A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Last fall a weakened brown paper wasp struggled on our basement floor. They are relatively harmless unless their nest is threatened. I gently nudged the wasp onto a piece of cardboard. It seemed to cooperate. It was very still until outside, then flew away.
Over the next month I escorted several dozen struggling wasps to freedom. Only queens are around in the fall. They shelter over the winter and build nests in the spring.
As the weather warmed more wasps appeared around our deck. I left them alone and vice versa, while looking to make sure there were no nests on the deck. The warmer the weather the more wasps I saw. Perhaps this was because I had saved so many queens in the fall. Yet others reported more wasps this season, too. This unusual year has brought an increase in several species to our part of the forest.
No wasp ever bothered me. I fantasized that some of them might even be thanking me for saving their queen. I felt like the wasp whisperer.
Then one afternoon I had no more sat in my deck chair than a wasp appeared and bit me without warning! My left arm swelled like a bratwurst.
We searched for a nest but found nothing. The next day my wife was stung in exactly the same way! Her sting was no more than a mosquito bite, while mine took five days of steroids to subside.
Kathleen, the scientist of the family, began a systematic search for the nest. Then she found it, or them. There were small nests under the arms of our deck chairs! It was like the wasps were following the script of a Hitchcock movie with the culprit found literally at the arm of the victim.
We disposed of the nests. Days later I found a large nest had fallen to the ground, empty, from its perch under the far side of our deck, where I had previously neglected to search.
Apparently these wasps did not remember me from the fall, nor had they been informed of my good deeds.
Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
A platoon of cleomes is making its way from our shady garden fence to the light. It has taken years. The vanguard has advanced to the gravel driveway, where they thrive due to my weeding laxity.
Cleomes are also called spider flowers because tendrils jut from their white, pink and purple flower balls. They are also called bee plants, as they are excellent pollinators. There is significant buzzing all along the sidewalk.
These cleomes are descended from a very few we planted at the fence. They produce a very large number of seeds. They grow best in full sunlight. Thus they have gradually volunteered down the hill and along the sidewalk to a driveway that has the least shade of any space in our part of the forest.
They are deer and rabbit repellent, emitting a scent that is sometimes called minty and sometimes skunky. If they are bent from foot or storm, they will likely bounce back to their height, which can be as much as five feet. They came to this continent from South American and the West Indies in the nineteenth century and were very popular for decades until cities and suburbs required smaller flowers for smaller gardens. More recently they have regained popularity.
The cleome doesn’t need much help, just plenty of sun. It can thrive in a drought. It can overwhelm a garden if it isn’t controlled, requiring more care with restricting growth than encouraging. Eighteen inches is the ideal space between plants to keep their volunteering from becoming an invasion. If their spread is controlled, cleomes can be helpful additions to vegetable gardens, repelling pests and attracting pollinators.
The cleome inspires one to impute a deeper meaning in its journey toward the light. One should take caution from the last words of Goethe, which were “More light!” While there is a temptation to interpret his words as the desire to take one final leap into metaphysical speculation, scholars are divided. Some affirm the leap. Others conclude that he was simply asking his daughter to raise the blinds.
Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
I enjoy walking our dogs at sunrise, listening to the concert of the birds. One morning the sound changed, as though the first violin had been replaced by a car alarm. It was a rooster. That new backyard shed two doors up the mountain was a henhouse.
For weeks the rooster was a featured player in the sunrise symphony with several mid-day practice sessions. Eventually he calmed down and his arpeggios were less frequent and lower volume. Roosters crow to announce territoriality and alarm. Our new neighbor had become more secure.
Chickens are the most prevalent bird on earth, with about three for every person. They are everywhere. Their role in the ecosystem is extremely varied.
That rooster reminded me of the wild chickens of Kauai, the most isolated of the Hawaiian Islands, where we were fortunate to visit in February.
Beautiful, multi-colored chickens are everywhere on Kauai. They arrived centuries ago with the Polynesians, but their currently large and increasing numbers are attributed to Hurricane Iniki in 1992, which blew down many chicken coops, releasing their inhabitants to breed with the wild stock. Every morning one is greeted with an entire orchestra of very secure roosters.
