About three years ago, my wife and I were taking a winter walk to the back of our property. It was a nice, sunny morning, but had frosted hard during the night and the air temperature was still below freezing. After crossing the creek we walked into a clearing between two tree-lined areas. We saw the strangest meadow of flowers we'd ever seen--the flowers were made of ice! Scores of them!
We determined that each was coming from the broken stub of a woody stalk from a perennial plant that grew the previous season. We eventually learned that they were a perennial composite wildflower called Frostweed (Verbesina virginica). The next year we were able to establish them in our backyard. (I also learned not to allow the pretty white flowers to go to seed else all of my non-mowed areas will become a meadow of Frostweed).
The stalks grow 5-7 feet tall and can attract butterflies and other insects. The Wildflowers of Arkansas book says that the leaves are eaten by deer. They grow along streams, roadsides, open slopes and valleys and bloom in late summer and fall.
The really cool thing is that in late fall or on certain days of winter--when the ground is well-saturated and unfrozen, but the nights are cold--the bottom of the frostweed stems will still actively pump water from the perennial roots up through the base of the stem. Since the above ground portion of the stem is dead wood and usually has broken off, the water has nowhere to go but out. The water hits the cold air and immediately turns to ice. The water pressure inside the plant continues to push it out in gorgeous ribbons of ice called "ice flowers" or "frost flowers". Each one is unique. The thin ribbons are adorned with minute striations or lines--like spun ice--when viewed up close, formed by ribs in the tissues at the base of the plant. By late morning they have all disappeared due to the warm sun. Their ephemeral beauty makes them all the more special.
I've seen this nondescript plant for years without giving it any special thought or knowing its name. Now I notice it all along the roadsides and bordering riparian areas (wooded corridors along creeks and rivers). I've seen the pretty ice flowers along Hwy 16 as I drive to work.
Here are some more photos of our frost flowers ...
Here's where I stripped the outer layer of lower stem to see where the "frost" is coming from:
I confess that I am not a fan of rap "music". The quotation marks symbolize my problem with it, and with its twin, hip-hop--they simply are not musical to my ear. This genre sounds like angry people talking fast as if they are making a game of it, so I'll have to listen over and over to slowly unwrap their message. Some are crude and vulgar and demeaning to women. No thanks. Lest I be viewed as a crusty, old musical curmudgeon, let me offer a couple of positive points before I move into my thesis. I will say that rap has provided a platform for many people--black, white, and brown--to give voice to the issues in their lives. And rap/hip-hop has penetrated and expanded into middle-class white America and pop radio maybe beyond even that of the 1960's musical icons. That said, let's move to Mr. '60's Protest Icon, himself--Bob Dylan.
For the last several years, a recurring thought to me has been that maybe Bob Dylan invented rap. Every time I hear his song, Subterranean Homesick Blues, I think, "that is not rap, but it sounds like its parent". It was recorded way back in 1965 (when I was 11), on the Bringing It All Back Home album, which, by the way, also included his iconic Mr. Tambourine Man. (if I'm overusing the word "iconic", it's hard to think about Bob Dylan in the context of the '60's without using it. Dylan is the one that moved popular music out of the rut of silly songs like the Beatles "I love you, yeah, yeah, yeah" and on to more substantial ideas.) Here is a video from a 1967 documentary--before there were music videos--of Bob Dylan creatively fooling around with his song playing in the audio.
Check out the bearded guy in the background who is the last to meander away. He is Allen Ginsburg, famous beat poet of the 1950's and one of the mentors of Bob Dylan and scads of other hippie generation movers and shakers.
Let me know what you think of my thesis about Bob Dylan being the first rapper. By the way, Dylan's song is just another incarnation of various talking blues songs that Dylan heard from his other mentor, Woody Guthrie. It seems that even the most creative artists reshape other artists' ideas, add their own reflection, and present them to a new audience. That's good . . . what Pete Seeger calls "the folk process".
Here’s a photo of some strawberries my daughter and her family in Oregon picked this summer. Last year, my wife and I picked strawberries at a small farm near our other daughter/son-in-law in North Carolina. Strawberries are wonderful! (I hated them as a kid because of a texture issue I had with the seeds; what was I thinking!) They are grown in pockets throughout most of the country. Sometimes I’m curious as to where a particular food came from, its history, so to speak. So why not strawberries?
