More Lesser Celandine

Just when I thought my invasive species illness from the lesser celandine couldn't get any worse, I read this post from the "The-Grizzled-But-Still-Incorrigible-Scribe-Himself".  This plant is going to cover every floodplain in Ohio sooner than later.

Tom

When Plants go Wild

I returned to my old stomping grounds this afternoon, and to my foolishness, I was shocked to see how much more lesser celandine, Ranuncus ficaria, there was along the floodplain of the Olentangy River.  In this area alone, there were at least 30 virginia bluebell plants just two years ago.  Today?  There was ONE PLANT.  This species is such a nasty, agressive invader of floodplains, it just makes me sick.

Tom

Burning Bush, Winged Eunoymus

Sometime in mid November Megan, Weston,and I traveled to my parents' home, located about 120 miles Northeast of where we live in Columbus. The acidic clay soils of eastern Summit County are heaven for red maple and black cherry. That's mostly what you see in this photograph. Each time I visit their house, and take a look at the woods behind their grassy yard, I learn something, even though I spent countless hours there growing up.

This time I looked out into the woods and saw a small shrub with blazing red leaves. It stood out in contrast to the rest of the woods because all the other leaves had withered and fallen away.

This is a burning bush, Euonymus alata, which is an extremely common ornamental shrub. You can find this in most suburban yards throughout Ohio. It is native to Asia, and it would be a fantastic plant if it stayed where it was planted.

But it hasn't, and it shows up in natural areas. Birds transport seeds because they eat its bright red fruits. I've never seen this species in huge numbers, but it has escaped enough to be considered by some to be invasive. Recently, on the Ohio invasive plant list serve, there was a lengthy discussion about it. Many people, both in the garden trade and natural areas managers, were unaware that it is showing up in Ohio's woodlands. Although I've never seen it out-competing or dominating woods, I'm beginning to notice it more frequently.

I'm finding little shrubs along the Olentangy River that seem to be responding after the non-native bush honeysuckles are removed. I've seen them scattered occasionally throughout the woods of Highbanks Metropark just north of here. And now I found it in my parents backyard as a naturalized plant.

So how did it get in the tree? I plucked it out of the ground and hung it there. It's both a way to ensure the plant doesn't root again, and to let others know that something is going on with this plant. I've been know to pull woody invasives wherever I go and leave a trail of dangling shrubs in my wake.

Obviously, I can't do this in areas where an invasive species has completely taken over, but when there are a few individuals here or there, I encourage everyone to quickly yank non-natives from natural areas. I don't know if this species will become our next big problem. But I do know I'm now noticing it.

Take a look to see if you see it as well in the areas you frequent. Obviously, the bright red autumn leaves make it really stand out, but without leaves its fairly distinctive. Its branches have fairly distinct parallel greenish wings projecting outwards from the wood, hence the scientific name "alatus", which is Latin for "winged". Most likely, it will show up in woods that are not far from suburban areas.

And now back to the picture. I think that the perspective on this one is fairly tough. Although the root ball does look like a squirrel's nest high up in a tree, it was merely a few feet of the ground. I'm laying on my back, with Megan's camera (the Canon SX20is, which I'm darn impressed with, but that is another post), at full wide angle, to get this shot.

Oh yeah. When we bought our house, it came with a burning bush. I recently lopped off its branches, and I'm waiting for spring to dig the roots out of the ground. Although it was a great winter perch for birds, it had to go. Hopefully next spring, I'll fill the empty spot with a nice native spicebush.

Tom

In the Honeysuckle

Images taken November 29th, 2009.

Columbusites: Have you been spying all of these yellow leaved shrubs with bright red berries that are everywhere in our urban woodlands? Jim McCormac tells the story of one of our nastiest non-native invasive species, Amur Honeysuckle, right here.

What are the local nasty invasive species in your part of the world?

Tom

Gypsy Moths at Highbanks Metro Park

Spring in late June???

A unsolicited, rather interesting comment appeared on my blog several weeks ago, completely unrelated to the post subject on Carex.

"Just thought you might know about Highbanks Metro Park. I was walking there today and noticed that a few acres near the top paths across from the nature center seem to have lost all of their leaves. Have you seen this and do you know what is going on there? All the trees are bald in that section of the trail."

My reply: "Maybe Gypsy Moths?"

