This small green insect (perhaps a quarter-inch long) with furtive eyes and a body like a leaf is one of my new-found favorites along Piney Woods Church Road. It is a Cone-headed Planthopper (Acanalonia conica). A strict vegetarian, it feeds on a wide variety of plants by piercing them and sucking their juices. This one was not very masterful at evading my camera, though it did try to get away a few times by shifting to the other side of the stem, out of sight and reach.
In my wandering down Piney Woods Church Road this morning, I inevitably returned to the Sweet Autumn Virginsbower (Clematis terniflora) blooming along a cattle pasture fence. I suspect I will take quite a few photographs of the flower in different light over the days to come. For today, my image juxtaposes the delicate, four-petaled white flower with a barb in the fence, a gray blur in the background.
Sunlight sifts through the forest trees, making its way to the space between the edges of a tulip poplar leaf, somewhere down Piney Woods Church Road….
Beyond the barbed wire edging Piney Woods Church Road, a cow grazes into the sunset.
Late this afternoon, along Piney Woods Church Road, I met up with a beautiful bug with a dreadful name. It is the Rough Stink Bug (Brochymena quadripustulata). Another insect ID book on my shelf uses the Latin to assign it the common name of Four-blistered Bronchymena, which I suppose is a little better, though it is quite a mouthful and carries the unpleasant image of blisters. (The Rough Stink Bug, as you can see in the photograph below, has a number of raised orange-red spots, including four on its upper thorax which are responsible for its Latin species name.) I came across this creature resting on the trunk of a pin cherry tree. According to one field guide, it dines on the sap of many trees, including cherry, though it occasionally feeds instead on larvae and pupae of other insects. The other field guide claims instead that it feeds only on “the juices of caterpillars and other soft insects”. Predatory or no, if I were a caterpillar I would err on the safe side and stay well away from the Rough Stink Bug.
This afternoon I felt compelled to photograph mushrooms, of which there are several of at least three different species along Piney Woods Church Road right now. This is a view from underneath, looking up at the gills that are letting in the sunlight.
On my early afternoon walk down Piney Woods Church Road, I was quickly drawn to explore some shrubs growing near the road edge just a short distance from Rico Rd. Among the leaves, a broken fragment of a leaf was hanging by a single thread. The slightest hint of wind would send it twirling round and round. It was a marvelous lesson in patience trying to focus on it, let alone photograph it. With enough tries — maybe fifteen in all — I succeeded a last, and the result is the lovely image below.
“Say can I have some of your purple berries?”
“Yes, I’ve been eating them
For six or seven weeks now; haven’t got sick once.”
“Probably keep us both alive.”
— Wooden Ships, Crosby/Stills/Nash —
The sassafras trees (Sassafras albidum) along Piney Woods Church Road bear bright bluish-purple berries now. I pull one off and crush it between my fingers. It is mostly seed, with a thin layer of pulp that has a fresh, invigorating scent, reminiscent of sassafras tea. Later, at home, I pore over field guides and search the internet for information on the berries. I find that they are beloved of many bird species, but none of my edible wild plant guides inform me whether or not they are safe to eat. It would take quite a few to satisfy a hunger, of course, but I relish wild flavors, a bit like Thoreau with his love of wild apples. Maybe tomorrow I will try one. I doubt they are harmful, given that sassafras twigs can be chewed and roots steeped for tea.
On a cloudy, windy afternoon, I discovered another new flower blooming: a single whirl of four yellow petals, forming a cross atop a low shrub with oval leaves. The plant is almost certainly Saint Andrew’s Cross (Hypericum hypericoides), native to the Southeastern United States.
As sunset approaches, a horse grazes contentedly at the base of a pecan tree, while across Piney Woods Church Road, a mother cow gives her new calf an evening tongue bath.
