Wild edible fruits beginning to ripen

Summer is here and so are the wild fruits beginning with serviceberries and thimbleberries. 

The blue to purple fruit of the serviceberry ripens on six to 30-foot tall shrubs in late June or early July. Serviceberries are also known as saskatoons, juneberries, and shadbushes. 

Ripening saskatoons (also called serviceberries)

While serviceberries look like blueberries in size and shape they aren’t a berry. The plant belongs to the rose family and the fruit resembles the pomes of apples and pears. Unlike berries, saskatoons have two to five seeds like pear and apple cores with flesh around the core. 

Saskatoons can be substituted for blueberries in recipes because the flavor is likened to blueberries, apples, crabapples and almonds. The fruit is an excellent source of fiber, manganese, magnesium, iron, calcium, potassium, copper and vitamin C. Dried saskatoons have more iron and copper than raisins. 

Spit bugs most powerful jumping insect

Spit bugs, spittlebugs, froghoppers. They’re all the same insect that produces the globs of spit-like froth on the stems of grasses, flowers and shrubs this time of year.

While the spittlebug may be well-known for its spit, it isn’t as well known for its jumping capabilities. The name froghopper is well-suited for the most powerful jumping insect, though the frog part comes from its head resembling a frog.

As spit bug nymphs progress through five stages they become more developed and transition from green to brown

Froghoppers can accelerate in less than one millisecond to velocities of 10.5 mph which is ten times faster than a flea. Adult froghoppers can jump up to 27 inches vertically and up to 100 times their body length (which is approximately 1/8 to 1/4 inches). The human equivalent would be jumping over the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. 

Sun halos and sun dogs possible year-round

On a hike over Memorial Day weekend I happened to look skyward and see a colorful ring around the sun. The ring didn’t last long enough for me to reach the ridgeline above the trees. The rainbow-colored circle turned out to be a sun halo, more specifically a 22 degree halo. 

Sun halos can either be white or rainbow-colored 

Like rainbows, sun halos are unique to the observer because they depend on light refracting through an object and entering the eye of the observer. Each observer sees light being refracted from different objects or different angles from the same object. 

Identifying orchids in North Idaho

The orchids in North Idaho aren’t as spectacular as tropical orchids but they have their own attractiveness. Some of the orchid flowers are so small they may not be recognized as orchids at first. 

Orchids are among the most specialized flowers. They have three sepals and three petals but the lower petal (called a lip) is highly modified. The lip is larger than the other petals and sepals and may have lobes, forks, pouches, spurs or a different color. 

A few of the orchids found in North Idaho include spotted coralroot, mountain lady slipper, fairyslipper, Alaska rein-orchid and rattlesnake plantain. All of these orchids are perennials, so you can return to the same location every year to find them. 

Spotted coralroot

Bushy-tailed woodrats more commonly known as packrats

After crossing one of the bridges on the Copper Creek Falls trail this spring, I came across a  small dead animal that I didn’t recognize. I guessed it was a rat because of its size and long tail. 

The only woodrat that lives in North Idaho is the bushy-tailed woodrat and this animal fit the description. Large round ears, long whiskers, gray fur, white-topped feet and a bushy tail with white below characterize the bushy-tailed woodrat. Unlike house rats, bushy-tailed woodrats have a well-haired, bicolor tail. The woodrats are also more closely related to deer mice than the rats inhabiting big city sewers. 

The 14- to 18-inch bushy-tailed woodrat is prey for owls, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, badgers, raccoons, hawks and long-tailed weasels but the cause of death is unknown for this wet woodrat.

A more common name for the bushy-tailed woodrat is packrat. They are well-known for their urge to collect anything from sticks and stones to tinfoil and rifle shells. The bushy-tailed woodrat adds the collected items to its shelter. 

Polyphemus moth: One of our largest moths

Fluttering at the base of a bush caught my attention. I thought it was a butterfly but the antennae indicated it was a moth--a moth with a hairy body that resembled a tarantula. The moth was huge with a wingspan of nearly 5.5 inches. 

Male polyphemus moths have large, feathery, comb-like antennae to detect the female's pheromones

The polyphemus moth is unlikely to be confused with any other moth in the Pacific Northwest because of its size, tan color and translucent eyespots. I’ve never heard of the polyphemus moth before but I have heard of (but not seen) other giant silk moths--Luna and Cecropia (the largest moth in North America).

Not all eggs created equal

Many birds are dutifully sitting on a nest right now keeping eggs warm. Eggs come in all shapes, sizes and even the contents inside vary. 

An egg shell has thousands of pores to allow for air exchange but they are small enough to prevent bacteria from entering

Both the shape and size of the egg are determined by the internal structure of the female. Large birds lay large eggs and tiny birds lay tiny eggs. But when the size of the egg is compared to the size of the adult bird, small birds lay proportionally larger eggs.

For example, it would take 60 ostrich eggs to equal the weight of one ostrich but it would only take nine hummingbird eggs to equal the weight of one calliope hummingbird. Looking at percentages, an ostrich egg weighs 1.8 percent of the adult’s body weight, a robin egg eight percent and a wren egg 14 percent. 

More to ferns than fronds

Thalli. Sporangia. Sori. Pinnae. Frond. As foreign as these words may seem, they refer to a plant we see all the time--ferns. You won’t find a flower, seed or stem on a fern because they aren’t a flowering plant. 

Curled up young fronds are called fiddleheads and most are edible and taste like asparagus

Ferns are quite different from the plants and trees around them because they are a seedless vascular plant (vascular means they have circulatory system to move water and nutrients). Fern are larger than non-vascular mosses and don’t have the seeds of flowering vascular plants. Other seedless vascular plants are horsetails and club mosses.