Sow-Thistles

I've been meaning to find out the identity of these tall dandelion like flowers for years. They are a very common road-side flower and on the way up to the Laurentians last week the roadside was covered in them. The one in the above photo is growing in the experimental area beside Hunt-club, but there has been a patch of them by the 2011 planting area for years. They don't seem to spread easily into established grass or meadows as they haven't expanded into the 2011 planting area since the mowing stopped

Flowers of Smooth Perennial Sow-thistle(Sonchus arvensis) with Sow-thistle Aphids

Lower leaves of the perennial sow-thistle

As can be seen in the top photo they grow quite tall. There is another shorter spiny annual sow-thistle species that is less than a meter tall and has smaller flowers. A whole bunch of it is growing in one section of the experimental area but it has already finished flowering so I didn't get a picture. A picture of the leaves is below.

Leaves of the Spiny annual sow-thistle(Sonchus asper)

2013 planting

A few weeks ago I was walking through the tall grass along the berm west of the 2011 planting area and I noticed that the boy scouts had planted quite a few seedlings in the area. The tall grass hadn't been cut all year and I wondered if that meant the city had given the boy scouts permission to plant there and that it was to be an expansion of the naturalization area. Unfortunately it was not to be, for only a few day later the mower came along and cut down the long grass and the couple of dozen seedlings that had survived the summer there. There are about a couple of dozen other seedlings still surviving in the 2011 planting area. The seedlings were quite small and the vetch grew very quickly, so many of them got crowded out. The boy scouts planted a lot of white pine and a few deciduous trees I had a hard time identifying. I'm fairly confident that I have the two new tree species identified now (see pictures below).

Highbush Cranberry (Viburnum trilobum)

Blue Beech (Carpinus caroliniana)

I noticed on my walk a single dog-strangling vine about 75m from the west end of the 2011 planting area. It is spreading from the infestation that is further west along the berm. I attacked that patch this spring while the young vines were still easy to pull out. That measure seemed to be effective as the plants didn't come back but there were more of them in the shade of the trees that I didn't get to so it was really just a delaying tactic. I read in the paper that scientists in Ottawa are releasing a biological control agent that is specific for dog strangling vine. I hope it is effective; I wouldn't want all the wild places of Ottawa to turn into the Fletcher Wildlife Garden.

A Cluster Fly (Genus Pollenia) resting on a highbush cranberry.

and suddenly Summer

The trilliums seem to be holding their own against the garlic mustard. There are seven trilliums flowering in the patch rescued back in 2010. The hot and dry weather over the past week has compressed spring. The trees are leafing out already. The crabapples are blooming as are the wild plum back in the corner and the serviceberry. In addition to the trilliums and garlic mustard pictured above, there are dandelions, yellow rocket, forget-me-nots, violets and wild strawberry blooming.

Seven-Spotted Lady Beetle (Coccinella septempunctata)

Last year I don't think I saw one of these traditional looking lady bugs; this is the second one I spotted this year. Last year about this time I saw loads of the twelve-spotted lady bugs that aren't so hemispherical and are a paler shade of red. I haven't seen any of those yet this year.

A troop of scouts have planted a bunch of pine seedlings in the 2011 area. The place needed it as many of the evergreen trees had not survived the past two summers of drought. I'm not sure how well the new trees will do. The scouts seem to have just sliced the sod with a spade and then dropped the seedling into the groove without much thought of trying to match the soil depth or using loose soil to pack in the root ball and avoid air pockets.

Annual Cicada

Annual Cicada(Genus Tibicen)

I've been listening to these guys make their loud electical buzzing sound for a while now. There has been at least one up in a tree somewhere in the backyard for the past few days. The one in the picture above is the first one I've spotted in the flesh. They're huge! At first I thought he was a dried up leaf. He was hanging on to a dried up maple tree in the 2011 planting area.

