Our Window on Nature

What more could you ask? Warm summer weather — a new moon (the darkest night) — and one of the most consistent meteor showers of the year. If you’re willing to give up a little sleep, this weekend should be a wonderful show.

On the night of August 12th and the morning of August 13th the Perseid meteor shower should reach its maximum, with the potential of over a meteor a minute. The display occurs as the earth passes through the debris trail left by the Swift-Tuttle comet.

Small meteors enter the earth’s atmosphere every day, but only during a meteor shower do enough appear that you can be sure of seeing them. We actually entered the edge of the Swift-Tuttle trail back in mid-July, so the number of shooting stars has been increasing nightly. If you can’t catch the featured event on Sunday night and/or Monday morning, there are still more meteors than usual just before and after that date.

On August 12th (Sunday) the show gets a slow start around 9:00 pm with what are called Earthgrazers. According to Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office these are “long, slow and colorful; they are among the most beautiful of meteors,” but you will probably only see several of them per hour.

The frequency of meteors keeps improving throughout the night, with the most concentrated portion of the shower occurring before dawn on Monday morning. Although some of the brightest meteors will be visible from urban locations, try to get away from city lights. Give your eyes about 20 minutes to adjust to the darkness, and then watch the darkest portion of the sky.

The photograph of the Perseid Meteor Fireball shown above was taken at Joshua Tree National Park by Wally Pacholka in 1999. Winner of both a Time Magazine and a Life Magazine “Picture of the Year” award, Wally has a spectacular web site featuring comet and meteor photography. Check it out at http://www.AstroPics.com/.

When we think of palm trees, we imagine tropical beaches and pineapples, and dancing girls shaking their hips to the rhythm of drums. Palms belong in Hawaii or Bali, or at least in the Florida Keys.

In California, however, native fan palms are surrounded by desert. Sound like a contradiction in terms? These California fan palm oases aren’t widespread, but rather are tiny pockets of vegetation, a carryover from a time when the entire area was blessed with a tropical climate.

Isolated though they are, you can still visit some of these palm oases on your next trip to the Southwest.

During the Miocene and Pliocene epochs, southern California, northern Baja, and western Arizona enjoyed warm and wet weather. Sunny skies still dominate those regions, but now water is limited to trickles and ponds. Beyond reach of the moisture, desert extends toward the horizon, giving life to a few mesquite trees, and patches of creosote bushes and bur sage. (Read the rest …)

Flagtail, marsh beetle, blackcap, water torch. Visit the shoreline of most lakes, rivers, marshes, and ponds, and you’ll see areas of these grasslike plants stretching as much as 10 feet high above the water. In some places they are called rushes, flags, or Cossack asparagus.

Names used by American Indians are just as descriptive: prairie chicken feathers, eye itch, and roof grass. Since the plant grows on nearly every continent and is native throughout the United States, this multiplicity of names is not surprising. Whether you call it candlewick, cat o’nine tails, or the more familiar cattail, the cattail plant is familiar to most people who venture outdoors.

Although we knew cattail marshes were a habitat for certain birds we chased with binoculars and a camera, we actually took a closer look at this familiar sight during our first year of full-timing. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say, that’s when we had our first taste of this interesting plant.

One of our favorite books of the period was Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons. It was our personal guide to eating our way across the country while avoiding fast-food restaurants. And it had an entire chapter on the edible cattail. In fact, Gibbons called it the “Supermarket of the Swamps.” (Read the rest …)

This country is not only peopled by immigrants, but it’s vegetated by them as well. A high percentage of the plants you see when traveling across the North American continent are actually non-natives.

The seeds of these first exotics, as they’re called, arrived right along with the explorers and colonists. Some were intentional imports; others weren’t. Grasses such as timothy, crabgrass, and ryegrass were used to feed cattle. Wild parsley and chickory were used for food, while foxglove, coltsfoot, and tansy served medicinal purposes. Other plants were brought for their beauty, in an effort to ease the loneliness of life in a new land.

A couple of centuries later, botanist J.M. Fogg found that 14 percent of the plants listed in Gray’s Manual of Botany - more than 1,000 species in all - were introduced.

Not all of these non-native species came as invited guests, of course. Many crossed the ocean attached to the clothes of the colonists or to the fur of their animals. In his book North With The Spring, naturalist Edwin Way Teale points out an example of how it can happen. (Read the rest …)

Last month I lost my keys. That didn’t bother me nearly as much as not having my most-used naturalist’s tool readily available. On my key ring I have a small ten-power magnifying glass.

When I’m outside I usually have my binoculars, I often have a camera, but I always have my keys and a way to examine whatever catches my attention. I think that particular magnifier has probably traveled in my pants pocket for at least 25 years.

What can you do with a magnifying glass? Have you ever seen the delicate hooks that hold a bird’s feather in it’s streamlined shape? Or tried to figure out how a tiny tree frog manages to stick to the outside of a sliding glass door?

From the miniature scales on a butterfly’s wing to the texture of the bark from a trailside tree, the world seen through a magnifying glass will reveal details that most will never see. Try it on your next outing and, like me, you’ll never leave home without one. (My keys were found and returned, magnifier included.)