• Witchhazel (Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diane’)
  The red-flowered witchhazel blooms first, and it must have gotten started last week because the small tree I came across this morning was in full, rusty burgundy splendor.  The flowers have a nice light scent which is unfortunately absent when it’s raining sideways.  Oh, Oregon.
• Burmese Mahonia (Mahonia lomariifolia)
  Haven’t seen it yet, but I know it’s going or will be in the next few days.  Excellent early nectar and pollen source for ambitious honeybees who sneak out to investigate on warm days in January and February.

Peeking:

• Crocus
• Hellebores
• Hazelnuts and the various Corylus spp. cannot be far behind
• Cherry buds are thinking about waking up; buds are probably physiologically active (it’s alive!) but not outwardly swelling yet

Deformed leaves, epinasty, on tomato

A friend discovered these deformed leaves on a tomato we’d planted in her garden just a month earlier. It had been blooming and doing fine, until one day, it wasn’t. It was also covered with webbing, and many of the leaves were chlorotic – bright chartreuse with darker green spots and veins. We talked for awhile and I learned that a landscaping service came in weekly to care for the lawn and clean up. Looking around, I realized the field of Vinca and Ivy that normally grew next to her house was gone. It didn’t look mowed; the plants were just…gone. Aha! Herbicide.

The deformed leaves in the picture are a sign of herbicide injury, particularly of growth regulators. Epinasty occurs when one portion of the plant’s tissue grows faster than another, or continues to grow while the other portion ceases. Leaves and stems can twist and elongate and club. In this scenario, it looked like 2,4-D damage. Once the plants were stressed from the injury, spider mites got the advantage – the source of the fine webbing.

The appropriate people were called and admonished, the plants were replaced, and all was well in the world. But it reminded me: the problem with plants isn’t always right there on the plant. Sometimes it’s in the bed adjacent, or coming from the house next door, or visiting from the woods nearby (deer, I’m looking at you).

Before I knew anything about insects, I was told that these guys eat mosquitoes. Not so. The adults actually don’t eat at all, though the young larvae feed on decomposing vegetation, and they can be a pest in turf grass. They like to get into the house in my neck of the woods, and it’s dicey taking them outside without injuring their legs. They go frantic when you pick them up. They’re harmless though. And they don’t eat mosquitoes. Bummer.

Some crazy (brilliant) person planted one up here in the PNW, and I’ve been stalking it to see if it lived and thrived.  Fremontodendron doesn’t like wet feet, and we pretty much float the grass 7 months of the year here.  But look, here it is, blooming and brilliant.

Fremontodendron, Flannel Bush

You can see that it grows in a gangly, open habit. I’ve seen it hedged into a shape of some sort and can’t recommend that approach. The leaves are very mallow-ish – they feel like suede and in fact the little hairs can be a contact skin irritant. A small price to pay for it’s incredible yellow brilliance.

It’s a favorite of Ceratina, the small blue carpenter bees, and I’d imagine bumblebees and all the other bees of note like it too.

Picture it: Sapphire Blue Oat Grass or blue Senecio planted about its base. Fabulous contrast. Okay, I’ll stop gushing about it now.

There’s blood orange marmalade, honey from three different keepers’ hives, vintage sourdough starter that half the town is also in possession of, home brewed beer, a freezer container full of the viscous sugary delicious base for hot buttered rums, homemade champagne vinegar, and the aforementioned nectar from heaven of strawberry-rhubarb preserves.  (Seriously, they are unbelievably good, like fresh, ripe strawberries.  Better than the preserves at the Big Yellow House in Santa Barbara, and that’s saying something.)

I have been offered, but refused due to lilliputian kitchen dimensions, locally grown and freshly milled whole wheat flour (25-pound bags only!), a vinegar mother, dried chanterelles (honestly, I didn’t know what to do with them), grated and frozen zucchini, a metric-yard of eggplant, homemade dog food (I don’t have a dog), a yogurt mother culture (for making your own yogurt), and on 3 different occasions, homeless swarms of bees.

If I recall correctly, my rental agreement specifically forbids keeping bees in my kitchen.

