📜 EwA Week Highlights: Spring Changes and Spore Capsules

[Mike McGlathery]

EwA Highlights April 27, 2025 Hello everyone,  Thanks for reading the April 27th EwA highlights. The recent beautiful weather produced a tidal wave of observations from our naturalists, with this week’s observation total coming in at more than double that of last week. With so many seasonal changes occurring in our local flora, plants made up the largest portion of our observations this week. 📸 The spring boom of plant growth brings some less welcome sights along with it, such as the appearance of the notoriously invasive garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata). A web of exacerbating factors, ranging from deer browsing habits to its negative effect on native mycorrhizal fungi, has made this invasive particularly problematic. Once it has established a seed bank, it can be hard to eradicate, but you can do your part by removing garlic mustard wherever you see it and disposing of it in a trash bag to prevent subsequent seed dispersal. Over on our Anecdata project EwA Invasive Flora Patrol this week, user @nitiseereeram was doing just that! If you’d like to learn more about the project, you can come to our event on May 9th. EwA Invasive Flora Patrol Record (© @nitiseereeram · Medford, MA · Apr. 24, 2025)  As you’ll know if you’ve been to an EwA event, phenological changes can be as big as the leafing out as the forest canopy or as small as the fruiting of a lichen. Occurring at a scale slightly larger than that of the lichens is the phenology of mosses. This is a relatively neglected area of phenological research, but mosses do indeed exhibit seasonal changes, with many mosses generating spores over the winter and releasing them sometime in the spring. You can track these changes by observing the spore capsules of mosses, such as the distinctive round capsules of this common apple-moss (Bartramia pomiformis) observed by Sara. EwA iNaturalist Record (© gsarajg · Winchester, MA · Apr. 25, 2025)  In keeping with the larger story this week, EwA’s most observed species on iNat were the wood anemone (Anemonoides quinquefolia) and the Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense). Kathy observed this budding Canada mayflower on Friday. This plant can often be found in large forest floor colonies and is an important spring food for white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). Notably, as a forest-floor plant this is one of many species that can lose habitat to the invasion of that nasty garlic mustard mentioned above. EwA iNaturalist Record (© kathymcg · Winchester, MA · Apr. 25, 2025)  📊 Thanks to everyone for your great biodiversity records this week, totaling 1,326 observations of 630 distinct species. If you’re curious about the records from this week that have been validated by the iNat community so far, you can find them » here. 🏆 Running tally: To date, we have recorded 230,839 observations of 12,450 distinct species! Check out our EwA umbrella project, see the details per site/observer, and more » here. 📅 EwA Upcoming Public Events Ewa Field Events » Check the EwA Spring [ Event details and registration » ] Don’t miss some great opportunities to follow the rhythm of the season in our local habitats and in the local wildlife! Space is limited for all our field events. Wildlife ethics is important to us and we seek to avoid putting the pressure on natural habitats which large gatherings unavoidably do. We are asking our audience to register-and-commit (or cancel when you know you can’t come) to avoid no-shows. EwA Fieldwork (and Resources) It’s a great time to join our monitoring programs. Check EwA’s Volunteer Program Calendar 📅  to know when things happen. And if a session is of interest to you, don’t hesitate to reach out to get the rendezvous location. 📅 EwA Sites Map | 🌱 Site Protocols and Guides · Field Rosters · Field Notes » All here! | ℹ️ More about EwA’s Citizen Science Program » Here ❓ Do you have any questions? Don’t be shy. Just email me or reply to this thread.  That’s all for this week—hope you have a good one! -Mike