Lycopodium and Cyclops

On my last walk up to Shannondale Springs WMA I took a different direction and went just a little further than I normally do.

In doing so I found a couple of surprises. The first was lycopodium, I have not seen it in this section of the WMA before so it was a pleasant surprise.

It was just a small bit but I found it interesting because I had just been reading about lycopodium in Bernd Heindricks book The Trees in My Forest. He discusses the plants growth habit with their need for sun light. A few weeks ago a couple of us found lots of it further on up the mountain and what was interesting with those patches was that it was only on one side of the creek or on one side of the fire road.

Lycopodium is from the Greek “lukos”, wolf and “podion", diminutive of pous, foot. They are a genus of clubmosses, also known as ground pines or creeping cedar. They don’t have flowers but rather reproduce sexually by spores. They also are distributed through rhizomes.

The spores are famous for their flash burning properties and were used in early flash photography. I haven’t tried it yet but I have read that if you have a little pile of spores and put a match on it the match will just burn out but if you have a match and blow some of the spore into the flame they will flash. Oxygen is needed to make them burn.

The other surprise was a vernal pool full of Cyclops. They were orange and rather large for a microscopic animal. I could actually see then from a standing position. Here is one resting on a rock under the water.

At first I wasn’t sure what they were so I scooped up one and took this photo of it in the cap of the vial. They are freshwater crustaceans related to lobsters and shrimp. They are about 2-3 mm long with one eye in the middle of its head, thus the common name Cyclops. Here is a close up view where you can see the eye.

Plants and other green stuff in the pond sample

In order for my pond sample to be healthy I included some green stuff to provide oxygen. I had no idea what they were at the time but they were green so I figured, like vegetables on my plate, they are good to include.

Lemna minor (Lesser Duckweed)

The floating tiny Lilly pad looking plants are Duckweeds from the Lemnaceae family. They float on the surface of the water with a single root hanging down.

When I collected the water from Altona Marsh, my jar and hand was covered with them. I have seen them so thick on some ponds that you cannot see the water below. In situations like that they shut out the light and the plants below die along with the herbivorous insects that feed on them. Yet, they can also be a good tool for filtering and cleaning water. From what I read there is still a lot of research going to find ways to use them to clean up the environment.

I think what I have in my sample is Lemna minor (Lesser Duckweed). The common name Duckweed comes from observing ducks feeding on these tiny plants. They are high in protein, more than soybeans and are eaten by people in some cultures. Since they stick so well to my fingers I imagine that they stick well to ducks feet and are thus transported from pond to pond.

Another plant I think I have identified in the water is a Liverwort called Riccia fluitans. They grow just below the surface as you can see here. The branched thallus is darker green and thicker than the duckweed. They will also grow on damp soil and in that case, according to Ann Morgan (Field Book of Ponds and Steams), they can be reddish or purplish. Her book was written in 1930 so I wouldn’t swear by it but you can bet that the next time I go to Altona Marsh I will be looking.

Riccia fluitans

A third plant I have in the jar, I believe is a green alga species in the genus Chara called Chara vulgaris. What I’m talking about is the plant that has a defined stem and a whorl of leaf like structures along the stem as pictured below.

Chara vulgaris

There are lots of algae in the jar as well. The long stringy algae might be Zygnema species.

Zygnema species

Desmids are green algae cells that are often found in bogs similar to Altona Marsh where I found these. This crescent-shaped one is a Closterium.

Closterium

Below are some other shapes of algae that I found. Even though I don’t know what they are now I find them totally fascinating to look and loads of fun to find.

You can see some Diatoms in the photo above as well as algae.

Cacapon State Park in January

We drove down form the Blue Ridge Mts., over Sleepy Creek Mt. and stopped at the base of Sideling Ridge. We crossed through three watersheds; first the Shenandoah, then the Opequon and finally into Sleepy Creek Watershed. All three eventually run to the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. Trillium is discovering her ecological address and how the watershed is an important factor, so it was especially interesting and made the journey more personal. Cacapon State Park has two lakes – one for fishing and one for swimming. Our trail took us up to this fishing lake that was almost frozen over.

You can see the Oriskany sand mixed in with the grass. It looks like left over snow but it is really the sand deposits from the common sandstone in the area. It reminds me a little of the white sand in the Gulf of Mexico I used to play in when we vacationed in Panama City, Fla. But this sand is coarser.

We speculated how that branch came to rest on the ice.

And wondered how these interesting ice shapes were made. Our conclusion was that they were pretty to look at and they reminded us of all sorts of things.

I stopped for a moment to scoop up a small water sample with algae to examine later under my microscope.

I was having trouble getting the right white balance on my camera so the color is not quite right in some of these.

Two kinds of algae were present and some interesting diatoms.

