Cumulonimbus (from Latin cumulus ‘heaped’, and nimbus ‘rainstorm’) is a dense, towering vertical cloud, typically forming from water vapor condensing in the lower troposphere that builds upward carried by powerful buoyant air currents.
Above the lower portions of the cumulonimbus the water vapor becomes ice crystals, such as snow and graupel, the interaction of which can lead to hail and to lightning formation, respectively. When occurring as a thunderstorm these clouds may be referred to as thunderheads. Cumulonimbus can form alone, in clusters, or along squall lines.
Graupel also called soft hail, hominy snow, or snow pellets, is precipitation that forms when supercooled water droplets in air are collected and freeze on falling snowflakes, forming 2–5 mm (0.08–0.20 in) balls of crisp, opaque rime.
Graupel is distinct from hail and ice pellets in both formation and appearance. However, both hail and graupel are common in thunderstorms with cumulonimbus clouds, though graupel also falls in winter storms, and at higher elevations as well.
These clouds can produce lightning and other dangerous severe weather, such as tornadoes, hazardous winds, and large hailstones. Cumulonimbus progresses from overdeveloped cumulus congestus clouds and may further develop as part of a supercell. Cumulonimbus is abbreviated Cb.
Reference: “Cumulonumbus Cloud” and “Graupel” from Wikipedia
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. We discovered this seeming lily growing from the muck along the Treman Woodland Walk. Scientific Name: Lysichiton camtschatcensis. Common names: Asian skunk cabbage, white skunk cabbage, Far Eastern swamp lantern or Japanese swamp lantern.
This is a plant found in swamps and wet woods, along streams and in other wet areas of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Kuril Islands, Sakhalin and northern Japan. The common name “skunk cabbage” is used for the genus Lysichiton, which includes Lysichiton americanus, the western skunk cabbage, noted for its unpleasant smell. The Asian skunk cabbage is more variable: plants have been reported in different cases to smell disgusting, not at all, and sweet.
All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.
In Japanese it is known as mizubashō (lit. “water-banana”) from a supposed similarity to the Japanese banana, a name with poetic rather than malodorous associations. It is not closely related to the true cabbage.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. We found a path new to us, with this memorial stone bench, a biblical quote engraved on the seats. Biblical Quote on bench: “What doth the lord require of thee / but to do justly and to love mercy / and to walk with thy god.” Micah 6:8
The Book of Micah is the sixth of the twelve minor prophets in the Hebrew Bible. Ostensibly, it records the sayings of Micah, whose name is Mikayahu (Hebrew: מִיכָיָ֫הוּ), meaning “Who is like Yahweh?”, an 8th-century BCE prophet from the village of Moresheth in Judah (Hebrew name from the opening verse: מיכה המרשתי). The book has three major divisions, chapters 1–2, 3–5 and 6–7, each introduced by the word “Hear,” with a pattern of alternating announcements of doom and expressions of hope within each division. Micah reproaches unjust leaders, defends the rights of the poor against the rich and powerful;[ while looking forward to a world at peace centered on Zion under the leadership of a new Davidic monarch. While the book is relatively short, it includes lament (1.8–16; 7.8–10), theophany (1.3–4), hymnic prayer of petition and confidence (7.14–20), and the “covenant lawsuit” (6.1–8), a distinct genre in which Yahweh (God) sues Israel for breach of contract of the Mosaic covenant.
All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.
In the quote tract, (6:6–8), Micah speaks on behalf of the community asking what they should do in order to get back on God’s good side. Micah then responds by saying that God requires only “to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Thus declaring that the burnt offering of both animals and humans (which may have been practiced in Judah under Kings Ahaz and Manasseh) is not necessary for God.
Reference: “Micah” Wikipedia
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. Found here growing outside native range, being the Appalachian Mountains from Georgia to southern Pennsylvania, the Table Mountain Pine is named after the landform, not a particular mountain.
All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.
Its pinecones drew me to this scraggly, ungainly, poorly formed tree. All general mankind finds useful in the, scientific name, Pinus pungens, otherwise known as Hickory Pine, Prickly Pine and Mountain Pine, is to grind it up for pulp or chop it for tinder.
Last of the Mohicans
That said, the final scene of the 1992 film The Last of the Mohicans takes place in a nice Pinus pungens stand on a rocky mountaintop in North Carolina.
Personality
The tree has personality. Pinus pungens is the Lonesome Pine of the 1908 novel The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox, and popularized in the Laurel and Hardy film Way out West: “On the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine” Several “Lonesome Pine” hiking trails have been waymarked in the Blue Ridge Mountains and elsewhere in the Appalachians.
