Nature Diary
Notes from the field, essays, and observations.
Spring colors
A few of earliest flowers in my area:
No native flowers yet, but was happy to see these blooms:
- Aconite (Eranthis hyemalis)
- Snowdrops (Galanthus spp)
- Adonis (Adonis amurensis)
I’ve read that aconite is quite posionous, but I welcome its warm colors and the similar hues of the buttercup Adonis. Those two flowers are from Acton Arboretum. I traveled in to Boston’s Arnold Arboretum looking for a nonnative willow, rosegold willow, but it’s red anthers hadn’t appeared yet. Instead I found many snowdrop patches.
Looking for spring
Last week, impatient for spring, I went looking for early signs:
Witch hazel and willow catkins are the usual suspects in my area for the change of season. There are a few large specimens of witch hazel I visit at this time of year. One of them has grown so tall that it’s hard to see the ribbony petals. The willow is one I’ve visited many times in the past, it’s at the edge of a cattail marsh.
As you can see from the backgrounds, there’s still a lot of white stuff on the ground. I had to stand up on a snow bank to photograph the witch hazel and the snow was up to my knees near the willow. In the last week, the temperatures rose and much (but not all) of the snow has melted. Time to start looking for snowdrops and hellebore, with native hepatica soon to follow.
Snow and the meadow
A few sights from a snowy meadow:
I believe these are:
- Small white aster (Symphyotrichum spp)
- White-topped-aster (Sericocarpus asteroides)
- Sweet-fern (Comptonia peregrina)
The last plant, sweet-fern, isn’t a fern at all, it’s a woody shrub. The curving foliage remains all winter, it’s striking against the snow. Temperatures are going up and the snow is starting to melt – mud season is beginning.
Trees, leaves, and streams
Snow, snow, and more snow:
The white has been unrelenting. We had a foot and a half of snow, and then another snowfall. The snow in the first image of the trees is from the second snowfall. The pretty flocked look doesn’t seem to last long, though. As soon as the sun is out, it can disappear pretty quickly.
I’ve been out in the woods looking for icy streams and flows, but the snow has completely covered the smaller streams that I visit. In the second pair of images I found the flows I was looking for, but not the expected icing on the rocks.
The dangling bough of oak leaves was a happy discovery – and so was the oak leaf under the lacy melted snow.
Snow and simplicity
Snow changes as it melts and wraps around the landscape:
On the streets and roadways, the heavy snowfall of a couple weeks ago is dirty and melting. In the woods and fields the snow is still pristine but it gently melts into mounds, soft sloping white stream banks, and larger or smaller melt holes around trees and plants.
The little shrub in lower left is something I’ve walked by many times without noticing it at all. The pine sapling was also lost in the crowded forest understory until the snow fell and isolated it. Click an image to view a larger size.
In the snow
Snowy scenes in my area:
The first big snowfall this winter was almost two feet, followed by a more snow a few inches at a time. Now the temperatures are milder and the snow is beginning to melt, but it’s still pretty deep. I’ve been enjoying the white landscape: crevices in the snow, blowing snow across a tree-covered hilltop, and a fern stem that emerged from a snow bank.
Crystals and constellations
Some icy sights from cold winter mornings:
Ice stars form on stream surfaces when it’s around 15 deg F. Sometimes there are single stars, or clusters, or whole constellations of pointy crystals. The last image in this group is ice crystals on a mossy stream bank. The bank was just above the crystals in the first image in this group.
Snow and ice
In this post, closeups of snow and ice:
A top left and right, snowflakes on asters. At bottom right, lattices of snow crystals on oak leaves. In one of them you can see two nearly transparent hexagonal snowflakes. At bottom left, the remains of melted snow on switchgrass.
It was hard to find the familiar snowflake patterns, the aster images came closest to that. The lattice snowflakes and the polygons were something I don’t remember seeing before. The polygons were appeared white or transparent depending on the angle to the light.
Bubbles and drops
Images from warmer winter days:
The first image is a swirl of bubbles that formed as the stream flowed over some rocks. The reflected sky and woods were bright in the late afternoon sun. The drops are from a dusky, rainy day. The churn of bubbles in the last image are from the water surface at a small cascade.
Angles and flows
Another set of ice images:
Stream ice can form angular geometric patterns or irregular, snaking flow patterns under the ice. In the last image, the flow is the moving water under the crystal-lined hole in the ice. The other images were all taken the same day, but I have no idea why the ice forms angles in one spot and irregular curving flows in another.
Nature Diary 
