The folks at the botanical garden are very excited because one of the American Columbos they planted 19 years ago is looking like it might flower this year! This flowering stalk (above), also known as yellow gentian, is about 2 feet tall and it could grow to between 3 and 8 feet tall.
After spending 19 years in our Mountain Habitat as an unassuming rosette of leaves near the ground, one of our American columbos is about to put out a spectacular flowering stalk for the first and only time. Then, after reproducing, it will die. ~ NC Botanical Garden Facebook page
will it flower???
a rosette of America columbo leaves on the ground ~ apparently this one not going to be flowering this year
We also enjoyed the presence of other plants and trees, already blooming…
fringe tree blossoms
northern sundial lupine
sandhills bluestar
wild azalea
white-throated sparrow
A nice, quiet and cloudy late morning in the garden. We were a couple of hours later than usual and there seemed to be fewer birds out and about.
It was a windy day for a walk but off we went. The very first thing we saw was a snail crossing a side entrance path at the botanical garden. A slow moving creature is so easy to photograph, even if it was partly in its own shadow. And then a little patch of windflowers, how fitting for this windy day.
wood anemone aka windflower
lily of the valley
maiden pink
‘white lady banks’ rose
Manchurian lilac
mountain witch-alder
wild blue phlox
cobweb on a sweet shrub (aka Carolina allspice)
Coastal Plain Habitat boardwalk in April
I keep wondering if this is the same hermit thrush I keep seeing in this same spot, ever since January.
hermit thrush
ladybug
yellow-rumped warbler
tufted titmouse
On our way back to the parking lot we passed by the Children’s Wonder Garden and I spotted another life bird! And this one isn’t found in Connecticut, so I had to pencil it into my Birding in Connecticut book, like I did with the Carolina chickadee. I may have to get a different book to keep my life list in.
Brown-headed Nuthatch, #90
When the squeaky sound of a rubber ducky drifts down out of the canopy in a southern pine forest, be on the lookout for Brown-headed Nuthatches. These tiny blue-gray songbirds climb up, down, and around pine trunks and branches with the deftness of a rock climber. They cling to bark with their strong feet rather than leaning on their tails like a woodpecker. Brown-headed Nuthatches are social birds that travel in noisy family groups. Sometimes, offspring from previous years help their parents raise young. ~ All About Birds website
Well, we didn’t hear this cute little nuthatch or see him climbing up or down a pine trunk. Nor was he with a noisy family group. He was perched on the back side of the bee hotel, all by himself, feathers getting fluffed up in the wind. Finding him was a treat after a prior frustration.
Earlier on our walk we picked up the call of a white-eyed vireo on our Merlin app. We looked and looked in the trees where the call was coming from but couldn’t see anything. Tim finally resorted to taking random pictures of the tree with his cell phone, hoping to see a bird in one of them when he put them up on his monitor at home. Well, he did see a blurry blob that had the right coloring… But we can’t count it as a life bird — yet — because we didn’t actually see it!
4.2.24 ~ ‘old blush’ rose arbor North Carolina Botanical Garden
It was spring vacation week so we had a chance to take Katherine with us on one of our walks at the botanical garden. Like her grandmother, she was enchanted by the rose arbor. And we finally saw tadpoles in the frog pond!
And of course we saw lots of flowers…
lobed tickseed
Florida flame azalea
Virginia spiderwort
bogbean
wild geranium (with tiny ant)
great white trillium
Katherine knows a lot about cinnamon ferns and she located some starting to come up in the Mountain Habitat (above). And then, in the Coastal Plain Habitat (below) she spotted some more that were taller and starting to unfurl. My granddaughter informed me that, among other things, cinnamon fern is the oldest species of fern on earth. (70 million years!)
learning about cinnamon ferns from Katherine (photo by Tim)
Of course there were some birds to enjoy and a couple even paused for a photo or two…
Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal he was feeding her but I couldn’t capture it!
northern cardinal
white-throated sparrow
What a blessing it was to share a beautiful day with our granddaughter, to share our interests with her and to have her share hers with us.
3.30.24 ~ ‘old blush’ rose North Carolina Botanical Garden
It’s always a pleasure to be greeted by the roses dangling from their arbor each time we visit the botanical garden. It never gets old! Like sunrises and sunsets, I suppose. A steady presence. But we were on a new mission this day to locate a Virginia dwarf trillium, another tiny ephemeral we heard was blooming. Along the way we saw…
Spanish lavender
hermit thrush
This (below) was the only undamaged dwarf trillium we could find, surrounded by other kinds of plants. We had torrential rains for a couple of days and I think they did a number on the tiny trilliums. But I’m grateful we got a chance to see this one. It is much smaller than all the other regular size trilliums we’ve been seeing this spring.
