This week in the woods, along the edge of a protected forest in West Fairlee, Vermont, thin-leaved sunflowers continued their long, radiant bloom. While also known as the ten-petal sunflower and displaying that count here, they can have between 8 and 15 petal-like yellow rays around their central, seed-producing disk. This perennial in the aster family hosts the larvae of painted lady and checkerspot butterflies; feeds numerous nectaring insects, rodents, and seed-eating birds; and goes into the construction of muskrat lodges.
On the shady side of another wet woodland edge, spotted jewelweed, photographed here by Ann Little, carried on with its own lengthy bloom. The orange, cornucopia- or funnel-shaped petals have strong bilateral symmetry, much like orchids do, and brown mottles their upper and lower lips. Familiarity with such a ubiquitous species might prevent us from appreciating its full beauty, but Francette Cerulli’s article in the Summer 2007 issue of Northern Woodlands might make us pause and look at this “gorgeous, juicy plant”: “Any water droplets balanced on the plants’ leaves or in their bamboo-like joints quiver and shine like mercury,” she writes. While insects pollinate the flowers, birds do so more frequently and successfully. Susan Shea writes in The Outside Story that the flowers are tailored to hummingbirds, and Mary Holland points out that peak jewelweed flowering coincides with the fall migration of the ruby-throated hummingbird (photo by Ann Little). One experiment demonstrated that the dangling flowers’ movement helps daub pollen onto the hummingbirds' beaks and heads, and another that jewelweed produces more seeds when visited by ruby-throats and insects than when visited by insects alone.
In the same patch, the gall of a jewelweed gall midge dangled from an arching stem. This bulbous, abnormal growth results from a mother midge planting an egg in a still-forming flower bud and the egg producing a larva (colored orange, as if to match the flower it replaces). Mary Holland explains that unlike many galls that house single larvae, these ones are “colonial,” meaning that multiple larvae reside in separate cavities within it. When the larvae mature, they chew their way out (as evidenced by the multiple exit holes here), drop to the ground, and burrow down to where they can overwinter.
The beaked hazelnut’s ovate, toothed leaf looks highly similar to many other native deciduous trees, but the light-green nut – wrapped in a papery husk with a long tube or “beak” – makes it stand out in the fall. This shrub grows frequently along streambanks, on rocky slopes, and as part of the understory, but as Virginia Barlow shares in the Summer 2003 Northern Woodlands issue, trees growing partially in the open (along roadsides and field edges and in patch cuts or clear cuts) produce the most and best nuts. If you can get to the nuts before the rodents, bears, fishers, and blue jays do, they’re as edible and tasty as commercially grown hazelnuts, which they resemble. Dry the picked nuts, remove the wrapping, and eat them raw or roasted – but have caution when peeling, as the outer bristles can lodge in skin like fiberglass does.
Autumn meadowhawks may now be at peak numbers, patrolling open grassy areas and perching here and there. True to their name with their yellow or red coloring as well as their seasonality, they could fly well into October. These dragonflies stand out from other meadowhawks by way of their orange-tan legs; other similar meadowhawk species here have black legs. While the autumn meadowhawk is small (under 1.5 inches) relative to other dragonfly species, it is worth remembering that dragonflies descend from species that were likely the largest insects that ever lived: the Meganeura genus, which lived 300 million years ago, had a wingspan of nearly 2.5 feet.
What have you noticed in the woods this week? Submit a recent photo for possible inclusion in our monthly online Reader Photo Gallery.