Well, surely, an outbreak of the non-native gypsy moths, have defoliated at least ten, if not closer to forty, acres of oak dominated forest southwest of the nature center.
On Saturday, June 27, Megan, Weston and I went to hike at Highbanks, and I wasn't quite ready for what we experienced. Megan perhaps described it best, as "a fairy land". We were walking through dark, shaded forest, slowly coming upon the defoliated tree area. We were greeted with not only bright sun and mostly naked trees, but also thousands of fluttering male gypsy moths. They weren't shy either, and had no problem landing on me as I photographed them.

A male gypsy moth

Female gypsy moths, flightless, with eggs

The ultimately gross pupae cases of the moths. Notice the silk- they were originally imported to Massachusetts for their silk producing abilities, escaped, and the rest is history.

A few ash trees were spared- the maples and oaks were not.

The park now has excellent signage that tells the whole story. Regular runners and hikers at the park seem unfazed by the creepiness that is a gypsy moth infestation. Next year, the park will be using GypCheck to limit damage. GypCheck is actually made from dead gypsy moths, and is currently the most environmentally friendly control method available.

Tom

Catawba Nights

Howdy all, are you ready for the weekend? Big day on Saturday for us at the Division of Natural Areas and Preserves, our annual Cranberry Bog open house, and we have 550 people signed up, with walkups sure to come as well. It makes for a long day, especially if it is hot and sunny.

Some of you have seen my TA Photography blog where I put some of my favorite images that I've recently taken. I've set that blog up to be a photo gallery- the images are much larger there. I just added a thirty second time exposure from our Lake Erie trip two weeks ago. Here's a sample, but it looks so much better just a little bigger and viewed on a black background. See it here.

Tom

Spread of the Giant Grass

Invasive Phragmites from Barbara Lucas on Vimeo.

Another great video produced by Barbara Lucas, this short film focuses on the non-native invasive Phragmites australis subsp. australis. Sometimes referred to as common or giant reed, many of us in "the biz" just call it Phragmites, pronounced frag-MY-tees. This plant is a wetland species, but will also grow on beaches and even wet, seeping hillsides- it doesn't need very much water. This is one plant that I've seen expand in my relatively short lifetime.

Also- There is a native phragmites that has been recently described and named Phragmites australis subsp. americanus. It too is mentioned in the video. Currently, this native grass is a state threatened species. I wrote and article detailing it in the 2007 Winter issue of Natural Ohio.

Tom

Garlic Mustard!

Garlic Mustard Identification and Control from Barbara Lucas on Vimeo.

Take a second to check out this video about Garlic Mustard, a nasty invasive plant here in eastern and midwest woodlands. Our natural resource managers spend time and money managing invasive plants- I think some tend to discount the threat of invasives, but this video by Wisconsin Family Forests puts it all out there. It humanizes invasives a little too much for my taste, but overall, it is very well done.

Tom

Wildflowers at Peak

Dutchman's Breeches, Dicentra culcullaria

Megan and I made a purchase that we've been wanting to make for a long time. We bought new bikes over the weekend. This evening we took them for a spin along the Olentangy bikeway, a trail that I've seen hundreds of times, as it runs just across the river from our usual areas where we explore the river. Even on the bike, the wildflower display was spectacular, both from native and non-native species. These images are from last Thursday, when the flowers were entering near peak. They'll only be around for a few more days, so if you live in central Ohio, be sure to get out soon to take in the floral wonderland!

Part of the views along the Olentangy include a rather nasty invasion of a non-native buttercup called lesser celandine. In parts of the floodplain where the river regular flows during high water, this fleshy leaved plant carpets the ground with its yellow blooms. It is no wonder why it was planted as a garden plant. It must have made a fantastic ground cover in any yard, and now, it has escaped to natural areas.

Lesser Celandine, Ranunculus ficaria

The Final HDR Image- Sanibel Sunrise

And here is my final HDR image, created from the five images that I posted yesterday.

Pretty cool, isn't it? Notice how the people walking on the beach have been mostly removed from the final image. The software isn't perfect, as you can still see a their faint outline, also called ghosting. Still, without a tripod, and only balancing the camera on a railing, the Photomatix software did a fairly good job aligning the images. The Australian pine tree in the upper left was waving in the breeze, and in the final image, it looks as if I took this shot using a long exposure with motion blur.

The Australian pine (Casuarina equisetifolia) is a nasty invasive in Florida. There are so many of these trees there, that most visitors would just pass them off as an interesting part of the native flora. But they are a non-native invasive, and they grow quickly, replacing native dune vegetation. I first had experience with this plant when I was traveling around Australia in 1999 with Hiram College.

