Farther down the trail, we heard hermit thrushes singing and we saw a deer, a doe, warily watching us. So we stopped still, to watch her. That peaceful stand-off was disrupted by a loud-speaker at the head of a cavalcade of Segways ridden by visitors. The deer promptly vanished.
We see dense stands of pink and white flowers along some of our
roadsides, especially outbound on Glacier Highway from the high school. I’ve hears some folks call them “phlox.” But they are NOT the familiar phlox that gardeners love. Those roadside stands are produced by a wickedly invasive plant from Europe: Hesperis matrionalis has many common names including dame’s rocket and sweet rocket. It belongs to the mustard family and is not related to phlox, which is in a different taxonomic family. Hesperis and phlox are easy to distinguish with a closer look. Hesperis flowers have four petals and phlox has five petals. Hesperis has alternate leaves on the stem, phlox has opposite ones. They country wise email marketing list have different aromas, too—Hesperis emitting its perfumes mostly at night. It is pollinated by various insects.
Another attractive European invasive is common on the
lower branch of the dike trail. It’s a perennial often called sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella). Male and female flowers are on separate plants. The tiny red flowers are pollinated mostly by wind. It spreads In case emergency contraception both by seed and by rhizomes.
In June, we noticed that lots of cottonwood and alder leaves had rolled-up edges. That’s the work of leaf-roller moths (Torticidae). The larva rolls the leaf edge around itself for protection while b2b phone list it feeds. If all goes well, it will molt several times as it grows, pupate, and then emerge as a small adult moth. But danger lurks nearby. One day at the end of Sandy Beach, we watched a family of chickadees poking and prying into the rolled-up leaves, extracting the larvae. Some folks smilingly call the leaf rolls “bird burritos.”
