NO CRANES TO SPEAK OF

Sandhill Cranes winter in the Southwest. There is a wonderful nature preserve called Whitewater Draw just about 100 miles from our home. Chris Clark, married to my niece, Tryn, and he and their daughter Tryn Rose Seley, went with me for a visit early in January to see the cranes. There were patches of snow on the ground and the nature trails were wet and deeply muddy. We arrived at the time when the Cranes were due back from their morning grazing. A beautiful flock of Snow Geese entertained us in their complex flight formation, and numerous water fowl, and other birds were there for us to enjoy, but no cranes.

Not a bird in the sky

We would have stayed longer, but the deep mud kept accumulating on our shoes so that we gained a few inches in height and several pounds in weight as we trudged our way along the path. Gradually the waiting crowd thinned out until we were some of the few people left.

After two hours, we finally set off for home, wanting to get back to Tucson by 3:30pm. Not two miles down the road, we saw flocks of cranes, still miles away, making their way back to the preserve. We enjoyed seeing them from afar, and will have to return another time to witness the spectacle of them circling the ponds, calling to each other, and coming in to land.

My next book will soon be ready for the press. Catalina Mountains: A guide book with original paintings. In it I mention a little waterfall which I have dubbed Hidden Falls, because of the way much of the cascade is blocked from view by a projecting rock. I thought it was about twenty feet tall, but needed to check. It turned out that when my friend, Dave, puts his walking stick up against the bottom of his nose, the top marks ten feet. With the enclosed picture we calculated that the drop is just under sixteen feet. Now, I think, we may be ready to go to press.

PLEASANT OUTINGS

Lately when I get up in the morning I find ice on the bird bath. During the day the temperature rises into the sixties and even seventies, so Ed and I have been able to continue our weekly hikes in the mountains.

In November we parked the car and noticed yellow leaves in what at first looked like a single Alligator Juniper. On closer inspection we found that there are two trees, very close together, so close that at one point their trunks merge into one.

The top center trunk is a second tree

I looked near the top of the two trees and saw what appeared to be a branch from a Cottonwood, with bright yellow leaves. The nearest Cottonwood was about fifty yards away, so we doubted that it was a branch from it. We took out our binoculars and found that it was a grape vine. It was growing from very near the base of the trees, and extending over twenty feet to near the very top. The yellow patches in this picture are leaves of the vine in their fall colors.

A week or so later we were walking in a stream bed, and admired this Mexican Blue Oak. Its growth is very much one-sided, probably because a major branch to the left has long since broken off.

 

Further up we sat by a little stream, enjoying its pleasant sounds, and catching glimpses of various birds flitting in and out of the foliage. On a very much smaller scale, we saw a phenomenon that I had noticed in the Grand Canyon. One of the most noticeable rock layers in the Canyon is the Redwall limestone – five to eight hundred feet thick. I remember reading that the actual rock is a pale gray. The red color comes from millions of years of rust-filled water flowing down the surface. When my wife and son and I hiked down the North Rim of the Canyon, we could see freestanding Redwall limestone cliffs, and noticed that the horizontal surfaces at the top were not red at all but were pale gray. I pointed out to Ed that in this tiny gorge, the horizontal surfaces of the rocks were pale gray and the vertical ones various darker shades, especially of red. This was probably because of what is called Rock Varnish, a veneer that accumulates on rocks when wind blown particles stick to damp rock surfaces. The particles include iron and manganese oxides. We found the effect quite beautiful in this miniature landscape.

 

Wishing you all happy holidays.

NEW CAMERA

Some years ago my life was changed by the purchase of a new camera and lens. With it I was able to photograph even the smallest flowers, and this led me to write a book, “Small Wonders” many of the pictures being only possible because of the new camera.

And then came another change. Our son, with his wife and daughter, was here on a visit, bringing an unexpected gift – a new kind of camera, unlike anything I have ever seen before. It plugs into the computer and only takes pictures of things that are really small. Amcap – Digital Microscope 20x-800x Magnification 8-LED Mini Microscope Endoscope Camera Magnifier.

Right away I was struck with the difference between human made objects and living things.

I photographed one of my recent watercolors. The new camera produced a beautiful highly textured picture, showing the paper and the way the pigment settled into its peaks and valleys. Then I photographed the painting and printed a copy. The extra close-up camera showed that this print consisted of a series of smudges and dots.

A portion of the painting

Close up of the painting

Close up of a print of the painting

 

I suspected that living plants would be very different. To test my theory I photographed a spurge in our front yard (some kind of Euphorbia). With the naked eye and with my ordinary camera, I could not tell whether it was in bloom or not. Then I took a picture with my usual close-up camera and found that indeed it was. Finally I used my new Amcap camera, and found all kinds of detail I had been missing. With the new, even more powerful equipment I could go into more and more detail, and no matter how far I went, I would still be seeing new things until finally arriving at the molecular level. There is a kind of infinity in living plants that is quite astonishing and endlessly fascinating. And, by the way, it is in bloom.