When we left the lake side Trillium noticed the partially eaten pine cones. Our conclusion was deer browse since they were on the lower limbs and there was deer scat nearby.

She also noticed pine cones on the ground that had been eaten like fresh Eastern Shore sweet corn. Nothing but the cobs were left. There were several on the ground and it looked like the beginnings of a red or flying squirrel midden. Gray squirrels don’t eat that far down to the core.

Our other interesting sighting was Fall Cankerworm Moths (Alsophila pometeria) flying around the oak trees. They are part of the Inchworm Family (Geometridae).

Visit other interesting blogs featuring water at Watery Wednesday.

Whelk Eggs

While I was at Assateague Island National Seashore Visitor Center I spotted a small magnifying glass that was focused on some tiny Whelk shells. Next to it was one of those egg cases you often see on the shore. They look like tan quarters strung together and make a sound when you shake them. Now I knew those were the egg cases of Whelks but for some reason I thought the rattle came from each of the disks hitting each other. Well, was ever I wrong, the rattle is from tiny unhatched baby whelk shells inside. I asked the Park Ranger if I could have one of the disks and she tore off one for me. Yes!

This photo from Wikipedia. The other photos I took.

So I brought it home, open it up and poured out the little shells. A lot of them were broken and looked like little shards of glass but a few were still recognizable.

I placed them under my dissecting scope for a better look.

Here is what I found. They are so tiny yet almost perfectly shaped. They are also almost transparent. I just can’t imagine how they could possibly survive in the ocean, yet they do.

Here is what Wikipedia had to say:

“Mating and egg laying occur during the spring and fall migration. Internally fertilized eggs are surrounded by a transparent mass of albumen, a gel-like material, and are laid in protective flat, rounded egg capsules joined to form a paper-like chain of egg cases, commonly called a "Mermaid's Necklace". On average each capsule contains 0-99 eggs, with most strings having 40-160 capsules. After laying their egg cases, female knobbed whelk will bury one end of the egg case into the substrate, thus providing an anchor for the developing fertilized eggs and preventing the string of egg cases from washing ashore where it would dehydrate. Fertilized eggs emerge as juvenile knobbed whelks approximately 4 mm in length.”

See other interesting critters at Camera Critter.

Discovering Moss

My nature writing book group has been reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses and last weekend we decided to go on our own moss walk. I knew where to locate a variety of mosses but not what species they were. The five of us gathered along the Shenandoah River in the Shannondale Springs Wild Life Management Area (SSWMA) parking lot. Right off the bat we found cold bees sitting on wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia) a member of the Asteraceae (Aster family). They were waiting for the air to warm up and to begin sipping nectar and doing the important job of pollination.

Long-tongued bumblebees along with butterflies, wasps and flies visit wing stems. It is also a host plant for Silvery Checkerspot butterflies (Chlosyne nycteis).

The common name came from the side wings on the stems. Once you see you will most likely remember the common name.


Another flower we found at the edge of the parking lot was White Campion. Trillium remarked that she remembers this common name because it looks like it is carrying a pack of supplies for a CAMPing trip at the base of the flower. I thought that was a good little trick to help remember. I thought of the BBC mystery series Campion adapted from the writing of Margery Allingham that I love to watch. He would always place one in his lapel.

Our final destination was the Rolling Ridge Foundation, next to SSWMA, where we set up a table and small portable microscope. We found about 10-15 different species of moss. With hand lens and the microscope we marveled at the different structures of each one.

Broom Moss – Dicranum scoparium

Fern Moss --Thuidium

I was particularly impressed with one that had twisted peristome and brought a sample home to look under my more powerful scope. I think it is in the family Tortula but I am not certain.

Peristome is a combination of the Greek words peri, meaning around and stoma, meaning mouth. So in mosses there is a little cap like an elf’s cap that is attached to the tip of the operculum (the brown stems that shoot up from the moss). When the spores are mature that tip falls off and you can see the opening called the stoma. If you look closely with a hand lens you can see that the opening is surrounded by peristome with teeth. Most of the teeth are short but in the case of the Tortula they were long and twisted. Way cool.

Down by the creek I spotted a female walking stick. It was the first female I have ever seen and had it not been walking I surely would have missed it. 

We also found lots of funnel web weavers (see Trilliums Travels) and a few mushrooms.

On the way back to the car a stick with weird insect stuff was brought to my attention. I brought it home to get a better look and I’m guessing they are Woolly Aphids a member of the Aphibidae family in the order Hemiptera.

It was a joy to spend the morning with fellow Master Naturalist making discoveries in our neck of the woods.

Bubbles up close

These are bubbles as seen through my compound microscope.

It just goes to show that even the ordinary can look beautiful when looked at closely.

Look at more Monochrome Weekly photos here.