Virginia dwarf trillium
spreading Jacob’s ladder
white-throated sparrow
Only by living for many moons in one region, my peripheral senses tracking seasonal changes in the local plants while the scents of the soil steadily seep in through my pores — only over time can the intelligence of a place lay claim upon my person. Slowly, as the seasonal round repeats itself again and again, the lilt and melody of the local songbirds becomes an expectation within my ears, and so the mind I’ve carried within me settles into the wider mind that enfolds me. ~ David Abram (Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology)
yellow trillium (?)
twisted trillium
pine warbler
sweet shrub aka Carolina allspice
great white trillium (?)
tufted titmouse
red chokeberry
squirrel going out on a limb to reach maple seeds what a mess he made discarding the “helicopters”
carpenter bee (thanks to Eliza for the identification)
As we were making our way back to the parking lot this giant bee (above) was hovering over the walkway, blocking our path. Well, if it was just going to stay there I might as well get a picture of it. I don’t know if these creatures are unique to this area but sometimes they hover outside our windows and crash into them repeatedly. It sounds like someone is throwing pebbles at the window.
So we’ve lived here for ten moons I think, not very many so far, but our senses are slowly getting familiar with the seasonal changes.
3.20.24 ~ hermit thrush, North Carolina Botanical Garden
I lack roots, I cannot fly on my own wings, and I do not burrow into the earth. But I am a part of something vastly bigger than myself. I am a part of the enduring force, of life itself. And the great surge of life occurs every springtime. It is this that I am made aware of now. ~ Hal Borland (Hal Borland’s Book of Days)
fragrant sumac
Another favorite walk in the botanical garden, savoring every possible moment of this memorable spring flowering. Longtime locals have been telling us that this spring has come earlier here than it has in previous years. The last rose I found on this bush (below) was in November and this one in March is the first rose since then.
first ‘old blush’ rose of the season
Venus flytraps poking up from the soil
wild blue phlox
Carolina wren
white trout lily
limestone bittercress aka purple cress
‘finch’s golden’ deciduous holly
I’m planning to get a once a month picture from this spot (below) on the boardwalk. The areas on either side here were part of a subscribed burn sometime after we found the seedbox plant in January.
Coastal Plain Habitat boardwalk in March
3.20.24 ~ Courtyard Gardens Spring Equinox (8 seasons series)
Spring has returned — and now the earth is like a child who has learned her poems by heart. So many, so many … and for all her hard and lengthy studies now she takes the prize. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Sonnets to Orpheus)
eastern redbud cauliflory
Cauliflory is a botanical term referring to plants that flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks, rather than from new growth and shoots. It is rare in temperate regions but common in tropical forests. ~ Wikipedia
Learning something new every day… I’m trying to remember the word cauliflory by thinking of cauliflower. (I’m still having trouble remembering the word marcescence even after using it countless time on this blog…) This wonderful botanical garden is never the same twice.
3.17.24 ~ pineland phlox Coker Arboretum, Chapel Hill, North Carolina
This post is my contribution to Karma’s Signs of Spring Photo Hunt. I don’t have a prime lens, but the photos, except for the birds, were taken at about the same focal length with my zoom lens. (There was a lot of squatting involved to get the pictures.) Visit Karma’s post here if you’d like to participate.
stinking hellebore
It was spring break at UNC and we learned that we could easily find a parking space on campus when the students are out of town. And that meant we could finally visit the lovely Coker Arboretum, 5 wooded acres in the middle of a college campus. I came home with more than 300 photographs! What follows is a small sample of the birds and blooms we saw. Some of the plants were from other parts of the world.
Alabama snow-wreath
magnolia
spring starflower (South America)
Chinese redbud (China)
spring snowflake (Europe)
golden ragwort
Japanese camellia
spike winter-hazel (Japan)
hermit thrush
white-throated sparrow
‘hino-degeri’ azalea
‘snow’ azalea
Carolina wren
American robin
Spanish bluebell (Iberian Peninsula)
flowering quince
Carolina silverbell
cut-leaf lilac
I was especially attracted to the tiny South American spring starflowers which carpeted some of the garden plots. Something about those little purple lines on the petals. And the European spring snowflakes captivated me. They were a little bigger than our snowdrops. When I got home I learned they were native to southern Europe, all the way east to Ukraine, so I wondered if any of my ancestors had them in their gardens to welcome spring over there.
