100 Species Challenge #70

Specimen #70 Serviceberry

Amelanchier arborea

AKA Shadbush, Juneberry, Saskatoon

The fruit has a crown colored the same as the fruit. It has no poisonous look-alike. When I saw Kay write that she had Juneberries, I remembered that my youngest and I had tasted the juice of what could have been the same thing the day before. And two days prior to that, I sat on my SIL's deck trying to figure out what red berries the birds in her backyard were eating across the fence at the neighbors. I think it had to be Juneberries. 

Off to research. Yes, I had been seeing Serviceberry trees.

I read that Serviceberry was the tree's name because the flowers of the tree emerge around the time of Easter services. And that Shadbush was its other name because it bloomed during the shad's migration upstream. (see Wildman Steve Brill) Juneberry came because the berries come in June. But Saskatoon? I have no idea about its origins.

On my bike ride home from picking our Serviceberries (which were baked into muffins), I detoured onto a neighboring street and counted four of these trees in front yards. All with birds feasting on the berries. My oldest and I find these fruits much easier to harvest than mulberries. 

The tree is pretty 'undercover' if you ask us. The leaf is just a leaf -- not crazy-shiny, not a distinctly different color than other trees, etc. It's finely toothed and oval.

The tree is only distinguishable when it's in flower or fruit. It's in the center of the image. Not very special looking.

100 Species Challenge Specimen #68

Specimen #68 Wild Geranium
Geranium maculatum

Photos by me, in town

This flower is a spring ephemeral. We see it frequently in May. Sometimes they are called crane bills because the seed pod's shape. However, if you are not familiar with cranes, this is really not helpful. Do you think they resemble geraniums that you find on folks' front porches?

Mulberry, continued

Thought I'd follow up on the milky sap. We visited a mulberry tree in the neighborhood school's yard. You can see that my thumbnail didn't get completely clean from picking mulberries earlier. Yes, the leaf stem exudes a milky sap.

The Clover Angel

It's like a Snow Angel. Can you see her smiling?

This photo is part of Darcy's Sweet Shot Tuesday. (I know it's Friday, we took the shot on Wed., and I'm always late.)

100 Species Challenge #69 Mulberry

"Here we go 'round the mulberry bush...."

Specimen #69 Red Mulberry
Morus rubra

Found in low elevation areas with moist ground and full sun. The photo above was taken near the Clive Greenbelt, home to many geocaches. I took this photo to show the way the leaves appear -- there are leaves with varying amounts of lobes. They are very shiny, too. I read in one of our reference books that the twigs and leaf stems exude a milky sap, and we're going to look this afternoon for the milk.

Here on the right is a leaf with no lobes. The berry near my thumb is not ripe. Even though the tree is called 'red' mulberry, the berries are ripe when they are black. My fingers are stained from picking the ripe ones. And my thumbnail has purple nail polish in an attempt to hide the stains. LOL All around the leaf I'm holding are leaves with lobes.

So the lobes -- some leaves have a mitten shape (not sure if that's considered lobed), while others have lobes. Mitten (this is one pretty lopsided mitten if you ask me!):

Here is a leaf with lobes. The number of lobes varies:

About the nursery song I opened with: My oldest and I were talking about mulberry bushes. We've only seen mulberry trees. Any small trees we ever saw were not really bush-like. So we're not sure if the song is about the trees we're seeing or if 'bush' meant 'short tree.' There are Asian mulberries and native (American) mulberries. The Asian ones were transplanted to/naturalized in Europe and North America.