By Ken Moore
Over the years, I’ve enjoyed collecting witch’s brooms. Well, now, I haven’t actually collected them; I’ve merely spotted them, and revisit them often, quite often, since most obvious ones are along roadsides.

They are like old friends, and I smile inside every time I pass one.

My favorite witch’s broom is a fine specimen perched midway up a scrub pine, Pinus virginiana, along Estes Drive Extension between Chapel Hill and Carrboro.

Just before the holidays, I spotted one midway up a loblolly pine, Pinus taeda, along the ramp from Smith Level Road onto the U.S. 15-501 bypass. Can’t believe I had never noticed it; guess I’ve been paying more attention to vehicles on the road – not a bad thing. “Witch’s broom spotting” should not become a cell phone-like distraction while driving.

Last week, I spotted another one in a loblolly pine while walking through the pine forest of Carrboro’s Adams Tract.

A witch’s broom is an abnormal growth in a tree, usually caused by a virus or fungus. The growth is a dense mass of shoots growing from a single point, resembling an old-timey broom or strange-looking bird’s nest. There is not a lot of information on what is really going on with this plant-growth curiosity. I suspect there is simply not enough interest or concern for any young botanist to pursue a doctoral study.

I share my witch’s broom sightings with botanical garden nursery manager Matt Gocke, who is hoping to propagate some interesting-looking trees from some of the brooms. One way of producing plants with the compact, dwarf characteristics of witch’s brooms is to make grafts of the broom branches, or “scions,” onto the stems, or “stocks,” of normal-growing plants of the same species.

If the witch’s broom produces cones, then another possibility is to grow a dwarf tree from a seed collected from that abnormal growth. One such oddity is a dwarf loblolly pine growing along the north walk in the Coker Arboretum. That one is a dwarf seedling from a magnificent witch’s broom high up in one of the arboretum’s big pines. Sadly, that tree was killed by lightning two years ago. On your next walk through the arboretum, look for curator Margo McIntyre or one of her assistants to help you find that dwarf loblolly.

These rare curiosities are most frequently spotted in pine trees, though I did find one in a red cedar, Juniperus virginiana, several years ago.

More commonly spotted are the witch’s brooms in hop hornbeams, Ostrya virginiana, easily observed in winter months, when the messy looking, dense, leafless twig structures can be quite numerous on a tree, giving it a truly “bad-hair day” look. There are lots of them along the trail encircling Big Oak Woods at Mason Farm Biological Reserve.

Folklore is filled with stories of witches and their flying about on coarse twiggy brooms. I like the story of witches flying over trees to make brooms grow in them. I enjoy thinking about that story when walking beneath all those witch’s brooms in the Mason Farm hop hornbeams.
It’s fun to look up into trees; never know what you may find there!

A witch’s broom looks like a bad-hair day in hop hornbeam. Photo by Ken Moore

Last week a Citizen reader asked how I found anything to feature during winter. I responded that nature is so rich that I always had one or more subjects lined up, even in the winter. I added that I was already working on the lingering colors of sparkleberry.

That was my intent until the next day, when by the back door my eyes were captured by little white stars along burgundy limbs. Taking a closer look at a native aster in a pot destined, eventually, to go into the ground, I marveled at the coloration of remaining leaves highlighting star-like bases from which seeds had already taken flight.

At that moment, stopped in my tracks, I realized that the sparkleberry would have to wait; nature had stepped in to redirect my focus on that little aster.

However far ahead I plan, I am not really in charge of selecting what I will feature each week. Many times I am deflected from my intended focus to a more compelling one because of something that captures my eye. Perhaps my response to that Citizen reader should have been that I simply feature whatever nature thrusts my way.

I have moved that potted aster closer to my door for easier viewing each time I pass. That wildflower, in its so-called dormant phase, is now providing me as much pleasure with its bright star-shaped seed receptacles on stems strewn with burgundy colored leaves as it did last fall with its flurry of tiny purplish flowers perched on green leafy stems.

I recall how back in the fall I cautioned you to take a lighter hand as you “put your garden to bed for the winter.” I urged that clumps of tall branching plants and fluffy seed heads be left for winter interest and for food and cover for birds and other critters. I was at that time more intent on the distant landscape view of nature’s winter garden. Now I’m walking up close to discover color and textures not so obvious from a distance, definitely well worth slowing one’s pace.

