Impromptu Evening Walk at Great Meadows

6/1/12 Ruth and I attend Cherrie Corey's evening walk at Great Meadows.
Others attending:

• Emily Wheeler
• Carol and Marty Rogers
• Neela DeZoysa and Friend Cecilia Sharma
• Sarah Purgas - farmer and herbalist, she's head gardener for Gaining Ground and the Old Manse garden this summer; also is trained in historical preservation carpentry
• The Fischer-Frank family - Alan, Nina, and Julian (Cherrie's star homeschooler)

Fox Grape, AKA Concord Grape, (Vitis lambrusca) near start of the dike trail. We also have  River Grapes in Concord with pronounced teeth all around the leaf margin

Multiflora rose smell is stronger in evening
Yellow Flag Iris are everywhere this year.

Tufted Loosestrife

Tufted Loosestrife (Lysimachia thrysiflora) with clusters of yellow flower in the leaf axils (look like miniature wood buttons). They are just going by now. State botanist said he has rarely seen these in Massachusetts.

Viburnum dentatum, Northern Arrowwood, Opposite Leaves, Blooms a little earlier that the Swamp Dogwood.

Arrowwood

Eastern Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) is Cherrie's ID, based on leaf, stem ridges/markings, and leaf shape.  Small Shrub just past bench on right side of Cross Dike. Big green leaves with red veins.  Neela said she might find it in Arthur Haines new book Flora Novae Angliae. Cherrie says book is controversial because of new names both common and latin

Talked about Phantom Crane Fly, When it's in the sun you can see the black legs but when it flies into the shade you see just the whitish-blue dots at the leg tips.

Phantom Crane Fly

Buttonbush- one growing just before footbridge on left. Light green turns to dark green as it matures.Spherical inflorescences (from Latin in- + florescere to begin to bloom).

Buttonbush

Purple Loosestrife
Curly Dock

Showy tick-trefoil - pea family, blooms in mid-June with many pink and white pea-like flowers

Wood Sorrel (AKA Lemonies), 3 heart-shaped leaflets looks like clover

Evening Primrose, many  second year plants will bloom this summer.

Evening Primrose

Green Ash - a Floodplain tree, still Fraxinus pennsylvanica (sometimes also called red ash).

Green Ash

False Indigo, Amorpha fruticosa, native west of here in very dry places. Invasive in the NE and NW U.S. rare in other parts of the country.  Fabaceae pea family. May have expanded here at Great Meadows due to the warm winter.

False Indigo

Glossy Buckthorn, veins are parallel and don't run off the edge. It's now the first non-native plant ever recorded growing in Gowings Swamp.

Fine sparsely cut leaves near shoreline belong to either Water parsnip or Bulb-bearing water hemlock, both Carrot Family plants small with small, loose umbels of white flowers in mid-summer, sparser than the Queen Ann's Lace.

Umbels

Milk Parsley, cosmos like leaves emerging now near the water's edge, will have big beautiful umbels of white flowers with green and white variegated bracts in July.  State botanist, Brian Connolly, says that Great Meadows/Concord is one of only four places in North America where it grows.

Milk Parsley

Fleabane, probably Philedelphia (Erigeron philadelphicus) starting to bloom.  Many medicinal uses and, supposedly, when burned it keeps insects away

White Sweet Clover, beautiful long spike of little white flowers on tall, graceful bushes of delicate clover-like leaves.  Biennial.

White Sweet Clover

Rough Avens The fruit is more interesting than the flower, spherical with little barbs on it, leaves look like a strawberry plant.

American Lotus
Beaver chewing up first joist on Observation Deck

Downy Swamp Milkweed, furry stem and leaves

Pink/white striped bindweed (Calystegia sp.) vine wraps around thing.

Similar Plants

1.      Arrow Arum flower rarely seen, veins run out sideways from mid-vein

2.      Pickerel Weed has oval leaf and tall stalk with purple flowers, Massive amounts in lower impoundment.

3.      Sagittaria latifolia, Broadleaf Arrowhead - veins orginate at leaf base and run parallel with mid-vein

Moneywort, same genus Lysimachia as the tufted loosestrife. Not native, comes from Europe. Carpet of the floodplain forest.

Moneywort

Blue Vervain, hairy stems, wrinkled, candelabra for flowers..
White Vervain - Racemes that shoot out of the leaf stem.
Galls on maple leaves look like fungus.
Caterpillar, spiny comma or question mark, on american elm leaf.
Red Admiral butterfly

Small Hop Clover

Small Hop Clover

Wormwood or Mugwort (Artemesia sp.): didn't look healthy, all silvery and clumped together

Daisy Fleabane white. Philadelphia is pinkish

Cattail flowers, high on dike and growing out of warm rock crevices are producing pollen. Natives used pollen as flour.

Sensitive ferns right side of dike near end.

Sensitive Fern

Hawthorn (Rosaceae/Crataegus sp.)
on right before first bench, lower impoundment trail.

River Bulrush, flowering, on left side (Holt) used to be state protected.
Fresh tracks in mud near beaver lodge.

Ground Nut

Groundnut

Marsh Bedstraw (Rubiacea/Galium palustre)Marsh bedstraw

Flowering dewberry
Completely white bindweed, also called moonflower when grown horticulturally
Lots of Bittersweet on Upper Impoundment side of Cross-dike just after the Observation Deck.

These photos are by Cherrie Corey and Larry Warfield and web images.