Despite the ecstatic toast incident, the day has pummeled me.  I planned to work some more this evening, but I feel a mouth breathe coming on.

It’s easy to identify n00bs because they have tidy, streamlined, carefully reasoned positions on big issues.  Logging?  Always bad!  Restoration activities?  Always good!  GMOs: bad.  Organic agriculture: good.

Meet burdock (Asteraceae: Arctium minus).  Or burr dock, if you so desire.

Burdock is a European introduction, a noxious weed in two states, and ubiquitous in North America.

Noxious and introduced?  Bad!

It’s also a source of nectar and pollen for foraging butterflies, bees, and wasps.

Food for beneficial insects?  Good!

It eats Ruby-crowned Kinglets (Regulus calendula).  Its flower heads are prickly, tangled and sticky and ensnare these tiny birds.

Bird eating weed?  Most definitely bad.  (The birds are common and not endangered if that makes you feel any better.  I know, it probably doesn’t.)

The tap root is tasty and the leaves have been used for a variety of medicinal purposes across a number of cultures.

Medicinal and delicious?  Good.  Invasives as a food source?  Even better.

The flower heads stick to fur and make pets sick if ingested.

Barfing dogs?  Très bad.

Here’s a good one: Burdock was the inspiration for Velcro.  True story.

You can see where I’m going with this.  Ecology isn’t easy.  It’s complex, and it’s always about competing objectives.  The ornithologists see one priority.  The farmers see another.  The botanists have an opinion, and so do the entomologists.  Citizens are enthusiastic opinionators, and the land manager is faced with a huge task: to manage the needs of the plant community and the animal community in line with prevailing ecological goals and economic mandates.

I would say here that I sure wouldn’t want that job, but I totally do.

_____

Sources:

[1] http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=ARMI2&photoID=armi2_004_ahp.jpg#
[2] http://www.missouriplants.com/Pinkalt/Arctium_minus_page.html
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_de_Mestral
[4] http://bna.birds.cornell.edu/bna/species/119/articles/demography

Vox Hortus has its own domain now, so you can find it at www.voxhortus.com or at the WordPress address.

So much has happened in a year.  I’ve finished my third field season for my research project, I’m writing my thesis and looking for a job.  I graduate this spring, into an economy that is, as we know, underwhelming.  I remain optimistic.

In 2010, I stomped grapes for Chardonnay, drank a good amount of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, read a metric tonne of journal articles, wrote some papers, took a few classes, went to Idaho, went to Washington, went on one date, took up birding, dropped the ball on knitting, took up spinning, identified 4,150 insects, learned and forgot a bunch of statistical whatnot, sat through 5 successful graduate defenses in my cohort.  I’ve made great strides in getting over my fear of arachnids.  It’s been good.  Strange, but good.

Vox Hortus is 5 years old!  There are new features in the works and lots of ground to cover in gardening, insects, science, and the natural world.  The blog has a new theme and it’s all new from here out.  Welcome back!

I’m going to do some housekeeping and clean up the archives and categories…then – it’s on!

Readers, mea culpa. I’ll be a much better blogger in the near future.

In the field biology realm, as it takes place in the upper latitudes, you have a field season and a lab season.  Depending on what your organism is and where you are, it could be 3-months and 9-months, or 6-and-6, which is how it is where I am.  For 6 months I’m almost never indoors and I’m cut up, bitten, sunburned, sweaty, stung and weary.  For the other 6 months, I’m rarely outdoors and I’m tunnel visioned, analytic, pasty, caffeinated, restless and nocturnal.

While I’m inside these days, with the sun low and cold and the rain ever present, I’m longing for the bucolic field days of summer.  When I’m traipsing around the back forty with vials tucked into my underwear, chasing my subjects and alternately being chased by them, those winter months sound downright cozy.

“Elsewhere, we hear of a research assistant who “reported that a fecal pellet from a bald-faced saki monkey, with dung beetles attached, fell directly into his shirt pocket as he was observing monkeys in the canopy overhead.” Fieldwork doesn’t get any better than that, y’all.”

True true.  I have a subset of specimens that I unknowingly sat on in the field and later peeled off my jeans – they’re still good specimens.  A bit flat.