Hickory Horned Devil and Cicada Killer

A couple local cold-blooded residents offer chills and thrills this time of year.

Two weeks ago, my friend Jim sent this photo, wondering if this scary creature has a name. For scale, that's a quarter lying next to it. I told him it looked like a hickory horned devil, and found a post from four years ago featuring two I had found chomping on a small walnut tree in front of the Veblen House. A splendid creature if you can get past the intimidating appearance.

The other, a cicada killer, can be seen in late summer buzzing low to the ground in search of cicadas to grab out of the air. This photo is from three years ago, when there was a thriving colony of them living on one of the traffic islands in the public pool parking lot. The cicadas need to be a lot more worried about these than we do.

Hawks and Hummingbirds

When a red-tailed hawk flew into the neighbor's spruce tree the other day, the good news for the chickens and ducks was that I happened to be outside at the time. Last fall, after the leaves had fallen, we lost a chicken to a Coopers hawk in very traumatic fashion. The day following the attack by the Coopers hawk, I found a big red-tailed hawk perched above the coop in the early morning, as if it were a customer waiting to be served breakfast. The word was out about our tasty pets. It looked like the backyard would be under siege for the duration, requiring that the chickens live the rest of their days in the protective enclosure of the coop. Instead, the hawks stopped coming, and we gradually returned to the liberal and very convenient routine of letting the chickens out in the morning, to forage freely for insects and worms in our fenced-in yard until dusk.

Why this latest hawk flew into the dense branches of the spruce tree isn't clear, but the local hummingbird was not at all pleased. It flew straight towards the hawk, like a tiny missile, stopping three feet from the evergreen tree, hovering, then returning to another tree to perch. I imagined the hawk munching on hummingbird eggs, but it seemed late in the season to be raising another brood. After a few minutes, the hawk shifted to a nearby oak, posed for a photo, endured more harassment from small birds, and then flew off.

Since then, the hawk has not returned, perhaps intimidated either by my presence or the more constant backyard presence of the big white Pekin duck, which seems clumsy and a little silly to us, but may in size and occasional deep quack give the hawk pause. The hummingbird, too, has disappeared, but that may only be because I'm actually looking for it. Far better to be preoccupied with some task, and let the corner of the eye catch flashes of all the winged visitors.

Mosquitoes and Toppled-Tree Ponds

Part of the legacy of Hurricane Sandy, and other severe storms that have buffeted Princeton in recent years, is a lot of new mini-ponds in the woods. Each uprooted tree leaves a depression in the ground where its root ball had been.

Is this minipond megapuddle a mosquito haven or a mosquito trap? Well, that depends.

Depending on the underlying hydrology, one minipond will last much longer than another. Some dry out after a rain, and if it happens within a few days, any mosquito larvae there won't survive to adulthood. In such circumstances, the minpond serves as a trap, luring adult mosquitoes to lay eggs, then pulling the plug on the resulting wigglers.

Other miniponds in the forest will stay filled all summer if there's no drought. They may be in a floodplain with a high water table, or receive steady seepage from a slope. These also can serve as mosquito traps, because their stable conditions allow predators of mosquitoes to get established, like this frog at Herrontown Woods, and the water beetle

floating half submerged nearby.

Water striders that walk on water (not much luck with the photo) are also able predators of mosquito larvae.

The ponds that offer a haven for mosquitoes are the ones that neither stay full long enough to attract and sustain a food chain, nor drain quickly enough. The only way to figure out which is which is to resist the reflexive association of standing water with mosquitoes, and take a closer look.

The Summer of the Cardinal Flower

Until this year, cardinal flower was a rare sight in the Princeton landscape, surviving in small clusters along the shores of the DR canal, or showing up as a solitary plant lost in deep forest along the Princeton ridge. Plant it in a garden, and it might return the next year, or not, according to its whim.

Those solitary plants are back, like this one in the boulder field at Herrontown Woods. But with plentiful rain, relatively cool weather, and occasionally some human assistance,

cardinal flower has turned the landscape red for much of the summer, from the marshy uplands of Herrontown Woods* in the east,

to the replanted shores of the upper Mountain Lake in the west,

and many points inbetween. Most are wild, like a big stand I hear can be found downstream of Harrison Street along the canal. But a few are planted, such as this streambank on Princeton's campus, in the hidden valley next to Washington Road, where a stream restoration was completed.

The Friends of Princeton Open Space managed to grow hundreds of new plants this summer from the tiny seeds of cardinal flower, the main challenge now being to get them all in the ground.

Even cardinal flowers such as this one planted as part of the parking lot installation at Westminster Choir College, are hanging in there, waiting for someone to do a careful weeding.

And this specimen, planted long ago and given little or no attention among the hundreds of other wildflowers, is flourishing in our mini backyard tributary of Harry's Brook.