Also, I was intrigued by the description of vast meadows of wild strawberries in early America--acres upon acres of them--given in a book I am reading, called Travels of William Bartram. Bartram was a second generation plant explorer/collector from Pennsylvania who kept a detailed log of a 2-year long trip he spent exploring the wilds of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida in the early 1770's, shortly before the Revolutionary War. It is a fascinating account of encounters with alligators in the middle of the night, beautiful wilderness, and friendly encounters with native Indian cultures. Here is an excerpt about coming upon a huge field of wild strawberries in Cherokee country of North Georgia (note: the spelling and grammar are all his):
Proceeding on our return to town, continued through part of this high forest skirting on the meadows: began to ascend the hills of a ridge which we were under the necessity of crossing; and having gained its summit, enjoyed a most enchanting view; a vast expanse of green meadows and strawberry fields; a meandering river gliding through, saluting in its various turnings the swelling, green, turfy knolls, embellished with parterres of flowers and fruitful strawberry beds; flocks of turkies strolling about them; herds of deer prancing in the meads or bounding over the hills; companies of young, innocent Cherokee virgins, some busy gathering the rich fragrant fruit, others having already filled their baskets, lay reclined under the shade of floriferous and fragrant native bowers of Magnolia, Azalea, . . . disclosing their beauties to the fluttering breeze, and bathing their limbs in the cool fleeting streams; whilst other parties, more gay and libertine, were yet collecting strawberries, or wantonly chasing their companions, tantalising them, staining their lips and cheeks with the rich fruit.
The sylvan scene of primitive innocence was enchanting, and perhaps too enticing for hearty young men long to continue idle spectators. In fine, nature prevailing over reason, we wished at least to have a more active part in their delicious sports.
Bartram and his companion, a local trader, were soon discovered by some older Cherokee matrons who sounded an alarm that sent the young ladies scattering for cover. Some of them subsequently emerged and offered the travelers some fresh strawberries:
We accepted a basket, sat down and regaled ourselves on the delicious fruit, encircled by the whole assembly of the innocent jocose sylvan nymphs: by this time the several parties, under the conduct of the elder matrons, had disposed themselves in companies on the green, turfy banks.
My young companion, the trader, by concessions and suitable apologies for the bold intrusion, having compromised the matter with them, engaged them to bring their collections to his house at a stipulated price: we parted friendly.
I began to wonder if the strawberry was indeed a native plant or had been introduced by early colonists from Europe. After all, Europeans had been a constant presence in the area since the founding of St. Augustine in 1565. By Bartram's time, it had been well over 200 years--nearly as long as his colonial times to our own.
The story of the strawberry is really pretty cool. When Europeans came to Massachusetts the native Indians were already cultivating beds of native strawberries (Fragaria virginiana). When the Spanish arrived to conquer Chile and Peru in the 1500's, the natives had been cultivating and trading strawberries (Frageria chiloensis), probably for many centuries. Unfortunately, the eastern strawberries were very small compared to today's strawberries (actually the native strawberry still grows in wild in parts of the Eastern US); and the western strawberry (grows from Chile to Alaska along the western mountains) was larger but not as flavorful.
It wasn't until 1712 when anenterprising Frenchman named Frezier brought back seven plants from Chile with particularly large fruit. He planted them in France and for 30 years they were propagated and flourished, but never produced fruit. Finally, someone happened to plant some strawberries from the American colonies next to these beds. What Frezier didn't know was that the western strawberry (F. chiloensis) had male and female flowers on different plants. He had only collected female plants. The male pollen from the eastern strawberry plants (F. virginiana) fertilized the Chilean female flowers and the fortuitous result was a large, flavor-packed hybrid. All of our cultivated strawberry varieties today (except ever-bearing types) are descended from this bed of strawberries growing in France. Isn't it ironic that our two native species of strawberry had to go all the way to France to get together, then come back home and fill our baskets.
Remember this bit of botanical serendipity next time you bite into a big 'ol juicy strawberry!
Post Script: William Bartram also spent time, on numerous occasions, as a guest in native Indian villages. There he observed another way to eat strawberries: the women would grind the fruit with mortar and pestle into a mush, then mix it in with corn mush and drop it in hot bear fat for strawberry corn fritters or bake it for strawberry corn bread. Try it out! (maybe sans the bear fat ...)
