I guess that most people usually expect to read about strawberries in the spring and summer. This small, low-growing perennial strawberry may just be creeping near the edges of your yard right now. Still mowing to mulch your leaves?
Compare plant size with spruce needles
Mock Strawberry or Indian Strawberry loves foot traffic AND mowing AND may still be blooming in your yard. Look for it! I took photos of mine in flower during the first week of November. The yellow flower made me stop and check it out. Then I found some bright red fruits nearby.
Look for the pointed sepals going every-other-one with the three-toothed bract leaves on the bloom without petals
Potentilla indica, previously known as Duchesnea indica, is a member of the Rose Family and came to live in this country from Southeast Asia because people thought it was a pretty ornamental plant that makes a great ground cover. Boy, does it cover the ground! Its reddish stolons, or runners, take off horizontally to root here and there at the nodes where its toothed-leaves emerge. Those leaves are palmate and made up of three leaflets. Blooms appear singly and have five small, pointed sepals and five larger, toothed bracts in alternating whirls under their five yellow petals. After pollination by small bees and flies, the fruit, less than an inch long, appears – pointing upward, making it highly visible. You can clearly see the seeds attached all over the outside of the strawberry like red goosebumps.
The fruits showing their seeds
These are not the yummy, sweet, succulent, strawberries of spring. They are small, relatively dry, spongy, and tasteless. Edible, but who would want to? Ha! Birds, squirrels, rabbits, mice, raccoons, deer. This extensively naturalized import does have wildlife benefits! Actually, humans have benefited from these plants for hundreds, if not thousands of years, because of their medicinal qualities: fresh leaf poultices for skin ailments and insect bites, tea for cold symptoms, probably due to vitamin C, D, and iron content. Recent research shows properties that act against the squamous cell activities of various cancers.
Don’t confuse Indian or Mock Strawberry with the Wild Strawberry, Fragaria virginiana, that grows in Pennsylvania. Our native plant has white flowers, blooms in the spring, and has its seeds tucked up inside its fruits!
How beautiful the leaves are this fall! Our hills and mountains appear upholstered with green leaves during the growing season. Now with the lessening of sunlight due to shorter days, the leaves have begun shutting down their food production. As the amount of chlorophyll, the green color, slowly fades from the leaves, other pigments in them become visible – xanthophylls (yellows), carotenoids (oranges), and anthocyanins (reds to purples). Sometimes all the colors may be displayed in a single leaf!
At the edge of the woods, this Striped Maple is getting more sunlight.
Right now, Striped Maples (Acer pensylvanicum) are excellent examples of brilliant yellow. Small understory trees hardly getting above sixteen feet tall, they just shine out like beacons from the shadows under the taller mixed hardwoods where they like to grow. Look for the leaf shape as you walk or ride along the back roads. They differ from the common maple leaves because they are bigger, up to seven inches long as well as across, too. They are three-lobed instead of five-lobed…and the lobes point straight forward instead of out to the side. The pointed tips of the lobes are long and thin. With such a large leaf area, I’ll bet those points act like drip tips to help drain off the rain that beads up on them. The leaf base is rounded where its reddish stem and its three main veins meet together at the bottom. As an understory tree, the development of them is slow, but will accelerate when an opening with more light becomes available. Then they can grow up to thirty feet tall with trunks eight inches in diameter. Their range is from Nova Scotia to the North Georgia mountains and west to Michigan and Ohio. They grow in cool, rocky woods and seem to prefer slopes. At least, that’s where I saw most of the ones I was stalking for a photograph!
Green and white striped trunk.
The striped part of the common name refers to the easily-identified outer layer of bark that is green with white vertical stripes when the tree is young. It darkens up with time to brown, but those stripes are still quite visible. Striped Maples may live for a hundred years. Indeed, they must be very hardy because they get chewed on a lot. Rabbits, deer, beaver, porcupine, and the caribou and moose populations of our more northerly neighbors, all browse on them at one time or another during the year. Some resources indicate that this type of maple can start to regain twigs and leaves as stump sprouts rather quickly, about two months, after being denuded and trimmed to the roots. Their roots which are shallow and wide-spreading, make the trees strongly competitive for soil moisture and nutrients. Our colonial ancestors fed green and dried leaves of this tree to their cattle in winter and would turn them out early in spring to graze on the newly growing foliage in the woods near their fields. Today, tests are underway to determine if there is a practical application for an active anti-tumor substance isolated from Striped Maples.
