even better

i saw that wild parsnip was blooming a few days ago and made a mental note. you know by now i am sucker for all botanical umbellates. as often happens to me, when i went to finally photograph them, they had just finished blooming, only a suspicion of their yellow flowers remained. i was just about to walk away when i noticed this little guy on one of the leaves. a caterpillar that i thought was a monarch, but that research revealed to be a black swallowtail caterpiller! ding, ding, ding. all my senses lit up in delight. if you can, zoom in on him and notice the comical little face on his butt that’s meant to fool predators. it makes me wonder…do animals really understand a frown?

black swallowtail caterpillar on wild parsnip (Papilio polyxenes)

contrasts

vetch sounds like something you do after a bad chicken mcnugget, and yet the complicated sweet-pea leaves of this lowly roadside weed are among my very favorites. i love the lacy symmetrical shape, made more elegant by that pronounced seam down the middle of each leaflet. i also love how the duller, matte undersides of the leaves give everything a two-toned green and silver shimmer, like wind through an olive grove.

crown vetch leaves

cecidology

my favorite sentence from wikipedia recently: “the study of plant galls is known as cecidology.” so in other words, there is a scientific field for the study of cecidia, or galls, which makes me gladhearted about both the extent of human curiosity, and the extent of nature’s complexity. Better yet, these particular galls are caused by the black cherry finger gall mite, aka Eriophyid mites, that feed exclusively on the leaves of black cherry trees. i’m enchanted.

leaf with galls

start a movement

pink ribbons, blue ribbons, green ribbons. start a movement. my movements are contacting my local representatives to prioritize an end to police brutality on black and brown bodies, and noticing something each day in the nature around me (which happens to be a very old, very personal, movement). what’s your movement? get on it.

cattail leaf

tree snapdragon

i meant to feature the black locust tree blossoms that were scenting the entire neighborhood just last week, but by the time i was ready to go visit them, they had all fallen into the street. today i noticed that the catalpa trees had just begun to flower, looking like white snapdragons, and i wasn’t going to let them get away.

catalpa tree blossoms