The Daily Bucket is a place to catch your casual observations of the natural world and turn them into a valuable resource. Whether it's the first flowers of spring or that odd bug in your basement, don't be afraid to toss your thoughts into the bucket. Check here for a more complete description.
I should be confessing that I've been away from keyboard more often than not this week, leaving the (more than capable hands) of others in the Backyard Science group to sustain this series. But no, I have something worse than that to confess. Much worse.
I'll get to that in a second. First, a vivid illustration of just how quickly spring transforms a temperate hardwood forest.
27 March 2011
9 April 2011
16 April 2011
The transformation is far from complete. In a few weeks, those bright green leaves will all be unfurled, and the color will shift to a darker hue. At the moment the red buds have shed their blooms and the dogwoods are at their peak. Here's one more look at some of the dogwood blooms before they drop to the ground.
16 April 2011
And now, it's time to fess up. Here's the pictorial evidence of my crime, which appeared from under the fallen leaves just this morning.
17 April 2011
Some of you may be staring at this picture wondering "what the heck"? Others, those who know what this is, what it represents in my Missouri backyard, are probably screaming and looking to see if there is a handy supply of pitchforks and torches. Or maybe tar and feathers.
That folks is a bamboo shoot, and I don't mean a nice native bamboo like river cane. I mean giant, Asian, timber bamboo. And I did it with knowledge (well, ignorance) aforethought.
Seven years ago, I grew three different kinds of bamboo from seed, and gave out the little seedlings as gifts. This was not too long after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and I thought having a few mini-versions of those tree-sized bamboos from the film would be fun. So I grew some Japanese Timber Bamboo Phyllostachys bambusoides, Black Bamboo Phyllostachys nigra, and Giant Vivax Phyllostachys vivax. They were all teeny that first year, and at the end of the summer, when the pitiful little things were drooping in their indoor prison I... I... I planted them in my backyard.
Understand that the most cold-hardy of these was still only good to around 0 degrees, a temperature I could expect to beat with some regularity. Heck, these were all zone 7 or 8 plants on the old USDA scale, and my house sits in zone 5. I really thought this experiment would go about as well as my attempt to nurse a Tasmanian tree fern through the winter. I put them out there, I ignored them, and then... the next summer all three were back. The black bamboo barely put up a soda straw sized culm. But the other two poked up 4' high culms around the diameter of a pencil.
I could have stopped them then, but I confess (again) that I got curious. Just what would these things do? How big would they get in hard clay soil, in the shade of black oaks and ash trees, on a cold, north-facing hillside in Missouri? As it turns out, the answer is very, VERY big. The next year the Vivax was 10' high and big as my little finger and the timber bamboo wasn't far behind. Every year the two tiny groves, planted about thirty feet apart, have gotten less tiny as new shoots appear around the edges. Last season, the largest culms from both species were over 40' tall and 2" in diameter. The black bamboo is still struggling, just hanging on with a small line of 4' culms.
The thing is, since I planted these bamboos, the temperature has fallen below 0 exactly 0 times. It's gotten close, and I thought a week long period near zero this year along with heavy snows that actually snapped some of the culms might finally kill my own personal Frankenstein's monster. Nope.
Feel free to hate me.
So, what's going on at your place, good people who would never engage in such ecological terror and who will not be remembered alongside the guy who thought kudzu was a really good idea?
Today's observations come from these locations
Share your own observations in comments, and I'll add a marker to the map. Please give a city and state (as close as you feel comfortable in providing). Green pins for observations mostly about plants, brown for animals, and blue for weather or other inorganic items. The letter at the center of each pin will be the first letter of the user who provides the data.