It was far too cold in the woods this evening to crouch down and peer closely at the skeletal remains of summer. So I grabbed a handful of the most interesting things I could find and drew them at home in the good warm kitchen. At the top are two drawings of a very small bean pod, two perfectly spaced round black seeds, very cozy as two peas in a pod, delicate as baby fingernails. In the middle are two views of what I think is the skeleton of a daylily pod. It looks like a finely woven basket and encloses a single black seed. Possibly there were other seeds that have fallen out of this cage. At the bottom is a sketch of a twisting vine that has dry little buds at intervals, alternating sides of the stem. This vine was twirled around a fat twig that had another, finer vine springing off of it. The twig has very large shield-shaped leaf scars. Drawing 892 shows an enlargement of one of these.
Dominating this page is a papery hosta leaf with its veins raised and some small holes. The veins merge at the stem end in a perfect twirling motion. Drawing 895 is a small piece of a bittersweet vine with its tri-part yellow pod popped open revealing the red berry. The red smears on the page are from the berries-- a nice color, but it fades to a yellow quickly.
More leaf scars are in drawing 894. I took a nature study course as an undergraduate and learned that trees in winter could be identified by their leaf scars! Did you know that? I made a dichotomous key to use in identifying winter trees by these curious shield-shaped scars that are left when leaves fall off of branches. The bud of next season's leaf is a little bump just above the scar. I suspect this twig is from a red maple tree, based on the information at the following url. Go to http://www.ccfpd.org/NaturalResources/WinterTreeIDpocketguide.pdf to learn more than you really want to know about identifying trees by their leaf scars!
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