Equisetum

Tuesday, 26 March 2013.   I went for a walk today hunting for equisetum, or horsetail. In the Naturalists’ Training Course meeting tomorrow I’m to present on a species of it, Equisetum pratense, or Meadow horsetail, one of the seven species found here at KSR—that’s half the number of species known worldwide! I didn’t know, till I read in our text, there was more than a single extant species of horsetail, though it’s long been a plant I like. But the species I know is, I think, Equisetum hyemnale, Rough horsetail or Scouring rush—the one with stiff green stems, some with cone-like tips, that you spy alongside wooded paths or at the edges of ponds.

Here’s a photograph I took last August of a horsetail I saw here.

I’ve liked the plant, without knowing much about it, except that it’s been around for a long time. I used to take my daughters to the Royal Ontario Museum 30 years or so ago, to the old dinosaur gallery. Several dinosaurs were shown roaming through landscapes that included horsetails, some as large as trees, and I was startled and awed to discover that a form of those huge plants still existed.

The horsetails are vascular plants (that means they have a circulation system, similar to veins, that delivers nutrients between leaves and roots) allied to ferns, and like ferns they reproduce by spores. The stems we see are only a small part of the plant, for they grow up from perennial rhizomes. The rhizomes allow them to spread underground and, as I understand it, some large stands of equisetum are (like stands of trembling aspen) really a single plant. These stems are the primary organ for photosynthesis, since the plant has only relic leaves. I know that from the text – to look at a horsetail you’d think it has no leaves at all. The stems are interesting in another way, too – they can be either sterile or fertile. The production of spores is complex and I don’t grasp it yet, but I’m working on it.  

Meadow horsetail, the one I’m to present on, is described as “a delicate and airy plumed horsetail of the cool north” (and how lovely is that?) at:

http://www.rook.org/earl/bwca/nature/ferns/equisetumpra.html

Its other common names are Shade horsetail and Shady horsetail. Its Latin name, Equisetum pratense is derived from the Latin equus, for ‘horse,’ seta, meaning ‘bristle’ or ‘animal hair’; and partum, meaning ‘meadow’. It can be found in moist woods, thickets and meadows, and flourishes in partial shade to full sun. It produces fertile stems first, without chlorophyll; once the spores are shed (between April and early July) it turns green and grows branches. Its stems are deciduous, dying back in the winter.

Given that last fact, the horsetails I found on my walk today are definitely not meadow horsetail. I went back to the path where I’d photographed that horsetail with its spider web, sliding a bit over the snow—it’s gotten slippery as it’s melting--here are the photos I took:

It spread out quite a way up the slope, and its stems have definitely not died back though some of them are broken or bent from the weight of the snow.

I’ve learned meadow horsetail grows with whorled branches that are often horizontal or drooping, and usually with single stalks rising from the rhizome. It doesn’t produce a large number of fertile stems, but reproduces primarily through its rhizomes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it—or if I have I didn’t recognize it as a horsetail. Come spring I’ll have to see if I can fine it here at KSR.

There are some good images of it at: http://www.florafinder.com/Species/Equisetum_pratense.php

But spring is actually making itself felt here at Jokers Hill, though the snow is still in the woods. Walking today I heard and saw water running everywhere. Red-winged blackbirds are calling—yesterday I heard a robin and mourning doves. And most of the fields are bare of snow.  

Just look at those blues!

More Creatures ...

Monday, 25 March 2013. On Saturday afternoon I saw the National Ballet’s performance of Crystal Pite’s Emergence-- not for the first time-- and again I was blown away by it. Pite’s ballet uses the full company to create an extraordinary sense of hive life. The dancers, part of the time masked, and in identical costumes, move within a commissioned score by Owen Belton that combines electronic music with sounds of humming and buzzing.

I came out of the theatre afterwards humming and buzzing myself. I felt Pite had taken me into a different form of consciousness, and for a little while I’d come close to experiencing something of the world the way insects might do—or maybe what I'd felt were the insect possibilities (traces?) we humans harbour.

Though Pite was inspired by Steven Johnson’s Emergence: the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, the insects the dancers conjured most vividly were bees, not ants. And what insect more suitable for dancers after all, since bees are known to dance directions to where pollen and nectar are to be found.

Check this out to see how the dancing works-- and pardon the Volvo commercial at the beginning-- http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/apr/05/dancing-bees-show-direction-distance

The piece opens with a dancer (partnered) emerging from an egg or cocoon—stretching her limbs awkwardly, collapsing, then struggling up again. Then it gives way to a swarm of dancers who are masked and assume a stooped posture on hands and feet, bug-like in shape, and moving in ways that made me think of film footage I’ve seen of bees working at various tasks. The demands the choreography places on the dancers are high—they frequently move across the stage in awkward positions, their gestures reaching and angular.

The National Ballet has posted an excerpt from Emergence on UTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG5tnVf6z_8  The clip gives you a good taste of the sound but doesn’t include the more insect-like parts of the dance, so you’ll just have to take my word for it—or watch for it to come round again. 

