Sycamores, Limosins and Eastern Wahoo

Sycamore bark, with its camo-patterns of gray, green, ghost white and cocoa brown, enchants me. I'd love to wear a dress of sycamore bark, if I wouldn't be mistaken for a deer hunter.

We planted a sycamore in our side yard, watched it grow to pyrimidal young prince, only to have its top break out in a dreadful fall windstorm in September '10. I know it will recover, but it's upsetting to see our proud giant beheaded. I'm looking forward to seeing it send up a new leader, to see it grow up with a kink in its trunk.

Today Bill removed the last of its broken branches, making the aspect less upsetting. Now, to wait. A man once told my dad he wasn't going to plant fruit trees because it takes too long for them to bear. My dad replied, "Might as well plant them. You're waiting anyway."

Dad's been popping up in my thoughts a lot lately. The wisdom he gave me, I pass on to my children. He never knew them, but he informs their thoughts. And so he lives on.

A nurseryman in Yellow Springs told me that sycamores are very good at compartmentalizing injuries. I liked that term, compartmentalizing. It means sending out lusty ridges and laval flows of scar tissue around the wound, going on, after a brief pause, with their tree-ey lives. Here's to scar tissue. Scar tissue keeps us moving forward, growing upward. We compartmentalize the injury, pad it with a healing ridge, and pick ourselves up to move on. It can take years, but we wrestle our minds around and most of us manage to do it. And so do the trees. Scars give us character, empathy, tolerance, grace, and a certain beauty.

Some Limosin cattle were peeking shyly out at us from behind their hay rack. The sun lit their ear fringes, giving them an enchanting rim of light. I love Limosins almost like I love Jerseys.

 

Soon we would come upon a little stand of one of my favorite fall plants--the eastern wahoo, Euonymus atropurpureus. Native Americans used it medicinally--it has compounds that work like Digitalis, a heart regulator that comes from foxgloves. They also used its super-straight tough stems as arrow shafts. I love its stripey green bark, and especially its fall fruit. Not to eat, just to admire.

I really like getting land and sky in my botanical photos. The Canon G-11 is really good at that. The photos have an almost surreal quality, as you make out details of trees hundreds of yards away even as you're getting a closeup of the plant in question. Of course, to accomplish this, you often have to drop to your knees. That's OK. I do a lot of that anyway in the course of my Science Chimping.

The fruits have a wonderful spongy pink capsule that bursts open and shows the red pericarp to great advantage. I'm guessing they're trying to attract birds as dispersal agents with all this color. I imagine waxwings, hovering. Mmmmm. Bluebirds, too.

Winged Wahoo is a common yard shrub; this is its wild, native Southeastern cousin. Another name for it is Burning Bush. Later its leaves will burst into orange flame. Altogether a lovely plant, and a welcome reminder of my Virginia childhood.

It's warm enough on this early winter day to make Chet Baker pant. He runs circles around me as I walk, always staying in earshot and racing back at my call, as a good dog will.

The grass is too inviting, so he stops to graze awhile. This is his grass-eating face, with his muzzlepuffs all pulled up and out of the way. He's being a Holstein for a moment. The world's smallest Holstein, with grass. Without milk.

I walk a little farther and find a Little Yellow butterfly, Eurema lisa. I'd found it in Virginia, but never before seen it in Ohio. This year I've seen two--one in my yard, and one here on Dean's Fork. They're irregular vagrants, coming up from the south in the fall. Much more common near the coast than inland--I'm lucky to see them here at all. I love butterflying in part for that element of uncertainty. Turns out it was a big year for Little Yellows in Ohio and elsewhere. I learned that on Facebook, from Kenn Kaufman. Facebook can be good.

That dull brownish spot on the rear margin of its hindwing, its tiny size, and its furiously rapid low flight render it instantly identifiable, if not photographable! Count this a pretty good shot of a Little Yellow.

I give a little whoop of joy and walk on.

Thanks for everything, you good old road. Long may you run.

Sycamores and Burning Bushes

It is said that Xenophon halted his army for an entire day to admire the beauty of a single sycamore tree. I think of him whenever I see the leopard camouflage of one of our loveliest native trees. What a color scheme that would be for a bedroom. Mushroom gray walls, cream trim. Why, that's the color scheme in my bedroom! Knew I got it from somewhere.

Paler as you go up.

This sycamore gets the Perseverence award. It had been a huge tree, which must have fallen and rotted out.
Only one side, the back side, was still alive, and that side sent up two very robust shoots which went on to become sturdy if unlikely looking trees. Amazing. With trees, it's hard to tell when they're really dead. If you haven't heard my NPR commentary on that subject, you can hear it here.

Walking on, we found an unusual plant on the banks of the creek. I remembered it from my childhood in Virginia--a southern thing. It's Burning Bush, Euonymus atropurpureus.
Such lovely, glowing fruits! The green twigs are distinctive, as well as their opposite arrangement. Shila and I had found a nice bower of E. obovatus the week before, in the middle of the woods. We weren't expecting either species. And each are native, which makes it that much nicer. Just goes to show you what you find when you get out.

**Many thanks to Jason Larson, Botanic Chimp Extraordinaire, for correcting my ID's!

The star of the hike was the witch hazel, all abloom. Fabulous.
The lanky flowers smell of fresh ditto paper to me. Of course only those of us old enough to have had our tests run off on a ditto machine, those of us old enough to take the still cool and moist purple-blue papers, smash them to our noses, and huff the vapors in ecstasy, will know what I mean.

*Many thanks to alert reader Wayne for explaining that mimeo machines used black ink, and were used for runs of 500 sheets or more. The heady purple-inked papers we huffed were from ditto machines, or spirit duplicators. Dude. Spirit duplicators. What a name.

The Science Chimp, caught out twice in one post! Dang!

Witch hazel. Ahhh. It takes me back to elementary school.

Chet Baker and I went out today after finishing a painting, and I finished cutting the Loop Trail so I can have rapid healing hikes all winter. Chet was gone for a very long time and when he finally answered my calls he was collarless. I had noticed that it was looking loose on him but didn't think anything of it, derr.

So when I got home I weighed him. Here's our ritual. I walk him up to the scale and say, "All four paws on, Chet!" and he carefully climbs aboard. I weigh him and cheer for him and he jumps around and then he climbs right back on again for another check. Well, he's down to 23.5 from 25.5. And I thank KatDoc for that, for helping me realize that he doesn't need several bikkits a day, or even one; for making me see that if he gets extra goodies on top he needs less kibble. He's sitting under the table, burping quietly as I write. Good dog, Chet. Good owner, Zick. Good advice, Katdoc.

Now, if only somebody would take my bikkits away.