Many odd, strange, and curiously costumed kids of all ages are out and about at the end of October. So, let’s take a look at a creepy, gelatinous growing thing that likes to live in and digest decaying logs. Heh! Heh! Heh!
Tremella – jelly fungus
You can find Tremella in the forest – in the duff on the floor, or mysteriously appearing on hard and soft wood – especially dead trees, lying there decomposing. Tremella’s unseen hyphae eat the wood from the inside of logs where you cannot see them doing it. Creepy! Then, when they have digested enough for extra energy, they will reproduce and create more of themselves to take over the world. (Oops, I didn’t mean to say that.)
…they start small
They exude jello-like masses of lobed or wrinkled or leaflike jelly with spores inside it. These globs can be orange, or yellow, or black, or reddish-brown in color, depending on the species that produced it. They will break apart and dissolve to let loose all of the spores that will take over the world. Heh! Heh! Heh!
…and just keep oozing along
IT’S JELLY FUNGUS! Seriously, it is a fun kind of fungus because lots of folks don’t recognize it as one, and make icky, yucky noises when they see it or are brave enough to touch it. “Trembling” Tremellas… and they don’t just appear for Halloween, but can ooze into existence from May to November. Be vigilant and watch for them – in the woods, on your back fence, the sides of a raised bed. They are coming!!! Unfortunately something has taken over my mind…and my computer. I must sign off for n
American Dittany, Cunila origanoides, is a perennial plant in the Lamiaceae or Mint Family. “American” is attached to its common name because there are other plants native to Europe with the same name. The second part of its scientific name indicates that this plant resembles Oregano. Not too surprising, as quite a few of our cooking herbs are classified in the Mint Family as well. In fact, along with square stems and opposite leaves, aroma is one of the BIG family traits. Basil, Sweet Marjoram, Sage, Lemon Balm. Rosemary – to name just a few. There are lots – that are mostly native to other continents.
Check out the opposite and slightly serrated leaves of an upright plant.
I accidently became acquainted with American Dittany almost forty years ago as I tried cliff climbing near a creek. My boot slipped, and I grabbed the nearest rocky ledge. My reward was two fold: 1) I did not fall; 2) I was suddenly blessed with an amazing aroma from the plant growing nearest to my nose. Through all the following years of visiting that cliff and those plants, I have become aware of the decrease in their population. When I climb up to find them, I have to look and step really carefully in order to get photos. They now appear smaller than the reference books’ height of eight to sixteen inches. I missed their blooming time this year occurring from August to October. None of the plants I saw had their tiny, two-lipped purple flowers or the dried remains of them. Maybe they didn’t have the stored energy in their fibrous root system to reproduce.
This plant was hanging over the edge.
American Dittany or Stone-mint or Frost-mint is native to this continent from New York to Florida and west to Texas and Illinois. It tends to grow in dry forests and in the thin soils of rock outcrops, especially where vegetation is sparse. The serrated, lance-shaped leaves, dotted with oil glands (the scent), are opposite and stalkless, flowering from their axils. The wiry stem is brown and appears woody. When rolled between my fingers, I can feel the bumps that make it “squared”. In some resources, American Dittany is dubbed as a “sub-shrub” which is a dwarf, woody plant. I have not yet witnessed the reason this plant received a common name of Frost-mint. Evidently, when the watery sap pushes out at the bottom of a stem that has been cracked open by a hard freeze, it freezes into ribbon-like projections around the base looking like “frost flowers”! I would love to get a photo of that! I may have to let that task to someone younger and more agile. At my age, I probably shouldn’t be climbing around on cliffs in the slipperiness of winter.
Sometimes I find more than plants – a message for all mankind!
Recently, staff from the Tioga State Forest spent some time on the Coal Creek property to gather information to help them develop their management goals for the property and identify any immediate needs that NPC should work on while we own the property.
Is the drainage on the roads working? Are there invasive plants that should be addressed sooner rather than later? Are there any timber stand improvement activities that could happen?
Thanks to the support of NPC’s members, we were in a position where we could buy the Coal Creek property earlier this year. NPC will own the property while the Active Treatment System (ATS) for Coal Creek, Morris Run, and Fall Brook is built.
Once the ATS is up and running the property will be transferred to the Bureau of Forestry and managed as part of the Tioga State Forest.
