Common Nature

Every week I spend one afternoon volunteering at my local library, and since the weather turned late this winter, I've been walking there and back (1.8 miles each way, according to Google Maps.)

I've also been trying to record every flowering plant I see along the route, every week (which is something I've played with doing in a far less organized way many springs before, but having a weekly time and route for it is really neat; I can see a plant come up one week, in bud the next, and then blooming later. And since it's the same route every week, if there's a plant I can't quite identify one week, I can come back with a better guess next week, which is helping my identifications a lot. This week I saw 42 flowering plants on the route, of which I already could identify 34 with a fair amount of certainty before coming back to where my guides are, and I found good IDs for 7 of the other 8 in the books (the 8th one I took crappy notes and will have to wait for next week, if it's still there.)

I thought it might be fun to share my lists of flowering plants on here, for anyone else who is interested! I live in the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan area, and route I take includes two abandoned railroad right-of-ways; roadsides going through commercial, industrial, low-density residential, and suburban development; a cloverleaf interchange with a limited-access highway; short stretches along the edges of second-growth forest; and a wooded creek bottom; but nearly all the plants are widely-distributed weed species that turn up in pastures, yards, and roadsides nearly everywhere people clear pastures, yards, and roadsides.

So here's the lists for one week in February and three in March (one week in March was canceled due to rain.)

( February 23, 2012 )

( March 15 )

( March 22, 2012 )

( March 29, 2012 )


You'll notice ALL THE TREES in this week's update. It's possible some of them were out earlier and I just didn't notice; trees only go on the list if I already know them, or if they're right in my face. Also, a lot of grasses are in bloom already, but I really, really don't know my grasses, so they're not going on the official list this year (I'm working on it!)

In non-flowering-plants news, there are fiddlehead ferns opening among last year's fronds on the washed-out railroad bridge, some of the evergreens have baby male and female cones in clusters, and the moss is in spore.

This post is part of the Fecundity Project, which is my resolution to post about something that is in flower or in seed once a week for a year. You can read other posts in the project at the fecundity project tag.


( Fecundity Project 2: Bittercress (Cardamine) )

I have made a resolution this year to, every week, take a picture of an organism that is either showing its mating display or carrying the next generation, and then identify the organism. (Actually, I've made this resolution every year for several years; this year I'm going to go actually post the results for once!) I'm calling it the Fecundity Project because I can't think of a better word that covers the mating habits of flowering and non-flowering plants, fungi, molds and micro-organisms, and whatever else I might stumble upon. This is modeled on urpban's 365 Urban Species Project from several years ago, only I'm not quite as amazing as he is, so my identifications will be more tentative - in particular, I'm not going to be fussy about getting the exact species identification as long as I have the genus and several common names. (I have a whole rant about the limited usefulness of Linnaean taxonomic species in many cases compared to folk taxonomies, but I will save it for later, I think.) Anyone who wants to join in - adding to or correcting mine, or with posts of your own - is more than welcome to, especially since mine will, by default, be focused on American and Western European common names.

Since it's late-early-spring where I live, I'll be starting with early spring flowering weeds; the hard late winter this year has everything starting up several weeks later than usual, so the first weeds are only just now blooming.


( Fecundity Project 1: Speedwell (Veronica) )