Acoustic Cafe

Some friends and I were treated to a tour of the Acoustic Cafe Amphitheater, which is situated on an rocky mountain near Hayden.


You know Steve Masterson must be a nice guy, when you learn that he puts on a music festival that's located, more or less, in his yard. I haven't been to the festival yet, but it sounds like good music and a lot of fun. (Check it out at the link above - it's string music that draws people from across the country on Memorial Day weekend.)


Buster, who loves to walk.


Wild Four-O-Clocks, Mirabilis nyctaginea.


I kept thinking that some of the rocks looked like bald heads covered with green toupées. This one even had a nose and ears.


Indian Pink, Spigelia marilandica.


Skull tree.


Alabama Larkspur, (Delphinium alabamicum), and a cat whose name should probably be Groucho.


The other very beautiful, but very shy, dog.


Left, Purple Cliff-brake, (Pellaea atropurpurea).
Right, Yellow Passionflower, (Passiflora lutea).


Recycling!


Ragwort, aka Butterweed, (Packera sp., aka Senecio).


Four-leaved Milkweed, (Asclepias quadrifolia).


Solomon's Seal, (Polygonatum commutatum).


Heavy metal cricket.


Carolina Spiny-pod, Matelea carolinensis. Aka Carolina Anglepod or Carolina Milkvine.


More good rocks.


Nettleleaf Sage, Salvia urticifolia.


Whiteflower leafcup, Polymnia canadensis. Grows right on top of the rocks.

Limestone glade

We discovered a small limestone glade. It's not near our place, but it's in the same county (Blount county).



Plants in these glades thrive in unusual conditions: very thin soil on dry rocky ground.



A rocky pocket. From above, these flowers bring starfish to mind.



Widowscross, Sedum pulchellum. A.k.a. Pink stonecrop.



Most of them were white rather than pink. Definitely, they fit the description of "locally abundant".



Drifts of sandwort surrounded the sedum. I believe this is Glade sandwort, Minuartia patula.



In the shadier areas, there was a little Miami mist (Phacelia purshii). (Sounds more like a soft drink than a plant to me.)



I love the fringed petals.

Rocky top

The top of our property is a little steep.



And rocky.



I've been there once.



And I wasn't too happy about it.



I don't enjoy heights! (Such a weenie.)

Going up is not the problem... coming down is.

Needless to say, my husband took these pictures. It might be a nice view if the trees weren't in the way.

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Check out I and the Bird! Thanks for including me, Clare.

What else has been going on

Some of these¹



have been doing some of this,



while nearby, this² was found:



Toothwort³ mania began in earnest.



We had visitors⁴.



This



gave way to this⁵.



There was also this⁶, which is not the same.



And neither is this⁷.



Some excavation⁸ was going on.



But was apparently not satisfactory.



Ahhh it's almost trillium time⁹.



Tiny snails were observed, and also something else¹⁰ that I'm still pondering.



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¹Virginia Bluebells, Mertensia virginica
²See this earlier post if you're curious about the redrock fossils.
³Dentaria spp. Or is it all Cardamine now? I get confused.
⁴Canada Geese, Branta canadensis. I would say, "I know that you knew that already, I'm just trying to be consistent," but since there was a woman on a game show last night who did not know that the northern neighbor of the US is CANADA, for crying out loud, I'm not taking any chances.
⁵Hepatica or Liverleaf
⁶Rue Anemone, Thalictrum thalictroides
⁷Jacob's Ladder (Polemonium reptans) with Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica) flower
⁸I'm guessing Pileated Woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus), but I'm not sure.
⁹Trailing Trillium, Trillium decumbens
¹⁰Little groups of tiny, tiny rocks are held together and to the larger rock surface like glue. Is something alive in there?

Fossil week

Updated: see below.

While posting recently about the rocks here, I mentioned that the red ones often contained plant fossils. By request, here they are.







I'll post more fossil pics later this week and try to come up with some IDs.

These are possibly leaves of Lycopods - Lepidophylloides maybe. Like this and this. The ancient lycopod tree had different types of leaves, and the grass-like ones were called Lepidophyllum. I believe that would put them in the Pennsylvanian period, about 300 million years ago.

But I'm not sure about that. I've never found any more entire leaf impressions than these. So if you know differently please tell me.

They could possibly be from the other clubmoss tree, the Sigillaria, or the horsetail tree, the Calamites. (They are all from roughly the same time period.)

Updated: I found this at the Virtual Paleontology Lab, which explains why the leaves can have a different scientific name than the rest of the plant:

Because we don't always know which leaves belong to which seeds when they are first discovered, we use the convention of form taxa. When organs are found isolated (not in organic connection), each type of leaf and seed is given its own binomial name (genus and species name according to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature), without making any assumption about what belongs to what. To use the example discussed by Oliver and Scott (1904), leaves were described as Lyginopteris (genus only for brevity), seeds as Lagenostoma, and stems as Lyginodendron. The similarity of the first syllable gives a hint that the describing paleobotanists (others besides Oliver and Scott) suspected some relationship, but were unable to make a strong inference link. The last syllable of each name gives a hint to the organ type: "dendron" = stem, "pteris" is often used for frond-like foliage, "stoma" = seed. However, after Oliver and Scott's recognition of the unique glands on Lagenostoma lomaxi and species in the other organ form genera, they were able to make the whole-plant link with greater confidence. The whole plant then takes the name of the organ first described, in this case Lyginopteris. When you are writing, take care to make clear whether you are talking about form taxa (organs) or whole-plants.

Also, this is what the globe looked like 300 million years ago. Plate tectonics! Continental drift! Gotta love it.

If I'm right about what these are, the fossils pre-date dinosaurs. Pretty cool.

Here's what it's thought to have looked like around here at that time, more or less. There are modern relatives of some of these ancient plants, such as the plant-rescue ground cedar I tried (unsuccessfully, as it turns out) to transplant here last year.

Sue the T-rex? Sniff. Ho hum. My fossils are older than that. Almost five times older! Now if I could only find somebody to pay me $8 million for them...

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P.S. I have learned so much since I started writing this blog - looking all this stuff up so I can pretend like I know what I'm talking about.

Rocks in my head

Sometimes we find rocks made of rocks.



I tried to get a snapshot showing how rocky it is near the top of the hill.



But maybe this closeup of the old logging road bank shows it better. It's limestone at the bottom of the hill and sandstone near the top.



Hubby has started building these little rock towers everywhere.



The creek bed has huge boulders in some places, but this pebbly area is better for wading.



I made a little rock collection near the edge. The red ones often have plant fossils in them.



When I was a kid I was convinced that these were moon rocks.