The short walk to and from the mailbox is rewarded by the winter effect of dense wooly seed heads of common goldenrod along my very unkempt driveway. Recalling how I enjoyed the golden plumes of these, possibly my favorite of all wildflowers, weeks ago, I’m appreciating how the fluffy white seed heads rival the earlier bright flower heads.

In stark contrast, on rainy days those same seed heads are barely discernable, because they close tightly when wet. Well, that is logical; for why would a plant expose flight-dependant seed when it is weighted down with moisture?

The drifts of goldenrod seed heads lining the unmowed portions of the highways encircling our town these days seem to be suspended in time, as if to make certain we eventually take notice during our fast-paced travels.

Now I’m wondering what Mother Nature will offer up as alternative to my plan to feature the sparkleberry next week.

By Ken Moore

Next time you take a woods walk, carry along a pencil and a little notebook or sketch pad. Wherever you pause along the way to take a closer look, make some quick sketches and written notes of what you see and how you feel. Pay attention to details like bud shapes, round or pointed, whether a leaf is dark or light green, perhaps a colorful beetle in the path.

A simple sketch with color notes jotted on the sides guides you if you want to add color when you return home.

Some of you are thinking you’re incapable of drawing and painting. Beware, there is art in everyone. We simply need to rediscover that childhood freedom and creativity that lurks buried within. Reflect on how we drew as children. Whether a tree or bird, we drew it. Then along came the well-meaning parent or other attending grown-up with an “Oh no, that’s not how a tree looks!” and therein was the end of our artistic expression, sometimes, sadly, for the rest of our lives.

Back in late September, North Carolina nature artist Robert Johnson led a weekend class for a number of local outdoorsy types interested in keeping nature journals. Robert is like a contemporary Mark Catesby, except Robert does not have to rely on the harsh colonial travels on horseback through virgin territory. Robert makes long hiking and camping excursions into the wilds across America and from Alaska to New Zealand. In making his “nature notes,” he likes to “hike light” to “keep it simple!” He goes equipped only with a small sketch pad and a pencil and a little color chart of his own design. Back at camp, he sets up for the evening to add watercolors to his sketch notes, sometimes redrawing several pages to make larger ones representing an entire plant and animal community.

Going a step beyond Catesby’s colored sketches of almost 300 years earlier, Robert includes miniatures of the landscapes in which he discovers the subjects of his details. I can stand and contemplate a single one of his finished journal pages for many minutes and then want to go back again and again. Many of Robert’s works describe the wild nature of North Carolina. Thirty-two of them are on exhibit at the N.C. Botanical Garden through Dec. 21, and well worth a visit.

In September, students accompanying Robert at Mason Farm Biological Reserve were happy to discover new ways of looking, and with rediscovered childlike freedom made quick sketches and color notes, returning indoors to transform their notes into colored landscapes and details. No two were alike, and all were beautiful. Some of those folks had never set pencil or brush to paper.

Simple sketching is a useful way to focus your eyes and feelings on a landscape and details found there. Even you can do it. So on your next nature walk, take along a sketch pad and pencil, take that closer look, and draw from the found inner child – and don’t be critical of your work.

Make note; Robert Johnson will return to lead field sketching classes next spring at the Botanical Garden and next fall at the Museum of Natural Sciences.

illustrations by Laura Cotterman

By Ken Moore

I am grateful to a loyal reader of the Citizen for passing on to me Andrea Wulf’s The Brother Gardeners: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession, published last year. This account of the lives and passions of pioneer plant explorers and avid gardeners of the 18th and 19th centuries is engaging reading. Just a few nights ago, I was captivated by a copy of Mark Catesby’s color illustration of American beautyberry.

English plant explorer Mark Catesby is credited with introducing our native beautyberry, Callicarpa americana, to England in 1724. Wealthy English merchant Peter Collinson, with an obsession for growing plants, also received specimens of beautyberry from Philadelphia farmer John Bartram, who had made collections from his travels in South Carolina.

With Collinson’s financial help, Catesby published the colored drawings and written accounts of his American travels, Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, in a 10-part series from 1729 to 1748. His illustration of beautyberry caught the attention of English gardeners eager for new plants from America. His verbal description was equally engaging: “a highly unusual plant which wore its garish purple berries around its branches like bead bracelets.”

Though Collinson succeeded in bringing this American shrub to fruit, the English climate did not favor it for extended periods. As Phillip Miller, another avid English gardener, whose 1731 first edition of Gardeners Dictionary became the standard botanical/horticultural reference for gardeners worldwide, noted in his 1768 edition, “they had flowered, but to the great frustration of gardeners had failed to produce the desirable bright purple berries.”

