Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: Mustard family

I noticed this Dame's rocket plant growing in the garden at the Ellis Bird Farm. I had always known it as a plant that needs to be pulled because it is invasive, so I was a little surprised to see it when we were there. Such a pretty colour. "Dame's rocket is an invasive plant in Calgary that can rapidly spread. It chokes out natural vegetation and harbours dangerous plant diseases. Dame's rocket rapidly self-seeds and forms dense infestations quickly – in fact, each plant can produce up to 20,000 seeds. It's a highly competitive plant that thrives in ditches and waste areas. It is often part of wildflower seed mixes, whether on the label or not. Dame's rocket is also known as Hesperis matrionali, Damask violet, Dame's violet, Dames-wort, Dame's gilliflower, night scented gilliflower, Queen's gilliflower, Rogue's gilliflower, summer lilac, sweet rocket, mother-of-the-evening and winter gilliflower." From the City of Calgary. www.calgary.ca/CSPS/Parks/Pages/Planning-and-Operations/P... www.abinvasives.ca/factsheets/140506-fs-damesrocket.pdf?i... That day, 4 June 2016, I had the chance to visit somewhere that I had longed to go to for years - the Ellis Bird Farm. This was thanks to the annual Nature Calgary Bus Trip, which goes to a different location each year. When I read where this year's outing was going to be, I was so excited and registered immediately and, apparently, was the first person on the list : ) I believe there were 66 people on the trip, enjoying a great day. The sun was shining and the temperature got up to around 25C - too warm for me and for many others, especially when the whole day is spent outdoors. It was a very early start, with my alarm clocks set for 4:30 am. Unfortunately, they had also been set for 4:30 am the previous day, when I went on a Bio-blitz to the Square Butte Ranch. Being a dreadful 'night owl', this meant that I ended up doing these two trips on about 5 hours sleep total over the two nights. Not good! It is such a treat to go somewhere by bus - everyone can relax and chat. Some of the $50 charge per person went towards a donation to the Ellis Bird Farm (and to the JJ Collett natural area), which was good to know. The drive from Calgary to the Ellis Bird Farm takes about an hour and a half. When we arrived, we were greeted by a long line of bird nest boxes along the fence line. Within the farm area, there were even more nest boxes - everywhere! People send them from all over the province. I believe the Farm has the largest collection of outdoor boxes in the world - 300+! One of the highlights was seeing the Purple Martins and their condominium-style nest boxes. These birds are very social birds, who apparently like people too, and nest in condominium-style nest boxes. They spend "most of the year in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and come up to Alberta just long enough to raise a family." We started off by watching a very touching old video about Charlie Ellis - what a delightful, very shy, modest man he was. ""Ellis Bird Farm is both a non-profit company and a working farm. It was established in 1982 to carry on the legacy of Lacombe-area conservationists, Charlie and Winnie Ellis, when their farm was purchased by Union Carbide Canada Ltd. At the time, Charlie and Winnie operated one of the largest bluebird trails in Canada and had established their farmstead as a haven for wildlife. The Ellis family of Parkenham, Ontario, came west in 1886 to settle on a ranch near Calgary. Their son John, then a teenager, was married in 1894 to Agnes Clark who had come west from Ontario in 1888 to teach school. They lived near Calgary until 1906 when they moved with their family of four children to a quarter section homestead in the Joffre district. In 1907 they built a two-storey frame house and subsequently enlarged the farm by the purchase of an additional five quarters. After John and Agnes passed away in the early 1950s, two of their children, Charlie and Winnie, took over the farm operations. And about this same time, Charlie began a project that was to dominate the rest of his life; he set out his first nesting box for the Mountain Bluebirds." From Ellis Bird Farm website. www.ellisbirdfarm.ca/ After the video, we were divided into two large groups and then further divided again. Not easy to organize such a large number of people and it was rather confusing, Have to admit that I ended up, like varous friends, wandering around, taking photos. I always prefer to be free to do this, as there is a lot of information on the Internet, which can be read before and after such a visit. "​Ellis Bird Farm made science history on Tuesday May 31 when University of Manitoba Grad Student, Alisha Ritchie, and her EBF team (Cheyenne Knight, Claudia Lipski and Myrna Pearman) retrapped a very special yearling Purple Martin. This bird had been retrofitted with a light level geolocator last season, as a nestling, and is the first songbird EVER(!) to be tracked on its first migration. The bird had evaded several attempts to trap it, so it has been named Houdini." Information about their Purple Martin Geolocator Program: www.ellisbirdfarm.ca/purple-martin-geolocators.html Following our visit to the Farm, we boarded the two buses and were driven about half an hour's drive away, to the JJ Collett natural area, where the amazing Dr. Charles (Charlie) Bird took us on a walk (longer and faster paced than we were expecting, ha) along one of the trails. This is an interesting place to visit - will have to add information about it when I eventually post an image or two taken there. I had been on a day trip to JJ Collett once before, with friend Sandy and others, on 6 October 2013, but we explored a different trail. www.jjcollett.com/ Not sure what time we got back to the meeting place in Calgary - around 5:15 pm? I sat in my car and gulped down a mug of black coffee before driving for maybe 45 minutes to the far side of the city. My vehicle had been sitting in the sun all day and my coffee was as hot as if freshly made! Thank you, Nature Calgary and Leslie, for organizing this special day trip for us! Very successful and greatly enjoyed! Kate, thank you for your company on the drive there and back - made the time go faster and was so enjoyable.

