This week in the woods, we admired some of our numerous lichen species, as well as resident and early-migratory birds, green groundcover plants, and some lingering signs of seasons past. This smokey-eye boulder lichen appeared from beneath a slick of ice in Thetford, Vermont. The blue-gray, black-rimmed, button-shaped apothecia resemble a squirt of spray paint across the substrate they cling to. Not far away, burred horsehair lichen decorated the snow. Because it grows on old wood in open areas, it is prone to falling during high winds and often shows up on the forest floor following storms.
Understory plants showing between the recent spring snows but not yet flowering include plantain-leaved sedge (also called seersucker sedge), which has radiating, ruffle-textured leaves that spread relatively flat to the ground and may stay green throughout the winter. As soon as this month, these plants will send up 2-foot-tall stems with flower spikes. Shinleaf (of which we have several species) has also photosynthesized over the winter and sits among the duff ready to send up its own stalk and blossom this summer. Naked miterwort (also called naked bishop’s cap or bare-stem bishop’s cap) gets its name from the two-peaked fruits’ resemblance to Catholic bishops’ hats, or miters. Their tiny green-white, starlike flowers will emerge in a few weeks, and their namesake fruits a few months later.
The easily identifiable fruiting bodies of hemlock varnish shelf have stuck to the wood of their obligate coniferous trees all winter, albeit somewhat worse for wear from insects. Another striking leftover is the ovular, prickly, inedible fruit of wild cucumber, a vine often found near streams and rivers. Rather than insect consumption, holes and fissures in these dried husks more likely resulted from the fruit bursting open to shoot out its seeds.
Not all Canada geese migrate, but many that did have returned to our area – even if the ponds and lakes they favor haven’t returned completely to liquid water. The flocks that traveled in iconic V-shaped patterns break out into pairs in the springtime, with males protecting territories from other geese in aggressive threat displays. Often mistaken for courtship, which also involves much neck stretching and honking, the territorial defense behaviors can escalate to the point of geese biting and hitting each other with their wings, sometimes resulting in injury.
What have you noticed in the woods this week? Submit a recent photo for possible inclusion in our monthly online Reader Photo Gallery.