The 2011 planting area was hit hard by the drought in July. The drought is now over as it has cooled off and we have had rain on and off for the past week but the month long heat wave had already killed off many of the trees that had been attempting to comeback from last year. Some trees survived the drought better than others. The white pines were the most successful conifers. The hackberry, basswood, serviceberry and redbud did quite well, as did the suckering poplars. The maples and oaks in particular seemed to take the drought hard this year. This is the second difficult year for these trees and I'm not sure if they have enough viable buds to make another comeback next year. Maybe some of them will regenerate from the roots.

Bird's-foot trefoil and wasps

The bird's-foot trefoil is flowering all over the 2011 planting area. As I've noted in the other planting areas, the trefoil forms large tangled mats the second year after the lawn is left uncut. It can crowd out other plants for a year but it doesn't maintain its ascendancy for more than a year. The grasses come back in the third year and other plant's that can't withstand cutting start establishing themselves.

The wasp queen's nest I visited in May is somewhere in the middle background of the above photograph. She now has about a half dozen daughter's helping her take care of the hive. I'm sure they appreciate the bountiful supply of nectar flowering all around them.

Appropriately for the end of June, there have been plenty of June bugs flying around at dusk. They like to hover and fly around the tree branches. I'm not sure why they do it, but presumably it has something to do with attracting a mate. I imagine the bats that come out when it is darker pick off many of the June bugs as they slowly fly around.

A Wasp Queen

Here is a wasp queen I encountered as I was surveying the trees from the 2011 planting. She is busy making her paper nest for her first set of offspring.

2011 Planting Survey

I took some time this past weekend to survey how the trees planted last year are doing. 420 trees and bushes, of various types, were to be planted last May along the south side of the berm, west of the Newhaven cul-de-sac. Last week-end I found 317 that had survived the past year and 60 others that are clearly dead. That means somewhere between 16-25% of the trees planted last year did not survive. Many more like the Burr Oak above had a very hard summer last year and are only coming back from the secondary buds that failed to wake up the previous year.

Some trees, such as all of the Shagbark Hickories, failed to survive the transplantation and never leafed out last summer. Some particularly small trees such as the Ironwoods and some of the Beeches may have been lost in the long grass last summer. About half of the spruce, pine, and fir trees have lost their needles. Some stayed green all winter only to lose their needles come spring.

Some trees only have growth down at the base of the trunk where the buds had some protection from the winter winds. The Elderberries, the Redbuds, the Speckled Alders, and the Red Osier Dogwoods all seem to fit in this category. Almost all of the Alders that were planted last year are dead or have only a few twigs close to the ground showing any signs of life.

The trees that did the best were the Sumac, Hackberries, Sugar Maples and of course the Poplar volunteers that have invaded the area from the neighbouring forest. I counted some 67 Aspen suckers springing up in several groups along the forest edge.

Summer Transplants

Last August I transplanted a few seedling into the 2009 square to fill in some gaps where the trees had died. There were six red maple seedlings, two cedars, a pine tree and what I believe is an ash tree; all less than a foot tall. I figured that August was a good time to transplant the trees because the trees had had the summer to build up their energy reserves while it gave enough time for the trees to put some roots down before the frost. Initially they all seemed to do very poorly. The deciduous trees very quickly lost their leaves, the cedars turned an olive brown colour and the pine showed no sign of growth. Finally in October one of the maples started putting out new growth just in time for the frosts to kill it off.

With that inauspicious start I was worried the trees wouldn't survive the winter but this spring they are all showing promising signs of life. The buds on the pine tree (see above) are swelling, the maples look healthy (to right) and the cedars are greening up. These small trees were transplanted from flower gardens and from under trees where they had planted themselves. In the case of the cedars they had rooted in among the pebbles under the eaves of the house and came away with bare roots. It amazes me that they all survived since I don't know how many roots they lost in the transplantation. Yet the late august seedlings have a better record of survival than the potted trees transplanted for the city last spring. I'll save their sorry tale for another post.

