Sense of Place

Tag: plant

  • Glass Flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

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    Nicolette Cagle
    in

    In 1886, a father and son team of Czech glass artisans were asked to make botanical models for Harvard University. Over nearly half a century, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka worked to create one of the most “scientifically and breathtakingly beautiful collections ever created”. Popularly, the collection created by the Blaschka’s and Harvard are called the…

  • Beech Drops

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    Nicolette Cagle
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    Plant Profile.− This month’s plant profile in a parasitic plant called Beech Drops (Epifagus virginiana). Beech Drops clump around beech trees, grow about six inches high, and look dead. They look dead because they lack leaves and chlorophyll, but luckily for Beech Drops, they do not need to make their own food because they can get…

  • Paean to a Walnut Tree

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    Nicolette Cagle
    in

    In a North Carolina neighborhood, constituting one small portion of a corpulent suburban empire, a young walnut tree bows to the wind. The rain pelts its leaves, but those leaves hardly quiver. The rain is not the walnut’s king. The walnut kneels like a courtier only for the wind, and when the wind decamps, the…

  • Pettigrew State Park (Creswell, NC) & Pocosin Lakes NWR (Columbia, NC)

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    Nicolette Cagle
    in

    Each Spring, I make my way to Pettigrew State Park (Creswell, NC) to explore the rich vernal wildlife around North Carolina’s 2nd largest natural lake, Lake Phelps. Lake Phelps is one of the Carolina bay lakes – elliptical lakes aligned on a northwest-southeast axis of uncertain origin, hypothesized to have been carved out by ocean currents,…

  • American Beech

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    Nicolette Cagle
    in

    “[The] Beech is identifiable by the gleam of its wondrously smooth bark, not furrowed even by extreme old age. Here it will be free of branches for full half its height, the sturdy boughs then gracefully down-sweeping. The gray bole has a further beauty in the way it flutes out at the base into strong…

  • GREAT EXPECTATIONS: April in the Piedmont

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    by

    Nicolette Cagle
    in ,

    BirdsApril launches spring migration in earnest, and the next couple of months can bring a steady stream of northbound travelers. Watch for wood-warblers (including Golden-winged, Nashville, Chestnut-sided, Magnolia, Black-throated Blue, Black-throated Green, Bay-breasted, and Blackpoll), along with herons (such as Little Blue Herons, Black-crowned Night-Herons, and Cattle Egrets), thrushes (Veery, Gray-cheeked, and Swainson’s), and sandpipers…