Lugworms? Why, Certainly!

[This post ran some years back, and I thought, hey, let’s revisit lugworms! I mean, is there ever a wrong time? Enjoy.]

———

I warned you. Well, I warned someone…probably one of my fellow LWONers…that if nobody suggested a compelling way to fill this space for today, I’d write about lugworms.

Time’s up!

I’ve actually been thinking a lot about lugworms of late because of a recent diving experience in Ria Formosa, a sandy-bottom coastal lagoon in the Algarve of Portugal. I was there searching for seahorses (a perfectly fine subject for this essay…why not seahorses?? Look how lovable!) and I repeatedly noticed these walnut-size grayish mucus balls flopping around among the rocks. The current was kicking them hard, but they were clearly built to take it; some held tight, balloons tied to a fence on a windy day. Others detached and rolled through the sand and seagrass like tumbleweeds. Tumbleweeds made of mucus.

What were they? I wanted to know. So, I asked the seahorse scientist Miguel Correia, of the Center for Ocean Studies at the University of the Algarve, who had escorted me on the seahorse dives (and probably also wondered why I wasn’t writing about seahorses for this essay).

I was delighted with his answer: Lugworm egg sacs.

Continue reading

In Praise of Minor Bulbs

This first ran on April 5, 2021. In the years since, the Wisley blues remain fine and flourishing (“flourish,” from “florire,” to flower, HA!); the Siberian squill have moved around but are still in little bunches except at my neighbor’s house where they’ve grown into cities; the anemones continue to look demure and squirrel-resistent. And last fall, even though this never works, I once again planted Dutchman’s breeches; and while I come close to remembering where I planted them, I see nothing, no sign; give up, Ann. But I shall not dwell on this, I’ll just listen to the little yells from all over the garden, from the leucojum (what a dumb name, why has no one thought of a better name, how about Elegant Bells of Joy?), from every ever-loving minor bulb.

UPDATE: I checked again and yes! 2 Dutchman’s breeches have leafed out! I probably planted 3 or 5, but never mind. Have faith, Ann! Never give up!

The flowers that bloom in the spring tra la. I love them faintingly, I gaze at them, hands folded reverently, such dears they are, oh my darlings, my minor bulbs!

Minor bulbs are not the same as spring ephemerals — really their name — like spring beauties, dog-tooth violets, may apples, shooting stars, and Dutchman’s breeches, their names alone are a song. They grow in woods and each one is so delicate, so oh-please-stay-awhile that they break your heart when in the next minute they’re gone. I’ve tried planting these and it never works. (But see above – maybe!)

Neighbors and passers-by say how beautiful are the daffodils-narcissi-hyacinths, which I also love though more prosaically. Thank you, I say, but come look at my minor bulbs. Oh nice, say the neighbors and passers-by, and continue having transports over the major bulbs. But look at this one, I say, it’s called Chionodoxa, chion meaning glory and doxa meaning glory, snow glory, glory of the snow, see how the white centers fade into the blue petals, so interesting! The fact is, minor bulbs seem to interest no one but me.

For years I ignored them in the catalogs — minor, unworthy of my attention, and dirt cheap. The catalogs say to plant them in masses and drifts so you notice them. I don’t know about that: I’m kind of a minor bulb myself but I wouldn’t be better drifting all over the landscape.

The first one I planted was Ipheion uniflorum, this variety called Wisley blue, Wisley being a Victorian businessman who planted an experimental garden*. I can’t find out what Ipheion means (“Genus name origin is unclear,” says the Missouri Botanical Gardens) but the word looks Greek and if anyone knows I’d be so happy to hear it; uniflorum is one flower. So I planted maybe 5 of them so I could look at each one flower. But their character is such that they like their own company and they spread like water — I don’t know how because they’re bulbs — and now I have hundreds. I not only don’t know what Ipheion means, I can’t pronounce it so I call them Wisley blues. I step outside on a spring morning and yell, “Good morning, Wisley blues!” as loud as I can.

This little one is Scilla siberica, Siberian squill; a random internet source says scilla is Greek for exciting, which, hardly; the scillas/squills are a big family that includes lots of bluebell-like things. I planted this one inadvertently when I’d dug up, semi-legally, some huge naturalized snowdrops in a woods not obviously owned by anyone, and the little scilla came along. I’m not proud of my short career in piracy but I’m not giving this back. The scilla family spreads but this one hasn’t, just a few quiet, modest characters here and there, small but so intense and indigo you have to look at them. Such precision they have and so brave because early spring is not the kindest time of year.

