Seed Collection Day

Usually a group volunteers to collect seeds once a month. There was an event in early September that I missed because I was animal sitting two hound dogs and an elderly cat. But I made it today. We had two men, four women, and four children under 7 years of age. My goal today was to collect hairy gramma  and thimbleweed. Hairy gramma doesn't look like much. The grass and the seeds are just a few inches off the ground. After 90 minutes of picking hairy gramma I wished I had picked a taller plant. The grass is indistinguishable from the other grasses. What makes it different is the seeds. The two seeds in this picture are a little to the left of center. The bottom one is half way up. The top one is above it. They both look tan in color.

The seeds look like eyebrows. Isn't that cool?

With just a half hour left in our three hour tour of duty I got distracted by this grove on red pines.

Here is a shot of the red pines looking straight up into the sky. We had great weather today. The sky was overcast and the temperature was in the 60's.

On my way back to the meeting place I found some ground cherry husks. The cherries were gone but the seeds were still inside the husks.

 

Seed Collecting Machine

Today I went to the Nature Conservancy site at Weaver Dunes which is 20 miles from my place. I saw this contraption on a trailer attached to a truck. The contraption has large orange bristles that rotate like a sidewalk sweeper. I asked a nearby man what it was. He said it is a seed collector for seeds like big blue stem. The seeds are collected into a container in the back.

The sticker reads "Be Careful. This machine has no brain. Use your own." Golly, such sarcastic signage wouldn't work for the general public but prairie owners must be different.

 

Time Of The Lotus Bloom

Now is the season for the blooming of American lotus. The flowers near shore stand higher above the water line than the flowers in deeper water. Lake Winona has 4 patches of lotus blossoms now. This is the largest aquatic wildflower in the state. I have seen them before when paddling the Mississippi in Cottage Grove near Lion's Park. Water lily leaves have a notch while lotus do not have a notch. If you splash water on the leaves the water beads up and rolls off like a windshield that has been Rain X'd. The waterproof leaves inspired scientists to develop Gore Tex. I think lotus are beautiful.

 

June Grass

I know it's July but today I picked seeds of June grass at the Nature Conservancy site of Weaver Dunes. I picked two half gallon empty milk jugs of June grass.

I was so glad the sky was overcast because we were very warm. By the time we finished at 1 p.m. the temperature was 85 degrees. We had a nice breeze. An Eastern towhee sang for us while we worked.

Our group included a dozen people. Some from Winona, some from Rochester, and some from Minneapolis. This is blazing star. We could have picked hoary puccoon seeds but those are hard to find without the flowers.

We found white and purple prairie clover.

These are partridge peas. I had a good day out on the prairie today!

 

Weaver Dunes

Today I volunteered to collect seeds at Weaver Dunes Scientific and Nature Area which is run by the Nature Conservancy. The location is near the town of Kellogg. I was the first  person to arrive. On the driveway I spotted this mature Blandings turtle. I stopped the car and approached the turtle. I waited a few minutes. I talked to it. I explained the danger of waiting in the road. I touched it with my foot. The turtle wouldn't move. Another car approached. A man got out. Together we went to see the turtle which had decided at that point to move off the road. We followed the trail of it's tail and found it waiting in the tall grass on the way to a pond. The female Blandings turtle are sexually mature at age 14 so seeing one this size was very satisfying. This is turtle nesting time.

This is a hairy puccoon.

Our goal was to collect porcupine grass. I put a bungee cord around some belt loops and ran the handle of a milk jug through the cord. I think I gather a little more than half a cup of seed. Porcupine grass has sharp seeds. Seriously sharp seeds. You could remove a splinter from your skin with one of these seeds. One seed even punctured the plastic of the milk jug. The seed tips are heavy and have a long attachment called an awn. We removed the awns so the seeds wouldn't get all twisted together.

The prairie was very pretty. I have never seen so much healthy and lush poison ivy in my life. I washed my clothes and took a shower when I got home. This delicate beauty was all over the hills. This is called a larkspur which is in the delphinium family.

Besides our leader from the Nature Conservancy, four other men made up our group.

This is called goat's rue.

Our leader said they found a new species of milkweed on an east facing hill. She spent an hour looking for it. Last week it was knee high and had a flower bud on it. She found it but most of the plant had been eaten. This is a clasping milkweed. The leaves attach to the stem in a different way that other milkweed.

I always thought of this as goat's beard but the actual name is salsafy. Salsafy sounds much like satisfy. Salsafy is how you feel after you eat a tasty taco.

Our three hours were almost up when we found this fawn lying next to the roadway. I thought one older man in our group would really enjoy seeing this fawn since he seemed to love nature so much. I point out the fawn and wait for his reaction. He pretends to shoot it with a gun. You can never tell with some people.

 

Nest Construction

This morning I went on a bird hike at the Gustavus Adolphus arboretum. We saw a Swainson's thrush, a black and white warbler, robins, downy woodpeckers, gold finches, Tennessee warblers, yellow warbler, Harris sparrow and a great blue  heron. But the best thing we saw was super tiny and far away from the path. One young woman spotted a hummingbird nest on an oak tree. We watched as the hummingbird came in and out of the nest. She was building a nest for her young ones. This was astonishing. A group of ten of us watched for at least ten minutes. I had other classes today. One was on nature journaling and sketching. One was on moths. That guy had thousands of pictures of moths. I had another class on plant medicine. The teacher is Native and she has a store in Mankato. She studied plant medicine from her grandparents on both sides. She studied at the Rosebud reservation and the Pine Ridge reservation. She made each of us a bag of tea. I chose the sleeping/calming tea. Any day where I can learn something is a good day.

