Newsletters
June 2017 - Musk Turtle, Wood Anemone, DCR Issues
WELCOME TO GREEN FUTURES!
“Childhood means simplicity. Look at the world with a child's eye ...it is very beautiful.”
-Kailash Satyarthi
“Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.”
-Arthur Rimbaud
MASSACHUSETTS DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION AND RECREATION (DCR) DYSFUNCTION CONTINUES - Governor Charlie Baker promised to remove patronage from state government. Instead, he places additional incompetent hacks, cronies and toadies in DCR and EOEEA.
We've long campaigned for the proper management of the much abused Freetown State Forest and other DCR forests, parks and reservations. Yes, the rot starts at the top.
Here's the latest from the Boston Globe. https://www.
And, more. https://
Appears to us Baker, Polito and Beaton consider the state's environemental agencies unimportant. Also appears they have an unending list of low-skilled supporters, friends and family members that need jobs.
More Baker administration hanky-panky? https://www.
We've always supported the DCR employees who are the base of the pyramid and actually do the hard work at their respective DCR facility. Compare the salaries they receive for their work with those of their DCR masters. Shameful! From the Boston Herald: http://www.
Still waiting to hear the outrage from the leading statewide environmental organizations. Their silence is telling.
INTERESTING ARTICLES AND NEWS ITEMS EMAILED IN
People's Climate March. https://www.c-span.org/video/?
Mini-Trump says he'll testify. http://www.pressherald.com/201
Too much noise. https://www.theatlantic.com/sc
Samso has a strategy. http://www.csmonitor.com/World
Trump vs. National Monuments http://news.nationalgeographic
The Antiquities Act https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0
Wolves and academic freedom. http://www.opb.org/news/articl
Does Trump lack the legal authority? https://www.bloomberg.com/view
Guess who embarrasses Maine? http://davidfarmer.bangordaily
Burning iomass is not carbon neutral. https://www.eenews.net/stories
Expand our forests. https://www.eenews.net/stories
Trump and science. http://news.nationalgeographic
Terry Tempest Williams has this to say about Bears Ears. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0
Are climate change denying booklets in your neigborhood school? http://www.pbs.org/newshour/up
This land is your land, this land is my land from Bears Ears to Katahdin Woods and Waters.https://www.nationalparkstrave
Walking in West Bank. http://www.npr.org/sections/pa
Unfettered greed taking precedence over ecological wisdom. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on birds, poetry and immigration. https://blog.oup.com/2017/05/h
LePage in a rage. https://www.theguardian.
BIORESERVE FAUNA OF THE MONTH – Musk Turtle (Sternotherus odoratus)
Photo - Colin Osborn, USFWS
Musk turtles are common but rarely seen because they are almost completely aquatic. Females only briefly leave the water to lay their eggs.
At four to five inches long the musk turtle is the smallest turtle species in the Southeatern Massachusetts Bioreserve (SMB). Their top shell (carapace) is moderately to highly domed and black to grey in color or sometimes a mottled/speckled black and brown often covered wholly or in part with green algae. The bottom shell (plastron) is also black, often with grey or brown patches.
These turtles have long necks and tails and short legs. They have large pointy heads and usually either one or two yellow stripes one running from the nose back, one above the eye and the other from the nose, below the eye, back to the base of the neck.
Musk turtles are native to the eastern half of the country. They are found in coastal sections of Maine and New Hampshire and in entire states from Massachusetts to Florida. In Canada they range from Southern Ontario down through Michigan and Wisconsin, south, to the southern half of Missouri, southeastern corner of Kansas, eastern Oklahoma and Texas. They are most abundant in quiet coves and bays of lakes and ponds with abundant underwater structure consisting of logs, tree branches, rocks and aquatic vegetation.
Musk turtles get their name from a defensive stinky secretion from four musk glands at the base of their fore and hind legs near the edge of its shell.
Omnivores, musk turtles eat a wide variety of aquatic plant and animal material they encounter as they forage about the bottom of their pond or lake.
During winter musk turtles hibernate underwater in mud banks, woody debris and in old muskrat dens and lodges.
