Japanese maples in January

The Japanese maple still has dried leaves clinging to it.

Purple fruits

I usually walk by this area when I go to the radio station, but I never noticed these purple fruits before.

Strange twig pattern

I was intrigued to see a tree on which the branches were twiggy lower down, but had long smooth ends.

There was a row of this kind of tree on campus. Another tree of the same kind did have twiggy ends.

And another just had short lateral twigs.

Snow goose

There were plenty of gulls and Canada geese at Peebles Island, which is usual.  But today for the first time, I also saw a snow goose there.

Fallen cottonwood branches

There are cottonwoods along the shore at Peebles Island. Today I found many fallen branches. I do not recall a recent big storm that would have brought down so many branches.

Usually being among trees brings me serenity. But trees also fall with lethal ferocity. Today when I heard the trees moving in the wind, I felt fear at their power.  I also felt the bitterness of the cold.  That too can be lethal.  Nature is beautiful, but also powerful and merciless.

Contrast in bark

Today at Peebles Island, my eye was caught by a tree that was alongside the road, near the start of the path that goes out to the pavilion. What caught my attention was that the bark of the branches was so different from the bark of the trunk.

What kind of tree is this? Two things came to mind. Last spring, before the leaves came out, I noticed some stump sprouts that looked like the branches in this photo. After the leaves came out, I found that they were boxelder. The other thing that came to mind was chokecherry. That was something that popped up from my unconscious mind.  I know that when I was growing up, we had chokecherry trees at my house.  However, I did not pay attention to what they looked like, and if you asked me what kind of bark they had, I would say I had no idea.  However, when I saw this bark, my mind said "chokecherry."

When I got home, I looked in The Sibley Guide to Trees.  Boxelder did not seem to have bark like this.  For chokecherry, there was no picture of bark, but it said that chokecherry was similar to black cherry, and the opposite page showed photos of black cherry bark which matched the photo above.  Also, I did an internet search for both chokecherry bark and boxelder bark.  Chokecherry bark matched.  Boxelder did not.

Pine, hemlock, cedar, and oak at Peebles Island on the last day of 2011

Today when I arrived at Peebles Island, I saw that there was a little water on the floodplain to the west of the bridge.  Geese and gulls were browsing there.

When I walked into the forest, it seemed very quiet, though there was some birdsong.  I did not know what kind of birds I heard, but they seemed different from the birds I usually hear around home and work.  The birds I usually hear around home and work include sparrows, robins, starlings, and crows.  Later in the walk, I spotted chickadees and nuthatches. I may have seen a flock of juncos as well.  I could not get a close enough look to tell what they were.  They were among trees on the cliff.

In the forest, I saw the usual black birch, oak, etc.  Having just seen pines when I was in Connecticut and New Hampshire the past week, I was struck by the absence of pines.  However I did in time come to a grove of white pines.  I looked around to see what made this spot different, why would pines grow here and not in other places? What I noticed was that it was a low-lying area.  However, there are other low-lying areas on the island where pines do not grow.

Besides the pines, the evergreens I see at Peebles Island are hemlocks and what may be Atlantic white cedar (I have trouble distinguishing the "cedars.")  The hemlocks mostly grow on the side of the cliff.  There's an area where there are a lot of them on the cliff.  In that area, there are also a few over on the inland side of the path.

Being on the side of the cliff affects the shape of this hemlock:

Because the trees have mostly lost their leaves, it is harder to identify them. However, the oaks can be identified by the leaves that still cling to them. After identifying them by their leaves, I studied their bark and buds, to see if I could learn to recognize oaks that way as well.

Here is the bark of two small oaks near the cliffside. I think the first is red oak and the second is white oak.

The bark on these small trees looks quite different from the bark of the big old oaks.

The oaks had clusters of small red buds at the ends of their twigs.

I spent some time examining a small white oak that had many leaves still on it. I noticed that there were buds at the base of each leaf. I concluded therefore that in the places where there were buds but no leaves, there probably had been leaves which had fallen off. I examined the buds that were not adjacent to leaves, and found the leaf scars behind them.

The forest also includes trees which I think are chestnut oaks.