I spotted this hen and chicks behind a hedge at a restaurant. She kept gathering the chicks to her, as they tried to explore, which would expose them to the dangers of a sidewalk and human feet. She succeeded, and as we were leaving, everybody seemed ready to settle down for the night. I have eaten no chicken since.
Last week the morning chorus had added another car alarm. Neighbors two doors down the mountain had also acquired chickens. This is part of a national trend, inspired by a fear of food scarcity, I suspect, with a little “off-the-grid” strategy mixed with some back to nature aspirations.
Stereo roosters feel a bit like Kauai, which is nice. If there are more to come, I suspect they will begin to remind me less of that beautiful island and more of the Ohio of my boyhood. Chickens are everywhere.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
This photograph is not an attempt at art, but rather to reveal the barred owl hiding in our neighbor’s trees. Among the most common owls in North America, they hunt small animals by sitting still, if not quietly in tree branches, then swooping down.
They fly away at the least disturbance, so this was a rare opportunity to get close. Yet barred owls are also curious about people and can be surprisingly mild and engaging. Their calls are so loud as to be heard across their entire hunting territory, which can be as large as seven hundred acres.
We heard this owl days before we saw him, usually at dawn and dusk, as is typical. “Who cooks for YOU? Who cooks for you-ALL” is how the call is characterized. The final syllables are an emphatic “HOOT!” Barred owls are also called hoot owls.
My not yet two years old grandson’s favorite book shows drawings of animals. We read to him that the cow says, “Moo.” The pig says, “Oink.” The owl says, “Hoot.” He also has little stuffed toys of various animals. Have we led him to believe that cows and chickens are the same size, as are his toys? Such are the oblique concerns of grandfathers.
He must also be disabused of the idea that all owls say, “hoot.” Besides the barred owl, the screech owl’s call ends in a hoot, preceded by a sound that is indeed a screech. Otherwise, most owls express the vocal equivalent of a metal lathe or automobile brakes seriously in need of fluid. Other “hoots” may originate from mourning doves, who emit a more melodious, softer hoot than any owl, the Kenny Gee to the screech owl’s Ornette Coleman.
While my grandson’s book is now a valued part of his education and enjoyment, he will move on to more complex and accurate representations of owls. Otherwise he would be seriously misled into a stereotyped belief that all owls say the same thing. In fact, (please forgive me), most owls don’t give a hoot.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Nobody names a child Mugwort. “Where the Mugwort Grows” is no state’s official song because it is a terribly invasive and homely weed that grows everywhere. Nobody wonders that it might be a flower.
It is historically one of the most widely used medicinal plants all over the world. One can purchase many preparations of mugwort from capsules to essential oil to dried leaves, both online and in drug stores.
It is of the genus Artemisia vulgaris, which contains hundreds of species, from the intoxicating and toxic wormwood from which absinthe, the favored inspiration beverage of European artists of the Victorian age is made, to the homely sagebrush. One might name a child Artemisia, after the Greek godess of the moon, the hunt, and women’s health. Artemesia II was a Greek queen of the fourth century B.C., a botanist and medical researcher. “Mug” derives from its use in flavoring beverages, which are held in mugs. “Wort” is an old word for plant.
Mugwort is sometimes offered as a cure for hangovers, nightmares and as a bringer of sweet dreams. It repels insects, aids stomach distress, anxiety, high blood pressure and is second only to Vicks VapoRub as a versatile comforter. All agree that it is bitter and toxic in large or prolonged doses.
Mugwort continues to be a valued component of herbal healers and various shamans. Because of its use in women’s health, it has often been the special province of women practitioners. These practitioners were sometimes called witches and were treated by authorities in the familiar fashion.
Unlike digitalis, aspirin, quinine and countless other helpful medicines found in plants, mugwort still stands outside the door of scientific acceptance, despite many controlled experiments. It is hard to find a control group or placebo to test if a substance cures nightmares and brings sweet dreams.
Those who swear by mugwort may some day get a scientific validation. I can’t use the cliché “time will tell” however, because time, in the form of centuries of folk medicine across many cultures, has long ago made up its mind.