Musk turtles breed in the spring. Mating takes place in the water after a receptive female responds to nibbles from a male that has been pursuing her. By late spring/early summer, when the eggs are fully developed, females leave the water and search for an area of warm, soft soil that receives some sunlight. There she will lay her two to nine eggs. Some females of this species will nest communally. The eggs hatch in September or October and the inch long hatchlings head immediately to water. Males will reach sexual maturity at two years old and females at 4 years.
Like most turtle species musk turtles, if they make it to adulthood, are extremely long lived. This is of benefit to species that suffer high mortality egg and juvenile mortality. Raccoons, skunks and opossums often watch areas where turtles nest waiting patiently until the eggs are laid ...and the gobbling them up. Hatchling musk turtles, only an inch long, are and ideal snack for the above mentioned egg snatchers as well as most snakes, most predatory fish, bullfrogs, jays, crows, ravens, hawks and owls. Even ants have been known to swarm hatchlings as they leave the nest and destroy them.
Even as adults these snappy, smelly turtles are not always safe. Locally, adult musk turtle shells found under bald eagle nests show that despite the musk turtle's musk ...or maybe because of it? ...eagles find them a tasty treat.
BIORESERVE FLORA OF THE MONTH – Wood Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia)
Photo – Wikimedia Commons US NPS
There are about 200 species in the genus Anemone. Anemones are also called wind flowers from the ancient Greek tale of Aphrodite (Venus to Romans) and Adonis (same to name to both Greeks and Romans).
Here's some quickie mythology on how anemones came to be. There are many versions of this tale. Here's one: Myrrha was the daughter of King Cinyras. She lusted after her father and when he was drunk she would hop into his bed.
Eventually Cinyras discovered what his daughter had been doing and attacked her with his sword. Myrrha fled and stayed ahead of her father for nine months pleading to the gods for help. The gods took pity on her ...not enough pity in my opinion ...and turned her into a Myrrh tree. As a tree Myrrha gave birth to a son, Adonis. Adonis was the personification of male beauty.
Aphrodite saw baby Adonis and immediately fell in love with him. She had somewhere to go so entrusted him to Persephone (Proserpine to the Romans) for baby-sitting. Persephone was so smitten by his beauty that she refused to give him back when Aphrodite returned.
The two feuding goddesses were upsetting Zeus (Jupiter to the Romans) so he decided Adonis would spend one-third of the year with each goddess and the last third wherever he chose. Adonis chose to spend his third of the year with Aphrodite so they ended up together for two-thirds of the year.
Adonis grew up to became a great hunter and Aphrodite was his lover, but he spent more and more of his time hunting. Aphrodite knew Adonis would eventually be killed by a wild animal so she sought to prevent his hunting by chasing after him.
One day an especially enraged wild boar, possibly sent by god Ares (Mars to the Romans) because he was jealous of Adonis' and Aphrodite's relationship, attacked and gored Adonis. Aphrodite held him in her arms as he died and his blood mixed with her tears was blown by the wind around the world. Where they fell, anemones sprang up.
Our local wood anemones growing in shaded forest groves are spring ephemerals. Spring ephemerals are early spring perennials that bloom before the forest trees fully leaf out and deprive the ephemerals of sunlight. They grow rapidly, bloom, ripen their seeds and then go dormant until spring arrives the following year.
Where growing conditions are ideal anemones can spread via rhizomes (underground stems that produce roots and shoots) often covering large areas of the forest floor. Anemone leaves are very noticeable. They are dark green, compound leaves with deeply cut leaflets.
The wood anemone blooms in southeastern New England in April. The flowers are a half-inch to inch in width with usually five petal-like tepals (outer part of a flower neither petal nor sepal) surrounding numerous white stamens (male pollen producing organ. The flowers are pollinated by small forest flies and gnats. The fruit of the anemone is made up of a round head of single seeds.
Wood anemones contain protoanemonin and are toxic to most animals and wisely left alone by deer.
A week ago I had a fire To warm my feet, my hands and face; Cold winds, that never make a friend, Crept in and out of every place.
Today the fields are rich in grass, And buttercups in thousands grow; I'll show the world where I have been-- With gold-dust seen on either shoe.
Till to my garden back I come, Where bumble-bees for hours and hours Sit on their soft, fat, velvet bums, To wriggle out of hollow flowers.
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