Blink January 4, 2008
Posted by Jennifer Schlick in mysteries.2 comments
Have you ever had the experience where you just look at something and you know in an instant what it is? (That’s the premise for the book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell.) I had that experience in the gorge last week when I found something green growing alongside the creek.
A part of my mind said instantly, “Liverwort.” Another part of my mind said, “What are you talking about? You don’t even know what a liverwort is. Stop trying to be so knowledgeable!” I took lots of pictures and asked my good friends at ID Please on Flickr. Guess what? It’s liverwort. Snake Liverwort. Conocephalum conicum.
There are two main categories of liverworts – thalloid and leafy. Snake is the largest in the first category.
I guess I must have learned about liverworts in that same biology class when I learned that there are 2 kingdoms of living things… It was still stuck back there in the gray matter somewhere and <BLINK> – suddenly it emerged, though I hadn’t needed that information for decades.
Aren’t brains amazing things?
Learn more about it here:
Brain Teaser December 10, 2007
Posted by Jennifer Schlick in mysteries.5 comments
What’s “wrong” with this picture?
Hints:
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Consider the time of day it was taken… (2:50pm)
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Consider what they taught you in scouts about finding your way…
First correct answer wins a prize!
It’s Spittlebug Season! June 1, 2007
Posted by Jennifer Schlick in insects, mysteries.8 comments
We see a lot of little kids at the Audubon Center in spring… literally thousands. Almost all are PreK through grade 4 or so… most in the very youngest grades – PreK through 1st. Little kids like little things. It does no good to point to a Great Blue Heron standing in the middle of Big Pond if there is an ant on the railing of the overlook. Indeed, we have been known to lead entire 1.5-hour field trips just in the backyard.
Spittlebugs are one of my favorite things to show. First I show them how to find the white froth on the stems of certain plants. It’s funny how you might walk right past it not noticing… until someone shows you one example. Then suddenly, it’s everywhere! They tell me what they think it is… frog spit or snake spit are the most common guesses.
Next I show them how to reach into the froth to find the actual cause: a bitty little bug with teeny black eyes. After they watch my bug for a few seconds, they invariably ask, “Can I hold it?” I encourage them to find their own spittlebug.
They are hesitant at first. It seems like a really gross thing to do: reach into foamy spit on a plant… eww. Still, they are so eager to hold their own bug that eventually they cave in. Once we all have bugs on our fingers, I tell them that as the bug starts to feel more comfortable, it may start to do the “Spittlebug Dance”.
The dance involves elongating your abdomen and pushing it up into the air. After we observe the bugs do this for a little while, I encourage everyone to try it! It’s good to use a high-pitched voice to say, “Whooo! Whooo!” as you do this. Mind you, I have never heard a spittlebug make this noise. But humans doing the dance just seem to need to make some sort of noise, don’t you think?
After the dance, we place the bugs back on the same kind of plant it came from. Each species of Spittlebug has its own food preference: you wouldn’t want to put a pine-loving Spittlebug on a goldenrod or vice versa.
What is your favorite nature thing to share with children?
While surfing around the ‘net to see what others have posted about Spittlebugs, I found this amazing photo of a Spittlebug costume. I think he’s a genius!
Obsession with Lace April 15, 2007
Posted by Jennifer Schlick in mysteries, photography, wildflowers.4 comments
Certain images in nature make me pull out my camera. I just can’t resist. It’s an obsession. Queen Anne’s Lace is one such obsession. It doesn’t matter what season it is, what the weather is, whether the light is good or bad, or from which direction the light is coming. I must photograph Queen Anne’s Lace if I see it. I don’t know why. Search for the word “Queen” on my Flickr site, and you’ll get several pictures of this wildflower. Apparently, I’m not the only one with the QAL obsession. Search “Everyone’s Photos” for “Queen Anne’s Lace” on Flickr, and you will get more than 1,000 hits. (Beware… not all the photos labeled Queen Anne’s Lace really ARE Queen Anne’s Lace.)
It’s not like it is rare or anything. It can be found in just about any field or along any roadside in these parts. Apparently, it is not native to North America… so it can be found in Europe, too! In fact, I’ve seen a map showing it on every continent, except Antarctica. It’s common.
It’s common. How often we dismiss the common, the ubiquitous, the omnipresent. But how can you dismiss this flower? So pretty. So variable. So many personalities. So interesting.
The Latin name is Daucus carota. Another common name is Wild Carrot. I’ve never tried to eat any part of the plant, but in “The Literature” the leaves, flowers, seeds, and roots are all listed as edible. As to harvest and prepatation, I’ll leave that reseach to you… (The Literature also notes that it might give you dermatitis, and it can be toxic in large quantities, so proceed at your own risk.)
What fascinates me most about this plant is the way it seems to protect its seeds. The seed itself is small and bristly. It relies to a certain extent on hitchhiking for distribution. A deer may brush by a plant and the little barbs on the seeds grab hold of the deer’s hair. Later when the deer runs or shakes, the seeds fall off in a new location, hopefully suitable for a new plant to thrive.
The thing is, those seeds don’t stick so well to wet hair. Walk through a field on a damp, drizzly day and all the seeds appear to be trapped inside minature cages. Come back when things are dry, and the cage has opened, revealing willing hitchhikers.
