renewal

 The growing season has already started in the bosque, for some plants. Different plants grow in different ways. Those that grow every year from seeds have different skills than those that can grow from root stock. All plants, however, are taking their cues from the "photoperiod". This is a complex process, but basically plants use hormones to control behavior, based on light.

Some trees, like these cottonwood buds have a wide range of times when they come out. Other trees like the elms are different and bud all at the same time.

 

 This tree mistletoe is more visible during the winter, when it can often be the only green on a tree. Cottonwoods are very tolerant of many parasitic organisms like fungus, insects, mistletoe. This is bad news as all mature trees seem to have some sort of "attack" going on. The good news is that these trees are not going to be killed. Some trees like the American chestnut have been almost wiped out by a single species of parasite.

One of the traditional first plants of spring is the London rocket. They like moist areas with good shade. They are often found with dandelions in areas of cultivated lawns.It has an agreeable pungent flavor, and totally edible. Considered a weed, they spring up, seed, and disappear almost in the blink of an eye.

 

 In contrast, this giant reed is a grass species that sprouts from underground runners. This gives it a head start when it starts to grow again after damage. This spot in the picture shows where it is returning after having been dug out from a fence line last year where a tree limb fell on the fence (the limb that fell is stacked neatly in pieces on the left of the picture)

This is willow baccharis. Not a very easy name to remember. It is in the aster family, like just about everything else. These flowers aren't supposed to come out until April according to literature. Most plants, of course, cannot read, so do not follow the textbook. This plant can take advantage of disturbed soil and sprouts before anything else. The last big disturbed event was from the army corps of engineers. A similar disturb event is occurring now at the Harvey Jones outflow north of Romero and the levee road, so expect to see unusual plants there in about, oh, ten years?

Several elms in the Andrews Lane entrance to the bosque have been "girded". This is the normal approach to prevent a tree from spreading. Weirdly, this approach is done to the large, mature trees instead of the younger and scrubbier ones that spread. I also notice that even thought the tree is dead, the wood is unaffected by rot and the trees become snags and don't fall over. As to why this particular tree is a shrine, I will never know.

This battered tree root across the trail has adapted to become a structural support rather than an organ for absorbing water and nutrients by a process called suberization. This is an interesting process well studied in chemistry because it controls the quality of market foods such as potatoes and sweet potatoes.

 

 Cold dry periods often cause snapping of tree trunks. You can see the hole at the base of the tree from a partially healed past injury. Fungi traveled up the dark, moist heartwood and hollowed out the core until the dead weight overwhelmed the fibres in the bark.

This is the close up of the stump. The dark core shows spiderwebs and dry rot. Then there is a thin section of actual wood, wrapped by a curling, papery cuticle. The thick, tough bark covers the outside and is almost as thick as the woody section. Cottonwood is considered a soft hardwood in arborist terms. Its lack of desirability to loggers probably saved it from commercial over exploitation. But its future might depend on commercial tree farms. The creation of a demand for fancy "live edge" wood tables is concerning, as they need old trees without defects that have taken many, many years to grow. Poaching of thousand year old alligator juniper on public lands is pretty endemic right now and is blatant. Cottonwood trunks have lots of character and will soon be sought after as other sources of easy wood disappears.

 

 Cottonwoods face many attacks. Here the random scribbles of a bark beetle larvae burrowing under the bark can be seen. There is also a dark hole where some carpenter bees chewed into the fallen wood to create an egg chamber. The smaller dimples all over are from a woodpecker hitting the wood and listening for the echoes of beetle tunnels below.

The willow swales at the edge of the Rio Grande is a very unique environment. There is a lot going on there, especially as it a dense area mostly avoided by people. Where humans have made paths, the invasive plants have a chance to grow. Here is a Russian olive. Where the morning sun is able to reach the ground the olive is growing new leaves to take full advantage of its fast, bushy growth. These trees often reach out over running water to get to open sunlight. The beavers like to prune those branches back for their dams, for food and to create the open back-up ponds that suit their favored lifestyle.

Coyote willow forests also have a damp soil that favors the growth of grasses that have also begun to grow and green out in the mild winter. This ideal nursery environment is often where the future cottonwood seedling have a good chance to grow to full size, according to the rules of forestry succession.