 

Euphorbia seen from above

Euphorbia with my close-up camera – below, with the new camera

LATE BLOOMERS

We live in Arizona so we expect the unexpected, like Saguaros, Creosote, Ocotillo and a host of other plants blooming more than once a year. The books say that they are Spring bloomers. The plants say they will bloom when they feel like it, which apparently, is right now.

On Halloween I made a trip to Sabino Canyon. It was a beautiful sunny day. According to my own rain gauge, we have already had over twenty inches of rain since January 1. Compare that to the normal total of ten to twelve inches and you will see why some of the plants are confused. I looked up at a very tall saguaro. Toward the top it was crestate. This word refers to the fact that with some saguaros, the top, instead of being a column topped with a dome, fans out into many folds and ridges. Sometimes normal branches grow out of the crestate top (see my posting SEEN ON NATURE WALKS April 1, 2017).

On this last day of October the one I saw not only had the crestate, and new branches emerging from it, but the top of the saguaro next to it was sporting a fresh new flower. Another had  flowers on a side arm.

Not far away there were a number of creosote bushes (Larrea tridentata) in flower. Yesterday I saw two Ocotillos (Fouquieria splendens) with their bright red flowers at their tips. On a short plant walk Ed and I saw over thirty species of otherflowers in bloom, and this was early in November.

 

Whenever they bloom, these plants are always welcome, giving us a lift with their beauty.

Fall Glory

This entry in my blog was written by my wife, Louise, telling the story of a recent trip up the mountain to see the fall colors.

“On Friday we decided to drive up the Catalina Mountains to see how the colored leaves were doing. Several earlier trips had whetted the appetite and seemed to promise more and better to come. With a free morning ahead of us, we climbed into the car and headed up the mountain.
We saw some beautiful trees with vivid yellow leaves near the bottom levels of the mountain, then miles of lovely evergreens and other trees.

As we approached Bear Wallow, at mile post 22, there were more and more trees in color, almost all of them shades of yellow.

We parked and walked down into the Wallow, rejoicing at the vividness and variety of the yellows. One tree in particular stopped us in our tracks with it high-impact golden color, which seemed to have a life of its own. Frank was taking numerous photographs. There were a good number of fellow-color-seekers on the trail, all ages, carrying children, cameras and binoculars.

Half way along we came to what our hearts were looking for – a bright red maple, a burst of flaming glory in the midst of the yellow and green. A whole flock of people were gathered in the clearing near the tree. When you looked up at the top of the tallest branches, the contrast between the glowing red of the leaves and the gorgeous blue of the sky was striking.

A smiling young woman kindly asked if we would like her to take our picture in front of this spectacular tree. We happily posed for her and she clicked this picture.

Along came a group of familiar hikers, calling out Frank’s name and waving copies of his book.
We feel fully blessed to live so near to a heavenly place like Mt. Lemmon where we can go for beauty, companionship and nature any day of the week. What a treat to keep us centered and balanced, with a taste of autumn thrown in.” Louise B. Rose

Thanks, Louise

YOU’VE GOT YOUR GALL

As you drive up the Mt. Lemmon highway you soon leave the Saguaros behind and come into a landscape with oaks and a number of different shrubs. One of the most beautiful shrubs is called: Manzanita – a Hispanic name meaning “little apple”. The botanical name, arctostaphylos, comes from two words meaning “bear grape”. In the Spring and early Summer it is covered with beautiful pink or white flowers, shaped like little bottles.

On a recent plant walk, we noticed bright red shapes on the leaf margins of a manzanita. We suspected that these shapes were galls. My friend, Larry looked it up in a book about galls, and told me that it has its own name: Tamalia coweni.

Galls are an abnormal growth that plants create in response to the activity of little critters, like tiny wasps or, in this case, an aphid. The aphid gets on a leaf margin, and somehow tricks the plant into growing in an unusual way. The portion of the leaf with the aphid, swells, and the edge of the leaf rolls over. At first this growth is green. After a while it turns bright red.

This is my photograph of a leaf with two galls, one red and the other green. When we sliced the green gall open, we saw aphids inside, barely visible in the picture below. The aphids lay eggs which develop into adults that emerge from the leaf when they are ready.

We have seen galls on other plants, especially oak trees. Galls come in many different forms, all serving as a place where eggs are protected and fed on their way to their full development.

NOW HEAR THIS

For my 91st birthday my wife, Louise, gave me a megaphone. This is not because I am losing my voice or that she is going deaf, but so that more people on my plant walks can hear me dispensing wisdom. I don’t know that it makes much difference, but we do get a laugh out of it.

(Photo by Linda Stelljes

This last walk had at least 24 people on it (I did not do an exact count), and we had a very pleasant morning in the Gordon Hirabayashi camp ground in the Catalina mountains. I got excited about seeing the tiny flowers featured in my new book, such as:
Button Weed – Diodia teres.