I saw this one in a catalog — it’s Leucojum aestivum, called ‘Gravetye Giant’ after an Irish garden writer whose house was Gravetye Manor. Leuco means white and I don’t know what jum has to do with it; aestivum is summer. Summer whites. I had trouble taking this picture because it was a little windy out and those heavy bells kept swinging back and forth; they should have made dinging sounds. The little green dots could have been put there by some Arts & Crafts artist. Leucojum is much bigger than the other minor bulbs, a foot or so tall, dignified, very much a social presence. So while most of my minor bulbs are near the house where I can see their precision, leucojum is out by the sidewalk where it can be appreciated by people walking fast. It does like to be appreciated.

Anemone blanda, anemone is Greek for wind and like the leucojum, it blows around a bit; blanda is mild and pleasing; a mild wind flower. I tried planting these years ago and maybe they showed up once; tried again, no show, gave up. Read up on them, discovered that right after planting (shallow) they get eaten by squirrels. I was irate, felt disrespected, rose to the challenge, and ordered them again. Took advice: doubled-up old chicken wire, folded it into a tube, put the anemone tubers inside, stitched the tube together with wire, planted the whole thing, and watched hell-bent squirrel-holes appear in the mulch. They may have gotten some of them, I don’t know, but not all of them. NOT ALL OF THEM, YOU GREEDY BEADY-EYED RAT-BASTARDS! VICTORY IS MINE!

Minor bulbs: prayer, pleasure, and righteous fury, at pennies per shot.

________

*In a comment on the original post, Adam Ganz says “Tiny point: Wisley is more than a minor businessman who planted a garden – it’s the research garden of the Royal Horticultural Society https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley.”

________

Photos by me, and I wish they were better but that would mean getting an actual camera and learning to use it. Any reliable information has come from the website of the Missouri Botanical Gardens, an institution which is a gift unto us all.

Peak Bloom, By Night

pink tree with river and city lights

One of the great signs of spring in Washington, D.C., is the herds of middle schoolers who arrive, on trips to Learn About America. I got to partake in this annual migration in a small way myself this year; a friend from college had brought her very own eighth grader to town for spring break. I inquired about highlights to the visit so far; they included seeing the original Constitution and eating a lot of french fries.

We had fancy brunch, then went to the National Museum of American History, then to Artomatic, a freewheeling art show that pops up in an empty office building in the D.C. area every few years.

At some point in these wanderings, I looked at Instagram – I know, I have a problem – and saw a post from the National Park Service. They’d called it: Peak bloom was here. Our cherry blossoms were ready for visitors, several days earlier than expected (and weeks earlier than average).

After dinner that night, I convinced my skeptical partner that it was worth getting in the car and going to look at the flowers in the dark. Well, mostly I reminded him that he wasn’t required to go along with my hare-brained schemes if he’d rather keep sitting on the couch.

I’d never been to see the flowers at night before, and I thought it might be disappointing. It was not. The trees were puffy and beautiful, and, if you really buried your nose in them, very lightly fragrant. And perfect.

trees with text on wall "Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that."

Peak bloom is still going, two days later – no rain or high winds have come to blow all the petals away. I know my friend’s eighth grader got to see them, and I hope lots of other people do, too.

If you want to see more cherry blossom pictures, this isn’t my first rodeo. See daytime pictures in my 2014 post and my 2016 post.

Photos: Helen Fields, obviously

Redux: Vanishing Points

This essay originally appeared in 2012.

If the artwork above looks familiar, the reason might be that it was part of the argument that Ann made in a recent post. She suggested that the beauty of the Florentine paintings of the fifteenth century—“stunning, literally; you look at them and can hardly breathe”—couldn’t have been due only to the usual reasons that art history texts cite: Florence’s return to a leading role in international commerce combined with the rise of humanism and rationality. The intensity of the beauty, Ann argued in both words and images, must be due to the intensity of the catastrophes that recently had befallen Florence: the flood of 1333, the financial collapse of 1346, the drought of 1346 and 1347, and finally, in 1348, the Black Death.

No argument here. Or, I should say, no argument with Ann. But the final work of art in her argument, Sandro Botticelli’s 1489 Annunciation, prompted me to think about not only where fifteenth-century Florentine art came from but where it would lead. More precisely, what got me to thinking was the window in the painting.

