[ValleyNature] Botanical Gardens evening walk, May 4/10

[James W. Wolford]

MAY  4, 2010 - "NATURE COUNTS" evening walk (now every Tues. at 6:30  
p.m. through late August) at the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens.   
Tonight there were 8-10 participants, including "Sherri" of the HIBG,  
Jo Bishop, Harold Forsyth, Rosemary & Jim Jotcham (Jim & I decades  
ago shared the teaching of "Field Biology", a summer course in local  
flora & fauna), et al.

Here is my list of noted blooming plants: bluets (1), blue violet (2  
species), light blue violet with spotted petals, shadbush/Indian pear/ 
serviceberry (2 species), lowbush blueberry, wild strawberry, forget- 
me-nots (blue, pink, & white varieties together), sweet fern (not a  
fern)(relative of bayberry), Forsythia, marsh marigold, skunk?  
currant, rhodora, goldthread, sheep laurel/lambkill, leatherleaf,   
tall dwarf birch (an oxymoron), common dandelion, coltsfoot, cuckoo- 
flower, pussy-toes (Antennaria neglecta?), baneberry species (looked  
like red baneberry to me but labelled as white baneberry, so I'm  
probably wrong!)(see note below), willows (3? species), red  
elderberry, speckled alder, white trillium, roseroot (Sedum),  
bearberry, red or purple trillium, toothwort, blue cohosh, sessile- 
leaved bellwort, and wild Aralia or sarsaparilla almost in bloom.

[The next day I checked the BANEBERRY plant (actually 3 plants there)  
for the key characteristic for identification (from New Flora of N.S.  
by Marian Zinck/Munro), i.e. whether the entire undersurface of the  
leaf is hairy vs. hairs just along the veins on the underside -- and  
the leaves examined had hairs apparently only on the veins, thus  
belong to Actaea alba, a.k.a. WHITE BANEBERRY, just as the permanent  
tag/sign indicates (but the inflorescence appears more like that of  
red baneberry).  Now we'll have to look for the stalks of the berries  
and berry colour too if they develop normally later.]

Other observations in the Botanical Gardens: black "dead-man's- 
fingers" fungus (last year's?), "turkey-tail" polypore fungus, tall  
fiddleheads of ostrich ferns shown + old fruiting stalks, other  
unfurling ferns included lady ferns (both green and red morphs) +  
cinnamon fern + royal fern + 1 maidenhair fern, common horsetail  
(both spore-producing and green vegetative shoots), pine sp. male  
cones almost open, spring peeper treefrogs giving the rising trill- 
like "rain call" (under appropriate skies with slight drizzles),   
"cheese-burger" song calls of black-capped chickadees, Harold Forsyth  
heard a distant singing cardinal (in the direction of where I live on  
Wickwire Ave., where I have not heard any for quite a while), song  
sparrows singing, etc.

Cheers from Jim in Wolfville

Jim (James W.) Wolford
91 Wickwire Ave.
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada
B4P 1W3

phone 902-542-9204
e-mail <jimwolford at eastlink.ca>

"In wildness is the preservation of the world" -- Henry David Thoreau

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