What brilliant design. Things like that fascinate me. I’ve had a love affair with this plant since I was a kid at Girl Scout Camp. I first fell for it because it had a cool name. I learned to observe it through all the seasons and the image became a part of me. Then came the book knowledge – more facts to attach to this plant. And, I have a feeling that I’m not done yet. I may try munching on some leaves or roots this spring, in small quantities of course.
Trees, Birds, & Bugs April 6, 2007
Posted by Jennifer Schlick in birds, insects, mysteries, trees.2 comments
When I was a girl at Girl Scout Camp, my counselors tried their best to teach me the names of the trees, wildflowers, ferns, and more. They gave us little tricks to help us remember. Shagbark hickory was easy, for example, because of that amazing, shaggy bark. White pine was easy, too, because the needles came in bundles of five and there are five letters in the word “white.” (Don’t try to extend this memory aid to the red pine, though, whose needles come in bundles of two, not three!)
I don’t know how I managed to remember the American elm; there was no particular memory aid provided. I loved the shape of the tree – like a big water fountain. I loved the little, delicate seeds that looked like they were encased in their own little flotation devices. I loved the leaves – their intense green, the serrated edges, the distinct veins. I especially loved that the orioles favored them for nesting sites. It was fun to look for the sack-like nests in fall after the leaves had dropped.
I was pretty young when I heard the grownups talking about Dutch Elm Disease and pondering what would become of the orioles if the elm trees were all wiped out. Would the birds be able to adapt to using some other tree for their nests?
It wasn’t until years later when I started working at the Nature Center that I learned more about Dutch Elm Disease - a fungus that attacks the xylem in the tree and can eventually spread to the roots – and to other elms that share the root system. The fungus is spread by a beetle that bores under the bark of the elm and lays eggs there. When the larva hatch, they also chew through the cambium – creating amazing “galleries” which remain long after the beetles are gone – and even after the tree has succumbed to the fungal disease.
We find the bark beetle galleries at Audubon all the time. Some of the pattern’s are miraculously beautiful. Isn’t it ironic that this beauty is also the cause of the disease that killed the tree allowing me to see the beauty?… Ah nature… Always a puzzle.
I’m happy to say that despite the killing off of most of the elms in our area, we still have orioles. I’m looking forward to May when I’m sure I’ll hear them singing along the very trail where I took this picture. (I learned their song using the method I described in another post! )
I’m also happy to say that I know the locations of several elms that seem to have survived Dutch Elm Disease. And I have just this moment made it my mission to photograph them over the next few months. Stay tuned!
Many thanks to Jayne, whose amazing bird photos can be found here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/89985824@N00/
Taking Things for Granted March 27, 2007
Posted by Jennifer Schlick in galls, mysteries.2 comments
I learned about Trees with Knees from my Girl Scout camp counselor back when I was a very young girl. We were taking a tour of our tent unit when we found a tree similar to the one pictured here. “Pickles” explained that a long time ago, a seed landed on an old stump and began to sprout. Since it had not landed in soil, the roots had to grow over and around the stump to get to the forest floor. Over time, the “nurse stump” slowly rotted away, leaving the roots in their original positions – looking like the legs (with knees) of a strange, long-necked animal.
The first time I encountered this tree with a group at Audubon, I was surprised to discover they didn’t know what caused the “knees”. I had lived with this knowledge so long I just assumed everyone knew. When I gave the explanation and saw how amazed my group was, I realized that I had lots of that kind of knowledge that I could share… that there were plenty of things I had learned about the natural world over the years that might not be common knowledge… things people might be fascinated to know.
Another favorite misconception I love to clear up for people is the nature of that bump in the middle of some goldenrod stems. I’ve heard people call it a seedpod, or a disease… The truth is even more fascinating.
There is a fly that lays eggs on the stems of goldenrod in the summer. When a larva hatches, it bores its way into the center of the stem to find everything it needs to survive: food, water, and shelter. The plant responds to the activities of the larva by growing extra thick layers of tissue in the shape of a ball around it.
When fall comes, the larva creates an exit hole – right up to, but not breaking through the outer skin of the gall, then returns to the center to spend the winter. In spring, the larva will pupate and eventually use the exit hole to emerge as an adult. If you find a gall with a smooth small hole, the adult has emerged.
Sometimes the fly is not so lucky. There are too many creatures out there that know about this secret life. Birds, such as chickadees or downy woodpeckers, may peck holes into the gall to find a tasty lunch.
And, of course, there is the overzealous naturalist who finds a gall with no hole at all and wants to show her charges the contents. (Who me?)
Would you believe there’s more? For example, there are wasps that drill into galls to lay eggs so that the wasp larva can feed on the fly larva. It’s all too fascinating… and I never tire of teaching people about it! (While hiking with the Cub Scouts, we also found oak leaf galls and willow galls.)
P.S. After showing my Cub Scout group the gall, we happened on this water snake – the first I’ve seen in 2007. After I explained that while water snakes are not poisonous, I don’t like to pick them up, since their saliva has an anti-coagulant that keeps your blood flowing after they bite you, which they almost always do… one young Cub Scout decided he wanted to try picking it up anyway. 
His first attempt made the creature turn it’s head toward the boy, then slither a little way down the bank. That movement was enough to convince the dad that his son was not going to get a second chance.
