Secret Sidewalk: eight late-November wonders

As fall drifts toward winter, nature doesn’t slow down, not really. Amazing things happen all around us, all the time. This site’s tagline: “Everyday wonders in everyday habitat loss” includes not just “natural” areas, but our own yards, trash alleys, parking lots, roadsides. For example, our Secret Sidewalk …

The Secret Sidewalk is a shortcut through 3 neighborhood blocks, but rather than running along a street, it runs between homes. It’s a 5-foot-wide Metro right-of-way flanked by property lines, and it feels intimate, despite crossing four roads, and despite tall privacy fences. It takes walkers past a mix of cultivated and wild. Exotics, natives, volunteers, invasives: all here. Signs of the season change daily.

Wonder #1: the Gulf Fritillary butterfly on a lantana that has survived first frost. I watched the Gulfie’s proboscis probe the florets, but I don’t know if she was finding nectar. Depending on the cultivar—some have more nectar than others—lantanas can be good season-extenders for pollinators, even in a native-centric yards, though lantana is native farther south: “Mexico, the West Indies, and tropical America.”

Farther south is where Gulfies should be by now, for their own good. They don’t survive Nashville winters in any form: egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, or adult. Some migrate to warmer states, some just die—and their life span is only about 18 days anyway—but I’ve seen at least one adult flying in my yard every sunny day this month.

Wonder #2: not terribly noticeable whippy things:

These are what’s left of the long, compound leaves of a native Black Walnut, whose fruit also dropped on the sidewalk, but got taken away by squirrels and, I’m sorry to say, by lawn crews. The whippy things are the rachises: the central stems along which pairs of leaflets grew. If you see these on the ground, you know you are underneath a tree that makes compound leaves, but if the rachises are velvety and smell like Walnut hulls, you know you are underneath a Black Walnut.

Above: a handful of good smells.

Below: bare branches bare show stout twigs that held heavy hulls.

Wonder #3: Virginia Creeper fruit.
The leaves have mostly flown, but the vine’s grape-like drupes are a show-stopper at the sidewalk.

Isn’t the fruit gorgeous? Love the contrast of red stems with those blue-black-purple “berries,” each with a pale, powdery blush. People can’t eat them, but birds can, as can other small animals. Foxes could even reach this bunch, they hang so low.

I’m still trying to find out how old a Virginia Creeper has to be in order to fruit. Or maybe the key is to go aerial, as must English ivy? Or maybe it needs a certain amount of sun? Because I’ve known oodles of Virginia creepers that are many years old, yet never fruit. 

Wonder #4: Next to the Creeper dangles another native vine: Carolina snailseed. A few fruits got nibbled on the stem, and what’s left behind is the snail-shaped seed that gives the vine its name. Carolina snailseed is a tenacious, wiry vine gardeners fight—even I pull it from the yard—but here on the sidewalk where no one cares, it can do its thing: climb tall objects, bloom (and feed insects), fruit (and feed birds).

Wonder #5: Here’s the tree that hosts both of today’s vines: an Eastern Red-Cedar. This one is male: see the little mustard-brown tips? They are male cones, and they’ll open in February to release pollen with every breeze.

Female Red-Cedars receive the wind-borne pollen and make blue “berries” / cones that are invaluable food for our winter frugivorous birds. I’d tell you to watch for Cedar waxwings and Robins, but I’m not sure where the nearest female Red-Cedar is. If you know, do tell.

Wonders #6 and 7: In the same block of the Secret Sidewalk, I found new stands of two wonderful, native wildflowers. No one planted them, but they belong here in our Central Basin ecosystem and can feed our local foodweb AND can bring beauty and joy to people. 

You know Blue mistflower? This is its cousin, Pink thoroughwort / Fleischmannia incarnata. You can’t buy it at local nurseries, and I don’t often see it in our overly-groomed neighborhood, but it’s still here in old lawns and “waste” places.
I had it for years and years—I saw the mystery leaves in the lawn—but it wasn’t till I stopped mowing that I saw what it could do: make beautiful, pale pink blooms, then fluffy seedheads, and then many more plants.
For weeks in fall, I watch little insects and native bees taking pollen and nectar, and I see skippers and butterflies, too. Depending on the microclimate, it can keep blooming in November, as this one proves. 

For a plant profile , see our local native-plant gardening blog, “Clay and Limestone,” here: link.

Next is White Crownbeard, aka White Wingstem and Frostweed and Verbesina virginica.

This is the one we must run out and look for at the first hard frosts, when stems burst with ice sculptures called Frostflowers. (my post re: frostflowers, here.) Not to be missed! This little specimen is still blooming, but most local Frostweed morphed into seedheads weeks ago.
The leaves feed caterpillars of butterflies and moths, the flowers feed many, many insects; the seeds feed birds. This is one powerhouse plant. It gets tall in a rich garden, but here on the Secret Sidewalk, where it gets peed on by dogs, stepped on by people, pulled by children, cut by weedeaters, it stays short.

Wonder #8: winter annuals, whose seeds have been waiting all year. They aren’t from N. America, but do provide some function and food. The pic shows chickweed (delicious! nutritious!), dead-nettle, mock strawberry, and the seed-leaves / cotyledons of ivy-leaved speedwell. 

Look around: you’ll see lots of germinating greenies in the yard and garden right now. Keep an eye on them to see what they become. Some, I pull; some, I keep; some, I transplant; some, I eat.

There were other wonders on my short route, but too many to share here. Actually, I took the same route twice today: at 7am and at noon, because I had to come back when the sun got higher than the privacy fences (for brighter pics). But when I returned, I saw different plant and animal neighbors (including humans) that either weren’t there the first time, or that I’d simply overlooked. Same route: twice the wonders.

In which case, I’d like to offer a Sidewalk Nature paraphrase of a famous quote. The original, by Heraclitus says: “No man ever steps in the same river twice,
for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

I say: “No one ever steps on the same sidewalk twice,
for it’s not the same sidewalk and they’re not the same person.”

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Look around: what wonders do you see nearby, now?

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My other posts about the Secret Sidewalk:
Secret Sidewalk (accidental) Pollinator Garden
Secret Sidewalk Sign
Secret Sidewalk Milkweed Vine

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Bio:
Joanna Brichetto is a naturalist and writer in Nashville, the Hackberry-tree capital of the world.
She writes about everyday marvels amid everyday habitat loss at SidewalkNature.com and on Instagram (@Jo_Brichetto); and her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, Ecotone, Fourth Genre, Hippocampus, The Hopper, Flyway, The Common, The Fourth River, and other journals. Her almanac of urban nature encounters (w/ Trinity University Press) is currently in production.