Many animals use the human trails to move about quietly. Here is a nice picture of a squirrel track. The heel is deeply imprinted and is found in all mammals that climb for at least part of their ancestry. The term is plantigrade. Coyotes travel these paths too, leaving scat as calling cards to avoid boundary disputes and communicate.

There are a lot of insects still around, but they tend to be much smaller. This leaf-hopper is actually a specialist sap sucking insect of the tamarisk tree. It was accidentally introduced AFTER the tamarisk was identified as critical habitat for the southwestern willow flycatcher. Most people know about the biological control beetle, not many people have followed the parallel story of this leaf-hopper. Biology is usually more complicated than the one sided arguments of industry versus environmentalists, and that's saying something.

I continue to be in awe of fallen leaves. Plants have changed every corner of the planet by their actions. Dropping leaves creates, then amends the soil moisture, acidity, nutrient content, oxygen, aeration and just about everything else. Creatures thrive in it, use it to hide, and keep warm. Yet every year humans spend days of their lives to blow them away into plastic bags, to deliver into other people's land fills. Madness.

 

"The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance" - Aristotle

 

A beautiful local keystone arch from a red sandstone from nowhere near here... Arches are a human invention for creating space under a roof. But arches are also spectacular natural shapes as well. This non-functional arch juxtapositions those two concepts so well.

This comparison "arches" photograph shows the beautiful arched limestone capped granite of the Sandia mountains during the "pink minute" of a typical sunset. Not co-incidentally, the gravel under the human arches is also granite or "crumpled mountain" that does not look as nearly as pretty...

We are used to normal things turning political in the blink of an eye. This stack of rocks found in the bosque for example: a skill called rock balancing popularized by Pontus Jansson and popular on Instagram. It became a hot topic for a while when many people began to disturb river edges while looking for smooth edged stones to stack.

Biology is confusing. Humans do nothing to make that picture easier to see. These seed pods came from a "golden rain" tree cultivated THROUGH the floorboards of the Corrales Bistro outdoors patio. Of course, the work of gardeners (who love this tree) is running into problems with environmental managers (who are, at best, concerned). The city of Albuquerque has this tree on a list of trees appropriate for planting. At the same time, Florida and Texas have this exact same tree on a list of invasive species. Personally, I think if we could just take all the energy we spend gardening and criticizing each other, and put it towards the shared space we all live in....

This is a common four winged salt-bush. One of my favorite plants. Usually the seeds are visible in the thin vanes of the seeds. But this one was covered in fuzzy balls as well.

 

Observing closer, these balls were the nesting chamber of a gall midge. These insects manipulate the plant hormones normally used to control growth so that they instead make these fuzzy cocoons. The plants grow is dry saline conditions on the loose soils above (west of) Loma Largo road

 

 Most people likely have not noticed, but the Rio Grande in Corrales rose about a foot on Dec. 2. The level of the river is entirely human controlled (from Cochiti Dam, I think) and this flow likely co-coincided with silvery minnow releases. Many sand banks are under water for the first time in a while and the river is turbid as the new sediment is washed downstream. When it recedes in the summer, new seedlings will grab the land back again for another season.

 It takes time for water levels to seep into new channels, but the water table should slowly rise. This picture shows the bottom of the interior drain at Priestley road in Corrales. The water table is almost at the surface, and rising. The ditch soil is turning dark as the salts left behind dissolve again in the rising water.

 

The Sandias outline against the sky can be used as a calendar of the passage of the sunrise over the course of a year. Sunrise is now directly east of us, instead of more northeast. Because humans like cardinal points, this means the sunrise shines down all the east-west roads at sunrise. Because roads are tree-free the roadside weeds are given a powerful cue to grow. Tracks in the dirt also show up better in the highly angled light. After loitering at the southern end of the Sandias for a month or so, the sunrises will shoot back northwards again as spring arrives in a few months. Not long ago, sunrise and the angle of the midday sun would have been navigation aids, and still can be for those who can observe a simple shadow on the ground while looking at a watch. Arcane knowledge that now belongs to a different era. The arch of the passage of the sun through the sky is still a work of art, whether it is significant or not.