Pinecone Bud
Pinus pungens prefers dry conditions and is mostly found on rocky slopes, favoring higher elevations, from 300–1,760 meters (980–5,770 ft) altitude. It commonly grows as single scattered trees or small groves, not in large forests like most other pines, and needs periodic disturbances for seedling establishment. The three tallest known ones are in Paris Mountain State Park, South Carolina; they are 26.85 to 29.96 meters (88 ft 1 in to 98 ft 4 in) tall.
Reference: “Pinus pungens” Wikipedia.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. A type of sandstone popular with Cornell monument builders, called “Lenroc” after a mansion build by Cornell’s founder, was used for these benches built into the hillside of the FR Newman Arboretum. The views are more interesting than the bench, the arch of stone in midground in one photo.
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The stone is mined locally from surrounding hills. Calling it “Lenroc” (Cornell spelled backward) is a misnomer as the stone is mined widely throughout the region.
Feldspathic Greywacke
“Bluestone from Pennsylvania and New York is a sandstone defined as feldspathic greywacke. The sand-sized grains from which bluestone is constituted were deposited in the Catskill Delta during the Middle to Upper Devonian Period of the Paleozoic Era, approximately 370 to 345 million years ago…..
Glacial Landscape on an early spring day, Easter 2023
Textures
…The Catskill Delta was created from runoff from the Acadian Mountains (“Ancestral Appalachians”). This delta ran in a narrow band from southwest to northeast and today provides the bluestone quarried from the Catskill Mountains and Northeastern Pennsylvania. The term “bluestone” is derived from a deep-blue-colored sandstone first found in Ulster County, New York.”
You can feel the origin of this bluestone from these macros of two pavers from a monument bench.
Reference: “Bluestone” Wikipedia.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.
The signage attached to a branch disabused us of this impression, incorrect all for being true until the flowers burst forth.
Magnolia “Golden Gift” Magnoliaceae
Description
A visually beautiful magnolia whose golden flowers bloom in abundance and persist well; a small tree or large shrub with a loosely pyramidal form and large relatively coarse leaves; flowers appear before the foliage; an ideal landscape or garden accent
Ornamental Features
Golden Gift Magnolia is covered in stunning fragrant gold cup-shaped flowers held atop the branches in early spring before the leaves. It has dark green deciduous foliage. The large pointy leaves turn coppery bronze in fall.
Landscape Attributes
Golden Gift Magnolia is a deciduous tree with a distinctive and refined pyramidal form. Its relatively coarse texture can be used to stand it apart from other landscape plants with finer foliage. This is a relatively low maintenance tree and should only be pruned after flowering to avoid removing any of the current season’s flowers. It has no significant negative characteristics.
Ancient
Magnolia is an ancient genus. Appearing before bees evolved, the flowers are theorized to have evolved to encourage pollination by beetles. To avoid damage from pollinating beetles, the carpels of Magnolia flowers are extremely tough. Fossilized specimens of M. acuminata have been found dating to 20 million years ago, and fossils of plants identifiably belonging to the Magnoliaceae date to 95 million years ago. Another aspect of Magnolia considered to represent an ancestral state is that the flower bud is enclosed in a bract rather than in sepals; the perianth parts are undifferentiated and called tepals rather than distinct sepals and petals. Magnolia shares the tepal characteristic with several other flowering plants near the base of the flowering plant lineage such as Amborella and Nymphaea (as well as with many more recently derived plants such as Lilium).
With a neighbor, Sycamore or “Buttonwood”
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Pam and I ambled around the Arboretum for our Easter 2023 outing. Ezra Cornell had a large farm on the East Hill above Ithaca, New York. As part of locating New York State’s land-grant college in Ithaca, Cornell offered to donate the farm for use as a campus. Parts of this property remain in use as farmland. Our walk followed the outer Arboretum reaches along this research farm.
All photography using the IPhone 14 ProMax triple camera, raw format, edited on the phone.
Growing off the road that loops around the Arboretum, this scraggly pine, the Jack Pine, attracted our attention by the grey colored growths curving around the branches
Serotinous
These are pinecones with the unusual property of not opening, hanging onto the branch, turning this color, until the appropriate conditions arise, serotinous is the botanic term for this. They open when exposed to intense heat, greater than or equal to 50 °C (122 °F). The typical case is in a fire, however cones on the lower branches can open when temperatures reach 27 °C (81 °F) due to the heat being reflected off the ground.
The Color of Younger Jack Pine Cones
Form and Behavior
Tolerant of conditions that preclude other trees, Jack Pines can form pure stands on sandy or rocky soil. It is fire-adapted to stand-replacing fires, with the cones remaining closed for many years, until a forest fire kills the mature trees and opens the cones, reseeding the burnt ground.
Native
Pinus Banksiana, Pinaceae, Jack Pine, Nova scotia to New York and Minnesota
Joseph Banks classified this pine during a 1766 expedition to Labrador and Newfoundland, the scientific name, Pinus Banksiana, is in his honor. Jack Pine is native to eastern North America in the far north, south to northwestern Pennsylvania, including New York State.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
In more recent centuries Loughcrew became the seat of a branch of the Norman-Irish Plunkett family, whose most famous member became the martyred St Oliver Plunkett. The family church stands in the grounds of Loughcrew Gardens. With its barren isolated location, Sliabh na Caillí became a critical meeting point throughout the Penal Laws for Roman Catholics. Even though the woods are now gone an excellent example of a Mass Rock can still be seen on the top of Sliabh na Caillí today. The Plunketts were involved in running the Irish Confederacy of the 1640s and were dispossessed in the Cromwellian Settlement of 1652. Their estate at Loughcrew was assigned by Sir William Petty to the Napier Family c.1655. The Napiers are descended from Sir Robert Napier who was Chief Baron of the Exchequer of Ireland in 1593.
Cairnbane East in Ireland, part of the Loughcrew Cairns complex, combines historical significance and folklore, particularly about a witch shaping these megalithic structures.
Here we are looking south, southwest from the north side of Slieve na Calliagh (aka Cairnbane East) toward Cairnbane West. Flowering yellow whin bush is in foreground, white flowering hawthorn trees in distance.
Cairnbane East hill is topped by a fine and accessible passage tomb, Cairn T.
Cairnbane East of the Loughcrew Cairns, known colloquially as “Hag’s Mountain,” nestled amidst the rolling hills of County Meath, Ireland, is a site of profound antiquity that beckons the curious traveler with its enigmatic charm. In this beguiling corner of the world, where history and folklore converge like two ethereal streams, the Loughcrew hills with their cairns rise, sentinels of a bygone age, each with its own tale to tell. But it is the myth of the witch, the “Hag of Loughcrew,” that lend a haunting aura to these ancient megalithic structures, invoking a world where magic and reality danced together in a mesmerizing waltz.
The Loughcrew Cairns
The Loughcrew Cairns, those hallowed remnants of an era long past, are monuments that defy the erosion of time. Constructed during the Neolithic period, they bear witness to the ingenuity of ancient minds and the profound spiritual significance these structures held. These tombs, hewn from the earth and stone, were not mere resting places for the departed, but sacred vessels of cosmic alignment, paying homage to the celestial dance of the heavens.
The Witch’s Role
One of the most enduring legends surrounding Hag’s Mountain is the story of a powerful witch who was said to have constructed the cairns. Cairn T includes a kerbstone known as “the hag’s chair.” According to folklore, this enigmatic figure, known as the “Hag of Loughcrew” or the “Cailleach,” commanded supernatural abilities and controlled the forces of nature. The Cailleach, which translates as ‘old woman’, ‘hag’, and ‘veiled one’, exists in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and is an expression of the hag or crone archetype found throughout world cultures. Related words include the Gaelic caileag and the Irish cailín (‘young woman, girl, colleen’), the diminutive of caile ‘woman’, and the Lowland Scots carline/carlin (‘old woman, witch’). The Cailleach is associated with winter, and it is believed that she uses her staff to create the winter snows. In some folk tales it is said that she carried massive stones from distant quarries to build the cairns, working tirelessly through the night and completing tasks that would have been impossible for ordinary mortals.
In these legends the Cailleach’s role in the construction of the cairns is believed to explain their precision and alignment with celestial events. The Cailleach used her magical powers to ensure that the cairns’ passageways perfectly aligned with the sun’s rays during the equinoxes, illuminating the inner chambers in a spectacular display of light and shadow.
Conclusion
Slieve na Calliagh weaves a tapestry where history’s threads intertwine with the shimmering strands of folklore. In its stony silence, it echoes the time when myths and reality were inseparable, when the land bore witness to the otherworldly. As we wander amidst the Loughcrew Cairns, gazing upon the ancient stones, we become travelers in a world where the mystical and the corporeal coalesce, and the stories of the witch endure as whispers in the wind, carried through the ages.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
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