A very simple, everyday occurrence when you live on a dirt road, and your new electric car doesn't have a rear wiper (go figure!) is this kind of pattern of dirt, grit and pollen on the rear windshield as it drops and settles from the overhang, depending on how much moisture there is around.
Different days, different conditions, different patterns - some days are worse than others (I wonder if some of it is ash from wildfires?)
This pretty little annual was showing off on one of my floating garden stumps. It's one of the more common false foxgloves, Agalinis purpurea and enjoys wet, boggy environments
This little beauty is partially parasitic, using the roots of other plants to gain nutrients.
Whilst examining aquatic plant air spaces and distinguishing tiny yellow flowering bladderworts from each other, I detected a movement in my plant tray. It came from this little brown speck ...
which turned into this as it moved along - the head stretches forward and uses the same looping motion as an inchworm to pull itself forward, attaching and detaching front and back suckers alternately to move forward.
What is aerenchyma, you might ask? It's something that aquatic plants have within their tissues to enable them to stand upright in water currents, without needing their own sturdy structure - they make use of air spaces that keep them buoyant and also help with gas exchange within the plant.
I cut through the cross section of a thick stem of variable milfoil and took a photo to show the aerenchyma (air-filled cavities) within
Look at all the gaps/air spaces within the stem above. It makes the cross section look like a wagon wheel or an orange slice, but with air spaces. What a fantastic adaptation. Here are two more, free floating in water:
This pretty butterfly is most likely the Northern crescent, Phyciodes cocyta, though it's difficult to tell apart from the Pearl Crescent, Phyciodes tharos, so they were originally regarded as one species.
It very pleasingly kept still for me to get close and capture the lovely antennal markings, the orange tips of which make it a male.
I like how presentable this mushroom looks next to this oak leaf. I'm not 100% sure of its ID, but Google lens suggests it might be Amanita vaginata, grisette mushroom, with a wide distribution in North America. The grooves on the cap's margins and little bump in the center stand out.
On Aug 14, we had a thunderous rainstorm, and it was so very welcome. We haven't seen precipitation from the sky since July 20, and the temperatures have been alarmingly high. The ground is so dry, parched and hard-packed that I think more rain ran off than soaked into the ground. A pity, but that's what happens when things get out of whack, and drought conditions set in. Even my native foamflowers have been looking stressed.
Some raindrop streaks and gushings were noticed as I stood outside to watch
Yet again, after thinking I'd seen and identified all there was to see in our aquatic Arrowhead ecosystem, I discovered something new - a very delicate little flowering bladderwort that requires a combination of specialized conditions, low water (it's described as semi aquatic) and very hot days, to flower. The planets aligned this past week for me to see this Utricularia resupinata (Lavender, or resupinate bladderwort in common parlance) for the first time!
I almost paddled right past them, initially thinking I was seeing a slightly lavender-tinged pipewort, of which there were many stranded away from the water's edge.
But I decided not to be lazy, retraced my paddling 'steps' and beached to make sure - am I glad I did!
This little gem is so fragile - and I can't help seeing a Daffy Duck profile!
The lower part of the plant, embedded in the sediments, looks like this - it's very difficult to detect the bladders, even this close up.
Unfortunately the plant is threatened or endangered in many of the States to which it is native.
I'm so excited to showcase a new aquatic algae for me - Tristan Taber of LSM suggests it might be a Palmodictyon algae. It looks quite spectacular up close - I used the 2x zoom on my cell phone, and draped the algae over an inverted ramekin in water before raising it up to highlight its filamentous form.
A visit from the monarchy today!
So very happy to see Danaus plexippus visit MY yard again this year
I've seen a lot of these net winged beetles in my yard lately - the one I picked to photograph has something weird going on with it. Were its legs caught in a web and tangled over its back? It should have 6 legs and 2 long antennae that look like they're armored with brass plates.