[facts gleaned from Plants For Man by Robert Schery and
the website of Vegetarians in Paradise; for a more complete account, go
to this link)]
The projected date of default of U.S. treasury obligations looms like the shadow of El Capitan does over pretty Yosemite Valley. As I write this post, the deadline arrives next week. Congress is busy, but at the wrong things . . . busy voting on partisan legislation as they prepare for the next round of elections in 2012--knowing full well that the current bills will never pass both House and Senate or be signed by the President. Even within each political party there is wide disagreement. All observers agree that the Congress is pathetically dysfunctional.
We are witnessing one of the downsides of democracy. Our leaders are producing political campaign fodder instead of skillful agreements. All this pushing and shoving is just jacking around on a narrow trail that leads the country past a dangerous ledge--way down at the bottom of which is a wrecked economy . . . and the beginning of our new chapter in world history as a second-rate, has-been world power. Did you know that the Netherlands was once the world superpower? Portugal was big time! It can happen. China and Brazil are no longer economic slouches.
At the risk of sounding somehow unAmerican, I must pass on what I learned from the teaching of Charles Simpson, an Alabama pastor in the 1980's. He said that democracy is not the best form of government, but monarchy by an all-powerful, all-wise, all-merciful king. In other words, democracy may be the best government formed by men on earth. But as we are witnessing now, democracy can be weak and indecisive, even foolish. A king who knows the right thing to do simply declares it. 'Nuf said. The kingdom of heaven will some day rule the earth in the person of King Jesus. And only then will we have the perfect government.
It is hard to look at a sunset without stopping to appreciate the utter beauty of it. To then connect that beauty to God’s beauty is an appropriate response of worship. The beauty that we see in God’s creation is only a reflection of His own beauty and majesty.
Three hour-long sunset during the summer soltice in Alaska; taken at midnight
(courtesy of my daughter, Nellie, and her husband, Dustin Vail, 2008 )
My wife and I sometimes try to name all the colors that we see in a sunset. There are problems with that: I’m not an artist, so my vocabulary of color names is limited to something like the 24-pack of Crayolas™ (remember "periwinkle"?). God’s palette is much richer than my vocabulary. Another problem is my lack of perception of all the subtle nuances of color, one ever so slightly different from another. And then, as soon as I try to describe the colors in one single cloud, the colors have all changed as the angle of the sun shifts down or as the cloud itself shifts.
Sunsets are a dynamic art; kind of like those little tubular kaleidoscopes you looked through as a kid, the colors and patterns constantly changing as you twist the end of the cardboard tube. Beauty upon beauty. Sunsets are like that. God is like that … beauty upon beauty if we will stop to notice. Lifestyle worship is about stopping to notice the beauty, the attributes and nature of God—how He impacts our lives, how we don’t deserve it—and then responding appropriately in praise and thanksgiving to Him . . . lavish praise, free and unbridled praise.
Did you know that the LORD is listening and hears when you praise Him? . . . And that He responds? . . . And that it makes Him smile? . . . The Bible says:
“For the LORD takes delight in his people …
Psalm 145 is like a hymn of praise to God, written by King David nearly 3000 years ago. Praise is very much a verb, an action. Our English word, “praise”, is from an Old French word meaning “to prize”.
Check out Psalm 145. As you read through it, notice all the verbs, I will:
The sound is pervading, it’s unrelenting . . . surreal. Heard from a distance, one imagines some kind of industrial equipment humming along; or maybe a mass cheer from a far off football stadium—a cheer that doesn’t end. Up close, it sounds like thousands of rattlesnakes in the trees. It’s been thirteen years in the making and now one month of noise-making. We’ve been invaded by the Thirteen Year Cicada.
The love calls begin at daybreak and end at dark . . . until the next daybreak when it starts all over again. Unless you happen to hear an individual cicada (a.k.a. “locust”) zip by or on a branch just above you, what you hear is the mass of cicadas—all doing their thing at once without a break.
Julie and I recently took a jaunt down to our creek to look at some wildflowers. We began to notice the classic empty “shells” of locusts on tree trunks and plant leaves. But it wasn’t the occasional ones that you see every summer in the Ozarks. They were everywhere! And a couple of days later the noise started. It is so constant that the mind unconsciously ignores it—selecting it out as unimportant background--until someone points it out to you. And then you hear it and you are amazed. And it doesn’t go away.
Finally, I saw a live one on our picnic table. The most striking feature is the almost glowing brick-red eyes. I didn’t remember our regular locusts with those eyes. A quick internet search told me that this was not the regular Dog Day Locust that we have each year (so called because they emerge during the hot, dog-days of July and August). This was the first week of May. I determined by its markings that we had Magicicada tredecula. There are basically three species of periodical or cyclical cicadas in the U.S. All three species have a 13-year and a 17-year version of the same insect.
