Cherry blossoms in Kenwood

 It is cherry blossom time!  One of the more poorly kept secrets about Bethesda is that we have some neighborhoods with really great cherry blossoms.  You don't have to drive to DC and brave the crowds around the Tidal Basin, instead you can skip the drive and brave the crowds right here.  

Yesterday I went to the Kenwood neighborhood to walk around.  There were numerous people out walking and more than a few cars traffic wasn't bad.  Of course, it was a Friday afternoon.  This weekend I expect it to be much more crowded.  If you want to walk, don't plan on driving into the neighborhood and parking, many of the roads have temporary parking restrictions.  I parked up near the Bethesda Pool (not to be confused with the Pool of Bethesda) on Little Falls Parkway and walked down the Capital Crescent Trail to Kenwood.

This is peak of the blossoms and this weekend will be a great time to see them. Saturday will be partly cloudy with a high of 52. Sunday will be colder with a high of 42 and wind.

Monarch Buterfly Chrysalis and more

Green Monarch Butterfly Chrysalis

In yesterday's post I talked about how many Monarch Butterfly caterpillars I had this summer and how they kept disappearing.  Not all of them did, however. One day I came out to find a caterpillar hanging upside down from a leaf, looking mostly dead.  After a day of that, it turned into this beautiful green chrysalis.  I looked around on the web and found out that they stay in this stage for a little over two weeks.  I'd check on it every few days, but after about two and a half weeks I was getting concerned.

Transparent Monarch Butterfly Chrysalis

Then, a couple of days ago, I found that the chrysalis was semi-transparent and you could see the butterfly's wings through it.  This was encouraging, but as I kept checking it, it seemed to darken and no butterfly was emerging.  The next day I was away from the house, but when I came home...

Monarch Butterfly Chrysalis, post emergence

The chrysalis was just an empty shell.  The Monarch Butterfly had emerged!  I started looking all around to see if I could find it.

A newly emerged Monarch Butterfly

After a short hunt, I saw it on a plant.  As I got closer it tried to fly away, but it couldn't, so it kind of glided to the ground and sat there, wings shaking a bit.  I left it a while and when I looked again it had made it back to a plant and appeared to be sleeping with it's wings folded.

Monarch Catepillars

A Monarch Butterfly egg

I planted milkweed a couple of years ago, hoping to attract Monarch Butterflies.  I didn't see any until earlier this year when one came by to lay some eggs.  In the photo above you can see a tiny speck of an egg on the bottom of a milkweed leaf.

A very, very small Monarch Butterfly caterpillar

I was very excited when I found a number of eggs and they started hatching and I saw tiny little black, yellow, and white striped Monarch caterpillars. 

As the caterpillars started growing, I noticed that many of them simply disappeared without a trace.  I saw a yellow jacket eating one but I don't know if the yellow jacket killed it or happened across it after it died.

Some of them got quite large, but they also disappeared.  There seems to be something that eats them.  It wasn't uncommon for me to have half a dozen on a single plant and about one a day disappear until they were all gone. It is possible some of them crawled off to make a chrysalis, but I suspect most of them became dinner for something.  This photos are not of the same caterpillar, they are of many different ones.

Sometimes I'd have two or three Monarch caterpillars eating the same leaf.

Despite the heavy casualties, there were some successes, I'll talk about them tomorrow.

Is it Spring already?

The warm weather recently has been pleasant, if uncharacteristic for this time of year.  It has succeeded in confusing not just people, but trees too.  I was driving on Little Falls Parkway on Sunday, and right at the corner of it and Dorset Avenue were about half a dozen cherry trees blossoming!

Plants and animals around Cunningham Falls

The area around Cunningham falls is loaded with plants and animals. When I was there I saw dozens of small toads, deer, and lots of interesting and colorful fungus and flowers.

This deer was hanging out along the cliff trail.

Indian pipes. These low-growing small flowers usually come out of the ground in small clumps.

Orange and Yellow mushroom.  It was growing right in one of the campground areas.

Odd-shaped fungus growing from the side of a tree stump.

Related posts:

• Cunningham Falls State Park
• Hiking to Cunningham Falls
• Cunningham Falls

Odd Fruit

I saw this tree with some really odd fruits on it. A lot were green but they were turning red as they ripen. Some however, were oddly spikey with only the tips of the spikes turning redish. I'm guessing they are infected with something and aren;t naturally like that. The trees are right near the corner of Rosedale Ave and Wisconsin Ave if you want to take a look at them.

[where: Bethesda, MD]

Bethesda Cottonwoods

I've never seen a cottonwood tree before, so it never crossed my mind that they might produce cotton. Imagine my surprise when I went for a walk and saw lots of cottony fluff all over Battery Lane Park in Bethesda, MD. The stuff was everywhere, big clumps of it. And there were bits of it floating in the air. It took me a few minutes to track it down to the trees by the playground. If you have a little time over the next few days, I'd recommend that you go there and take a quick look, it is pretty interesting.

If you look close at the drifts of fluff you can see the small white seeds. I'm not positive, but I think that some of them have already sprouted.


Some cottonwood trees are female and some are male. Only the female trees have the fluff. The seed pods are way up in the top of the tree and each one produces a lot of the snow-like fluff.