Sadly, English gardeners today must rely on the smaller-berried oriental callicarpas, which, in my perspective, pale in contrast to our coastal North Carolina native.

Those “garish purple” berries are still holding on as we head into December, I think because we have not yet had serious killing frosts. There is a particularly spectacular planting of them over in the woodland gardens just west of building five at the Carol Woods Retirement Community.

The friendship established across the Atlantic between Collinson and Bartram was steadfastly affectionate, while at times testy, as their numerous correspondences attest. Collinson came to depend on Bartram as the most reliable source for cuttings and seeds of American plants and Bartram depended upon Collinson for financing plant explorations and providing botanical/horticultural texts not otherwise available to him.

Collinson was the center of many such collaborative friendships. Stories of worldwide plant adventures, including the travels of Captain Cook, and the subsequent successes and failures of English gardeners with new plants are enriching for wildflower enthusiasts and gardeners alike.

By mid-18th century, plants were eagerly exchanged back and forth across the Atlantic. And, early on, enthusiasm for growing exotic foreign plants was tempered a little by concern for potential dangers. When yellow toadflax, Linaria vulgaris, a much-loved flower in Britain, invaded the landscape like a weed, Bartram was worried about the havoc. So today, as we are aware of the havoc of plants like Norway maple and paper mulberry, gifts to Bartram from his English patrons, we also are appreciative of many plants shared by early gardeners that do remain well behaved within our garden gates.

“Garish purple” beautyberry still showing off in Carol Woods. Photo by Ken Moore

One of my favorite native herbs, rabbit tobacco, is an eye-catching wildflower with an engaging aromatic quality. Frequently called sweet everlasting, among countless other names, it retains its wooly white stems and leaf undersides and aromatic qualities for months. Late in the season, the stem leaves turn grayish and take on a lasting curly, dried characteristic.

The ample late-summer rains have been good for this common annual of open fields and roadsides; I’ve enjoyed seeing more of it this year than in the past. And even now in late November, the aging tawny-white seed heads are evident along roadsides.

Its scientific name, Gnaphalium [naff-AY-lium] obtusifolium, from the Greek, gnaphalon, refers to the soft, wooly hairs on stem and leaves. The leaf, -folium, is obtuse, obtusi-, being somewhat rounded at the leaf tip. Now, just to keep some of you taxonomically current, I recently discovered that this plant has been reclassified to Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium.

I’m always intrigued by plants with pseudonyms. I guess rabbit tobacco is not really a gnaphalium, but it’s like a gnaphalium. I’ll leave it to you to ponder its taxonomy.

I’m more intrigued with the common name, the heritage of which I’ve yet to discover. One story is that some Native Americans believed rabbits liked this native herb and were helpful in caring for it in their field habitats.

I presented my question to revered Lumbee herbalist Mary Sue Locklear at the American Indian Heritage Celebration in Raleigh last Saturday. She replied that she had never read or heard a satisfactory explanation, though she enjoys imagining that the bunch of tiny white flower heads resemble the rabbit’s tail, and thus the name. I like her explanation.

She also said there’s nothing better for breaking fevers than a long steeped tea of equal parts dried rabbit tobacco leaves and flowers, green pine needles and green sweet gum leaves. Sweet gum leaves are collected green and dried for use during the winter months.

Earlier Saturday morning at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, I visited with local herbalist, wildcrafter and teacher Will Endres. Like so many of us, Will also was puzzled about the heritage of the common name; he considers the name a bit demeaning for an herb of such great value. As a digestive bitter, chewing the green leaves is one of nature’s finest herbal aids. Will prefers to use the green leaves.

When asked about smoking rabbit tobacco, Will had a lot to describe. He said it does relieve symptoms of asthma and similar respiratory ailments. He prepares a rabbit tobacco mixture, with other herbs, that is helpful for folks trying to break a smoking habit.

I could have talked with Will Endres and Mary Locklear all day without exhausting the medicinal, ceremonial and spiritual heritage of this engaging plant.

And as for those rabbits – well now, Peter Rabbit was known to enjoy rabbit tobacco tea, though it was most likely a lavender substitute, perhaps the very first “pseudognaphalium.” And then there was Uncle Remus’ Brer Rabbit who “tuck a big char terbacker … you know this life everlastin’ that Miss Sally puts among the clothes in the trunk; well, that’s rabbit terbacker!”

Pearly white-topped rabbit tobacco is easy to spot in early fall. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

Autumn colors are far from over. Recently, I have come close to pulling off the road simply to consider the hickory trees.

