by Roland D. Hallee

It’s simply amazing what you come across in the woods of Maine. While preparing to open camp for the season, my wife and I were helping friends do some raking and leaf pickup, when the wife showed me something that she had raked up. It looked kind of odd. OK, something else I had never seen in the 34 years my wife and I have been there.

Aylostera vulpina, a common house cactus, native to Bolivia and Argentina.

It was round, like an orb, a little smaller than a tennis ball. Brown in color, with black bristles all over the exterior. At one end was a hole with what appeared to be dried mud inside.

That evening, I perused through the myriad of books I own and found nothing that really resembled it. The closest I came was that of a milkweed stock, but still didn’t look the same. So, I turned to my contact at the Maine Depart­ment of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, in Augusta. His initial thought was a gall, but he would confer with his botanist colleagues.

Basically, a gall is a kind of swelling growth on the external tissues of plants or animals. They are abnormal outgrowths of plant tissues, similar to benign tumors or warts on animals. They are caused by various parasites, from fungi and bacteria, to insects and mites. They are highly organized structures and because of this the cause of the gall can often be determined without the actual agent being identified. In human pathology, a gall is a raised sore on the skin, usually caused by chafing or rubbing.

In the end, what we had found was not a gall.

Several emails later, my contact replied following some consultations with the botanists, and were wondering if it might be a Chestnut gall. This would only be possible if we had a mature Chestnut tree on the premises. There are none that we are aware.

Then, another state botanist concluded there are no trees in Maine with galls that have multiple spines from the same attachment point and therefore he speculated that it was most likely a cactus house plant that was thrown away in the yard some time ago.

He concluded the orb was possibly that of the Aylostera vulpina plant, a cactus that is native to Bolivia and Argentina, but very popular as house potted plants. In the wilds of South America, they grow at altitudes of 3,400 – 3,900 feet. I was not able to find a common name for them.

The plant is easy to grow and recommended for beginners. They prefer a gritty, porous soil mix with a pH slightly on the acidic side. Full sun to light shade. The root system is rot prone so watering should be monitored closely. It’s recommended to let the pot dry out before adding water. It is winter hardy and will sustain temperatures below freezing. They require a winter rest period.

This species of cactus will occupy a small flower pot confortably and remain a manageable sized house plant. The flower is bright red with scarlet petal tips and white stigma.

They are subject to mealy-bug attacks and to fungus and rot brought on by overwatering and high humidity.

It appears that in cultivation they grow larger and cluster more vigorously than in the wild.

The site where the pod was found has had a high turnover rate in the past 6 – 10 years so could very conceivably have been a potted house plant. The area had not been raked in quite some time.

I guess, for the time anyway, we have solved another “mystery” at camp.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

In golf, finish the following phrase: “You drive for show, but putt for…”

Female, left, and male cardinals.

by Roland D. Hallee

My wife has been trying to attract cardinals to our feeders at home for quite some time. Last Sunday she got her wish when a pair of cardinals came in search of food. First, the female showed herself by clinging to a feeding station. A couple of minutes later, the male appeared. I had told my wife when she first saw the female that, for sure, the male was not far away. When you see one cardinal, the mate is always nearby.

It prompted a conversation about how over the last few decades, the northern cardinal, which was rarely ever seen in this part of the country, has become more abundant.

In John James Audubon’s day (1785-1851), the Northern Cardinal was considered a southern bird and was rarely seen as far north as Philadelphia. By 1895, its range reached the Great Lakes, and by 1910, the cardinal was in southern Ontario and along the southern portions of the Hudson River. Some authorities believe the cardinal’s push northward was due to more people feeding birds during the winter and their loss of habitat in its traditional southern grounds.

Today the Northern Cardinal is a year-round resident from the Dakotas, southern Ontario and Nova Scotia south to the Gulf Coast, and from southern Texas westward through Arizona and southward through Mexico as far as Guatemala and Honduras. The Northern Cardinal was introduced in Hawaii in 1929 and is now well-established there. It also occurs sparingly in southeastern California and in Bermuda as an introduced species.

Although nonmigratory, cardinals often gather in large flocks of up to 70 birds during winter months and can be found in bushy thickets in the more sheltered areas of their range.

Northern Cardinals feed by hopping around on the ground and securing food from low shrubbery and trees. Cardinals’ short, heavy, reddish beaks crack seeds with strong abductor muscles that enable them to handle larger and tougher seeds that birds with smaller bills cannot crack. The grooved upper mandible holds the sunflower seed while the sharp-edged lower mandible moves forward and crushes and husks the seed. The bird then swallows the inner nutmeat.

Most authorities believe Northern Cardinals mate for life, but during winter, the male does not allow his mate to feed with him. With the return of spring, however, he regards her in a new light. Then you see the practice of mate-feeding when the male brings shucked sunflower seeds and other choice tidbits to the female. She waits with her wings all aflutter like a baby bird begging for food, and he places the seed in her bill as tenderly as a first kiss between lovers.

Northern Cardinals will eat almost anything offered at feeding stations. Their favorite foods are black-oil sunflower seed, cracked corn, suet, suet mixes, nutmeats of all kinds, melon seeds and safflower seed. The birds’ diet consists of 30 percent insects, which makes cardinals highly valuable to farmers and gardeners. They consume some of the worst agricultural pests: codling moths, cotton cutworms, scale insects, cotton bollworms, grasshoppers, aphids, snails and slugs.

Although cardinals prefer to eat on the ground, they will come to bird tables, trays on posts and trees, window trays, and hanging feeders with perches.

Water for drinking and bathing is just as important for Northern Cardinals in winter as it is during hot months. Remember to keep the water in your birdbath fresh and unfrozen year-round. Because wet cardinals cannot fly quickly to safety, place your birdbath near cover so the birds can escape from cats and other predators. When birdbaths are not available, cardinals bathe in shallow edges of ponds and streams, in snowmelt or in a puddle after rain. Like children, cardinals enjoy bathing in the spray of lawn sprinklers.

Northern Cardinals prefer brushy woodlands, riparian thickets, garden shrubbery, residential areas and parks.

Cardinal nests are compact and well-lined with fine grass or hair, or they might be flimsy and scarcely lined. The birds often use grass, rootlets, weed stems, pliable twigs, vines and bark strips, interwoven with leaves and paper or plastic. Once, when a storm blew the nest out of a bush, a strip of plastic was found in it with the green recycle symbol printed on it. This pair of Northern Cardinals taught me that humans are not the only creatures to use recyclable materials in their homes.

The cardinals have been appearing daily, and it’s our hope they will continue through the summer months.

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

Name the only three MLB players to have accumulated at heast 500 home runs and 600 doubles during their career.