Misidentified flowers

This blog is really a journal of my progress learning about the natural world around me. Sometimes I make basic errors, thinking I know more than I actually do. Looking at the above picture I would have said I could identify all the flowers there, as I see them all the time. They are the common mix for god's roadside garden in July: Queen-Anne's Lace, purple vetch, birds-foot trefoil,philadelphia fleabane, and yarrow. But I wasn't quite right on at least two of those IDs. My field guide is sometimes quite stingy with pictures and the main page on fleabanes highlights the philadelphia fleabane not the Annual fleabane(Erigeron Annuus) which is a better match for the common flower around here. As for purple vetch, well that is what I've always called that since I was a young lad, which is a perfectly good descriptive name, unfortunately that name is taken by another species of vetch and the common vetch we have around here is called Tufted vetch(Vicia cracca). I've still got lots to learn.

Annual fleabane(Erigeron Annuus)

A bumble bee on Tufted vetch(Vicia cracca)

Black Medic

I've never been exactly confident on my identification of this common lawn plant as Black Medic(Medicago lupulina) since my guide book doesn't give a good sense of its size and there is another common flower that is very similar but with flowers that are 2 to 3 times larger. So in the above photo notice the tiny syrphid fly; those little guys are a bit smaller than mosquitoes. Around here, this is a "weed" in lawns that thrives where the grass doesn't do well, like by the sidewalk in my lawn. As it's green and can be mown, it is welcome in my lawn any time.

I finally took the time to go through and figure out what it was using the web. There are 3 species of hop clover that are very similar to black medic. Since it isn't the right time of year to see the seedpods the identifying feature that nailed it for me was the tiny spike at the end of each leaflet on Black Medic. A couple of websites pointed this out as a way to distinguish black medic from its look-alikes. The look-alike I find around here (that really doesn't look very similar when you compare the real thing side by side) is Hop Clover(Trifolium aureum). Below are close-ups of the two flowers

Black Medic (Medicago lupulina)

Hop Clover (Trifolium aureum)

More rain

I visited the north side of the berm today for the first time in a few weeks and got caught in a sudden thunderstorm while wandering around checking out all the new growth. This has been a very wet spring and for about a week at the end of June there wasn't a day without a good rain. I'm sure the trees aren't complaining but I'm ready for a dry spell. In one particularly damp, mosquitoey area there is a bumper crop of buttercups flowering.

Buttercups as far as the eye can see

The timothy grass was in bloom and it was attracting some sort of fly. About half the grass stalks had their own fly hanging out on them, presumably feeding. In previous years I've noticed that this grass is very popular with the two-spotted plant bugs (one is out of focus at bottom of photo) , but I hadn't noticed these flies before.

A fly on timothy grass

Rough-fruited Cinquefoil(Sulfur Cinquefoil)

Trip Down Pinecrest Creek

Manordale and Huntclub Road is at the southern edge of the Pinecrest Creek Watershed, so a drop of rain that falls here has a fair chance of eventually getting into the creek. It is a highly urbanized creek and it only emerges from the storm sewers north of Baseline road. Last weekend I went for a bike ride down the creek to the Ottawa River and snapped the above picture. My real agenda for writing this blog post however are the white flowers in the foreground. I can never remember what they are called, they superficially look like Queen Anne's Lace or Wild Carrot but on closer inspection turn out to be Cow Parsley, also called Wild Chervil. A couple of closeup pictures with my new camera below:

Flower Time

The trees and bushes are in flower and I went out with a new (to me) camera to try it out.

Redbud (Cercis canadensis)

Pin Cherry (Prunus pensylvanica)

In Flower

• Redbud
• Pin Cherry
• Trilliums
• Creeping charlie
• Violets
• Daffodils
• Lilac
• Honeysuckle
• Dandelions
• Forget-me-not
• Elderberry
• Common speedwell
• Yellow archangel
• Self-heal
• Crabapple
• Apple

The trilliums that were planted back in 2009 haven't expanded very much, this year there were 10 blooms.

Turkeys and Turkey Vultures

This past weekend I saw both a turkey and a turkey vulture flying along the berm. I startled the turkey in the field north of the berm; it lumbered into the sky and flew off getting no higher than the rooftops of the bungalows along Kelvin. A couple of days later I saw the turkey vulture in the same spot (well 100 feet higher up) soaring effortlessly. Both turkeys and turkey vultures are relatively recent arrivals to Ottawa. I remember around 2000 hearing reports of turkeys just to the south in Leeds-Grenville and being excited as I hadn't seen one yet in Eastern Ontario. As it happens, this weekend I also got my first taste of wild Eastern Ontario turkey and I'm happy to see them on my plate as well as in the field.

I took advantage of the heavy rain this weekend to transplant a couple of seedlings into the berm area to fill in some gaps. One of them was a seedling of the white spruce I had to take out of my back yard a couple of years ago. The other was a small Manitoba maple that wasn't welcome in the flower bed. I also tried sticking a few willow twigs in the ground to see if they would take. I've heard that is supposed to work but I have my doubts.

It snowed a bit on Sunday but hopefully that is the last of winter for us. I figure the last of the chill left the ground a little over three weeks ago. I snapped this picture of a garter snake three weeks ago as I was picking up garbage in Ben Franklin Wood. I was surprised to see him as it wasn't exactly warm yet, but I guess it was warm enough for him in the strong spring sun.

winter skiing

It has been quite a good year for cross-country skiing with one final hurrah of fresh powder in the middle of March. Now of course we are in the middle of the great melt with the rest of the week predicted to be above freezing. I feel very lucky to have this nice long stretch of open space for skiing any time I please. It isn't exactly quiet as the rumble from Hunt Club is ever present but it feels quite private as there is rarely anyone else about.