Weirder than those eyes is the fact that these little guys and gals have been waiting since 1998 for this big moment. One month of non-stop flirting and mating. (They do stop at night, apparently, but non-stop in the sense that apparently the adult stage doesn’t even bother to eat) They’re here for one thing only. The noise is from the massive congregation of males calling to the females, trying to attract a mate--like thugs catcalling and talkin’ trash at the girls walking down the street. Check out a wonderful video short from the BBC with David Attenborough of Planet Earth fame.
The males have two little flaps on their segmented bellies covering a hollow chamber. Stretched across the Inside of the chamber is a thin membrane like the skin of a drum, with muscles that it can use to vibrate the drum to make its sound. The female, on the other hand, has no such structure; she only makes a clicking sound with her wings to indicate that she is hot to trot and likes what she hears from her bug-eyed Romeo. After they mate, she uses a saw-like appendage on the end of her belly to cut a couple of slits into a nearby tree stem. She then lays her eggs in a neat row in each slit.
Dime-size emergence holes under our water oak tree.
The eggs will hatch after a few days, and tiny larval versions crawl out of the slit and drop to the ground. They burrow about one foot deep into the earth and start sucking sap from tree roots for the next thirteen summers, buried in the dark, not hearing a sound. God only knows (I mean that literally) how each cicada knows when the thirteen years are up and it’s time for everyone to emerge again.
Geographic range of Brood XIX
It turns out there are different groups or “broods” of these bugs around the country. Each brood might be dispersed over many states in the Upper South and Midwest. Another brood may only be in a couple of states on the Atlantic Seaboard. All of the individual cicadas of a certain brood emerge at the same time: every thirteen or seventeen years, depending on which brood. Ours is Brood Nineteen (XIX) which stretches from the Gulf Coast to Indiana and from Oklahoma to Virginia. [map from Cicadia Mania] The last emergence was in 1998; the next will be in 2024—clean as clockwork. There is a brood of 17-yr cicadas in New England which were first noted by European colonists in the early 1600’s. Four hundred years later the same brood is still emerging every 17 years. They’ve been doing that, no doubt, since the last glaciers retreated from New England ten thousand years ago or so.
Thirteen summers … thirteen winters … thirteen springs and falls … that’s a long time to wait for . . . well, you know. No wonder they make such a racket!
[all photos by Bob Holland; first video by Julie Holland]
As I drove to work from my little bedroom community into Fayetteville, AR this winter, I spotted what I at first thought was a white plastic bag caught in the top of a tree about forty yards from the highway (known generically in these parts as “a WalMart bag”). After a classic double-take, I realized it was a lone bird—absolutely pure white—sitting in this lone tree in a pasture. It was obviously a raptor of some type, but the only pure white raptor I knew of was a Snowy Owl which, according to my bird book, does migrate from the Arctic in winter as far south as Missouri. A quick internet search informed me that Snowy Owls have been sighted in Arkansas three times over the years. But this just didn’t seem right.
This is as close as it ever let me come.
I saw the same bird in the same tree two more times and again in some riparian woods lining the Middle Fork of the White River about a hundred yards from the highway. Still, these were only observations at 55 mph without binoculars. One Saturday, I grabbed my binoculars, bird books and camera, and drove to the spot that I’d seen the bird before. I was better prepared this time, but no bird. On a lark, I decided to drive down a side road to the back of a subdivision which butts up against pastures and scattered woodlots along the Middle Fork. As I pulled into the last cul-de-sac there was the bird: facing me from seventy-five yards away sitting in an old dead tree behind a house. I snapped a preliminary photo (through my windshield), and grabbed my binocs. It looked like a pure white hawk. It had bright yellow feet (talons). I then slipped open the car door and snuck around the side of the house to try to out-flank the bird. Of course, being a raptor, the bird’s eyesight is much better than my own, maybe even with my binoculars, I don’t know. The bird had flown.
The next week I tried again. Trolling again down the side road, I quickly spotted the bird in a tree at the edge of a 2-acre woodlot where it gives way to a pasture which runs through the Middle Fork valley. I decided to hop the fence and sneak through the woods to try to get a close look. I saw some interesting things in the woods, like this pretty orange Bolete—a wood-rotting mushroom fungus with pores instead of gills. But the bird knew what I was up to and was gone by the time I emerged on the other end.
