This week in the woods, snow melted beneath a dense cover of eastern hemlocks to expose three-leaved goldthread in West Fairlee, Vermont. While it will have star-like white blossoms later this spring, this evergreen woodland wildflower takes its name, in part, from its roots’ orange color. Boiling the rhizomes imparts a potent yellow dye.
Another perennial, interrupted clubmoss, emerged from beneath the snow in damp forested areas with the thaw. This plant gets its name from a constriction or “interruption” of the stem with each year’s growth. (We wrote about how clubmosses survive the winter in this January post.)
Except during their spring and fall migrations (broadly May–June and August–September in our area), millipedes often remain out of sight in secluded, covered environments such as soil, compost piles, and garden beds, and under logs, stones, and leaf litter. However, this pale cadaver stood out several feet up a tree trunk. The distended segments, timing, and location suggest possible death from the zombie fungus Arthrophaga myriapodina. This relatively newly described (2017) genus and species of fungus belongs to the “insect destroyers” order Entomophthorales. Once the fungus has entered its host, the millipede is induced to climb to an unusual elevated spot like a twig, tall blade of grass, fencepost, or tree trunk before dying. The high vantage point likely creates favorable conditions for dispersal of the fungal spores when they erupt from the millipede’s body. The first researchers to describe the species write, “At that time, the millipede bodies become distended, with prominent bulging intersegmental zones of glassy conidiophores.… Within a day of the millipede’s death, all conidia have been forcibly discharged and the structures that made them have collapsed, leaving an enigmatic husk of a millipede, or a pile of its disarticulated, sclerotized segments.”
Until the trees leaf out again, we can still spot the occasional squirrel drey in canopies. Squirrels use these messy constructions to rear their kits and, if they can’t find a warmer tree hollow, to overwinter. Crows, eagles, and hawks make similarly sized nests, but they primarily use sticks to form an open cup, while squirrels also use leaves, grass, and tree bark to form a cavity. Learn more about these shelters in this recent Outside Story essay by Emily Haynes.
What have you noticed in the woods this week? Submit a recent photo for possible inclusion in our monthly online Reader Photo Gallery.