After a morning on the property conversations are underway and lists are being drawn up. We’ll begin having some conversations about what are next steps and what’s reasonable for NPC to take on during our ownership. Stay tuned for future updates as those plans are developed and we start to implement projects.
One thing that everyone seems interested in is the property’s historic uses. One group walked to the northern end of the property and explored some old roads, now grass covered walkng paths that led to a coal mine. During the jaunt, they found a stone “wall” under one of the walking paths (former road).
In looking at the 1938 aerial image the road that is now walking path can be seen. It’s evident the road was being used and people needed to get to where the road was leading. Now, it’s finding that spot on the ground.
Stay tuned as we learn more about the property’s past while exploring what its future will look like.
Did you ever go to the Library of Congress site named “Everyday Mysteries”? Luckily, I found it and the above question along with its surprising answer – Watermeal. Ever heard of that? I hadn’t, but I had seen the plant itself just four days earlier, growing in a pond as I walked the trail at Lime Bluff. What a coincidence! It is a joy to walk and bird and look at plants and trees there. That’s when I saw a completely green pond. Yuck, I thought, a total algae takeover! Then a slight wind arose, and all the green lazily swirled and parted to expose the water’s surface. NOT algae – because it would have stayed clumped together. I put my hand in the water and out it came, covered with lots of tiny green bumps. The plants were miniscule like poppy seeds and felt like them, too.
The green pond.
I couldn’t wait to check out my PA plant reference. There I found Watermeal. Its other small relatives were listed and described, too, as species of Duckweed. But Watermeal is a different species and in a different genus and definitely the smallest of the whole bunch. Wow, the smallest flowering plant in the world growing nearby!
Using my binocular microscope and the grid pattern in the bottom of a Petri dish full of green specks, I was able to measure them – ranging from one-half to one millimeter long. Remember, there are 25.4 millimeters in an inch. Now, look at a ruler and be amazed at how tiny these plants really are! I am!
A closer look.
They have no roots, no veins, no stem. Just an oval-shaped leaf called a frond, kept afloat by tiny cavities filled with the oxygen made when they photosynthesize in the sunlight. They don’t bloom often, using their single anther (male part) and their solitary pistil (female part) to make one almost invisible seed. Most of the time Watermeal will reproduce vegetatively by making clones that emerge from budding pouches, located at one end of their fronds. The parent plant and clone may stay together for a while. In the fall, a special clone filled with starch called a “winter turion” is produced. The accumulated starch makes the turion heavier than water and it sinks, to overwinter on the pond bottom, using the starch to stay viable. It will rise in spring after making enough oxygen to create buoyancy. One resource indicated that Watermeal can cover an entire pond within a few weeks after arising from the pond bottom.
An even closer look at Watermeal.
Watermeal’s scientific name is Wolffia brasiliensis. It is a member of the Arum Family, like Skunk Cabbage, Green Dragon, and Jack-in-the-Pulpit…a morphologically divergent member of the Arum Family. Recent DNA testing got the whole Duckweed Family classified as a sub-family within the Arum Family. Watermeal, native to both North and South America, is considered an annual plant. It grows in the fresh water of ponds, sinkholes, swamps and slow-moving streams. Many times, it is found floating among its larger Duckweed relatives.
A lot of research is being done with Duckweeds (Lemna) and Watermeal (Wolffia) because of their effective up-taking of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, pathogens, and toxins in the mitigation of polluted waters. With that kind of nutritious diet, some species can double every 36 hours. The downside is they need to be removed from the water before they die and release all of the contaminates back into the same water.
I wanted to write an article about the geology of our area – a study on the amazing hows and whys of the built-up layers and types of rock and mineral formations under us, plus the soils deposited here for growing things and us to walk on and build on. Researching and writing an article about that far down Underfoot would undoubtedly be a complex task, something I really don’t have the background for.
I’m here where I want to be looking for plants, and the plants certainly seem to know where they want to put down their roots in clay, dirt, sand, mud, rocks, acid, alkaline, wet dry. So I guess maybe there is no need…and yet, sometimes there are days… when I mosey along the creek, looking down, and want to know where the vast amounts of pebbles and rocks came from upstream.