And then I heard the call.
A long, single, descending “screeeeee ….” rang out from the other side of the pasture. I made my way to that side of the woods and again heard the call. Sure enough, in that direction, was the brilliant white bird sitting in a tree on the other side of the pasture. It was a hawk call, probably a red-tail. As I began to walk across the pasture, the hawk took flight, cursing me with scree! Up until this moment, I had only seen the hawk from the front. As he/she flew away, from my right to left, I could see the wings and sides—pure blazing, beautiful white! All over!
Now I can spot the bird from quite a distance because of the color (or lack thereof). But I have given up harassing the poor thing when I don’t even have a spotting scope to get a better look. I googled pure white hawks and found a website with some really nice photos of albino hawks that look just like my Middle Fork friend. Unfortunately, the site did not give permission to re-use the images, but here are three others from other sites:
white Red-Tailed Hawk, Albany, NY (R. Guthrie)
white Red-tail in rehab center
How gorgeous is this white Red-tail!
I also emailed an ornithologist at the University of Arkansas, Joe Neal, about what I was seeing. He told me that a local birder from Round Mountain, near my town, had been watching this bird for years. Fifteen years to be exact! Joe put me in touch with Jim Morgan who said that the bird has been wintering here since at least 1995, but normally stays up-river about a quarter mile or more, away from the highway and more out of sight.
There has been some discussion about whether this is a red-tail or a red-shouldered hawk. The call is that of a red-tail (a red-shouldered hawk will cry out several times in a row). And Jim saw it once, backlit by the sun, revealing a faint, pink band on the tail like a red-tail. The biggest question is whether it is a true albino or is very leucistic. Joe Neal says that even an albino can have color in the feet and bill. But the eyes will be pink. I can’t get close enough to see the eye color on this bird. Leucism is a genetic trait caused by separate genes those that cause albinism. Leucism can be complete or partial, and can affect all kinds of critters, not just birds. I have a musician friend who has small leucistic patches of white amongst his generally dark, brown hair.
Here are some further distinctions from about.com: Albinism is another genetic condition that can turn a bird’s plumage pale, but there are distinct differences between albino and leucistic birds. Leucism affects only the bird’s feathers, and typically only those with melanin pigment – usually dark feathers. A leucistic bird with different colors may show some colors brightly, especially red, orange or yellow, while feathers that should be brown or black are instead pale or white. Some leucistic birds, however, can lose all the pigment in their feathers and may appear pure white.
Albinism, on the other hand, affects all the pigments, and albino birds show no color whatsoever in their feathers. Furthermore, an albino mutation also affects the bird’s other pigments in the skin and eyes, and albino birds show pale pink or reddish eyes, legs, feet and a pale bill, while leucistic birds often have normally colored eyes, legs, feet and bills.
While leucism can be unusual and exciting for a birder to see, birds with the condition face special challenges in the wild. Lighter plumage may rob the birds of protective camouflage and make them more vulnerable to predators such as hawks and feral cats. Because plumage colors play an important role in courtship rituals, birds with leucism may be unable to find strong, healthy mates. Melanin is also an important structural component of feathers, and birds with extensive leucism have weaker feathers that will wear out more swiftly, making flight more difficult and eliminating some of the bird’s insulation against harsh weather. White feathers also reflect heat more efficiently, which can be fatal for birds that rely on sunbathing and solar radiation for heat in northern climates.
While I can’t vouch for his/her’s sex life, our Middle Fork red-tail seems to be doing quite well and has been for at least 15 years . . . a glorious bit of God’s green earth, and a real treat for me--spicing up an otherwise dull commute on a winter’s morning.
Trained as an ecologist and later as a plant pathologist (sick plants). Worked for years doing research on tree diseases, then plant diseases in general for the Cooperative Extension Service. Then it was the landscape maintenance business for many years, until I left to pastor a church for five years. Now my wife and I are running a dog boarding business called Ernie Boudreaux's Doggie Dude Ranch. We also have HollandWildflowerFarm.com where we sell seeds for native plants. I recently returned to work at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville where I conduct research on soybean diseases. We have two grown daughters and sons-in-law, plus an "adopted" Korean son and his new bride. I play the mandolin among other things.
The stalks grow 5-7 feet tall and can attract butterflies and other insects. The Wildflowers of Arkansas book says that the leaves are eaten by deer. They grow along streams, roadsides, open slopes and valleys and bloom in late summer and fall.
