Author: David Gorsline

At the park: 158

The latest update on nest box monitoring:

Ooh, lots of activity for the end of April! Four boxes have hatched (all of them off the main pond: #2, #10, #7, #6). For Box #2, I flushed the hen, who gave me a broken wing distraction display… because there were ducklings in the box! Camera snafu, so I was not able to get a photo.

Meanwhile, Box #13, which looked to have been abandoned with a single egg, is now incubating 14 eggs; Box #84 is a new nest, also incubating. We have five boxes incubating at this point.

For May, our work days will be 10 May and 24 May. We can make 10 May our last day to check all the boxes; on the 24th, we can spot check just those that are still incubating….

Scots Gaelic is in my Google Translate (I was checking a sus etymology): Tapadh leat!

The Minutes

As the US approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence declaration, Tracy Letts’ The Minutes takes a troubling look back at our complicated past—in the present case, through the blinkers of a tedious weekly meeting of a small town city council. Challenges are made, and met. As one character says, “History is a verb.”

If the ending of the play is a little over the top, nevertheless the playwright’s message is clear. However, a key argument of the debate is knocked over quickly with a smidgen of what-about-ism (perhaps to keep the piece at its 90-minute running time); one wishes for a deeper, more nuanced engagement with the issue.

Timothy H. Lynch as Mr. Oldfield adds a bit of comedy to the proceedings, as the council’s most senior member but no longer its most compos mentis.

  • The Minutes, by Tracy Letts, directed by Susan Marie Rhea, The Keegan Theatre, Washington

Thinking about this play from a more personal standpoint, I begin to wonder whether I am in the target audience for this play, or for that matter, something like The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa FastHorse, a much more facile work. Maybe I’ve already read enough David Treuer: I get it, already.

I was talking to a (younger than me, middle-aged) colleague some time ago, and we both expressed the feeling that much new theater these days has become, well, preachy. Mind you, I am still noticing new, challenging good work out there (e.g, The Great Privation, Soft Power). But maybe, now that I am in my legit crotchety years, the arc of my own moral universe has bent as far as it will go.

When you find yourself in danger

I’ve been rewatching episodes of Jay Ward’s Super Chicken on YouTube, in all their blurry transfer-from-video glory. Several of them are breaking-the-fourth-wall (-screen?) genius, and all are hilariously silly.

Super Chicken’s long-suffering majordomo/sidekick is Fred, who has a penchant for replying “Roger Wilcox” to Super Chicken’s directions. I wonder which comedic savant added the “x” to the well-known “Roger, Wilco”.

Anyway, I’ll do what I can to reintroduce Roger Wilcox into the world.

Pink

Pinxterbloom Azaleas1 [Rhododendron periclymenoides (Michx.) Shinners] are blooming here in Northern Virginia, along with their cultivated relatives. Hmm, another name puzzle to work out.

Let’s take the common name first: it’s more straightforward. Pinxter morphed from the Dutch Pinkster or Pinksteren, the feast of Pentecost (or Whitsunday, for folks in the UK). Pinkster is still celebrated in the US today, particularly among Black communities of New York-New Jersey, i.e., the lands colonized by the Dutch. See the African American Pinkster Committee of New York (aapcny).

This article in Dutch on Pinksterbloem (Cardamine pratensis), botanically unrelated, gave me some clues as to the etymology.

The Flora of Virginia gives March-May as the flowering time for Pinxterbloom Azalea, which more or less squares up with the possible dates for Pentecost, 50 days after Easter, 10 May to 13 June.

Now let’s look at the specific epithet, periclymenum. Readers may know that oides is a suffix that means “like, resembling, having the form of.” Michaux called this showy shrub Azalea periclymenoides, presumably due to its resemblance to Woodbine, or European Honeysuckle (Lonicera periclymenum)—he doesn’t give an etymology.2

And what does periclymenum mean? Here, the trail goes sketchy. Google Translate suggests “dangerous,” but that reading is not backed up by my Latin-English dictionary or Roland Wilbur Brown’s Composition of Scientific Words (1956).3 However, sources suggest that both Lonicera periclymenum and Rhododendron periclymenoides are toxic. In particular, honey made by bees feeding on Pinxterbloom Azalea is called “mad honey” and can cause grayanotoxin poisoning. So… maybe “dangerous.”

A final note: the scientific name for Pinxterbloom Azalea is a pileup of synonyms, eventually sorted out by Shinners in Castanea 27: 94-95, 1962. I haven’t been able to locate a copy of this paper online.

1Also called Pinxter-flower, Pink Azalea, and (in Vermont) Election-pink.

2He also reports that it can be found in New Jersey.

3Although I do see Clymenus as a cognomen of Pluto.

Some links: 112

Williamsburg midweek getaway

I put together a quick road trip to Williamsburg, anchored by a visit to the recently expanded Muscarelle Museum of Art on the William & Mary campus for its fine exhibition of women Abstract Expressionists.

