Mayapples, Nurse Logs, and Reeves Pheasant
Now that’s an interesting title!
“MAYAPPLES”
I want to send out a big thank you to my blog friends for helping me identify things. I just love knowing the names of things in nature!! If it weren’t for you all I might not have found the name Reeves Pheasant or Mayapples. I think the reason I love knowing the names of things so much is the neatness of being able to recognize them and call them by name when I see them in nature. Over the past few years of studying nature more in-depthly I’ve slowly, and sometimes quickly, built upon my ability to recognize more and more things. I’m also blessed when I find out the name of something to be able to read more about it and learn everything I can.
After discovering what mayapples are and at Holly’s suggestion, I looked them up in the Handbook of Nature Study and read all about them to my kids. After that we took a walk out to observe them and draw them for our nature notebooks. At Ms. Comstock’s suggestion Hannah fashioned a beautiful little doll from them!
“This is a study of parasols and, therefore of perennial interest to the little girls who use the small ones for their dolls, and with many airs and graces hold the large ones above their own head. And when this diversion palls, they make mandarin dolls of these fascinating plants.” – Handbook of Nature Study, page 479
We also learned about and was able to find a Mayapple fruit on one of the plants.
We read that the fruit is edible, but the stalk and other parts of the plant are very poisonous. We decided not to take any chances in trying the fruit! I was also surprised to find out that they are classified as a wildflower; an unusual one to add to our notebook.
Also suggested was to look for the “umbrella case” at the base where the plant was enclosed before it opened up.
Another thing we have discovered the name of the past week is a Nurse Log. Nurse logs are basically fallen pieces of tree trunks that are decaying and “nursing” the woods floor with their nutrients. We found several of these on our walk.
Nurse logs are excellent places to discover other things as well, such as mushrooms, insects and woodpecker holes.
And the newest Reeves Pheasant news is that I spoke with a lovely lady from the Kentucky Department of Wildlife about our new friend and she was a surprised as I was to hear that the fella had taken up residence with our wild turkeys. I have sent her a couple of photos and a few videos. She affirmed that indeed they are not running around in the wild, they are only in captivity here, but as long as he’s posing no apparent threat, it’s ok to let him be. So far he’s ran/flew away at the sound and sight of us. Then she informed me that that the poor thing probably won’t survive long due to the hawks; seems they are not very good at getting away from them. I suppose this is one of the reasons attempts to bring them here haven’t worked. So, we’ll enjoy his visits for now. Here is my video proof of him hanging with the turkeys. It’s not the best quality because I had to take it through our window.
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