LAWNS IN EARLY MAY

      Lawns in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania are full of adaptable life early in May, making them interesting to experience.  One needs only to step out of their house onto their lawn to see adaptable plant and animal life in abundance.

     At this time, red maple trees and elm trees are loaded with multitudes of small, winged seeds that drop from the trees and twirl away on the wind from those parent trees.  One-inch-long, red maple seeds each have a tree embryo at one, swollen end and a veined, thin wing on the other end that carries the embryo away on the wind.  

     Each flat, round and light-beige elm seed has a bump in its papery middle that houses the embryo tree.  These seeds resemble half-inch wafers.

     Shimmering beautifully in sunlight, thousands of these petite, attractive seeds of both kinds act much like snow falls.  They swirl down in big numbers onto lawns in a few days, drift in the wind and pile against various structures on the ground.  Lawns, gardens and walkways get covered by these seeds for awhile.  Many seeds fall into waterways and ponds where they decay.  And many of these seeds of both kinds are ingested by squirrels, chipmunks, mice, wild turkeys, crows and other kinds of adaptable creatures.  Those that sprout on lawns get mowed off.  Obviously, very few of these seeds get to sprout into new seedling trees.

     Early in May, many thousands of beautiful, cheery, yellow dandelion flowers brighten a neighborhood of lawns.  Some lawns are golden with dandelion blooms.  And within a couple of days those blossoms close, seeds develop in them, the seed stems grow tall quickly and the flower heads open to expose several beige seeds, each with a fluffy "parachute", to the wind; all that between lawn mowings, which is a reason why we can't get rid of dandelion.   

     Another reason dandelion is tough to beat is because some plants, adapted to regular mowing, produce flowers and seeds on stems so short that the mower blades pass over them, allowing them to go to seed and blow away on the wind.  The descendants of those dandelions will also grow flowers on short stems because that is in their DNA.

     Many dandelion seeds are eaten by mice and a variety of seed-eating, small birds, including northern cardinals, house finches, American goldfinches, song-sparrows, chipping sparrows, house sparrows and other species.  Woodchucks and cottontail rabbits consume the leaves, stems and blooms.

     But many other dandelion seeds blow away on the wind and colonize new ground, which is why dandelions, and their lovely, cheery blossoms, are practically everywhere in this area. 

     Cottontail rabbits, wood chucks, white-tailed deer and Canada geese eat the new, tender grass of short-grass lawns, adding a bit more of the wild, and intrigue, to suburban lawns.  The chucks and geese are active by day, but the rabbits and deer are more active in late afternoons, evenings and at night. 

     A variety of lovely birds inhabit lawns by early May.  American robins are there to eat earthworms and nest in shrubbery.  Yellow-shafted flickers poke their long, sticky tongues down ant hills in the ground to consume ants.  Mourning doves coo through the day, visit bird feeders and feed young in their grassy nurseries in coniferous trees.  House finches, house sparrows, chipping sparrows and Carolina wrens are hatching young in sheltered places, including in conifers, shrubbery and crevices in buildings on lawns.

     Norway spruce trees are quite handsome early in May.  New, light-green needles are growing on the many tips of their twigs, offering contrast to the older, dark-green needles.  And the red, cone-like female flowers and the multitudes of small, beige male blooms are developing, and decorating those spruce trees.

     At this time, and throughout the year, suburban lawns in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania are alive with adaptable plants and animals making use of those lawns.  Their needs are met, and we get to enjoy their beautiful, intriguing presence close to home; always a win/win situation.

     

      

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

LATE-SUMMER, ROADSIDE EDGES

      Many sunny, un-mowed edges of country roadsides grow tall with plants by August in southeastern Pennsylvania.  These long, lean, human-made habitats are interesting oases of tall, dense vegetation growth and small creatures.  Lovely bouquets of flowers perch obviously on tall plants adapted to disturbed soil, including white flowers on Queen-Anne's-lace, blue blooms of chicory, yellow ones on evening primrose, Canada goldenrod and velvetleaf, and pink blossoms on red clover and brown knapweed.  There are pink or white flowers on bindweed vines that crawl up the many tall foxtail and redtop grass growing thickly along these same roadsides, and corn stalks on the sunny edges of cornfields.  Goldenrods' innumerable, tiny golden blooms are particularly attractive to bees and other kinds of nectar-seeking, pollinating insects.  And by the second week in September, patches of that wild, ten-foot-tall sunflower, with large, yellow flowers, called J...
Read more

LATE NESTERS

     Three kinds of abundant birds in southeastern Pennsylvania, including mourning doves, American goldfinches and cedar waxwings, nest late in summer for a variety of reasons.  Most "song" birds in this area are done raising young by the middle of July, but these three adaptable species could be rearing offspring into early September as a result of being dependent on certain foods or nesting materials that are most abundant in late summer.       Each pair of handsome mourning doves raises two young per brood, but they "put-out" two young a month, on average, from March into September because they rear two broods at a time through the warmer months. Each pair of doves probably can only feed two young at a time because they regurgitate pre-digested seeds into the beaks of their offspring.  But they compensate for that by hatching chicks in spring and summer.       Each pair of doves starts a brood of young early in March....
Read more

MATS OF WATER PLANTS

     By August, varying-sized, green mats of algae, duckweed and water stargrass float together on the surfaces of certain ponds and still backwaters of creeks in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.  Algae grows in long, matted strands, and duckweeds are tiny, flat plants that grow in colonies on water surfaces.  Stargrass colonies root in muddy bottoms.  Each plant's long leaves undulate in currents and the single yellow flower barely emerges from the water's surface to be pollinated.       Together, those mats of algae, duckweed, and stargrass in bloom, look like tiny islands in the water, and remind me of lawns with dandelion flowers flourishing in them.  And, those mats of small, aquatic plants create niches that several kinds of small creatures use for a variety of reasons.      Certain kinds of attractive and entertaining damselflies and dragonflies rest on those mats, after aerial feeding forays on small, flying in...
Read more