I look at all of the different colors there, made possible by coal, slate, quartz, shale, limestone, mudstone – a palate of blues, greens, browns, pinks, ecrus, whites, blacks. All at one time were part of huge, gorgeous, solid mountains, the ancient Applalchians, first formed roughly 480 million years ago during the Ordovician Period and, some say, as tall as the Himalayas. Now in our time, eroded, broken down, tumbled and jostled until they are almost round, practically sorted by size as the bank slopes to the water – their placer and their maker. Millions and millions of years it took for the pretty rocks to get here, down to pick-up-able size, for kids of all ages to plop back into the water or skip across it, to enjoy the smooth feel of shale or the bumpiness of sandstone or just the fun of drawing colored pictures on flat rocks.
It is autumn – time to find your pie marker and get baking those yummy apple pies. What! No pie marker?
There is a type of plant that grows around here, commonly known as Pie Markers. The resemblance of their strangely-shaped seed capsules to the baking tools used for marking or fluting or crinkling the upper edges of pie crust is, well, remarkable! I was taught by my gram to use the pinch-finger technique for crimping my crust edges and have never owned a pie marker. Until now! Thanks to the owner of the antique store in Pennsdale, I have an example to show you.
Pie Marker flower with green seed capsules
The Pie Marker plant was brought to this continent in the 18th century to be cultivated for its strong, jute-like fibers for making string, ropes, rugs. Indigenous to India and grown in China from around 2000 BCE, known as Qing Ma, it was used medicinally for an antiseptic, an astringent, and as a demulcent – think “soothing”. The fiber business went bust, and we now have a plant whose seed output yearly (per plant) can top 15,000, depending on height – which can be up to five feet tall, having many downy branches, eight-inch velvety leaves, and lots and lots of five-petaled yellow flowers. The pollinated flowers create the seed capsules made up of twelve to fifteen segments that form the round “pie markers”.
Older plant with mature seed capsules
Pie Marker AKA Pie Maker AKA Abutilon theophrasti AKA Velvet Leaf AKA Indian Hemp AKA…I found eleven common names so I’ll quit now… is considered a damaging weed to agricultural crops like corn and soybeans because of its competitiveness over nutrients and water plus the fact it harbors maize and tobacco pests and soybean diseases. There are many other plants in the Mallow Family – okra, cotton, ornamentals like Rose of Sharon, Hollyhocks and Hibiscus – that are “positive” members of our plant community.
Botanical and man-made pie markers
I may have inadvertently spread Pie Marker seeds on my property after collecting the pods for a dried flower arrangement. I found them growing on the edge of a field. They seem to like disturbed places like edges, compost heaps, and alongside buildings in town. They added a lot to the arrangement. But, I will have to be vigilant weeding new plants as they appear next spring. Their seeds can remain viable for 50 years in dry soil. I guess that will keep me busy for the rest of my life!
When a drought is finally declared the day before construction starts on a stream project, to be followed with over 3” of rain beginning only a few hours later, it makes for an interesting project.
Mark Sausser of Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission explains the construction process to Little Pine State Park officials as the excavator holds the sill log in place while the crew uses rebar to pin the log to the streambed.
The Little Pine Creek streambank stabilization and habitat restoration project kicked off with a 2-day rain delay, and more rain throughout the week and a half long project. The deviation from typical stream flow, accompanied by a shortage of delivered logs for structures, enabled the stream team to show their flexibility and creativity, as they had to modify the original plan. With DCNR’s permission, the crew cut a few trees (mostly willow and sycamore) to use as face logs for the mudsills, with intentions of the trees reestablishing roots to help further stabilize the bank
The Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy partnered with Little Pine State Park (DCNR Bureau of State Parks) and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission on a project to address eroding streambanks along Little Pine Creek within Little Pine State Park. Using log and rock structures approximately 1,000 feet of the streambank were stabilized and some floodplain access restored.
A bird’s eye view of pinning a sill log; drill the hole, find the hole, use sledgehammer to get rebar started, finish pounding rebar with jack hammer and bend the extruding end downstream.
Specifically we looked at the stream stretch starting at the shooting range going downstream. Little Pine Creek is a Cold Water Fishery that is attaining for aquatic resources. The project site is in a stretch of the stream that also has naturally reproducing trout and is a Keystone Select trout stream.
Little Pine Creek’s streambanks are eroding, creating bank heights of 8 to 10 feet from water’s edge to the top of bank. The sediment from the eroding stream banks is entering the stream system and depositing in the area of this proposed project and down stream.
Grading what used to be the 14’ vertical bank, once grading was completed the bank was seeded and mulched. Also notice the willow tree used for structure work in the bottom left corner, the goal is for the tree to establish roots and grow to further stabilize the bank.
