You’ll find it tucked away in the middle of the Sunday Globe on the page with the weather report, next to the Megabucks winning number and “This Day in History.”
Nature
Photo by Ryan Hagerty (Public Domain)
White-breasted nuthatch • Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren (CC BY 2.0)
Autumn’s quiet sounds
Summer birds have flown south, deciduous trees are bare. Wildflowers have faded and mushrooms are withered by the cold. But for the lover of nature, these last spare days of autumn offer one welcome gift. Silence.
The Pagoda tree at Kew Gardens • Photo by deror_avi (CC BY-SA 3.0)
History uprooted
Among the more engaging characters with which J. R. R. Tolkien populated Middle-earth were the ents, the oldest of all living races, a treelike people only tentatively removed from their arboreal roots, awakened by elves from a long, silent awareness of themselves into mobility and speech.
Model of a coelacanth at the Houston Museum of Natural Science • Photo by Daderot (Public Domain)
Let us consider now the coelacanth
“Consider now the Coelacanth,
Our only living fossil,
Persistent as the amaranth,
And status quo apostle.”
Indian-pipe • Photo by Will Brown (CC BY 2.0)
The zombies of the plant world
It’s been a bumper year for Indian-pipes. I can’t recall another time when I have seen so many. Even as I write, in late September, they are still common in the pine-oak woods, pushing up through the leaf litter on the forest floor, little covens of waxy-white wildflowers, ghostly, bewitching, vaguely demonic.
Pink lady's slipper in New England woods • Tom Raymo
The lady’s slipper
Lady’s slipper. Moccasin flower. Squirrel shoes. The scientific name of the plant is Cypripedium, which is Greek for “slipper of Venus.” The early French explorers of North America called it le sabot de la Vierge, “the sabot of the Virgin”; a sabot is a wooden shoe worn by peasants in France.
The wings of a Rhagoletis fly mimics a spider's legs • © entomart (Used with permission)
A gentler scientist
Among the books I remember best from childhood was Jean-Henri Fabre’s “Insect Adventures,” stories translated from the voluminous works of the great 19th century French entomologist and retold for young readers.
Primula vulgaris, or common primrose • Photo by Henry Perks on Unsplash
A primrose is a primrose — well, not always
Come with me for a Valentine’s walk down the primrose path. It is a walk of spring, of young love, and of dalliance. Just now, in the midst of winter, we can use a taste of spring.
Burdock hitching a ride • Plant Image Library (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Hitchhiking for survival
This is the season of the grabbers and clingers. I came home from a walk in the woods with enough seeds stuck to my clothes to start my own weed patch. Bloom time for the wildflowers is past; now is the time when the seeds go traveling.
Photo by natsuki on Unsplash
Tree book as Yankee as a cod
In the basement of the Ames Free Library in my town of Easton, out of public view, are 14 huge volumes that were among the first acquisitions of the library, and still, after almost a hundred years, remain the largest volumes in the collection.