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Lincoln is blessed with so many wonderful wildflowers that it is almost fortunate that our showiest local orchid, the pink lady’s slipper, is rare enough not to outshine the rest. By another of its monikers, it became the eponym for Moccasin Hill, one of Modernist neighborhood Brown’s Wood’s crossing ways. (The other is Laurel Drive, […] Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning. –T.S. Eliot
A good spring for our one native cactus— though here at the boreal edge of its range, it would take an exceptionally long and […] In our previous episode, a chestnut tree in the last throes of blight put forth its second and last crop of nuts. –Last, at least, for another few years, until one of the young basal shoots matures enough to bear before the blight takes it in turn. That crop was collected from open burrs before […] More commonly known as tamarack (Algonquian for “snowshoe-making wood”), larch, or Larix laricina, this lovely tree is native from slightly south of here all the way up to the tree line in Canada and Alaska. Its favored setting is the bog, precious few of which have survived development and eutrophication. Given full sun, however, it […] So many species flowering at once… Here, Rhododendron mucronulatum ‘Cornell Pink’ and forsythia (cultivar unknown) against lightning-blasted Pinus strobus stump:
Virginia creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia, is surely one of our finest native vines. Propagated by birds, it shows up almost everywhere, and is easily propagated deliberately from rooted ground sections. It is self-supporting, but much more benign to structures than other strong clinging vines like Campsis radicans (trumpetvine) or the climbing hydrangeas. It also offers possibly […] (Please see earlier post.) Many of the developing burrs are knocked off by wind and rain before maturing. But with fair weather and good fortune, a few complete development and are released to the forest floor, or into the waiting jaws of squirrels. In this case, the tree produced about 15 burrs, […] Just about the time Farrar Pond was filling, a disease was discovered among American chestnut trees in Long Island. Within Ed Farrar’s lifetime, Castanea dentata, the dominant tree in many eastern forests, was all but extinct. An estimated four billion chestnut trees were lost, and with them a staple food, valued lumber and shade tree […] Tough tree, tender shoots |
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