The combination of human intervention and unexpected natural abundance is heartening, even more so because plants such as cardinal flower add so much to the quality of life for hummingbirds and other Princeton residents.

*Thanks to Sally Curtis for the second photo in this post.

Inkberry Thwacking Alert

If you plan to head south on the Harrison Street sidewalk towards the bridge over Carnegie Lake, be advised not to wear a nice shirt. A branch of inkberry, which travels in professional circles as Phytolacca americana, but also has been known to go by the more humble name "pokeweed" or simply "poke", has grown out over the sidewalk. Its berries are ripening, and when they do,

as these in the photo have, it's highly likely that any passerby, perhaps distracted by the view or by cars barreling by, or by interesting thoughts, as Princetonians often are, will get thwacked in a way that shirts do not easily forget.

Countless Yellows

Pollinators have been having a field day in our backyard, where yellow dominates every which way you look. It would be easy to assume that all these flowers are the same species, but at least seven different kinds of wildflower are contributing to the overall effect.

Cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata) is the most prolific.

Common sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale), mixing here with the purple of ironweed, doesn't make you sneeze, and it's not common. I've seen it twice in all my explorations of Princeton open space. It has shorter, notched petals and a yellow center.

Tall tickseed (Coreopsis tripteris), bought at either the Bowman's Hill or DR Greenway plant sale and seen growing wild only three times in my life, has distinctive leaves,

divided into three leaflets (thus the "tripteris" in the latin name).

Cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum) is the tallest, reaching 10 feet, rising over the lateflowering thoroughwort in the background. A hummingbird, normally drawn to tubular flowers, was taking sips from these one day.

All the other flowers look like a sunflower. This actually is one. There are many species of native sunflower, many of which spread aggressively underground. Each spring I swear I'll pull every last one out, but a few always survive, to perpetuate the cycle of summer pleasure and spring toil.

Black-eyed Susans are bred for looks. They're of no interest to pollinators,

who prefer the wild, unbred variety.

All the different versions of yellow may seem redundant, but diversity is the basis of resiliency and continuity. Different yellows bloom at different times, claim different ground. One may cater to a pollinator's shape better than another, or thrive in weather that causes others to languish.

Scarce Native Euonymus Found

One of the finer native shrubs you'll almost never see in the wilds of Princeton is Strawberry Bush, also known as Hearts-a-Bustin', or Euonymus americanus. Perhaps without a ten foot square colony persisting in Herrontown Woods, you wouldn't see them at all. These green capsules don't look like much, but later in the fall they'll turn dark red and burst open, revealing bright orange seeds. That's the ornamental part.

The shrub's undoing has been its position high on the list of deer's preferred foods. This one patch survives, badly chewed but with enough leaves to sustain growth and a few flowers, partly because some of the stems have grown high enough to escape the deer's browsing.

Spicebush, another shrub that survived intense browsing pressure only by having a single stem high enough to escape the deer, has made a dramatic recovery in Princeton's woods since deer numbers came down. But deer much prefer the taste of Hearts-a-bustin' to spicebush, and so the native euonymus still gets hit hard even as deer numbers have dropped and other forest understory vegetation has recovered.

I had encountered this rare patch a couple years ago, but hadn't been able to find it again. Only when a few of us recently began clearing trails at Herrontown Wood, which involved cutting down hundreds of the highly invasive Winged Euonymus (also called burning bush, or Euonymus alatus) did I come across it again. It's an excellent example of how an exotic species (winged Euonymus) that is inedible to deer can dominate whole hillsides, while the heavily browsed native euonymus shrub becomes vanishingly rare.

With some careful propagation, along with continued investment by Princeton in keeping the deer population in balance, this shrub could once again populate our woodlands and gardens.

Search for Monarchs--Nature Walk This Sunday

This Sunday at 10am, I'll lead a walk along the DR Canal towpath, beginning at Washington Rd. and walking towards South Harrison Street. Native wildflowers are at their late summer peak along the nature trail loop near Harrison St.--one of the perks of finding yourself in Princeton in late August. If time allows, we'll head up to the university stream restoration, which is packed with cardinal flowers right now.

You can park on the West Windsor (south) side of the canal, in the lot next to the canal on Washington Rd.

Meanwhile, jog your memory. Has anyone seen monarchs this summer? I saw this one in my backyard in early July. Saw another a couple days ago at Mountain Lakes Preserve, in the meadow we planted years back with summer wildflowers. A neighbor says she saw a few. That's it.

There is reason to be worried. All the information I could find online suggests that monarchs are not recovering their numbers during their multi-generational migration north this summer. Winter numbers in the mountains outside Mexico City were down 60% from two years prior. Last year, drought and changing farm practices made for a hard summer. This year, cool temperatures have slowed migration northward. An early August post in Michigan reported low numbers. An in-depth analysis by MonarchWatch is not promising. This link gives a good sense of where the monarchs are. This link offers more up to date news, and a way to report sightings.