 

Stuff I Saw On My Walk Today

Walking around Lake Winona today I, for the first time in my life, found some Dutchman's breeches. I have looked for these before but never found them.

I also found a leucistic robin too.

Usually when I walk around the lake I see up to a dozen turtles. Today, because the trees haven't leafed out, I saw a grand total of 87 turtles. Some were painted turtles and some were map turtles.

 

Keukenhof Gardens

Today we took a tram, the subway, and a bus to Keukenhof Gardens which is the largest flower garden in Europe

Here is an organ with moving characters that played happy circus music.

The gardens are meticulously groomed.

Tulips galore.

Each section of bulb flowers is surrounded by green lawn.

They had a wooden shoe boat in a pond near a miniature windmill.

This working windmill was moved here from somewhere else. The whisper boats (run by electric motors) were right behind this windmill.

The whisper boats take 20 people through the canals between fallow fields and fields of tulips, hyacinth, daffodil and crocus flowers.

We saw acre upon acre of flowers. Geese and ducks and coots swam in the canals.

We were cold after the boat ride so we went indoors to enjoy a cup of hot chocolate.

We got there early before the crowds.

By afternoon the place was crowded with people.

March 19th through May 10th is the time to visit when flowers are in full bloom.

They offered bulbs for sale but spring is not the time to plant tulips so we didn't buy any. Keukenhof Gardens is a great place to visit.

 

Prairie Fire

Tonight the Winona Bird Club had a talk with a prairie fire expert. This is the same guy who gave the timber rattlesnake talk a few weeks back. The meeting was very informative. I was surprised to learn how many prairies around this area get burned.

 

Blazing Star And Lead Plant

This morning and part of the afternoon I traveled to the Nature Conservancy office at Weaver Dunes to collect prairie seeds for a new section of land that is being converted from farm to prairie. The weather was foggy and cool and I started out with a sweatshirt and two fleece jackets. When I left I had just the sweatshirt on.

We had about 25 people helping. We had five priority species to focus on plus ten secondary species. I decided to focus on two priority species.

I filled a quarter of a paper envelope with lead plant seeds. The orange is my water bottle. The blue are my shoes. Lead plant can have roots 10 to 15 feet in length. Lead plant prefers dry and sandy soil. Lead plant is in the legume family so it secures nitrogen in the soil.

We collected a couple of gallons of blazing star. I started out putting the seeds in an envelope but quickly dropped that idea and put the blazing star seeds into a milk jug I had attached to my pants. Monarch butterflies and other butterflies appreciate blazing star. While we were working a half dozen bald eagles flew over our heads-a good omen, not? One guy found the shell of a map turtle.

 

Collecting Prairie Coreopsis Seeds

 

Today I drove north and west to the Weaver Dunes Nature Conservancy site. With the help of 14 other people we walked through the prairie (and the poison ivy) collecting seeds. We even found a ground cherry which I thought was pretty cool. One guy found two snake skins that had been shed quite a long time ago. We had nice cool weather for our work. One family brought two kids under the age of five and I liked that. One kid found part of a deer antler. This is a remnant prairie. When the DNR does butterfly surveys they come here because of all the butterfly varieties that are found here. This is a really special place.

Whitewater State Park

Yesterday I drove 25 minutes north and west to visit Whitewater State Park again. Many years have passed since my last visit. I walked the trails. I saw a guy fly fishing for trout. I saw an indigo bunting and a rose colored grosbeak. I visited all 5 camper cabins. I walked past many  camp sites. They have wild parsnip everywhere. This rogue vegetable plant has spread all over. If you touch it with bare skin and then are exposed to sunlight you can get a painful rash. I usually think of vegetables as innocent but not this one.

 

Ripley Esker

 This past weekend I went to the master naturalist convention at Cragun's resort near Brainerd. I arrived around noon for my field trip to the Ripley esker. We boarded a bus and headed south. We entered the southern area of the camp. In case you didn't know, an esker is formed by an underground river beneath a glacier.  As the glacier melts the underground river takes a curving shape like a snake. Silt, sand, gravel and rocks drop out of the glacier. Once the glacier is gone, the esker looks like a snake like hill. We walked from the bus to the west side of the esker. This part of the prairie beside the esker had been burned earlier this season. The plants were already coming back in brilliant green. We found lots of wild flowers including pussy toes, hoary puccoon, and prairie smoke. I like prairie smoke. In the picture below the flower is newer and hasn't gotten to the ethereal smoke like shape yet. Once we got to the far side of the esker we started walking up the slope. We walked along the top of the esker noticing the difference in plant varieties from the prairie below.  After an hour or so of walking in the rain we headed back to the bus. The bus took us to a SNA (scientific and natural area) near Little Falls. We spent another rainy hour walking there looking at the plants and the birds. After all that fresh air it felt good to board the warm bus and head back to Cragun's for dinner and a keynote speaker.

Prairie smoke in bloom.

Happy Spring

Today I had an early appointment on Como Avenue so I thought I would celebrate the first day of spring by visiting the Marjorie McNeeley Observatory. Here is a rosemary bonsai that I admired.

They had several azalea bonsai. I was hoping to see the spring flower show in the sunken garden room but unfortunately that room was closed while they took down the winter show and added the spring show. They looked like they were almost done working. Rumors were flying that they might open the sunken garden room this afternoon. I waited for awhile before I walked down to and around the lake.

The southern third of the lake had thin ice but the rest was open water. I thought maybe the wind pushed the ice this way but it seemed to fit nicely in the bay so maybe not. I saw red winged blackbirds. I was happy to see the first Eastern bluebird of the season.