Here’s what The Globe’s dance critic, Paula Citron, wrote about the work when it was first performed in 2009*:

“The glory of the piece is Pite’s myriad insect imagery rendered in startling physicality. But more than that, her ability to conjure up parallels in human behaviour is what gives Emergence its psychological depth.”

* For the whole review go to: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/theatre-reviews/the-four-seasons-and-emergence-a-clever-pairing-by-the-national-ballet/article10075204/

Speaking of creatures ...

Not much time to post, but I want to get these images up -- Yesterday afternoon when I went to the research barn about 3:30, I found tracks in the fresh snow. Something had wandered back and forth in the drive in front of the barn, kind of ambling, looking about. I reckon it was a crow -- and I photographed its tracks.

Earlier in the winter I also took photographs of other tracks: rabbit, I think, and deer. 

There are lots of deer tracks, and I must try to get a better photograph of them. I saw a trail yesterday when I walked, but the tracks had been half filled in by the blowing snow. However, last night as I was eating dinner six deer picked their way across my view. Utterly lovely. 

But that's not it for creatures -- I also photographed this mysterious stuff -- 

After consulting with Robin Marushia ... might it be a fungus? ... the conclusion is: SCAT ... likely coyote scat. The animal appears to have been eating fruit and/or vegetables ... a vegetarian coyote? 

A Thought about Metaphor

Caught my eye ...

Metaphor … a figure of speech, my dictionary says … and is that almost a metaphor itself? … the image conjured in my mind a human outline (figure) dancing among or perhaps with words … Though it might I suppose also be a number tangled up with words, depending on where your mind goes first.

The dictionary goes on to say the figure of speech that is metaphor is one “in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison as in ‘a sea of troubles.’” But the nature of the comparison is interesting since it doesn’t imply simply likeness but skips immediately to identity. My troubles are a sea, one whose stormy waves threaten to carry me off, to drag me under.

It’s in this way that I think of metaphor as enacting a moment of metamorphosis, that process of transformation in which something is radically changed in form. A caterpillar rests in its silken cocoon and when it wakes and emerges it has become a butterfly or moth. A tadpole darting about in the water, evading predators of all kinds, gives up its tail for legs and becomes a frog.

With a good metaphor for an instant one thing becomes another, often something to which it bears no actual material resemblance. My troubles aren’t a literal sea washing up with its undertow, but they feel like they are rising around me and some days they make it hard to breathe; they are an emotional sea. We use the processes we see in the world around us to make sense of ourselves, our feelings, our experiences.

But I’m wondering if there aren’t also material metaphors—if the trick objects have of suddenly looking like something else, something alive for instance, isn’t a form of metaphor … the way our imaginations leap ahead of our perceptions. A few times walking at Jokers Hill I’ve found myself encountering “creatures” – not just in the woods, but also in the lab. Is it a trick the eye plays, to see something that isn’t there in what is? Or is it the objects themselves winking at us, saying we don’t always know what’s in front of us?

Here's another lurker in the woods.

And the lab is full of eyes ... 

watching whoever is watching them ... 

Another sign of spring

March 8, 2013.
Though I woke to fresh snow this morning--the trees heavy with it, the car covered in white plush--the days are stretching out now and growing milder. That early morning snow has slumped and is running away in trickles. 

There's more light each day. For me it's particularly noticeable in the evenings. Below are some photographs I took last night between 6:20 and 6:45. It's not so long ago that it was completely dark by then. 

Here's how the sky looked as twilight finally settled down and I headed back to my house.  

Back at Jokers Hill …

March 7, 2013. Things have changed at Jokers Hill while I was in the south. My last day here at the very end of January it looked like spring was around the corner. The fields behind the research barn were completely free of snow as you can see from this photograph.

The sun was bright that day and gave me the opportunity to shoot a self-portrait, my shadow stretching across the grass.

me and my computer bag, not a bustle worn in front 

Though it was chilly and windy the sky was patched blue and white and I remember it felt good to walk, and easy, the ground hard underfoot and clear of snow. But snow fell in February, quite a hit of it in fact, and I’ve come back to lots of white on the ground and a white winter light today. But it’s not cold, the skiff of snow that accumulated on the car overnight has melted and what’s underfoot feels punky.

I came up briefly last weekend for a walk around with my family, and to check out what I needed by way of food. Saturday afternoon the wind was brisk, and we huddled into our jackets. That bare field had fallen back into its winter self.

Snow was heaped like boulders where the road had been ploughed. It must have been quite crusty and hard, perhaps there'd been some rain or at least shifts in temperature as well.

In spite of the snow and cold, things are stirring at Jokers Hill. Even on that cold Saturday afternoon walk, signs of a change were present in the increased colour of the willows. And we saw a Pileated woodpecker!

John’s hibiscus are flourishing. They made us warm just to look at-- but it was also nice to spend a few minutes in that greenhouse-feeling room. 

Yesterday afternoon I went to the Naturalists' Training Course session on fungi and lichens, and while we were outside scraping lichens off fences and trees to look at under the microscope, two Pileated woodpeckers flew over. We heard them call, and then, more impressively, their incredibly loud hammering on trees. It sounds like a huge drum. More on the fascinations of lichen in another post.