So, have you tried to create your first HDR image? It can be addicting--beware. I have a great guide called the HDRI handbook that I'm reading now, and it comes with software and image demonstrations. I found it in the catalog in the Columbus Metropolitan Library, and to show you how popular HDR is becoming, I had to wait three months before it became available. Who knows, future cameras may be engineered to take pictures without any post-processing to create these incredible images. For now, it takes a little bit of work, but I think the final results are worth it. Just another tool in the bag of the nature photographer.

Update: After Gale suggested I clone out the sunspot, I gave it my best shot using Paint.net. I am by no means an expert, but my cloning doesn't look all that bad! Now if I had photoshop...just think of the possibilities!




Tom

How to Create Fantastic Digital Images that Will Wow Your Friends

Notice anything interesting about this group of photos? I took them in succession, but at different exposure values using the exposure compensation feature with my Canon Digital Rebel XTI. The first image is two "stops" underexposed, the second is one stop underexposed, the third image is what the camera's computer thought was an ideal exposure for this scene, and the fourth and fifth images were overexposed by one and two stops, respectively.

The bottom line is that before digital photography, you had to choose one exposure and stick with it. Especially when using slide film. Which image would you have chosen to best represent the scene? More detail in the sky, or more detail in the plants in the foreground?

The bottom line today is that with digital imaging, you don't have to make this choice anymore. There's a technology, and an art really, known as HDR imaging that solves this age old problem and really puts digital photography over the top.

How did I found out about HDR? Upon joining FLICKR last fall, I was noticing some incredibly interesting images that looked like they were taken in real life, but had the lighting and look of computer animation. Images like this one and this one.

After doing some research, I found out that these fantastical looking images were called HDR, or high dynamic range images. These images, are in fact, a compilation of differentially exposed digital camera photographs all compiled into one image, in order to fully express the range of dark and light tones in a scene. Dynamic range is simply the difference between the lightest light and the darkest dark in a scene. Today's digital cameras don't capture a very wide dynamic range (neither did slide film, print film's range was slightly wider).

Have you ever noticed that your camera can't capture a sunset very well? Even though you might see color in the foreground of the scene you are viewing, the camera isn't able to pick that up. Or if your camera sees the foreground, then the sunset is washed out and really bright? Let's look closer at the first and the last image.





High dynamic range imaging looks to eliminate that problem that I have so crudely illustrated above. The goal is to present an image that more accurately represents what the eye sees rather than the camera sensor. After putting together an HDR image, you go through a process called tone mapping, and voila, you've got a pretty darn cool looking image.

And producing a high dynamic range is quite easy. Making it look really good is something that I'm still trying to figure out. I have seen some incredibly realistic looking HDR landscape images that don't look fantastical or computer generated.

There are several free downloadable software packages out there to get you started on the HDR path. I've been using Photomatix. What else do you need? Well, a digital camera with some type of exposure compensation (most Canon cameras have this, even the bottom of the line models), and preferably a tripod, but this is optional. I didn't use a tripod to capture the above images, and the Photomatix software can align a series of images for you if you shoot with a steady hand. It even has a feature to remove "ghosting" from the images, usually things like moving people, which certainly was helpful for me in this beach scene of Sanibel Island.

So, you're probably thinking, "OK, I'm ready to see the final product". Well, for that, I might draw this out just a little bit longer! I'll post my final image tomorrow. But for now, try going outside and taking a few image series, download Photomatix, and give HDR a try!

Tom

Like nature photographs? Subscribe to my feed, it is free!

Spring Proceeds Despite the Cold Weather

My outdoor thermometer read 52 at 5:00 p.m. this evening when I arrived home from work. Not exactly bone chilling, but we've only had two spring days break 60 degrees this spring. Last year at this time, I was photographing the open blooms of wildlflowers in Kenney Park. This year, nothing is blooming, yet. We'll have one warm day, and up will come a floral bonanza. Still, it is difficult to wait. The two most notable green plants popping up along the Olentangy this spring are Allium canadense (as pictured above), wild onion, and the non-native invasive Ranunculus ficaria, or lesser celandine.

This plant is up in its full glory, and it will be only a matter of days before its yellow blossoms carpet the floodplain. Plants that make it to invasive status usually exclude all other plants from growing and become ridiculously dense. Lesser celandine is no exception-look how it carpets the floodplain along the river. It really prefers this habitat, as it has not made its way up onto the stream terrace adjacent to the river.



