Black locusts

There is a black locust along the fence line behind Kirkstall that is throwing suckers out into the long grass. Yesterday I transplanted another black locust sucker to the naturalization area. Black locusts are natives to North America but are at the very northern limit of their range in Ottawa. They have thorns and vigorously sucker so aren't a good backyard tree but they have sweet smelling flowers in spring and fix nitrogen for the soil.

While lugging the sucker back to the naturalization area I saw a few relatively uncommon animals: a pretty monarch butterfly fluttering along the edge of the forest, a group of swallows taking insects on the wing and a turkey vulture soaring high above.

Syrphid

This looks like Toxomerus marginatus, a common type of hoverfly. It is feeding on a wild parsnip flower. The wild parsnip has not spread far from the location of the single plant that was there in 2013. There are a couple of smaller flowering plants but no large 6 foot tall plant like in 2013.

Clouded Plant Bug

A clouded plant bug hanging out on a Canada Thistle flower. They seem to like this plant as I photographed a couple of them feeding on another thistle flower last year.

Ants and Aphids

A black ant tending her flock of poplar leaf aphids as they feed on a young aspen sapling. On the leaf to the right you can also see the tracks of a common aspen leaf miner with the culprit himself at the end of the trail.

The Eastern Cottonwoods

The tallest trees of the 1995 plantings are the Eastern Cottonwoods. They are now about 75 feet tall whereas the rest of the forest canopy looks to be about 40 feet high. They grow quickly and the 20 year old trees already have substantial trunks. They are, however, very short lived trees; some of them have already toppled over. The cottonwoods take their name from the fluff their seed pods produce (see above). The ground beneath the female trees can be covered in the stuff in late June.

The cottonwoods sucker but their suckers are not particularly successful, dying back either in winter or in summer droughts. Only one sucker, pictured above, in the 2009 planting area has survived for more than 3 years. When the suckers do grow, they grow very quickly and can reach over 6 feet in a single season. The large shiny triangular leaves, pictured below, are quite distinctly different from the other suckering poplar species on the berm: the smaller rounded leaves of the aspen suckers (see last picture). As can be seen in the picture, that aspen sapling is suffering from poplar leaf aphids.

Cedar waxwings visiting the berm

Field Horsetail

Creeping charlie, burdock and field horsetail.

There is a fairly large colony of field horsetail growing on the north east side of the berm adjacent to the backyards of Kimdale. The mower hasn't been able to reach this steep shady slope for the past four or five years and other plants have taken the opportunity to expand and diversify the plant community of this grassy slope. Field horsetail is dead common but I have never learned the name for it until now. That is what this blog is for: to encourage me to extend my knowledge of the common plants and animals around me.

Last Monday a day long rain broke what was turning into a bit of a dry spell with the temperature rising to the high 20s for about a week. The new growth of sumac by the road was wilting from the lack of rain. The next evening it was very warm and humid when I visited the berm after dusk. The bats and fireflies came out, as did the mosquitoes. We had another good rain on Saturday and the temperatures are now considerably cooler.