The western population of monarchs, which overwinters not in Mexico but along the California coast, isn't doing any better. A Scientific American post states that the western U.S. population has "shrunk from over a million individuals counted at 101 sites in 1997 to less than 60,000 at just 74 sites in 2009."

Click here for past PrincetonNatureNote posts on monarchs, or type the word monarch into the search box at the top of this webpage.

Finding Home in the Far Away

Iguazu Falls in northern Argentina, twice the width of Niagara Falls, with tropical forests harboring all manner of animals exotic to a visitor from the U.S. It's on the flipside of the planet, with seasons reversed, and yet, what is that plant growing on the trunk of the tree?

A begonia like those we grow indoors in the U.S.

And these leaves are reminiscent of the purple passion flower native to New Jersey and points south.

Those trees look reminiscent of figs, somehow,

with a broad leaf,

and sure enough, there are the figs, growing along the trunk, clustered on curious stubby shoots.

This leaf has "wings" along its midrib like the winged sumac that grows along the canal in Princeton.

This grass does a good imitation of bushy bluestem (Andropogon glomeratus) that grows in the coastal plain along the eastern U.S.. Princeton's meadows and annually mowed right of ways have little bluestem, broomsedge, and just a few spots with big bluestem--all closely related.

And this Impatiens growing along the slopes of the gorge, seen also along a stream in Venezuela and in Puerto Rico, occupies a similar wet habitat to our native jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), and has similarly spring-loaded seedpods that explode when you touch them.

This succulent plant looks like a variation of the purslane that springs up in our gardens.

Our winterberry holly has similar clusters of tiny flowers along the stem,

and this vine with orange tubular flowers and long pods is reminiscent of our trumpet vine.

The familiar leaf of some version of wood sorrel grows on the moist rocks.

I thought at first this stiltgrass-like plant might be the dreaded eurasian wavyleaf basket grass (can you say Oplismenus hirtellus ssp. undulatifolius?) that has been invading the woodlands of Maryland and being fought against in an effort to prevent its spread up and down the coast. But a little research suggests it was one of the two native subspecies of basket grass whose range extends from the southeastern U.S. down to Argentina.

At this point, I was reminded by a teenage daughter that there were sights to be seen, where mist and sunlight meet to make standing rainbows, and that Dad was falling behind once again. But I liked the idea of an arc of kinship connecting the known to the otherworldly.

Knowing one's local plants makes the whole world a more familiar place.

A Riot of Wildflowers in Quiet August

One perk of spending August in Princeton is the late-summer bursting forth of native wildflowers. The most vivid example of this has traditionally been along the DR Canal towpath, particularly along the small nature trail loop just west of Harrison Street. But we've made some effort to "spread the wealth" around Mountain Lakes House, and also in Harrison Street Park and a few raingardens. Many of these plants can be obtained at plant sales at Bowman's Hill and DR Greenway. I've been meaning to get organized enough to do a literal "yard" sale now and then, because I have so many "volunteer" plants popping up. Always best to seek out local genotypes.

Here's what's blooming along the recreated creekbed in my backyard that handles (exploits) runoff streaming through from the neighbors:

Wild senna

Cutleaf coneflower (also called green-headed coneflower)

Jewelweed, with its pendant flowers and spring-loaded seed pods,

Purple-headed sneezeweed (doesn't make you sneeze)

Some tamed and wooly sunflower planted by my older daughter,

Among the red to blues, a leftover beebalm,

cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) with one of the Joe-Pye-Weed species in the background,

Great Lobelia (Lobelia syphilitica),

the trumpet section--rose-mallow hibiscus (Hibiscus moscheutos), which can also be white with a rose center,

purple coneflower,

blue mistflower (Conoclinium, formerly Eupatorium, coelestinum),

monkey flower, which keeps coming out white in photos,

and swamp milkweed.

White flowers are more common earlier in the summer, but here's a store-bought version of obedient plant (spreads aggressively in full sun but less aggressive in the shade),

sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia), also called summersweet for its fragrance,

the remnant blooms of Culver's Root

and buttonbush,

and the pollinator plaza called boneset (Hibiscus in the background).

Virgin's Bower (Clematis virginiana)--with toothed leaves rather than the untoothed leaves of the Asian autumn clematis, and planted in a pot to prevent it from spreading underground--is also just opening up.

The seeds of soft rush (Juncas effusus) add subtle ornament,

along with sedges like this woolgrass (Scirpus cyperinus)

and green bulrush (Scirpus atrovirens), which sprouts new plantlets at the tips of its seedstalks.