Fellow nature lover Peggi and I took advantage of a beautiful spring day to take a walk around the back of her property and see what was up.
There was lots of beaver activity along the flooded area of the Scotch River.
Into the woods, we saw a very active beehive inside a cedar tree. (Sorry I didn't get closer!)
There's always something to eat in the woods, especially if you are travelling with Peggi. She spotted a
Dentaria plant...
...also known as pepperoot. She suggests cleaning and chopping the root and adding it to mayonnaise. I took a few bites of it and it tasted sharp, similar to horseradish.
The fiddlehead ferns are already mostly in full fiddle...
...but we did manage to find a few that were perfect for cutting and steaming later on.
And there were plenty of lovely spring flowers in bloom like the Marsh Marigold...
...a Juneberry bush in full flower...
Many white trilliums up but here's a lovely red one.
Peggi stopped to take a quick photo of blooming purple violets.
These fungi look like last year's fruit. Nice, whatever they are.
Peggi has been watching this Striped Maple for a few years and even has chicken wire at its feet to stop the beavers from getting to it. Apparently this northern species of maple is something of a rarity this far south.
I thought this looked like part of a giraffe. Peggi laughed and said it was actually the root of a waterlily that was likely part of a beaver dam that had been recently demolished by the township.
Fellow nature lover Peggi and I took advantage of a beautiful spring day to take a walk around the back of her property and see what was up.
There was lots of beaver activity along the flooded area of the Scotch River.
Into the woods, we saw a very active beehive inside a cedar tree. (Sorry I didn't get closer!)
There's always something to eat in the woods, especially if you are travelling with Peggi. She spotted a Dentaria plant...
...also known as pepperoot. She suggests cleaning and chopping the root and adding it to mayonnaise. I took a few bites of it and it tasted sharp, similar to horseradish.
The fiddlehead ferns are already mostly in full fiddle...
...but we did manage to find a few that were perfect for cutting and steaming later on.
And there were plenty of lovely spring flowers in bloom like the Marsh Marigold...
...a Juneberry bush in full flower...
Many white trilliums up but here's a lovely red one.
Peggi stopped to take a quick photo of blooming purple violets.
These fungi look like last year's fruit. Nice, whatever they are.
Peggi has been watching this Striped Maple for a few years and even has chicken wire at its feet to stop the beavers from getting to it. Apparently this northern species of maple is something of a rarity this far south.
I thought this looked like part of a giraffe. Peggi laughed and said it was actually the root of a waterlily that was likely part of a beaver dam that had been recently demolished by the township.
Very nice spring walk! Made me think about the woods I used to walk in around Ithaca. I thought you guys called Juneberry shadbush. The fungus looks as though it might be Ganaderma applanatus, know as the artist's conk. Hard to tell from the bottom. If it is, when you scratch the new pore surface, it's brown underneath so you can draw on them by scratching. And hey, that striped maple is called moosewood, as in, of course, the famous Ithaca restaurant that I never made it to in the 20 years I lived there!
ReplyDeleteThe Tunxis Trail is one of Connecticut's wildest trails. Over the course of a few weeks I set out to hike the most northern twenty miles Online Plant Nursery
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