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The Many Forms of Freeze

on December 28, 2019

Witchwood Biodiversity Update 2022

2021 and 2022 were relatively quiet years in terms of surveying at the Witchwood. I spent sadly little time there - surveying or otherwise, and I felt the loss deeply. But I did make several new plant and animal species discoveries I'd like to share, in addition to a number of changes and corrections to the Witchwood Biodiversity Report 2020 . I'm posting a summary here and a link to the full document here (5 pages of content). Witchwood Biodiversity Update 2022 - Summary This report further documents the biodiversity of the Witchwood, six beautiful acres of forest in Windsor, New Hampshire, USA with a four-seasons brook, forest seeps, vernal pools, and a wonderful diversity of plants, animals, fungi, and more. This is a short update/addendum to the much more extensive Witchwood Biodiversity Report 2020 , published Feb 9, 2021. This update focuses on changes to known plant taxa (Plantae), while the 2020 report is much broader in scope. Overall, a total of 203 plant taxa have

Plant Progression: Bunchberry

Bunchberry (Chamaepericlymenum canadense) was just starting to emerge this past weekend. I found three plants in various stages: See the buds starting to appear in the center? I'll add more photos as it flowers. June 1 edit: they're blooming! July 27 edit: they're in fruit. Supposedly they're edible, though I've never tried them. Some bunchberry leaves persist through the winter, so this was actually one of the plants I was able to identify before the snow fully melted. Here's how it looked then:

Plant Progression: Starflower and Cucumber Root

When leaves first emerge, I often mistake cucumber root ( Medeola virginiana ) for starflower ( Lysimachia borealis ) at a glance. Both have a thin purple-ish stems and a whorl of similarly-shaped and colored leaves. They tend to appear in the same places, and are of comparable size early on. But look closer - starflower leaves have pronounced, branching veins. Cucumber root, as a member of the lily family, has veins that run parallel from stem to leaf tip. And starflower's stem is smooth while cucumber root's is positively fuzzy. Starflower on left, cucumber root on right: As soon as buds appear, the differences become obvious. Starflower has only a single whorl of leaves, and the buds appear on long, tiny stalks. Cucumber root develops a second, smaller whorl of leaves above the first, and the buds first appear nestled within them. Starflower on left, cucumber root on right: Neither have reached bloom yet in my woods as of May 19 - I'll update this whe

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