On this botanical garden visit we were totally captivated by a new life bird. We couldn’t get over how tiny it was! How could any songbird possibly be smaller than a chickadee? I couldn’t stop taking pictures.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet, #88
A tiny bird seemingly overflowing with energy, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet forages almost frantically through lower branches of shrubs and trees. Its habit of constantly flicking its wings is a key identification clue. Smaller than a warbler or chickadee, this plain green-gray bird has a white eye ring and a white bar on the wing. Alas, the male’s brilliant ruby crown patch usually stays hidden—your best chance to see it is to find an excited male singing in spring or summer. ~ All About Birds website
Of course there were other things to notice on that beautifully sunny day.
the frog egg embryos are looking more and more like tadpoles
snails presumably climbing a rock (we didn’t actually see them move)
Alabama snow-wreath (rare)
eastern redbud
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy, that we can scarcely mark their progress. ~ Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)
red-shouldered hawk (might be the same one we saw five days earlier)
‘finch’s golden’ deciduous holly
wild columbine (aka eastern red columbine)
We enjoyed seeing all the redbud trees, promising spring, with their vibrant blossoms appearing to accent the gray landscape well before any leaves come out. So many delightful changes are in the offing. It will be fun noticing as many of them as possible!
Another lovely midday stroll through the botanical garden, noticing many small things. This has definitely become our go-to place, visited as often as we used to visit our little city beach back in Connecticut. We find ourselves checking out some regular spots, like the little patch of sandhills pyxie-moss, which is filling in nicely.
sandhills pyxie-moss with pine cone left after a prescribed burn
bloodroot
limestone bittercress aka purple cress
If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
golden ragwort
little sweet Betsy (a trillium)
patch of little sweet Betsy
bottlebrush buckeye
It is always safe to dream of spring. For it is sure to come; and if it be not just as we have pictured it, it will be infinitely sweeter. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery (The Story Girl)
Red-shouldered Hawk, #86
We heard a hawk calling and Tim finally spotted it. These were the best pictures I managed to get of it before it flew away. Turns out it was another life bird for me, even though I’ve seen them in captivity before I’m counting this one because it was in the wild.
Whether wheeling over a swamp forest or whistling plaintively from a riverine park, a Red-shouldered Hawk is typically a sign of tall woods and water. It’s one of our most distinctively marked common hawks, with barred reddish-peachy underparts and a strongly banded tail. In flight, translucent crescents near the wingtips help to identify the species at a distance. These forest hawks hunt prey ranging from mice to frogs and snakes. ~ All About Birds website
‘lemon drop’ swamp azalea buds (looking about the same as they did five weeks ago)
oakleaf hydrangea
tufted titmouse
After being delighted to finally get a photo of a titmouse closer to the earth and to my camera, another life bird suddenly came into the picture! What a sweet surprise and wonderful way to end this lovely spring walk.
White-breasted Nuthatch, #87
A common feeder bird with clean black, gray, and white markings, White-breasted Nuthatches are active, agile little birds with an appetite for insects and large, meaty seeds. They get their common name from their habit of jamming large nuts and acorns into tree bark, then whacking them with their sharp bill to “hatch” out the seed from the inside. White-breasted Nuthatches may be small but their voices are loud, and often their insistent nasal yammering will lead you right to them. ~ All About Birds website
On this Sunday morning my friend Susan and I set out to find dimple trout lilies at the botanical garden, only to find the gates would be closed until 1:00. No matter, we decided to saunter along the nearby nature trails for a couple of hours. And there turned out to be plenty of the tiny lilies in the woods. They are so tiny they barely poke through the leaves on the forest floor. They are native here in the Piedmont.
dimpled trout lily poking up through the fallen leaves
This post has way too many pictures but I couldn’t bring myself to cut out any more than I already did. The woods still looked like it was winter, unless one looked down and more closely at the leaf litter for tiny spring ephemerals.
Virginia spring beauty?
Meeting-of-the-Waters Creek
moss spores?
remembering to look up sometimes
a lone hemlock in the hardwood forest
eastern gray squirrel
tufted titmouse way up high
dimpled trout lily
rue-anemone
hepatica
little sweet Betsy (a trillium)
common blue violet
dandelion
The Dandelion’s pallid Tube Astonishes the Grass — And Winter instantly becomes An infinite Alas — The Tube uplifts a signal Bud And then a shouting Flower — The Proclamation of the Suns That sepulture is o’er — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1565)
When the botanical garden gates opened we went in and found more dimpled trout lilies and what looked like more kinds of trilliums coming up.
North Carolina Botanical Garden more dimpled trout lilies
hepatica
bloodroot
What a wonderful time we had enjoying springtime’s opening act in this part of the world! I’m sure there will be many more flowers coming soon.