Another was Rattle box – Crotalaria pumila. One of our walkers pointed out that this name comes from the Genus, Crotalus, which includes the rattlesnakes. When the seeds in the pod are dry, you can hear the rattle when the wind blows. Although I had not seen it when Ed and I went out to explore the area and make a plant list,

I was happy to see Many-flowered Ipomopsis – Ipomopsis multiflora with its blue stamens.

Next Friday, October 5, I will be giving a short talk about “Small Wonders” at a book signing at Sunrise Chapel, 8421 E. Wrightstown Rd, in Tucson. There will be other authors, and a display of art work. You are all invited. It begins at 6:30 pm.

NEW BOOK JUST OUT

In the process of writing “Mountain Wildflowers” I came across a number of plants with very small flowers. I called them “invisible” since most people, including myself, would pass by and not even see them. The idea expanded to include clusters, where the individual flowers are rarely seen. I then looked at composite flowers, whose name suggests that what looks like a single flower is actually composed of many much smaller ones. Then there were those little beauties that are small, but still visible and definitely worth a closer look.

This blog has been silent for quite a while. My somewhat feeble excuse is that I was working on four new books, which is partly true. Anyway, this week I got my first shipment of my new book: “Small Wonders.” Here is a picture of the cover, designed by Owen Rose, and a sample page.

Thanks to my super macro camera, I can now take pictures of items that are smaller than a quarter of an inch.

There are over 200 species in this book. In most cases I have a life-sized picture of the flower in the upper corner, right near the enlarged version, as you fan see in the sample page.

Published by the newly formed Hardy Perennial Press, at $21.95, it will eventually be available from Amazon.com. ISBN 978-1-7325402-0-0

The other three books in the assembly line are: 1 – An illustrated guide to the Santa Catalina Mountains, 2 – Glorious Grasses, 3 – Choose Joy –  Fifty-two Tasks on Spiritual Growth.

A REALLY TOUCH LITTLE FLOWER

Driving up the mountain road, you pass mile-post 15, and soon come to a point where the road turns away from the view you have been enjoying for several miles. You are now in an Oak-Pine woodland at almost 7000 feet. The ground is a tumble of boulders, some in quite fantastic shapes. And on these boulders, seemingly growing right out of the rock surface, are these delightful little plants. On a recent hike in the mountains we came to an area with dozens of them scattered over a fairly wide area, almost all of them growing in some kind of rock crevice. Many were in bloom, though the flowers were few and far between. The plant is called: Catalina Beardtongue (Penstemon discolor), and is only found in one state in the Union – Arizona. The color ranges from a very pale blue, almost white, to a much deeper hue. The flower stalks are only a few inches high. And they certainly have a very remarkable beard on their tongue.

 

There was a lot of road reconstruction during the rebuilding of the Hitchcock Highway up the Catalina Mountains north of Tucson from 1988 to 2005. The road goes right through this area, which is the only part of the range where I have seen this flower. We were worried as to whether it would survive. The fact is, the plant is doing extremely well, surviving on rock surfaces with practically no soil, and in a part of the year with very little rain. Through all of that, this gem of a flower keeps its beauty.

A FORGOTTEN FLOWER

I have been hiking the Catalina mountains for thirty-six years. Most of the hikes for the first seventeen were done as a means of covering the ground fairly rapidly, with occasional stops to take a landscape photograph. That all changed in 1999, when I started taking pictures of flowers too. This has meant traveling much more slowly, and has rewarded me with a growing enjoyment of plants. Seven years ago I wrote a guide to the mountain wildflowers in this part of Arizona. Since then, I occasionally come across one I have never met before, and that is always a treat, though a little discouraging since it is too late to include it in the book.

My son, Owen, and I are putting finishing touches on a new book, Small Wonders, which includes many plants that did not make it into the first flower book, some because they seemed too insignificant, others because I had not met them yet. Just recently I met a new one, too late for the book in progress. Ah well, the beauty of this kind of search is that you never come to the point where you have seen it all.

After three and a half months with no rain here, we had a downpour on Saturday, June 16. This was the day when our son, Alan, and I had planned to go up into the mountains so that I could photograph a flower that had not been recorded in this mountain range for over a hundred years. We saw it on our plant walk about a week ago, but I did not have my close-up camera to get a good picture. Besides the flower buds were not yet open.

In just a few hours two and a half inches of rain drenched our property, and obscured our view of the mountains. We almost gave up hope of going up the mountain that day. And then, in the middle of the afternoon, we saw our chance. We drove up to Turkey Run, walked the trail under a clear and cool sky, and I got the pictures shown below.

This is a member of the Ericaceae – the  Heather Family. It is related to Pyrola, and when I first saw it I thought it was Pyrola elliptica. We noticed it growing in a bed of moss. Its name, Sidebells, describes the fact that the flowers are all on one side of the stalk. This is also the meaning of the botanical name, Orthilia secunda.

The plant on the right is Pyrola Elliptica, which has flowers all around the stalk.