), leaving an air pocket. But don’t quote me on that. My sister felt the pattern looked like a face, maybe sort of like The Scream if it had been painted by Dali.

Speaking of weird ice formations, there were a lot of these along the trails. It was really hard to get a photo that I felt adequately captured the shapes, and in the end I still don’t think I really got it. They looked like ice-covered grass stems, except there was no grass inside. They seemed to be solid ice, but thin and often curved like grass stems. Strangely, they were covered in dirt. I wondered if perhaps they were formed by a process related to that which created my freezer icicles, maybe starting out with ice forming on the blades of grass, but wicking moisture up from the ground (they were all in low-lying areas that were wet or damp a few weeks ago when it was warmer) and extending the ice crystal formation beyond the end of the blade. The dirt maybe got drawn up with the water molecules?

Carrying on with the theme of I’m-not-really-sure, I think this is Winterberry Holly, Ilex verticillata. My mom had commented to me that there were a couple of bushes with flaming-red berries in a wetland up the road, which she’d noticed on a recent trip to town, and she pointed them out to me as we drove by the last time I was up. I did a search for Ontario shrubs bearing orange berries in the winter, and came up with Winterberry, but I would feel more comfortable calling this that in the summer, when I’ve seen its leaves. Even though I’m not sure there’s any other shrub that grows in our area which retains bright orange berries into the winter. Unless there’s something conclusively distinctive about a plant I tend not to make definitive IDs in the winter, and even then I usually have some summer experience with the species, too. To prove this point, Jennifer over at A Passion for Nature recently included a photo of snow-covered Winterberry in one of her posts, but her bush doesn’t look much like mine, so I’m inclined to just leave it as a tentative ID.

We discovered this giant bracket fungus growing from the top of a stump alongside the trail. I had my sister put her boot up on the stump to provide a sense of scale, as my first photo didn’t look very impressive. Since I don’t have my fungus guide here with me, I don’t know the identity of this individual, although it somewhat resembles an oversized and independent Turkey Tail. I will try to remember to update this with the actual ID when I get home and return to my field guide. There’s lots of different types of fungus in the forest here, some common ones I recognize, but lots I didn’t, and so I admired them but for the most part didn’t bother with photos. Fungus is one of those groups that I mostly don’t even try to ID strictly using the internet, preferring to look it up in a printed guide where you can quickly flip through photos.

We returned to the house by way of the horses’ field, so that my sister could check their water trough level before we headed out for the afternoon. This was Raven’s first experience with horses (although she’d met the cows down the road from our house a few times, I think). I don’t think she knew what to make of them, or even whether to be afraid or curious or playful. The donkey made it clear that he wasn’t interested in playing, however (donkeys are often kept in herds of other animals like sheep because they are exceptionally bold and instinctively will drive off wolves or coyotes), and so we retreated back to the house to thaw out.