{"id":257,"date":"2006-06-03T12:10:33","date_gmt":"2006-06-03T16:10:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2006\/06\/03\/another-long-ride-to-middlesex-fells"},"modified":"2006-06-03T12:10:33","modified_gmt":"2006-06-03T16:10:33","slug":"another-long-ride-to-middlesex-fells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/2006\/06\/03\/another-long-ride-to-middlesex-fells\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Long Ride to Middlesex Fells"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Monday.  I saw the first one within a couple dozen feet of the trailhead:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>pink lady&#8217;s slipper <em>(Cypripedium acaule)<\/em> (orchid family) &#8211; Lady&#8217;s slipper is another one I remember my mother showing me, though I think perhaps not this kind.  I saw this within 50 feet or so of the trailhead.  It apparently enjoys highly acidic soils, often growing under pines and oaks.  I saw dozens of these today, and they were all in these circumstances &#8211; white pines and red\/black oaks, mainly.  The understory had a bunch of hickory, shagbark I believe, and sassafras.  It made me happy for some reason to see something like that possibly succeeding oak\/pine in a Massachusetts badland.<\/li>\n<li>yellow stargrass <em>(Hypoxis hirsuta)<\/em> (amaryllis family) &#8211; I think wikipedia has this in the liliaceae.  Not that personable a plant.  Growing in the middle of a trail, in only one place at all.<\/li>\n<li>greenbriar <em>(Smilax rotundifolia)<\/em> (lily family) &#8211; Smilax is the only shrubby lilial (if that word&#8217;s forgivable) in the region.  There are a lot of them, and I only keyed this out in Newcomb&#8217;s, not the Peterson Trees &amp; Shrubs I just got.  It was quite common.<\/li>\n<li>blue toadflax <em>(Linaria canadensis)<\/em> (figwort family) &#8211; I saw this last year, but I think only ever next to a lamppost on Mass. Ave.  It was happy in the sandy, sunny land up by the tower on the skyline trail.<\/li>\n<li>wild peppergrass <em>(Lepidium verginicum)<\/em> (mustard family)<\/li>\n<li>maple-leaved viburnum <em>(Viburnum acerifolium)<\/em> (honeysuckle family) &#8211; also called &#8220;dockmackie&#8221;.  This was very common.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And at the Mystic River Reservation on the way home:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>lesser stichwort <em>(Stellaria graminea)<\/em> (pink family) &#8211; This is essentially another chickweed, with big flowers.<\/li>\n<li>Guelder-rose <em>(Viburnum opulus)<\/em> (honeysuckle family) &#8211; This is a lot like cranberry viburnum, but European.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Monday. I saw the first one within a couple dozen feet of the trailhead: pink lady&#8217;s slipper (Cypripedium acaule) (orchid family) &#8211; Lady&#8217;s slipper is another one I remember my mother showing me, though I think perhaps not this kind. I saw this within 50 feet or so of the trailhead. It apparently enjoys [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[407],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/129"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/desultor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}