Tree Swallows and Bayberry

 

Trees Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) descend on Northern Bayberry bushes 

(Morella pensylvanica) to feast on the gray, waxy berries during fall migration.

They grew in the post-glacial sand deposits around Junius Ponds, NY.

My first recorded encounter with Tree Swallows was August 2nd, 1969, but I didn't pay them special attention until a migrating flock descended on the bayberry bushes around Junius Ponds* on October 12th, 1976. It turns out this behavior is rather famous and was (temporarily?) "immortalized" on an interpretive sign along Assateague Island National Seashore's Life-of-the-Dunes trail. The text read, "Northern bayberry is an abundant interdune shrub that enriches the surrounding soil and helps form protective thickets for wildlife. Many species of birds, especially great flocks of migrating tree swallows, feed on the gray waxy berries. Early colonists made candles from the wax of the 'candleberry bush.' Berries are most visible in early fall." That sign was already deteriorating in 2013, and I hope they've replaced it, but we haven't been back to that trail to see. (Please comment if you know. Our last trip to Delmarva was back in 2016.)

*Junius Ponds is in Seneca County, NY. At the time, the bayberries were part of the Bayberry Environmental Education Center (originally Junius Ponds Nature Center) which is now closed. Since bayberries are a sun-loving shrub, they gradually lost out to natural succession as encroaching trees grew taller and overshadowed them.

iNaturalist: Northern Bayberry

Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)

 

Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), single leaf 

Zurich Bog, Wayne County, NY, June 17th (© Dave Spier)

Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) is a carnivorous bog plant. What look like dewdrops on the tips of red, glandular hairs, are sweet, sticky-mucilage secretions to attract and hold insects. The hairs curl to further hold the prey which is then digested with enzymes to extract nitrogen and minerals. It's an adaption to supplement the nutrient-poor environment of acidic sphagnum bogs. 

Multiple leaves, seven or so like the one pictured above, form a rosette around the base of the plant. The small flowers (not pictured) grow in a one-sided raceme at the top of a stalk rising above the leaves. The flowers usually have five white, rounded petals, although I've seen photos with only four. 

The Round-leaved Sundew, sometimes referred to as the common sundew, is circumboreal in distribution. In the Western Hemisphere it is primarily a northern plant scattered across Alaska and Canada with disjointed coastal range extensions south to California in the West and down the Appalachians to the Gulf of Mexico in the East. It is more common around the Great Lakes and Northeast into Canada where it grows in sunny acidic bogs, but it also can grow in fens, marshes and wet sand. In New York, it's considered exploitably vulnerable on IUCN's red list.

iNaturalist: Round-leaved Sundew

USDA: range map [zoom in for counties]

(photo at top ref. # 806-25)

Water Avens (Geum rivale)

Water Avens (Geum rivale), nodding flowers at Zurich Bog, Wayne County, NY, May 30th (© Dave Spier)

Water Avens (Geum rivale), a.k.a. Purple Avens, is another native member of the Rose family (Rosaceae) in the Great Lakes states and the Northeast as well as the Rocky Mountains, much of Canada and the temperate regions of Eurasia. It prefers wetlands with full or partial sun including slow-draining bogs, fens, pond edges, deciduous swamps, stream or river sides and wet meadows. It can hybridize with its close relative, Geum urbanum, as well as two other Geum species.

The half-inch, initially-nodding flowers have five yellowish petals mostly hidden under purple or maroon sepals that form the enclosing calyx. The flowers are set up to be pollinated mainly by bees but also flies and beetles. As a last resort it will self-pollinate. Water Avens has a long-flowering period, usually June to August. The resulting burr-like seeds get caught in the fur of rabbits and small mammals who do the job of dispersal. Rhizomal growth can maintain a colony and sometimes leads to dense clusters but expansion is otherwise limited by this method. 

If you boil the rhizomes, the tea has a faint taste of chocolate, hence another common name for the plant, "chocolate root." Native Americans used it medicinally to treat coughs and colds in children as well as dysentery and other ailments of the digestive tract and malaria. This led to the folk-name "Indian chocolate." Unlike the roots, the leaves are mildly bitter due to the presence of tannins.

The large compound basal leaves have heavily-toothed leaflets ranging in size from a small lateral pair toward the bottom, medium in the middle and finally a single, large, often-lobed terminal leaflet. These are interspersed with tiny leaflets along the main leaf stem (rachis). Each flower stem arises from the axil of a sharply-lobed or palmately compound, upper leaf with three points.

iNaturalist: Water Avens 

Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix)

Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) leaves and flowers at one of the Junius Ponds, natural post-glacial kettle lakes ringed by boggy wetlands in Seneca County, NY, June 24th

 

Poison Sumac, a.k.a. Swamp Sumach (Toxicodendron vernix, syn. Rhus vernix), like Poison Ivy and all of their relatives, belongs to the Cashew family (Anacardiaceae). Beware -- like Poison Ivy, the entire plant contains a resin called urushiol that can cause an itchy skin rash (contact dermatitis) on sensitive people. It's more toxic than Poison Ivy and Poison Oak due to differences in the chemical structure of the urushiol. Inhaling smoke from burning Poison Sumac can cause life-threatening pulmonary edema.

My first encounter with Poison Sumac was fortunate in the sense that I had a long macro lens and never touched the plant. It was growing in a boggy wetland ringing a natural post-glacial kettle-lake where I couldn't reach it. It wasn't until I got the slides back and tried to identify the plant that I realized my "luck."

The leaves are alternate on the branches and each is compound with 3-6 pairs of opposite leaflets plus one stalked terminal leaflet. The oval leaflets are smooth-edged (entire) and abruptly-pointed at the tips and taper to short stalks at the base. The leaves often form arching, umbrella-like clusters by crowding at the branch ends. 

Clusters of small, yellow-green flowers rise in loose panicles from the leaf axils (where the leaves emerge from the branch) in early summer. The flowers turn into whitish, beadlike fruits, each with a single seed much like a cherry or olive (both of which are totally unrelated and safe to eat). The weight of the berries makes each cluster droop. Like other sumacs and Poison Ivy, the seeds are spread by birds which are immune to the effects of ingesting the berries.

The scientific name, Toxicodendron vernix, translates to "toxic-tree varnish."

Other, non-toxic species of sumacs grow in drier, upland habitats.

(iNaturalist -- Poison Sumac)