** Please do not pick & eat any forest plant without the advice of an expert.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Near our back door among a variety of unwelcome and uncultivated weeds I saw these beautiful buds on long, thin stems. “Is that a flower or a weed? It sure looks like a flower to me.”
“It’s columbine,” my wife said.
I recoiled from the buds I had admired a moment before. “Columbine” still carries a terrible association with the Colorado high school of that name, which suffered a mass shooting in 1999.
The school shares the name of the Colorado state flower, but remains such a morbid tourist attraction the superintendent has considered closing it and razing the building.
Columbine derives from the Latin word for dove. The five buds, like those in the photo, are said to resemble five doves. The flower is also called Granny’s Bonnet, while the name of the species is based on the Latin for eagle’s claw. Clearly the flower allows for widely divergent interpretations of its shape.
The appearance of these plants on the other side of the house from where the seeds were originally placed shows that columbine is self-seeding or self-sowing.
Because of its beauty and because it travels but doesn’t endlessly multiply and drive out other plants, it is a flower, not a weed and is not invasive.
It can be found in many colors, is deer-resistant and a popular pollinator for bees and butterflies. One might add a flower or two to a salad for color and sweetness, but don’t add any seeds or roots. These are very toxic and also carcinogenic.
“Where the Columbine Grows” was written by Arthur Flynn and adopted as the Colorado official state song in 1915. It is difficult to believe it was written over a century ago. Here is its third verse:
“The bison is gone from the upland,
The deer from the canyon has fled,
The home of the wolf is deserted,
The antelope moans for his dead,
The war whoop re-echoes no longer,
The Indian’s only a name,
And the nymphs of the grove in their loneliness rove,
But the columbine blooms just the same.”
** Please do not pick & eat any forest plant without the advice of an expert.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
This moth spent an afternoon near our door. She seemed completely unshaken as I moved closer to take her photo. By the evening she was gone.
I went online to identify her. I searched “large brown moth with lighter stripes.” There are a lot of brown moths. None like this one. I varied the search. No luck. I posted the photo on social media asking for help and an hour later I received a comment: female io moth. I searched “female io moth” and there she was!
I did an earlier column about an io moth that I helped recover after he had smashed against our window. He was battled but unbowed and with my help, lived to fly another day. I even wrote that the female is much larger and brown or rust colored. When wings of either gender are unfurled, dark blue eyespots appear to scare predators.
When I searched “io moth,” only photos of males appeared. One has specifically to search “female io moth,” to find the female. I searched “cardinal” and about three-quarters of the photos were of the male. Same with the Baltimore oriole. A search of “human” and “homo sapiens” yielded a terrifying variety of pre-historic folks and future mutants, with few photos of how any of us look today. I guess if you are human enough to search, you don’t need a current photo. The female human was represented about as frequently as the female cardinal.
The systematic difference in form between individuals of different sex in the same species is “sexual dimorphism.” Female insects are often much larger than the male, due to carrying large numbers of eggs. Female birds are often less colorful than the males to protect them from predators. The more colorful the males, the more attractive to both mates and predators.
I think the female io moth and other species have been shortchanged by internet searches. The human is also considered to have a degree of sexual dimorphism, but less than many other species. Whether this persists and what it means is yet to be determined.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
When we created a garden on top of the shale near our house, we arranged several shelves of large, stacked rock to hold the soil. The shelves, with numerous cracks, crevices and seams, have become a series of homes for frogs, lizards, chipmunks, mice and snakes.
The combination of mild winter and long, wet spring enhanced the living conditions for all. They are more numerous, and bigger. For instance, we usually saw one or two garter snakes per year, about a foot long. Last week we saw this one.
He didn’t look that big when he stuck his head out, but he just kept coming. One, two, three, probably four feet, about as big as garter snakes get. The bulge in his middle indicted a recent meal. He was on his way to bask in the sun.
I admit it. I’m afraid of snakes. Like many fears, mine is driven by ignorance. I know just enough about snakes to be afraid. Only because it was moving slowly away from me did I linger to snap the photo.
The garter snake gets its name from the obsolete article of clothing which, when properly affixed to keep stockings in place, resembles the indentifying vertical stripes of these snakes. Calling them “garden snakes” is incorrect, even if gardens are currently more prevalent than garters.