Continue reading

Toward a theory of cuteness aggression

I want a dog. For a while now, my awareness of this has been getting louder. It was when I encountered these little gentlemen that the urgency of the situation became undeniable. (If you value your hearing turn down the volume before you hit play.)

I’ve lived with many canines – parents’ dogs, roommate dogs, partners’ dogs, my dogs. These animals are an unceasing upside of being alive. However, owing to circumstances, I haven’t had a dog living in my house in 10 years. I have been too busy to commit real time to fretting about this – and life circumstances don’t permit remedying it just yet – but increasingly the sense of needing a dog has become absolute. My reactions to cuteness in public are becoming alarming. As you probably surmised from the pitchy caterwauling above (pity the poor owner).

That was when I remembered cuteness aggression. 

Continue reading

This Is Not a Snake, Though It Is Snake Shaped

Look at this worm!! Folks, I met this giant earthworm during a trip to a cloud forest in Ecuador where I was covering amphibian declines with photographer Joel Sartore for National Geographic. It may recall one of those corrugated plastic pipes you use to run water from your downspout to the street, but it’s not that. (It’s too narrow to do much good in that department anyway…it would certainly clog up with the first rain.)

Not one of these.

The worm was just a thing we found along the trail, and we weren’t prepared with a worm field guide or a worm expert and so didn’t officially ID it. However, there’s another giant earthworm known to Ecuador called Martiodrilus crassus—which one online source says translates to “worm that feeds on dogs” and another insists means “thick martian,” and I’m too lazy to go down this particular wormhole to investigate further. Anyway, it’s possible that’s the kind of worm this is, but don’t quote me on it.

Earthworms live in burrows underground, which they tunnel out themselves with their muscular heads. If their burrows flood, they come up to the surface. That’s probably why this one was out and about: It rains a lot in the Ecuadorian cloud forest. In fact, you’d think the trail would be displaced worms as far as the eye can see. You know that childhood game “The Floor is Lava” where you leapt from chair to chair in the living room to avoid burning your feet? What if the floor were worms? It seems like a bad idea for lots of reasons (squish squish), but it did spring to mind when I considered all those drowning worms’ emergence.

There are bigger earthworm species in Australia. Some can reach nearly 10 feet in length and can even be heard gurgling and glugging underground. But this South American one, which made no sound that I could detect, was no slouch. Earthworms eat organic matter and minerals in the soil, and then poop out said organic matter and minerals (minus whatever their simple bodies need, I suppose). Those “castings” left behind are called frass, and big worms leave behind a lot of it. I’ll say this: I’m glad I don’t have to clean up after this particular earthworm or any of its big-ass cousins.

—–

Thanks to top-notch photographer and friend Joel Sartore (you may know of his Photo
Ark
project, and if you don’t, you should) for the wacky image of me and the worm shot on a trail in the cloud forest reserve of Reserva Las Gralarias, near Mindo, Ecuador.

Science Poem: The Birds of Hyde Park

A colored pencil drawing of lime-green parakeets perched atop an electrical tower and on the surrounding wires.

Long before I knew that science writing could be a job, I wrote science poems. A lot of them. Sometimes several in a day. And just as quickly, I abandoned them and moved on to the next vivid factoid in astronomy, anatomy, or animal behavior.

There are hundreds of these dashed-off verses in my files, raw and rough around the edges, forgotten and gathering dust. Once in a while, someone will say something that triggers a flicker of memory. In this case, it was Our Jane sending me an Instagram post about the feral monk parakeets of Chicago.

It would be so easy to write an entire post, or three, about the surreal midcentury explosion of tropical birds in urban Illinois. Instead, I’ll direct you to this truly delightful article, and get to my poetry point.

The Birds of Hyde Park

Chicago's winter is nine months long.
Wind fit to hollow the cheeks of sweet children 
spins, screaming, down each vacated street.
And screaming, too, from the dips
of the satellite dishes, the birds of Hyde Park 
come home to roost. Each nest is a mess 
of yesterday's vines, each bird uncanny in a jungle
of cold wire. Argentina is thirty worlds away.
From the topmost floor of the busiest building 
you can just see them landing,
great feathered limes in a bowl
of smoke and slate.

I dashed this poem off in 2009, when the parakeet population in Hyde Park was the greatest in the city. In the intervening time, that flock has dispersed or relocated, as have I. A lot of other things have changed, too; most relevant to you, perhaps, is that I edit my poems (including this one) now.  

*

Drawing by me, based on a photograph by Gary Leavens.