In Bloom:
Forget-me-not
Dandelion
Yellow Rocket
Garlic Mustard
Trillium
Serviceberry

A redwing in the poplars

Today was the first really warm day in over a week and the snow was melting fast. Walking along I was on the look out for a redwing blackbird. I heard this fellow before I spotted him high up at the top of a poplar. It isn't the best picture because he was so high up. The eastern cottonwood poplar trees from the 1995 planting are amazingly tall trees now just 17 years after they were planted. Last summer a wind storm knocked a few of them down, and the year before a dead trunk fell down into the 2009 planting area. Perhaps in another 17 years the current giants will no longer be here. They don't seem to be a very vigorous suckering plant. There is one sucker growing in the 2009 planting square, and another in the 2010 west side area. There are loads more suckers of the other species of poplar invading the 2010 and 2011 planting areas. I believe those poplars are trembling aspens. On the 2010 west side and in the 2011 planting area past Newhaven, the aspens are sprouting up so quickly and densely that they are liable to crowd out the new maples if I am not careful. These aspens sucker vigorously but the parent trees in the 1995 planting area are only half as big as the Eastern Cottonwoods growing beside them.

Actually, I'm not certain that the larger poplars are true eastern cottonwood poplars. I suspect they are a hybrid commercial variety that has been selected for its vigorous growth. Eastern cottonwoods are not native this far north being more a tree of the Carolinian forest.(Poplar identification, pdf with more details). The trees do carpet the ground beneath them with masses of cottony fluff when they disperse their seeds in summertime though, so I will continue calling them cottonwoods.

A short tailed shrew

This past week I have been spending about an hour a day getting the trees planted this spring ready for winter. That involves pulling back the grass, removing the mulch circles and fixing the planing job if they were planted in appropriately. I received a hundred white spiral tree protectors from the city forester last monday to put around the tree trunks. I have gone through about half of them cutting them in two to protect twice as many trees.

Today as I was attempting to fix a particularly bad planting job where a maple tree had been planted several inches too deep, I heard a squeek and the soil I had been carefully digging started moving. I thought I must have disturbed a meadow vole but then a pink snout pushed out of the ground. What ever it was, it was apparently digging its way out. I quickly got my camera out, to at least get a shot of the little guy's snout. As soon as he spied me he ducked back under again. But with a little coaxing and patience I eventually got the above picture of him just before he scooted away intoo the long grass.

I believe he (or she) is a short tailed shrew. The pink rather pointed snout, the pale grey sleak fur, the size and shape, the small ears and eyes all lead me to believe this was actually a short tailed shrew.

The northern short tailed shrew is a small carnivore that eats insects, worms, mice and voles. They have a reputation as voracious eaters and are also noted as one of the few venomous mammals. Their venomous bite allows them to incapacitate larger prey such as voles. Since they are active throughout the year and are just about an ideal size to be able to use the meadow vole's runways under the snow, I imagine voles make up a significant portion of their winter diet.

2011 Growing Season Recap

This year the naturalization area was extended to the area south of Kirkstall that was accessed from the end of Newhaven. The above picture is looking east from the west end of the new planting. The trees were planted on a warm dry day in a couple of hours and for the first two months there were very good prospects that most of the tree would survive. May was wet but not cold and June also had consistent rain. By mid June the grasses were tall and it was necessary to pull back the grass from the new trees.

July was hot and dry with some days in the high 30s. The only trees in the new area that didn't seem to suffer from the heat were the invading suckers from the adjacent poplars. The newly planted trees suffered under these conditions and by the end of July some of the new trees were losing their leaves. The burr oaks and the speckled alders in particular seem to not survive the dry conditions well. Some oaks survived better than others, about a third look like they are dead and the rest only look mostly dead.

The dry spell didn't end until halfway through August, but with the rain the temperature cooled and few of the new trees attempted to recover from the heat wave. The more established trees from the 2009 and 2010 plantings did not suffer very much from the heat wave at all. Even those newly planted trees that had a bit of shade did ok, but the Newhaven Extension area that had the south east facing hillside exposure, with poorly developed soil were hit hard.

Now in September I am spending some time preparing the new trees for winter. In order to minimize the loses due to field mice I am removing the mulch circles and pulling the grasses back from the base of the trees. The mulch circles hid a lot of problems. Quite a few trees are poorly planted, and the field mice are making themselves at home under the circles. Hopefully removing their cover will convince the field mice to not make their home under the new trees this winter.

Meadow vole damage

The above is a picture of some Meadow vole damage in the 2011 planting area. The trees in this area had a manufactured circle of mulch placed around the base of the tree. This helped with preserving soil moisture around the newly planted root balls. However they produce a convenient location for field mice to hide. As the night time temperature goes down they will extend their burrows underground around the tree roots. Once their food runs low they will start eating the roots killing the tree. They like the taste of some trees better than others. The above sugar maple would probably be killed this winter if no action is taken.



I attempted to collapse the burrow entrances by punching down the soil around the roots. I then added soil to bring the soil back up to the original level. There was a tag left on the tree that might have damaged the tree in a few years as it grew. I removed this tag and added a tree protector to keep the meadow voles from girdling the tree at the base of the trunk. Hopefully these steps help the tree to survive the coming winter.

Lilacs and rabbit

Went for a walk along the berm this Victoria day to inspect the trees. This past week has been very good for the trees, with lots of rain and warm days. The newly planted trees in the Newhaven Extension are doing great. Most of the trees are growing vigorously, even the Burr Oaks that take a long time to get started are starting to leaf out. There are about 20 Burr Oaks in the new planting and only 2 or 3 do not show signs of life yet. The only tree that does not yet have signs of life are the shagbark hickories. I still have some hope, but because they tend to form a tap root they have a reputation of not transplanting well.

I snapped the above picture when walking along the northern fence.

In Bloom:
Dandelion
Garlic Mustard
Forget-me-not
honeysuckle
lilac
ajuga
serviceberry
crabapple
apple
Solomon's seal

The 2011 Planting

It was a beautiful day for planting on Saturday, almost shorts weather. There was a good turnout with about a hundred volunteers coming out to help including our local MPP Lisa McLeod. The soil was very wet because of the large amount of rain we have had over the past few weeks. One of the city trucks got stuck in the mud trying to drive over the grass. This year the city provided mulch for around the base of the trees so we will see how that helps them with the rodent problem.



The 440 trees and bushes were in the ground by lunch time. As before it is a real mix of deciduous and conifers. New for this year are Burr Oaks; we received about a dozen of them. I am not entirely sure they were Burr Oaks. The trees are about 6 feet tall and have only a few thick twigs. The twigs are thick with a corky ridged bark. There are few signs of them budding yet so they are a couple of weeks at least behind the maples.

Yesterday afternoon while walking along the top of the berm I noticed a loud rustling among the dead leaves of the 1995 planting. When I got closer I spied a large brown bird with a long tail and its mate close by. It seemed to be deliberately moving the leaf litter about in order to find bugs under the leaves. There were also grackles and robins about but the noise was mostly coming from the brown birds. The other birds had a quieter feeding strategy. After consulting my bird book I believe they were brown thrashers. The pair were quite timid and I couldn't get near them for a good look but they were about the size of a grackle, with a brown back and lighter front.

In Bloom:
dandelion
violet
bloodroot
trillium
scilla (escapee by north fence)

Getting organized for 2011

We're getting organized for the 2011 tree planting event. We received our official approval on Friday and went out for a site visit with the tree person from the city. Here is a map to the planned area for 2011.

Signs of spring

I went for a walk along the berm on Tuesday the 15th. It was a nice warm and sunny day with the snow quickly melting underfoot. All the plants are still asleep but the birds knew spring is coming. The crows, sparrows, chickadees, and cardinals and starlings that have been our wintertime companions were all active but I also noticed some Redwing blackbirds up at the top of the populars lustily announcing their claims. There was also a single Robin waiting for the snow to melt away perched in a crabapple tree.



I learned today the school's application to plant more trees this spring was approved. So if all goes well the tree planting area will be extended to a new area to the south of the end of Newhaven this spring.