They have a raise network of what look like lines or veins on their wings - this is the reticulated net winged beetle, Calopteron reticulatum.
The pattern is the criss-cross texture of my skin outlined with blood (a great way to show skin texture). I hope you're not grossed out - I find this fascinating!
I came out of the lake after pulling up milfoil for an hour and a half, only to find that my hand was bleeding. There was absolutely no pain, but it bled constantly for more than 30 minutes, so ... it must have been a leech bite. They anaesthetize the area when they begin feeding so it doesn't hurt at all. Pretty amazing creatures.
Any idea what this strange pattern could be?
A caterpillar up close, perhaps?
This very bright caterpillar caught my eye whilst looking at little flowering bladderworts by the water's edge. It is way more showy than its adult form, the smeared dagger moth (Acronicta oblinita), a very nondescript, drab creature found throughout eastern North America.
Don't touch! Those spikes can irritate one's skin when released.
I cropped this photo really tightly to emphasize the reflective quality of the spheres of water droplets
This is what happens after spending hours and hours hunting for invasive European naiads (Najas minor) in the shallows on the lake ... on the drive back home, all the trees by the roadside start looking like enormous naiads to my exhausted mind! I thought I was losing my marbles, imagining I was driving along a pathway overhung with tree-like naiads, which in real life are currently about 6 inches tall. Oh my! "When trees become naiads" should be the title of my memoir, written from an asylum.
I need help! Maybe a break from naiad hunting is on the cards!
It's amazing how focused and tunnel-visioned one becomes when on the lookout for foreign marauders.
I find this leaf to be lovely in its simplicity - a milkweed leaf has another pressed up against it, so the upper and lower surfaces can be seen together, matching up perfectly.
This unusual piece of greenery is a floating or aquatic liverwort, also known as a crystalwort (Riccia fluitans). It holds its shape, though the feel of it is like a gel. There is both an aquatic and terrestrial form. It is considered a primitive or ancestral plant, similar to mosses in that it is nonvascular.
It is widely distributed throughout North America, and provides habitat for fry and insect larvae, so they're integral to an ecosystem. It's able to survive through northeast winters, and grows from fragments that branch a lot, ending in a little fork or notch.
It's striking to see witch-hazel seed capsules against their dramatic green leaves - they look so furry and inviting to touch, almost like velour.
It's so hard to stop reading a book sometimes, when the writing itself is brilliant ...
I read "Luster" recently, by Raven Leilani, and was mesmerized and intoxicated with her exquisite use of language and metaphors, notably mentioned by a reviewer as follows, "sentences like ice that crackle or melt into a languorous drip." (Jazmine Hughes, The New York Times Book Review).
But I was very uncomfortable with the content, storyline and behaviors that I personally couldn't relate to, such as the protagonist digging around in her lover's wife's (open marriage) bathroom cabinet, finding a fentanyl patch, and using it ... I don't know which level I ought to have stopped on!
As I get older, I shock even myself with my creeping narrow-mindedness!
I've enjoyed getting to all sorts of lovely places I don't often visit on the lake, albeit whilst hunting for the aquatic bane of my life, Najas minor (European, or Brittle naiad) ...
I loved the gnarly-ness of this very beautiful and rugged rock
Dragonflies - pretty, charming and colorful, they flit around and settle for longish periods, displaying their beauty. These very accommodating specimens provided delight and wonder, in their various iterations.
I was amazed a the size of this mussel shell in a secluded cove and had to get closer to be sure it was exactly what I thought it was. Here it is on my shrub rake, it's 6 inches across. It's probably the Eastern elliptio (Elliptio complanata).
What bothered me though, was that this mussel shell was open and in the sun, with the living tissue parts no longer attached to the shell. While it allowed me to see and photograph its intriguing innards, the fact that it had no future was upsetting.
Since the age of mussels can be determined by counting the rings on their shells, this one looks like it's easily more than twelve years old, and probably closer to twenty.
