All the wildflowers have gone to fruit and seeds. This shot is from November 19. Wahoo is a Dakota term for this plant, which means “arrow wood.” Native to North America, related to bittersweet and also to the non-native invasive kind of euonymous.
Eastern Wahoo (Euonymous atropurpureus)
Lucy and I were walking at Charles River Peninsula and I was surprised to see a vining wildflower running rampant that hasn’t been there for the last two years, the years I’ve been paying attention. It’s a vine with showy pink clusters of flowers, growing in the moist edges of the meadow. Why did it appear this year?
It has edible tubers (similar to potatoes but apparently way more nutritious) and beans! The shoots and flowers are edible too. It was a staple food for Native Americans, who called it Hopniss, among other things… They prepared it boiled, peeled and dried, made into sweet preserves with maple syrup, or as seasoning… many ways! Apparently Europeans learned all about using groundnut as a food source from Native Americans and it was a major help for those early (1600s) colonists like the Pilgrims. It’s commercially farmed in Japan.
Thoreau: “In case of a famine, I should soon resort to these roots.” Maybe we’ll need to try them. The best time to harvest them (for sweetest flavor) is after a frost, but before the ground freezes. Native.
Groundnut, Wild Bean, Potato Bean, Indian Potato, Hodoimo, Hopniss (apios americana)
Look at this bizarre little fungus, like black sausages standing on end. In spring, they’re covered with a white powder (the spores). Part of the latin name, polymorpha, means it can take many forms, but it’s often in this club shape. Belongs to the same class of fungus as morels and truffles, but these are inedible. Common to eastern North America.
Dead Man’s Fingers (Xylaria polymorpha)
We were driving around looking for a different access route to the marsh with the heron nest. We were on a residential street in Wellesley when we spotted this coyote. It immediately turned to leave, but when Lucy started barking at it from inside the car, it came back to investigate us.
It looked quite fine and healthy as far as I could tell. Rather thrilling to get such a good look. Coyotes weigh 20 to 50 lbs. and can live up to 14 years in the wild. Their litters are three to twelve pups, born in the spring. Both parents protect their pups and their territory. By fall, the young can hunt on their own. There is an area of Ridge Hill I call Coyoteville. I wonder if this one has a den in that area.
This 4th of July morning was gray with the clouds of an impending storm. We went to check out a heron nest I saw a couple of weeks ago. And it was so great to look over there and see all these great tall birds perched in their aerie! At first they were bunched together so it was hard to see how many there were. 
But then they wandered around a bit, revealing four.
I hope they come through this storm okay (remnants of Hurricane Arthur). Glad there is enough habitat here to support them. Imagine building that nest (with your mouth) — how do you get the first sticks to stay? Clever birds!
Great Blue Herons will eat just about anything they can catch, including fish, insects, mammals, amphibians, reptiles and even birds. They can hunt during the day and night, because of good night vision. We’ve noticed new beaver dams in our favorite hiking areas, and this is a boon for herons because hunting is good in the swamps created by the dams.
From allaboutbirds.org:
Male Great Blue Herons collect much of the nest material, gathering sticks from the ground and nearby shrubs and trees, and from unguarded and abandoned nests, and presenting them to the female. She weaves a platform and a saucer-shaped nest cup, lining it with pine needles, moss, reeds, dry grass, mangrove leaves, or small twigs. Nest building can take from 3 days up to 2 weeks; the finished nest can range from a simple platform measuring 20 inches across to more elaborate structures used over multiple years, reaching 4 feet across and nearly 3.5 feet deep. Ground-nesting herons use vegetation such as salt grass to form the nest.
Great Blue Herons nest mainly in trees, but will also nest on the ground, on bushes, in mangroves, and on structures such as duck blinds, channel markers, or artificial nest platforms. Males arrive at the colony and settle on nest sites; from there, they court passing females. Colonies can consist of 500 or more individual nests, with multiple nests per tree built 100 or more feet off the ground.
— A clutch will have 2-6 eggs, which are about 2.5 to 3 inches long. They incubate for about a month, and the young stay in the nest 4 to 7 weeks. These ones must be about ready to strike out on their own. Pairs choose new breeding partners each year.
This photo is from early May in Dr. Whiteside’s garden, and as it turns out, it is not native to New England. I think it’s a rare variety native to parts of the Appalachian mountains in the southeastern United States. Lily family.
Sweet Trillium, Jeweled Wakerobin, Confusing Trillium (Trillium simile)
Here are a couple more shots from that day, also of some varieties not wild in New England: some very fragrant and unexpectedly pink! lilies of the valley, and a variety of Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium). There are 11 species of Lady’s Slipper native to the U.S., but I think this one might be a hybrid instead of a wild variety. (Cypripedium: Cypri- refers to the island of Cyprus, where Aphrodite was born, and -pedium means shoe or foot.)
They’re so distinctive. There is something very proper and elegant about them, like they would never consider leaning, or demanding attention by being colorful, or blowsy and over-large. The most ornament they care to sport is some tasteful stripes.
This is from May 5, 2014. (I have quite a backlog of photos.) These are native to the east and midwest.
Jack in the Pulpit, Indian Turnip (Arisaema triphyllum)
It’s been a good year for violets! This is a variable species that can occur as white or purple. Photographed in Dr. Whiteside’s magical Illinois garden, but also native all over New England.
Common Blue Violet (Viola sororia)
Bonus pictures from my trip to the Midwest: we went to a concert in Lafayette, Indiana but had some time before the concert, so we checked out a wolf park surprisingly nearby. Beautiful animals.
I found this growing by a dusty country road outside Charleston, Illinois, but apparently it is native from western New England to Michigan south. Fragrant flowers, pollinated by bees with long tongues, like bumblebees.
Wild Blue Phlox, Wild Sweet William, Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata)
A hardy groundcover — tolerates poor soil, dry conditions, deer, rabbits, pollution… Has a milky, poisonous sap that repels herbivores. Forms a dense fluffy blanket about a foot tall. Tiny flowers that start lime-green and yellow, and age to red. Has narrow-leaved foliage reminiscent of cypress trees, hence the name cypress spurge. (The common name “spurge” comes from the Middle English/Old French word “epurge”, meaning “to purge”, because these plants were used as purgatives. (Poinsettias are spurges!) Native to Europe, introduced to North America in the 1860s as an ornamental, and is now a harmful invasive that has really colonized Charles River Peninsula.
Cypress Spurge (Euphorbia cyparissias)