Garter snakes hibernate and thus appreciate our walls’ many crevices, also conveniently inhabited by a variety of their prey. Yet they do not live without peril. Raptors, foxes, coyotes and even large toads are a danger to them, though I doubt this specimen is threatened by toads.
Garters make friends with others of their species, and when separated, return to their original cohort. Flicking their tongues to sense pheromones is the primary way they sense their environment. This is very important for males in detecting the scent of females.
As we walk through our gardens, we tend the flowers and veggies, almost oblivious to the life teaming and competing in every crevice of our shale walls. That is, until a four foot snake appears to remind us.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
Last year we seeded wine cap mushroom spores into wood chips near our shed. We hoped they would yield something by now, but no luck. We have learned to be patient, as the shiitake spores we implanted into logs took years, but eventually gave us a bounty.
During a spring weed pulling, I noticed a tight bouquet of mushrooms in the middle of our mulch pile. Interesting, I thought, but continued weeding. The next day there were dozens and the day after that the entire mulch pile was covered with hundreds of mushrooms! It was a good example of something that had spread exponentially.
We thought the wine cap spores might have migrated from chips to mulch, though they were some distance from each other. Also, the mulch mushrooms were neither wine-colored nor were they caps. They were flat or nearly so, and tended toward various shades of beige. Kathleen contacted our mushroom guy, as guessing wrong about mushrooms can be deadly.
He said, yes, they were wine caps. The test is not color nor shape, but a toothed ring around the stem that looks like a very small, spiked dog collar. Wine caps often grow in mulch. Their spores were not borrowed from our wood chips; they were already in the mulch when delivered. They begin the color of merlot, but fade to beige as they mature. Wine caps that grow in the sunlight are unlikely to ever attain the wine color of those found in shade.
When I searched “wine cap” on line I found photographs of a wide variety of shapes and colors. It was hard to understand what, if anything, other than the dog collar, made them of the same family. They vary greatly in size. Some are called Godzilla mushrooms or Garden Giants. These can weigh over a pound, with a diameter of over a foot.
The day after we discovered our mulched bounty, we found two wine-colored wine caps emerging from our wood chips, perhaps embarrassed to have been beaten to the punch by the lowly mulch pile.
* Warning: Please do not pick & eat mushrooms, or any other forest plant, without the advice of an expert.
A Naif in the Forest by Darrell Berger
Wing Tips to Hiking Boots: Musings of a New, Full-Time Poconos Resident
“Should I pull this?
“No. It will have a nice little flower. Let it be.” We did.
As it grew I recognized it as a familiar adornment at the side of roads. It is Yellow Rocket Cress. By the time the flowers appear, the leaves are too bitter to eat. They provide several vitamins. They were once called “scurvy cress,” because it could cure scurvy. It should have been called “anti-scurvy grass.”
It is a great pollinator, especially for bees. It grows best in the sun, which is why it seeks the side of roads and vacant lots where shade has been cleared. Rocket Cress likes moist soil; we can expect more of it in this year. It is found almost everyplace in the world, is slightly invasive but, like many plants, this depends on the beholder. One gardener purchases the plants for cultivation, while another pulls them as a nuisance.
They are part of the mustard family, sometimes called the cabbage family. It is a big family, over four thousand species, including seemingly unrelated plants, from fancy salad ingredients like arugula and watercress, to homey greens like collards and cabbage, as well as the mustard plants whose seeds are used for the condiment. Some are international, like bok choy and Brussels sprouts. Throw in turnips, rutabagas and broccoli and you have a family that covers a lot of taste, textures and contexts. In fact, the exact definition of this family is still contested among biologists. The one thing they have in common is at least a slight bitterness, which makes them almost universally hated by children.
With genetic testing increasingly common, humans are discovering more about their families. Not all of the information is welcome, as it can reveal that families have at least as much diversity within them as differentiate cauliflower from horseradish.
Humans are part of the family of Great Apes, including Chimps, Orangutans and Gorillas, which some seem to find insulting or impossible. I wonder if there is a mustard that considers itself the superior vegetable of its family?
** Warning: Please do not pick & eat any wild plant without the advice of an expert.