Somewhere between the colors of mustard-gold and lemon-yellow are the glowing autumn colors of the hickories. Some forests are almost winter bare except for hickory’s fire of gold spreading throughout.

This time of year offers close-up hickory-leaf opportunities, because those compound leaves (several leaflets forming a single leaf) frequently fall to the ground retaining all their leaflets.
Most hickory species have five to nine leaflets, except the pecan, with twice as many leaflets and an oblong nut unlike the round nuts of the hickories.

I most frequently encounter mockernut hickory, Carya tomentosa, which has large terminal buds at the ends of the twigs, large leaves (leaflets) and visible dark hairs on the petioles and leaf undersides. The often quite tasty nut is inside a thick round husk sometimes as large as a silver dollar. Another tasty hickory is the shagbark hickory, C. ovata, which, as the name describes, has bark that peels away in long vertical strips, easy to identify. Mockernut hickory bark is deeply grooved and gives no indication of shedding.

Hickory is one of our most valuable forest trees. Valued as firewood for warmth and flavorful cooking, it also has a rich heritage in medicinal use and practical implement making. The wood is tough, and many an old timer will proudly display a hickory walking stick.

If you visit the American Indian Heritage Celebration in Raleigh this Saturday you will most likely see hickory wood being used in some of the Native-American crafts.

And now for something entirely different: consider the hickory twig girdler. Back in August, you may have noticed twigs with leaves scattered about on the ground. They are still obvious along trails and beneath specimen trees. Twigs, with one or more adjoining twigs holding dried leaves, are 10 to 30 or more inches long. It’s most likely a hickory twig, but as Dave Cook describes in The Piedmont Almanac, one of my favorite references, some girdlers may choose oak, persimmon or pecan.

You’ll notice a clean, chiseled cut around the twig at least halfway to the center. The adult girdler emerges in August-September and selects a number of twigs on a tree. It chews around the twig, leaving it dangling from the middle woody strands. It lays a single egg in one or more small incisions in the twig bark next to a leaf petiole scar. The egg hatches and a tiny larva bores beneath the thin bark layer, where it remains all winter.

The girdled twig falls to the ground from its own weight or wind action to lie in the leaf litter hidden from tree-top woodpecker predators. In spring and summer, the larva eats and matures beneath the bark and finally pupates at summer’s end, emerging as an adult to begin the cycle again.

With a sharp knife you may be able to find the egg or larva just beneath the bark layer close to the incision. A clever little critter is the twig girdler, and a mighty tree, the hickory, to host it so quietly.

Considering the hickory is more than enjoying the color!

A forest of hickory is an autumn sight to behold. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

Several weeks ago, I was quizzed by a Citizen reader about a particularly dramatic small tree in a Carrboro yard along his daily route near the intersection of Hillsborough and North Greensboro streets. He described it as a small tree having orange miniature pumpkin-like fruits. I had to pause and think for a short while. “Oh, yes, I remember there is a small tree in that neighborhood that appears festooned with lots of little jack-o’-lanterns.”

It’s one of those eye-catching Japanese persimmons, Diospyros kaki, often simply called kaki. It is a small tree that bears orange, fleshy fruit, delicious when eaten fresh or used for jams, breads and puddings.

Though kaki is the most frequently cultivated persimmon species, I don’t think it is as much a delicacy as our native persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, a much taller tree, common in yards and along streets in our local neighborhoods.

The female, fruit-producing trees are easy to find right now by looking for the soft, ripe, quarter-size (sometimes larger), darkened, plum-like fruit on the ground beneath the tree. I began collecting fallen ripe persimmons beneath my favorite tree a month ago, before the recent frosts. Old-timers say it takes several frosts to ripen persimmons. But not any more. Perhaps shorter day light is the trigger. There are lots more on the tree. They’ll be dropping for several weeks more.

The Japanese persimmon in the garden of the nature sanctuary where I sometimes serve as a guide for school groups also has already produced soft ripe fruit.

Note well that you don’t want to taste the fruit of either of these two persimmons if they are hard to the touch. Just accept the “It’ll turn your mouth inside out!” description of anyone who has tasted an unripe one.

Last week, a group of third-graders helped me compare these two persimmons. We tasted a ripe Japanese persimmon growing in the garden and then walked over to a native persimmon growing along the wood’s edge. As tasty as that bigger Japanese variety is, those youngsters, without any prompting from me, showed a preference for the flavor of the native.

