Cultivated vs Wild
Today I walked the Gorge Trail to below Lucifer Falls, crossed the bridge and returned via the South Rim Trail, a trip of over 5 miles according to the Apple IPhone 14 Pro Max used for these photographs.
Thankful I was not here when this tree gave way across the trail.
Information about a cultivated fern, followed by a photograph of the wild version, trailside.
Flourishing hayscented fern.
Swimming Under The Waterfall
Swimming area closed for the season, the waterfall is still a draw.
An overview on a perfect September morning.
The waterfall at the height of summer in years past.
A palatial bathhouse built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, “For the people, by the people.”
Monarch from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly
Here are two of the ten monarchs we release this year. In under three minutes this video shows a monarch caterpillar transforming into a chrysalis, emerging two weeks later as a butterfly. Music “Emotional Underscores Vol. 3” by Yuri Sazonoff (SOCAN) “Can You Guess” and “Blessing”
“Migrating monarchs soar at heights of up to 1,200 feet. As sunlight hits those wings, it heats them up, but unevenly. Black areas get hotter, while white areas stay cooler. The scientists believe that when these forces are alternated, as they are with a monarch’s white spots set against black bands on the wings’ edges, it seems to create micro-vortices of air that reduce drag—making flight more efficient.”
“Monarchs begin leaving the northern US and Canada in mid-August. They usually fly for 4-6 hours during the day, coming down from the skies to feed in the afternoon and then find roosting sites for the night. Monarchs cannot fly unless their flight muscles reach 55ºF. On a sunny day, these muscles in their thorax can warm to above air temperature when they bask (the black scales on their bodies help absorb heat), so they can actually fly if it is 50ºF and sunny. But on a cloudy day, they generally don’t fly if it is below 60ºF.“
“Migrating monarchs use a combination of powered flight and gliding flight, maximizing gliding flight to conserve energy and reduce wear and tear on flight muscles. Monarchs can glide forward 3-4 feet for every foot they drop in altitude. If they have favorable tail or quartering winds, monarchs can flap their wings once every 20-30 feet and maintain altitude. Monarchs are so light that they can easily be lifted by the rising air. But they are not weightless. In order to stay in the air, they must move forward while also staying within the thermal. They do this by moving in a circle. The rising air in the thermal carries them upward, and their overall movement ends up being an upward spiral. Monarchs spiral upwards in the thermal until they reach the limit/top of the thermal (where the rising air has cooled to the same temperature as the air around it). At that point, the monarch glides forward in a S/SW direction with the aid of the wind. It glides until it finds another thermal and rides that column of rising air upwards again.”
Upper Taughannock Gorge from the South Rim.
Advice for releasing your monarch butterfly
We let our first monarch butterfly rest overnight, until noon of the following day.
I delay butterfly release when:
Those of you who know Georgia O’Keefe may be familiar with the form and coloring of Jack-in-the-pulpit from the series of six oil canvasses from 1930
“Arisaema triphyllum sensu lato is a herbaceous, perennial, flowering plant growing from a corm. It typically grows up to two feet tall, but populations in Georgia and Florida are known to reach almost twice that height. It has 1 or 2 leaves, each with three leaflets (triphyllum). Occasionally the lateral leaflets will be two-parted or lobed, giving the appearance of five leaflets per leaf. One species (A. quinatum) typically has five pseudo-leaflets per leaf.”
Those of you who know Georgia O’Keefe may be familiar with the form and coloring of Jack-in-the-pulpit from the series of six oil canvasses from 1930, her time in the east living near a spring. There is a spathe, the pulpit, strongly colored in dramatic vertical, flowing stripes, wrapped around a spandix, the “jack”, being a stem covered with male and female flowers.
Around the time my photography habit started in 2002 I was surprised by the jacks growing from the walls of Fillmore Glen, spying the distinctive forms flowing a bit above eye level under the three large leaves. Seeing them was like recognizing a friend in Halloween disguise, the exotic O’Keefe shapes in a known place.
“The small, inconspicuous flowers of Jack-in-the-pulpit are borne on a fleshy, spike-like inflorescence called a spadix (“Jack”), which is enclosed (or nearly enclosed) by a large, sometimes colorful bract called a spathe (“pulpit”). The flowers are clustered around the base of the spadix inside the spathe. A sterile spadix appendix protrudes from the mouth of the spathe tube. The appendix is covered by the leafy tip of the spathe, referred to as the spathe hood (or spathe lamina). The lip along the mouth of the spathe tube, used as a landing platform for winged insects, is called the spathe flange.”
“The inflorescence can be male (with male flowers only), bisexual (with both male and female flowers), or female (with female flowers only). In a small plant, most if not all of the flowers are male. As the plant matures and grows larger, the spadix produces female flowers as well as male flowers. The transition from male to female continues until eventually the plant produces female flowers only.[6] This is an example of dichogamy, a rare phenomenon in flowering plants. Due to this sex-change lifecycle, this species is sometimes called colloquially as Jack or Jill in the pulpit or Jill-in-the-pulpit.”
“The unripe fruits are smooth, shiny green berries (each 1 cm wide) clustered around the thickened spadix. Fruits ripen in the late summer and early fall, turning a conspicuous bright red color. Each berry typically produces 1–5 seeds, which are white to light tan in color, rounded, often with flattened edges and a short sharp point at the top. If the seeds are freed from the berry, they will germinate the next spring, producing seedlings each with a single rounded leaf. A seedling needs three or more years of growth before it becomes mature enough to flower.”
“The Arisaema triphyllum complex includes four closely-related species: Arisaema pusillum, Arisaema stewardsonii, Arisaema quinatum, and Arisaema triphyllum sensu stricto. A fifth species (Arisaema acuminatum) is sometimes included but its validity is controversial.”
Ecology
“Arisaema triphyllum sensu lato flowers from April to June.[citation needed] Arisaema triphyllum sensu stricto is the first to flower in the spring. In regions where the species are sympatric, Arisaema stewardsonii and Arisaema pusillum begin to flower 1–2 and 2–3 weeks later, respectively. Since an individual flowering period can last 1–3 weeks or more, it is not unusual to find all three species in flower at the same time. In the southeastern United States, Arisaema quinatum is reported to flower later than either A. pusillum or A. triphyllum s.s.”
“Arisaema triphyllum sensu lato is pollinated by fungus gnats, which it attracts by smell and are trapped by the flower. They manage to escape from a hole at the bottom of the male’s pulpit, but cannot do so when they fall inside a female pulpit, which do not have exit holes Thus the Jill-in-the-pulpit is a rare femme fatale in the plant world: luring the gnats in with scent, but ultimately killing the pollinators in a death trap.”
“Other insects are known to visit the flowers as well, such as gall gnats and beetles.[6] The plant is not self-pollinating since the male flowers on a specific plant have already matured and died before the female flowers of that same plant are mature. So the female flowers need to be pollinated by the male flowers of a different plant. This inhibits inbreeding and contributes to the health of the species.”
Michael Stephen Wills Photography 