Vol. 7, no. 33, Tuesday, August 13, 2002
Quick jumps: | This week's report | Home page | Wild blueberry report | From the Press |
Thursday, August 8. Portland / Gray (Map 5) About the local wild blueberries -- I can only address what I and others have seen at local farmers' markets -- and that is that they are certainly available. Of course where they are coming from I can't be too certain but I'd say within a 50 mile radius of Portland. I haven't been up in the mountains for a couple of weeks so I don't know where the season stands at higher elevations. C.R.
Sunday, August 11. Orono (Map 23) A Milk Snake went across a road and into a field on the other side. It was about two feet long with a small head and thick body, and russet brown mottles on a beige background, an impressive and beautiful snake. J.K.M.
Monday, August 12. Fort Kent (Map 67) The raspberries are ripening fast in this hot weather, but still very few ripe blueberries at our place. Maybe in bogs they are ripening faster, but I have not checked yet.
August 7 -- Mad Dog Skull Cap blooming around our vernal pool. Water Parsnip also. Willow Pine Cone galls are growing tight. They started as a loose
rosette of leaves. The Spotted and Blue-Spotted Salamanders have left the pool, I think. None in sight for a few days.
August 8 -- Indian Pipe white stems and flowers are emerging from the brown leafy
litter in the woods. Clintonia "berries" are a bright blue now. Juneberries are ripening. Agrimony and Touch-me-not are flowering.
August 9 -- Flat Topped White Asters blooming. Some of the mullein plants are six feet tall now.
August 10 -- We have a high retaining wall on the hillside behind our house, where solar panels will go. At 6 AM we spotted two foxes atop the wall. They were walking on it. Then sitting. Then they moved to the gravel behind it and started grooming their fur. Some scratching. Then a little playing. Nose to nose, one stood on its hind legs. Fun to watch. Have a digital photo. In the evening one was back, and lying on the gravel grooming its fur. One has a wide white tip on the tail, the other a narrow white tip.
August 11 – 87° F. Calm at the vernal pool. Many tiny wood froglets hopping near the edge. A few tiny toadlets. Several green frogs around the edge of the pool. A fly or maybe a beetle feel in the water and was blown along the edge. Two different frogs headed for the fluttering insect as it drifted by. Both rejected it. Damsels and dragons flying through the sedges and over the pond. One dragon fly caught a fly right by my ear. I could hear its jaws click. Band-Winged Grasshoppers are clicking in flight now.
Anoplodera canadensis, a sawyer beetle with red "shoulders" (bases of the elytras) landed on me up in the woods. G.F.
Tuesday, August 13. Orono (Map 23) Early the past three mornings (around 3 to 4 am) I put out my reclining chair on the deck and positioned it so the house blocked most stray light, while still giving me a good view of the constellation Perseus, moderately high in the East at that hour. Each morning I saw about 6 to 10 meteors in a fifteen minute session, some of them good, startling ones that traveled quickly and left a bright trail briefly. F.W.
Maine Wild Blueberry Report for August 7-13, 2002
Unripe
fruiting stage:
Early ripe fruiting stage: Northeast Aroostook County, Southeast Aroostook , Northern
Penobscot and Piscataquis Counties
Middle ripe fruiting stage: Cumberland, Hancock,
Southern
Penobscot, Washington and York Counties
No reports: other Maine counties
Your
participation is welcome! Please e-mail Frank
Wihbey, Editor, Maine Nature News: menature@maine.edu
OUTDOORS
Poison sumac berries a lifesaver for birds
By Terry Karkos, Staff Writer
Sun Journal
(Lewiston, Maine) Friday, August 9, 2002
Anyone who has ever driven along roadways in Maine or ventured into a new clear cut knows what this plant is, with its long, thin and narrow dagger-shaped leaves that turn bright red in the fall. In August, its branches sport a 6-inch dark red upright cone of small, round and hairy berries, which persist through winter.
Throughout my childhood during my dad’s August vacations to Maine, grownups instilled the fear of God into me about staying away from staghorn sumacs, which they called poison sumac. They also warned me about poison ivy and its toxic sap (urushiol), but you know how kids are.
However, after chatting on Wednesday with Margi Huber, a Maine Audubon horticulturist in Falmouth, and Bob Bittenbender, a nursery manager for Estabrook’s Farm and Greenhouses in Yarmouth, I learned that staghorn sumacs, which I have always given a wide berth, are not poisonous and they look nothing like their toxic cousin. And poison sumac, I learned, is usually found along the margins of swamps and bogs where the soil is wet and acidic.
In fact, Huber said, “To my knowledge, there are no poison sumacs or poison oak in Maine.” But, she quickly added, “Several years ago, there were also no possums or vultures in Maine and now they’re here.”
However, according to the Maine Forest Service’s “Forest Trees of Maine” book, poison sumac is found throughout the southern part of Maine and as far north as Penobscot County. It is particularly common around Mount Agamenticus in southern Maine.
And poison oak, Bittenbender said, only grows in California and other western states. Which was news to me considering that several adults have pointed out to me here in Maine what they thought was poison oak.
According to the Department of Labor’s Mine Safety and Health Administration, each year poison oak, poison ivy and poison sumac cause almost 2 million cases of a dermatitis that can be “extremely distressing.” I can vouch for that. Additionally, “Urushiol poisoning is the greatest single cause of workers compensation claims in the U.S. and is a leading cause of disabling (albeit temporary) dermatitis among miners,” the MSHA report states.
So if poison sumac and poison ivy are so caustic to humans, why do we allow them to grow all around us? Other than the fact that poison ivy is about as tenacious and hard to kill as hornpout, Huber said neither plant has any human benefits, but birds love the berries. And therein lies the rub, no pun intended.
Bittenbender elaborated: “Poison ivy is very good bird food. Staghorn sumac is a late lifesaver for birds like robins and cedar waxwings in late winter, early spring. From what I understand, the reason why the berries stay on through the winter is that they have a waxy coating that takes several months to break
down.”
He said when a late snowstorm hits after the birds have migrated back into the state, the only robins or waxwings that will survive are the ones that find staghorn sumac berries to eat. Which is why the staghorn plants are specifically requested in a lot of landscaping jobs, he added. Staghorns are also a first responder species, meaning that after forest fires or clear cuts are made, they are one of the first plants to grow back.
And, something else that I didn’t know about poison ivy is that you can still get dermatitis from the poisonous sap even if there are no leaves on the plant, Bittenbender added. So that makes moot the “Leaves of three, leave it be” adage my grandparents drilled into me while repeatedly treating their overly inquisitive grandchild.”
In the Arizona desert, I never had to worry about poisonous plants, just
venomous critters. But that’s another story.