Nature

I saw it coming. I knew the tree was going to die, sooner rather than later, but I didn’t do anything to save it. Every time I saw the cable wrapped around that oak, I’d throw up my hands and think, “Too late now!” (A phrase made famous in our family by my husband’s father, […]

We were less than a week into spring. The weather was cold and gray, but the landscape in my Charlotte neighborhood was Technicolor – emerald lawns, sunny daffodils, pastel phlox, Yoshino cherries and redbuds. Oddly, my eye was drawn to the drab trunk of a single willow oak, one of many lining the streets. About […]

While walking a property the other week, we stumbled on a tree with heavily furrowed bark. It took a few minutes of pondering, but we finally decided it was a cottonwood tree, and a large one. Eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides) is a widespread deciduous native found along sandy riverbanks and in bottomlands – exactly where […]

We have an evening routine in the Uwharries. We wait until dark to saunter down the driveway and close the yellow gate. Even on a moonless night, we can usually find our way without flashlights. We tip our faces toward the sky, drinking in the stars, the planets and the Milky Way. In fall, we […]

I recently took a trip with the Friends of Plant Conservation on the Black River near Wilmington. The Black River is home to the oldest trees east of the Rocky Mountains. They are bald cypress, which are known to grow to an ancient age. Bald cypress trees have a unique feature known as knees – […]

October has been as sultry as summer, but there’s finally the promise of weather that calls for sweatshirts and jackets. Deciduous trees and shrubs across the Piedmont have already started to don their autumn finery. Dogwoods are burnished a deep maroon, and poplars are shedding golden leaves. This time of year, few species are as […]

The star-nosed mole (Condylura cristata) has such an unusual appearance that if you spot one, there will be no question what you have found. The star-nosed mole’s nostrils are ringed by 22 rays, or fleshy tentacles, that possess more than 25,000 minute sensory receptors, known as Eimer’s organs. Because of this distinctive nose, the moles […]

As I left town for a quick trip over Labor Day weekend, a dozen hungry monarch caterpillars were munching away on my swamp milkweed. When I returned 32 hours later, they had vanished. Many stems had been denuded, so the cats had apparently eaten a lot of leaves before they disappeared. Most had been fifth […]

I’ve seen this cute little animal in some very different places – the chipmunk. I’ve seen them in the N.C. mountains as I hiked the Appalachian Trail, on the sidewalk in Chapel Hill at the UNC-CH campus, and in Colorado (a different species) while I climbed Mount Elbert. I’ve never seen one of these little […]

On a Friday morning in late July, Jan Pender left her home in Raleigh and headed toward the Uwharrie National Forest. (I use the term “morning” loosely – it was 3:30 a.m.) Pender, director of the N.C. Youth Conservation Corps, had allowed plenty of time to stop at McDonald’s, wait for an order of 20 […]