Our native has an almost cult-like following. As described in the Nov. 1, 2007 Flora (“Persimmon season”), folks who treasure persimmons will stake out their favorite tree(s) wherever they are and visit frequently to harvest, hoping other folks don’t know about their secret.

European settlers learned early from Native Americans that this little fruit, sometimes called possum fruit, was good raw or cooked and could be dried for storage. A Native-American word, “pasiminan,” means dried fruit. This fall I’m going to dry a batch to try as dried delicacies.

Medicinally, the persimmon was used extensively. I am particularly intrigued by the description of chewing the bark for heartburn.

Being a close kin to the tropical ebony tree, the heavy, dark-brown wood of native persimmon has been used for golf clubs, weaver’s shuttles and other items requiring hard, smooth-wearing wood.

Being mindful of how much we have learned from Native Americans, make note of the 14th annual American Indian Heritage Celebration taking place on Saturday, Nov, 21, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the N.C. Museum of History, across from the N.C. legislature on Jones Street in Raleigh. Dance, food, demonstrations, story-telling and crafts from North Carolina’s Native American tribes are well worth scheduling into your weekend.

Though smaller than Japanese persimmon, the flavor of native persimmon has created a cult-like following of admirers. Photo by Ken Moore

By Ken Moore

Remember that large genus of wildflowers in the aster (composite) plant family with the scientific name referring to some ancient king who thought one of the species was a poison antidote? Back in August, I described the many merits of boneset, Eupatorium perfoliatum, and more recently, two more Eupatoriums, flat-topped, blue flowered ageratum and the towering, feathery dog-fennel.

Please have patience as I indulge in describing another Eupatorium. I begin noticing it in early August, when the characteristic flat-topped inflorescences, the term for a plant’s flowering branch structure, begin bud formation. Single multi-stemmed plants or whole populations of them begin calling attention to themselves along the roadsides, where not in the path of frequent mowing.

Standing one to two feet tall, they look like puffy little clouds hovering just above the ground. Well, that’s the image I pull up whenever seeing them, and I enjoy weeks of roadside viewing as they gradually turn from pale-green to pure-white when they reach full flowering in September-October. Now as we move into the early weeks of winter, those plants are still attractive as grayish dried arrangements that last into the dead of winter. All three developmental stages of this plant are effective as a base or filler for flower arrangements.

This Eupatorium hyssopifolium, hyssopleaf Eupatorium, copies the leaf arrangement pattern of its namesake, the holy herb, hyssop. The short narrow leaves scattered up and down the stems usually have fascicles (tight clusters) of smaller leaves emerging from the leaf axils. I recall my delight decades ago when I learned to observe that “fascicled-leaves-along-the-stem” characteristic of this Eupatorium; until then they looked to me like any other roadside plant.

I remain in awe that plants like the whole group of Eupatoriums crowd so many tiny flowers into those variously structured inflorescences. It’s remarkable how many different insect pollinators are attracted to those flower heads. Our admiration should not stop with the flowers.

A closer look at the seed heads of those various Eupatoriums reveals, crowded together, thousands of single little seeds, little nutlets, called achenes by botanists. An even closer look with your hand lens, which I hope you always carry with you, will further reveal that each of those seeds are crowned with a ring of filament-like hairs.

These are the “parachutes” that carry those seeds aloft for wind dispersal. Now think about nature’s efficiency with this strategy. First of all, those seed plumes, so interlocked as they are, prevent all those seeds from being dispersed at once. You will notice that some of those seeds will hang on for weeks. That’s a plus for birds foraging during late fall and winter, and don’t be concerned for the plants; there are so many seeds produced that enough of them will gradually take flight on the winds to establish new plants near and far.

There are other Eupatoriums out there that we may not have noticed, but they are all being noticed by pollinators and seed-eating critters. And don’t fear, I won’t describe any more. I believe during the past few weeks, we’ve taken a closer look at the most engaging and useful of them.

Tiny black seeds are held in place for weeks by the delicately interlaced hair-like parachutes.

By Ken Moore

One of my favorite drives is west out of Carrboro on N.C. 54. Along the way are forest edges, fields and vistas across hilly terrain, beautiful miniatures of the grand mountain views that are four or more hours drive away.

With each drive, I usually discover something of interest not observed before. I’ve been waiting since about this time last year to share my discovery of an impressive sumac tree I noticed exactly 3.5 miles from the edge of town.

I glimpsed on a fence line on the left-hand roadside the brilliant fall color of what I thought was a sassafras tree. On my return drive, I remained alert to take a closer look and was surprised to realize that my sassafras was really a winged sumac.

