An Owl

It was a lovely day today to visit the roadside berm. I spent some time clearing out the european buckthorn bushes that form a barrier between the 2009 area and the older forest. It is really easy to recognize the buckthorns at this time of year as they are the only deciduous bushes with grean leaves still hanging on. On my way home I was surprised by this owl just hanging out a few feet from me.

The 2009 replanting area is now starting to resemble a forest. Some of the maple trees are starting to gain some character, like the one below that is starting to push up the earth as the root flare grows. The forest floor of the 2009 area is losing its grass and some seedlings are starting to establish themselves. Below is the first pine seedling I've noticed growing in the area.

As I was walking along, looking at the forest floor, I found one odd bit of trash. I wonder if it was a eurpoean or african swallow that dropped this.

Buckthorn experiment part 1

I've spent a fair bit of time this past month cutting back the buckthorn in the 1995 area. It had half taken over the understory so I decided to cut them back in areas to give other trees and bushes a chance. In doing so I've made quite large piles of twigs and branches and I wonder if it is good for the other plants to have such piles decomposing around them. Here I've made a crude experiment where I've left a pile of buckthorn on some grass outside the forest. The above image was on June 4th when I first piled it there. The image below is today the 30th of June after it had been sitting there for a month of mostly dry weather. I'll check back on it and see how the grass under the pile survived at the end of summer. If buckthorn as it decomposes gives off toxic chemicals perhaps the grass will die back from the pile of twigs.

Natives and invasives

 

These Trilliums have been here for 13 years since they were rescued from an area in Kanata that was to be developed. There were 6 flowers this year, about the same number as I started out with but there are a bunch of plants with small leaves so maybe in a year or two if the rabbits don't take an interest there'll be more. For the past few years it seems like one gets felled each year by a rabbit that has to relearn that trilliums don't taste good. This year the rabbit ate half the flower bud from one plant, which is at least better for the plant than taking it down at the stem.

This year I removed some buckthorns from around these trilliums in order to give them a bit of light. I've recently learned that European Buckthorn is alleopathic, meaning they produce a chemical that supresses the growth and germination of other plants, so I've become much more willing to intervene and remove the buckthorn. I've noticed that buckthorns are pretty effective at suppressing grass. Where they form the edge of the forest the grass dies back from under the bushes. Other trees and bushes are not nearly so effective at keeping the grass at bay; for instance grass can happily grow under sumac.

This flower is Creeping Charlie, an invasive from Europe. I planted this patch, inadvertently, about 6 years ago when I planted a black locust in the 2009 area. In contrast to the trilliums, the creeping charlie is spreading quickly as a dense mat in the shade of the blacklocust. That part of the 2009 area still has grass although the black locust is growing quickly. I expect the creeping charlie will eventually disappear when the grass loses out to trees and bushes. Creeping Charlie seems to like growing in tall grass (there is more of it on the north side of the berm in the long grass) but I've never seen it growing in a proper forest's leaf litter.

A Couple of Fungal Diseases

Plum Pockets on Canada Plum (caused by Taphrina Communis)

The Canada Plum bushes in the North-east corner of the berm area are infected with a fungal disease that causes their fruit to fail. The fungal infection causes their fruit to grow much larger than normal with a large hollow space where the seed should be. These hollow deformed plums that soon shrivel up are called plum pockets.

I don't know how this particular clump of trees got started as I have never seen them produce a viable plum and they seem to grow from suckers of the older trees. The clump may have been here a very long time; according to old aerial photographs hanging in the community center, the farmer whose land became Manordale had let a small clump of trees grow where Kimdale St. is located. At least one holdover from this woodlet is still there; between Ilkley Crescent and Kimdale Street there is a huge tree in a backyard that towers over the houses and the other trees. This clump of Canada Plums may have likewise grown back from the roots of a tree that had been in this woodlet some 50+ years ago. Once the field it is growing in became part of the Experimental Farm, this corner would have been left undisturbed, except by cows, for decades. Then in 1995 they created the West Hunt Club Road and the associated berm. The storm drain that is under the clump of Canada Plums was probably put in when they altered the natural drainage of the area with the berm.

Oat Crown Rust on Common Buckthorn(Puccinia coronata)

This bright orange growth that is deforming this buckthorn twig is actually a significant disease of oats, barley and other grasses. This oat crown rust fungal infection needs buckthorn in spring to complete its life cycle but then goes on to infect the alternate host which is a cereal or grass. The spots from this infection are quite commonly seen on the leaves of buckthorn but evidently doesn't do too much harm to the plant as buckthorn is a serious invasive problem for our forests.

Bushes in bloom

The bushes in the 95 planting area are in bloom. The lilac and honeysuckle above are quite pretty. The one-seed hawthorn (below) is also very showy. In the picture at bottom a bee and a flesh fly are visiting the much less showy european buckthorn.

Winter Rabbit tracks

The temperatures plunged this week from above freezing on the weekend down to around -30C. This with a dusting of new snow made it an excellent time to go looking for tracks on the berm. There were a whole load of fresh crow tracks in among the 95 trees. It must have been a whole flock of them giving the forest a good picking over. There were also a few rabbit tracks.

The picture above shows heavy browsing on an apple tree by a rabbit. This apple tree is rather bushy because it is just the regrowth from the root stock after a crabapple tree fell down a couple of years ago. I find it incredible the number of pellets he produced. The snow fell a couple of days ago so this pile is just from the past two days. I followed the tracks of another rabbit through the woods and he also was passing a huge number of pellets. Every few feet along his track there would be another pellet. And it was clear this was just one rabbit; the track was wandering around so much it couldn't be the pellets on a rabbit run poking out of the snow. It is purely my speculation, but I believe the rabbit I was following wasn't actually feeding but was just out in the cold -20C degree weather to pass scat and would have quickly returned to his burrow afterwards. I located his burrow to be an old groundhog hole (in center of picture below) under a glossy buckthorn bush by the eastern path over the berm. Cottontails don't make their own holes but they aren't above using one if there is one available.

Last year there were hardly any rabbits overwintering on the berm. This year there seems to be at least two: one on the east side living in the old groundhog hole and another living along the fence behind Kelvin that occasionally visits the crabapple trees.

Last fly of the year

Flesh Fly (Family Sarcophagidae)

It was a nice cool sunny November day today when I visited the roadside berm. This fly, here sunning himself on a buckthorn leaf, was the only bug I saw. I expect he'll be the last fly I'll see this year.

The leaves are mostly off all the trees revealing the under-story of european buckthorn that keep their leaves much later than most other trees or bushes. In the above picture you can see the modest little thorn bracketed by the two terminal buds of the buckthorn twig. Next year the buds will branch out leaving a small thorn at the crotch of the branch. In the picture to the right you can see the small thorn at the crotch plus a couple of the juicy black berries that are an easy way to identify the bush. Not every bush will have berries, so the thorns at the end of twigs are a better winter marker for this invasive bush. In the summer the upsweeping veins on the leaves are an easy identifying feature. The only other tree I know that has similar leaves is an apple tree. In the 2009 area there are a couple of volunteer seedlings that look a bit like european buckthorn. One is indeed european buckthorn (see below) but the other is an apple seedling.