To give you some idea of the amount of sediment coming into the system we can use the location of the swimming buoys at Little Pine State Park’s lake which is downstream. The buoys are placed where there is 4.5 feet of water depth. In 2020 the buoys were placed approximately 75-feet from shore, in 2021 they were placed approximately 125 feet from shore. The buoys had to move further out because of the sediment filling in the lake.
As you will see in the aerial photos comparing the site from 1995 (on left) to 2015 (on right) sediment is filling in the lake at Little Pine State Park. The sediment is from the eroding stream banks.
By working to eliminate sources of sediment and restore access to the floodplains the hope is Little Pine Creek can remain a Cold Water Fishery and continue to be attaining for aquatic resources as well as meet these other designations.
Jason Detar is a fisheries biologist for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and serves on the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture. He conducted a habitat analysis of Little Pine Creek. When asked by email his thoughts on this project he responded with:
“Substantial streambank erosion is occurring throughout the proposed project reach on Little Pine Creek. This has resulted in significant sediment transport downstream in the greater Pine Creek/West Branch Susquehanna/Susquehanna River watersheds impacting water quality and habitat. The Little Pine Creek stream channel is becoming overly wide and shallow from the bank erosion. Little Pine Creek is unique in that it is a large stream that supports a wild Brook Trout population throughout the project reach. Brook Trout are intolerant of sediment and elevated water temperature. Completion of the project will improve water quality by reducing erosion and sediment deposition and improve habitat for wild Brook Trout.”
The crew built modified sawtooth mudsills, root wad deflectors and placed boulders. The mudsills and root wads slow the flow of the stream and redirect it towards the middle of the channel, which relieves pressure from the heavily eroded bank. These structures also provide habitat for fish, turtles, and other animals. The rock piles in the middle of the stream were intended to be large, individual boulders which would create scour pools on the downstream side. The 14’ high vertical bank was graded to reconnect Little Pine to the floodplain, this will allow for sediment to settle out into the meadow above rather than continuing downstream and filling the dam during high water events.
Several sections of the modified sawtooth mudsill are seen here; the crew pins a face log on the downstream section, the completed upstream sections are being back-filled with stone, once all of that is complete, the bank will be graded.
We anticipate continuing this partnership with DCNR at Little Pine State Park to implement more stream restoration along this popular stretch of naturally reproducing trout stream.
A shout out and thank you to Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, Little Pine State Park, the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited, and the Coldwater Heritage Partnership for their help with the project!
Question: When does an oak leaf not look like an oak leaf?
Answer: When it is a Shingle Oak Leaf!
We’ve been taught there are two groups of oaks: white oaks whose leaves have rounded lobes on them and red oaks with sharp pointed and toothed leaves. Shingle Oak, or Quercus imbricaria, is a type of native red oak that has no points or teeth on its leaves – just nice smooth edges. Occasionally they may be found growing on moist hillsides or in bottom lands. I spied one walking on Canfield Island last week. I did not know what it was. The tree caught my eye because of its shiny, dark green leaves that looked sort of like rhododendron leaves only smaller and not leathery. I found a small bunch of leaves that had fallen, or been chewed off the tree, lying beneath it. They were smooth-edged, ranging in size from four to six inches long and were lightly furred underneath by very short, tannish hairs. I had to use my magnifier to determine that. Of course, it was all of the acorns growing on and lying beneath it that really clued me in…IT’S A SPECIES OF OAK!
This Shingle Oak could grow to 100 feet in height.
Shingle Oaks are more frequently found west of here in the Ohio and Mississippi River Valley regions. They are commonly used as ornamentals, and this one may well have been planted here. What a treat to find and identify it!
Twig of Shingle Oak leaves
Shingle Oaks flower in May when their leaves are about half-grown. Their acorns will then be ripe about eighteen months later. The species name imbricaria is Latin for “like a shingle” which could indicate its use as a source of hand-split shingles or shakes. Or, maybe, because of the caps on the small brown acorns that have wedge-shaped, pointed scales overlapping to resemble a shingled roof.
Acorns are about 1/2 inch in length
How many native animals and insects need native oak trees for food or habitat? Of 435 species of oaks worldwide, 91 are found in the United States AND support more caterpillar species than any other genus of plants in all of North America – not to mention all the animals that eat acorns. Read more about them in Doug Tallamy’s book, “The Nature of Oaks: The Rich Ecology of Our Most Essential Native Trees.”
