A Look at the Season's Main Events
By Virginia Barlow
September
Birds may be frequenting the poison ivy patch, eating the white fruits and then spreading the seeds / The snowy white flesh of the giant puffball is delicious. Older, off-color ones aren’t so good / Asters and goldenrods are among the last flowers visited by honeybees / Honey mushrooms (Armillariella mellea), the fruiting bodies of shoestring root rot, are choice edibles / Turkey vultures born this year have dark heads; the red, naked head comes with maturity
At high elevations and in red maple swamps, trees are turning red / Fringed gentian is flowering / The luminescence of the gills of the jack-o’-lantern mushroom (Omphalotus olearius) will last 40 to 50 hours after the mushrooms are picked. This poisonous fungus grows in large clumps at the base of hardwoods / Burdock is a biennial, and after its first year, the long taproot is edible. Plus, no burs next summer if you harvest it now / Bunchberries have turned red
Northern leopard frogs move from grassy areas to water when the temperature drops to 35˚F. They hibernate on pond or stream bottoms / The larva of a small fly causes goldenrod ball gall. The larva of a moth causes elliptical goldenrod gall. Both can be found at this time of year / Praying mantises are depositing their styrofoam like egg masses around twigs / Robins may get tipsy on the fermented fruit of black cherries. Deer mice eat the meat from the pits
Canada geese are on the wing / Crush a few leaves of sweet fern, a shrub of dry or sandy soils, to recapture the fragrance of summer / Beaked hazelnuts are ripe and, though small, are edible. Squirrels and chipmunks are likely to get to them before you do. Moose, deer, hare, rabbit, and beaver eat other parts of this shrub / Woodpeckers in the corn patch may be looking for cornborers / White-throated sparrows are moving through our area from points north.
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These listing are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on you latitude, elevation - and the weather.
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© 2006 by the author; this article may not be copied or reproduced without the author's consent.