At work I'm increasingly becoming involved with the management of non-native invasive species. Its a challenge, but knowing the invasive non-natives in your area, and avoiding planting these species is extremely important. You can get more information about Ohio's Invasive Plants at the Division of Natural Areas & Preserves invasive species information page.

Tom

BRRRRRRR...Madison is really cold!

-1 Degree. -11 Windchill. Boy do they make it cold here in Wisconsin. Why haven't we figured out a way to bottle up that cold air and pump it back into our houses during summer?

Lessons from this trip:

#1. Don't fly through Chicago, no matter how much you like to see rows and rows of 777's and 747's (i'm a airliner buff). Everyone else I talked to who connected in Cleveland, Detroit, or Minneapolis to get to this conference actually landed at the Madison airport. I did not. United wasn't able to get me here Thursday night and instead of staying at Megan's Uncle's house until the next morning when I did have a confirmed flight, I actually hopped on a bus that brought me to Madison three hours later. Crazy I know, but it was only a one block drag (I have my rollerboard suitcase) across the snowy sidewalk to my hotel.

#2. It is darn cold in Madison Wisconsin. It is ice-immediately-forms-on-your-nose-hairs cold. To my friends in High School, yes, you know how cold it really is here in Madison. Colder than a _______. I'll let them fill in the blank. Usually you think of snow as being wet. Not here-- the snow has a texture similar to styrofoam since it is so cold and so dry.

#3. Lakes. I finally got to see Lake Mendota, made famous to me in my limnology class at Miami University. It seemed like every scientific paper I read on lakes was either completed on Lake Mendota or compared their results to a study of Lake Mendota. I can see why the University is so famous for lake studies, since the campus is smack dab right against the lake. I even saw a bored looking college student shuffling snow around on the ice this afternoon as I was listening to a presenation.

#4. Madison is great little town. A jammed packed little town. Since the town sits on an isthmus between two lakes, space is at premium. Many of the buidlings in the area, including my hotel,are 6-8 stories tall. There don't seem to be any skyscrapers here either. State street is lined with cutesy boutiques, ethnic restaurants, and your typical college student stores--outdoor gear, college sweatshirt joint, bike shop, camera store, and art supply place. Oh yeah, and a cool looking old time movie theater.

So that's all I have, the conference has been great so far, I've gained quite a bit of insight into what other states are doing as far as mapping invasive plants go. I feel like today was a crash course to catch me up with the past 10 years or so of things that have been going on, and my brain was a bit frazzled. A nice walk down State Street in the -1 degree temperatures took some of the edge off. Did I mention it was cold here?

Tom

Red Eared Slider, Trachemys scripta elegans

I haven't been alive long enough to remember the grass green, quarter sized turtles that used to be sold at "five and dime stores." Larger juvenile and adult sizes of these turtles are still sold today at pet shops. Over the years, thousands if not millions have been released into the wild, and almost everywhere I go, I see a red eared slider. In Ohio, it is thought that we may have had some northern populations disjunct from its typical native North American range in the Mississippi River system, but now, you can see them in many lakes and rivers across the state. Other countries, and some states, like California, consider them an invasive species. I've not read anything that suggests they are reproducing in Ohio, or if they are outcompeting native species for food and basking spots, but they are definitely present here in central Ohio.

I was inspired to do this writeup after seeing a dozen or so sliders in Manhattan's Morningside park, then this past Saturday, I observed and photographed a large individual in the Olentangy River. Then on Sunday, Megan I saw another slider at Slate Run Metropark.

Manhattan is a long way away from the Mississippi drainage, but this pond at Morningside Park was full of red eared sliders

A loner.

Stacked up on a log

Looking for handout?

Why are people worried about this turtle in other countries? Well, they can outcompete native species for both food and basking spots. Here we have a native common map turtle and the red-eared slider in the Olentangy from this past Saturday.



And here is yet another slider from Slate Run Metropark, just south of Columbus. I'm guessing this one was "dumped" into this small pond, just off the parking lot, by someone that just didn't want the hassle of keeping a pet turtle. The giveaway is its shell. When turtles are raised in the wild, their shells grow very smoothly and don't have any "pyramiding" on their shell. Look closely at this turtle's shell, and you can see how each scute (section of the shell) is raised somewhat.



I guess the point here is to really think hard before you consider purchasing a red eared slider as a pet. There are plenty out there to adopt, and please, don't release these animals into the wild. They are now considered an invasive species in Europe, Asia, and Australia!