Now, winged sumac, Rhus copallina, is by nature a medium-height, rhizomatous shrub. A single seedling plant can produce a vigorous clump simply by extending its shallow horizontal roots (rhizomes) in all directions. When you see an extensive display of it, you may be looking at a single plant. I very seldom see it above five or six feet in height, a condition certainly maintained by roadside mowing schedules that are a constant threat to nature’s efforts at self expression.

The specimen along that farmyard fence is the only winged sumac I’ve ever seen that could be described as a tree. Since the length of that fence is always neatly trimmed of vegetation, I have a hunch that the property owners are largely responsible for helping this particular sumac attain its tree stature. I have a thicket of winged sumac, and I’m inclined to see whether I can encourage a tree from it – that is, if I don’t have to spend much time pruning the rest of the thicket.

This time of year, I find myself appreciating the shining brilliant-red of winged sumac as unsurpassed of all the fall colors, and then I spy the brilliant reds of its cousin, the smooth sumac, Rhus glabra (see Flora, Aug. 30, 2007), a larger similar rhizomatous roadside shrub. I guess my favorite fall color is whatever I’m viewing at any given moment.

Smooth sumac is easily distinguished from winged sumac by its vertical, conical seed heads that are displayed well into the winter. Winged sumac seed clusters are curled, round shapes that tend to present a messy effect. Looking closely at the center line (the rachis) of the compound leaves of winged sumac reveals a narrow flattened leafy surface along the edges, hence the description, winged sumac. Staghorn sumac, Rhus typhina, seen only in our mountain regions, is a similar but even taller species. There are great photos and descriptions of all the sumacs in Fall Color and Woodland Harvests, described in last week’s Flora.

We learned long ago from Native Americans that a refreshing drink, not unlike lemonade, can be made from the fresh berries of all three of these native sumacs; medicinal teas and other decoctions were made from the stem and root bark.

Note the winged sumac’s rachis between the leaflets. Photo by Ken Moore

It’s fall, and we have a winter’s worth of exploring along Bolin Creek ahead of us. I took my own solitary preview walk last Sunday.

My favorite access begins at the well-marked trailhead in Wilson Park that enters the Adams Tract nature preserve. An uphill walk through mature piney woods leads on over the oak-hickory forest and down through the beech-maple forest to the edge of the creek. All along the way, I could not help but pause frequently to admire mighty specimens of pine, oak, tulip poplar, beech and maple, each with an interesting story to relate, if only we knew how to talk to trees.

Well-worn trails lead in all directions along the creek’s corridors and on up into the Carolina North trails. It’s a close-to-home adventure to see if you can get yourself lost in these hundreds of acres of connected forests. If you succeed, you are never far from a trail that leads to a road or adjacent residential community.

It was a difficult choice Sunday for me to abandon enjoying the colorful wildflowers and grasses of fields and roadsides to enter the darker world of the forest. I was rewarded in rediscovering the beauty of fall’s lively awakening in so many ways.

The presence of so many different types of fungi (mushrooms) hugging the forest floor and clinging to fallen and standing trees reminded me that my mushroom guide was of little help left unattended on an indoor bookshelf. I took extra time out to appreciate a clump of coral fungus, so appropriately named for its underwater look-alike. This particular one seemed affectionately accompanied by the leaf of a crane-fly orchid, newly emerged for its seasonal growth to take advantage of the winter sun soon to be streaming through the leafless forest canopy. Numerous coral fungi are scattered about the forest floor. Some are edible and some are poisonous, so, unless you are an expert, enjoy with your eyes, but don’t touch.

I was surprised to see a few flowers of the witch hazel already open. They usually wait until closer to December. The leaves are just beginning to take on their beautiful golden-yellow tints, and a lot of them sported those characteristic little witch’s hat-shaped insect galls perched on the leaf’s upper surface. You can always identify a witch hazel if you find those little witch’s hats, because that particular insect lays its eggs only on the leaves of witch hazel.

We are fortunate here in our Piedmont that fall’s awakening goes on and on for weeks. It’s as exciting as springtime, with something new to discover with each trek outdoors. A great companion to help you appreciate the diversity and brilliance of our local fields and forests is Fall Color and Woodland Harvests, an easy-to-use visual guide to tree colors and nuts and berries by C. Ritchie Bell and Anne Lindsey.

The little witch’s hat insect gall is a tell-tale mark of a witch hazel leaf. Photo by Ken Moore