The seeds of Autumn Clematis (Clematis terniflora) look like little comets close up, or perhaps like tropical fish in a feeding frenzy.
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Autumn Clematis Seeds
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Snow Is Falling
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Snow on Ivy
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Japanese Barberry in Fall Color
Japanese Barberry (Berberis thunbergii) may be a noxious invasive, but it came here because it was beautiful, and no one can take that away from it.
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Forsythia at the End of November
Sometimes Forsythia gets a little confused. A few days of warm weather are sufficient to make the plant think it’s time to bloom.
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Corn Harvest
Mixed heirloom varieties of popcorn grown in a small city garden in Pittsburgh.
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Sunrise
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Weeping Willow and Cattails
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Staghorn Sumac in Fall Colors
Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina) has some of the most spectacular fall colors of all the spectacular trees nature plants for us around here. This clump was growing just below Grandview Avenue, Mount Washington, where they clung to the side of the hill. It should not be confused with the notoriously unwelcome Tree of Heaven or Chinese Sumac, also called Pittsburgh Palm or Tree from Hell, whose leaves just turn sickly yellow and fall off.
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Along the Tom the Tinker Trail
The Tom the Tinker Trail runs beside a gurgling stream through a narrow valley in the Kane Woods Nature Area. The trail is named for a fictional character in the Whiskey Rebellion: farmers who paid the whiskey tax would receive threatening notes signed “Tom the Tinker.”
Yes, there is a manhole cover in the middle of this idyllic scene. A sewer line runs down the hill through the stream valley.
All through the woods we can see evidence that there was once a little community tucked into this narrow valley. Above, a ruined foundation clings to the side of the gorge.