After that, it was field trips:

  • to the tiny but mighty Williamsburg Botanical Garden: scoliid wasps and nomad bees spotted among the Golden Alexanders;
  • this way, pleasea short walk along the Basset Trace Nature Trail, carefully tended by the Virginia Master Naturalists Historic Rivers Chapter; oddly, you drive through Colonial Williamsburg and park next to a hotel building to get to the trailhead;
  • and on the way home, a stop at Westmoreland State Park on the lower Potomac: friendly rangers and a solitary Rattlesnakeweed (Hieracium venosum) that seems to be out of its vouchered range.

On the back roads of U.S. 17 and Virginia 3, I lost count of the number of Baptist churches, as well as yard signs urging YES or NO in the upcoming referendum [Narrator: David is against the measure].

DIY Science

I participated in the inaugural DIY Science day at the Clifton Institute, led by co-Director Eleanor Harris. It’s an adult-tailored version of the Institute’s Young Naturalists program. Not too many rules: explore the field station, formulate a research question, do some science, and present your results. The vibe is a little like the Serendipity Days practice when I was with NPR’s Digital Media.

As I wasn’t sure how the day would play out, I planned a research question ahead of time: roughly, can we measure any differences between two species of oak (White Oak, Quercus alba, and Northern Red Oak, Q. rubra), as sampled as dead leaves from my home and the Institute? The red oaks are well-known for showing more tannins than the white oaks. Is there a way to measure that difference?

So I brought some leaves picked from my backyard, and then at the field station collected some more in the woods. First complication: I was hoping to also analyze another species from the red oaks, Q. falcata, only to find that there are no records of Southern Red Oak at Clifton.

Second complication: methods and materials for measuring tannins were a bit beyond the capabilities of the research station, or so I surmised. However, some follow-up searching suggests some simpler, alternative methods.

specimenAs a result, staffer Bridget Bradshaw suggested some other tests that might yield some interesting results. She also brilliantly suggested a simple way to make equal measured samples from my dead leaves: 10 punches with a paper hole punch from each leaf. No mussing about with weighing something in the sub-gram range. Samples went into small lidded yogurt jars (apparently well-stocked at the research station, and easy handled by the kiddos).

  • Simple chromatography with a bit of acetone and (coffee) filter paper.
  • Measuring acidity of samples steeped in water and set in the sun for 30 minutes.

pH samplesThe chromatography didn’t show any results after the hour or so that we had available. But the pH measurement did return some results, on the face of them counter-intuitive. Here’s our 16 pH specimens, sunning on the Clifton Institute porch.

All the White Oaks sampled, as well at the Red Oaks at Clifton, measured more basic than the control (the plain spring water that was used to steep the samples). A possible explanation: fresh oak leaves will measure on the acid end of the scale, but after some decomposition as dead leaves, the acidic compounds leach away preferentially, leaving more basic dead leaf material.

Third complication: the pH meter that we used took several minutes to produce a reading, and readings shifted about as we took our measurements.

For “final presentation” to the group, I drew a quick, crude graph with a Sharpie. I’d like to polish it a bit for presentation here. Update: After some scuffling with the Google Charts API, I managed to produce the following graphic. (It’s a screenshot, not live; the API and vanilla WordPress don’t play well together.)

More research needed: I’d like to try this experiment on some fresh leaves and with a more reliable pH meter.

By Jimmy Van Heusen: 2

somewhat familiar turfAn easy saunter up the C&O Canal from Carderock with Nature Forward’s Stephanie Mason, Genevieve Wall riding shotgun, and some familiar bird and plant people. We got stuck on “High Hopes,” most of us wrinklies remembering this novelty song from an animation seen on Captain Kangaroo, after watching two ants dragging a dead spider twice their size across the towpath.

Genevieve spotted a Silver-haired Bat (Lasionycteris noctivagans) roosting. Stephanie pointed out Smooth Rockcress (Borodinia laevigata (= Boechera laevigata)), a new plant for me. We all heard Louisiana Waterthrush singing very clearly, but nobody got eyes on it. Another critter with high hopes: an American Beaver (Castor canadensis) swimming upstream in an arm of the Potomac.

Genevieve and I collaborated to reconstruct the chorus of New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” (not “strange,” as I think I told the group) to serenade a trio of Wood Ducks, two drakes and a hen.

Out of Heber Springs: 2

An update by Arthur Lubow on the complicated artistic legacy of Mike Disfarmer. Ron Slattery is part of the story, which is not too surprising.

[Family member Todd] Minor said that contrary to prevailing belief, Disfarmer had been close to his sisters and nieces until an acrimonious probate dispute led him to change his name. “Our perception of him is a little off from what people think,” he said. “He was eccentric, yes, but not so extreme.”

Previously on AHoaA: