09 June 2012

A battered Buckeye says "YOLO"


I recently sat down at the computer for a blogging session, and after my first post I encountered an essay about the overuse of the phrase "YOLO" in social media.  At that moment I looked away from the computer and saw that it was a gloriously beautiful Midwestern day, so I logged off and went for a walk.

My destination was the Prairie Moraine Park, a 160-acre preserve near Madison subdivided for parallel use by human hikers and free-running dogs.  I walked a 1.5-mile loop without encountering another human - not bad for a site so near to a major metropolitan area.

The first butterfly to greet me was the battered Common Buckeye above, an uncommon-but-not-rare visitor to our state.  This fellow appears to be in the late stages of a challenging life; the colors are starting to fade and flake off from his wings, and he has several notches where the beaks of birds have managed to take away only part of his wings. 


Fresh specimens of this species have much brighter coloration on the dorsum of their wings, as shown by this copulating pair I photographed last year (the underside is more camouflaged, with the prominent eyespots hidden).

As I turned a corner of the trail further on, this magnificent oak came into view:


I'm no judge of the age of trees, but the girth of the trunk at my waist level was such that it would take four adults to reach around it, so it must be several hundred years old.

It seems to me that an appreciation of trees doesn't come until one reaches adulthood - perhaps older adulthood.  As a youngster, one's attention re the natural world is drawn toward insects and flowers and agates and shells on the beach, but trees are just part of the background.  It's when you get older that your attention gets drawn to the magnificence of trees.

There were more butterflies that afternoon - about ten species all told, most of whom were moving quickly seeking mates and nectar and not willing to sit for a portrait.  I finally tracked a brilliant orange fritillary to her resting place on the margin of the woods -


Fritillaries are hard for me to tell apart in the field.  This photo showed the "wide, light band" (arrow) on the underside of the hindwing that identifies this one as a Great Spangled Fritillary.

There will be more of these halcyon days this summer, when the lure of hiking (and the demands of more prosaic activities like repainting the deck) will draw me away from the blog.  Old-timers here know to scale back the frequency of visits to TYWKIWDBI in midsummer.

8 comments:

  1. The tree may not be too old. Growing out in the open like that it might gain a quarter of an inch in radius each year or half an inch in diameter. So maybe an inch of diameter for every two years. That would give you 7' in diameter in 170 years or a circumference of 28'. Does that sound plausible?

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    1. Maybe. I just don't know, because the rate would probably also be climate-dependent. At our latitude we have a rather short growing season between last and first frosts. One site I found from Great Britain said 20' circumference = 400 years. I don't know what it is here in Wisconsin. I could look it up, I suppose...

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  2. I admit I hadn't run across the "Yolo" thing at all, and was perplexed when I found this. Funny though.

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  3. I'd be interested in hearing more about the tree aging process. . . I know you can tell by rings . . . But the horror of the thought! I hope nobody or nothing harms this beauty in the future. I've always been fascinated by trees and anything huge and old. Good thing you took pictures! Many of those old trees that I had planned to photograph here in NJ, met their demise before I got to it. Lesson learned. Take camera! Great shots and observations!

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    1. "I know you can tell by rings . . . But the horror of the thought!"

      My understanding is that a core can be taken from a tree by drilling from the surface to the center, without hurting the tree or causing any more damage than driving a nail into the side would.

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  4. That sure is a beautiful Oak tree.

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  5. Here is a young woman making it her business to travel the world documenting the oldest living things. The poor thing must have gotten an obese trust fund...

    Anyway, she's having some good adventures and putting together a photo collection of some remarkable organisms.

    http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/spanning-seas-species-and-centuries/

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