Most of my plant photos are macros of single flowers, but I decided to take and post this one to show a mass of these Pennycress/Stinkweed seedpods. These dry, flat pods are, in fact, quite attractive. "This common plant, also known as Stinkweed, forms dense stands on disturbed soil. Regarded in restoration and landscaping as a useful volunteer cover crop. Not invasive, but may exclude native colonizers of disturbed soil. A prolific producer of very persistent seed. It has developed herbicide resistance at a few Alberta sites." www.anpc.ab.ca/wiki/index.php/Thlaspi_arvense This photo was taken on 23 July 2015, at Darryl Teskey's place. On this day, five of us spent the day botanizing the land belonging to Darryl Teskey, SW of Calgary and W of Millarville (maybe a 40-minute drive from Calgary). This was the first time I had been there and I'm so glad I was invited to go - I would have missed all sorts of things, including a family of Ruffed Grouse and several fungi. These Grouse were the rare rufous-morph, and we startled them when we were walking through the forest in their direction. Usually, you don't see Grouse because they are so well-hidden. When you get fairly close (sometimes very close) to them, they suddenly "explode" from the tangle of shrubs and plants of the forest floor, making ones heart beat fast! We were taken by surprise when we came across a nearby statue of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is known as the patron saint of animals and the environment. A nice idea, I thought. Our walk took us over grassland and through forest, many places treacherous with so many fallen logs which were often barely visible. I have never, ever seen so many tiny Skipper butterflies - there must have been hundreds or even thousands of these bright orange beauties that were flying or perched on flowers of every colour. Fortunately, the rain stayed away until we started driving back to Calgary. Quite a lot of black clouds, reminding me of the tornado that passed through Calgary just the day before (22 July 2015). Our purpose, as always, was to find and list everything that we saw - wildflowers, trees, grasses, birds, insects, fungi, etc.. Our leader then compiles an extensive list of our finds and this is later sent to the landowner, along with any photos that we might take. Always a win/win situation, as the landowner then has a much better idea of just what is on his property, and we have a most enjoyable day.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of these plants growing along the Bow River, in the Pine Creek Water Treatment Plant area. Seen on a walk in the area on 3 June 2014. "Sisymbrium loeselii is a species of flowering plant in the mustard family known by several common names, including small tumbleweed mustard, tall hedge mustard, and false London rocket. It is native to Eurasia, and it is known on other continents as an introduced species and in some areas a common roadside weed. It is an annual herb producing a hairy, erect stem which can exceed a meter in height. The leaf blades are divided into triangular, lance-shaped, and toothed linear lobes, and are borne on petioles. The top of the stem is occupied by a raceme of flowers with bright yellow petals each measuring just under a centimeter long. The fruit is a silique up to 3.5 centimeters in length containing tiny seeds. This plant is allelopathic against other species growing around it - it produces chemicals that inhibit the germination of seeds of other species." From Wikipedia. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisymbrium_loeselii

Photographed (macro) on Plateau Mountain on July 2nd. There were quite a lot of clusters of these plants and most had all the buds fully opened. Occasionally, you would come across one like this one, with just an outer ring of pretty little white flowers. Love the name of this plant : ) Sorry about all the plant photos at the moment. I have been cropping, etc. so many the last little while, to pass on to local fellow botany people, so I have piles of flower images and not enough time to search for any bird or other type of photos. Our growing season is SO short in Calgary!! Gotta dash to my volunteer shift this afternoon.

This member of the Mustard family, Dame's-rocket, was introduced from Europe as a garden flower. Now it has spread to roadsides and open forests. When we spent a morning walking at Strathcona Ravines Park (within the city) a few days ago, we came across a number of areas of this invasive, but very pretty, flower growing on the hillsides. I always love to see the colour, especially against the green foliage.

A friend and I spent this afternoon exploring the west end of Griffith Woods. At the end of our walk, by the parking lot at the west end of the park, two or three plants of this Dame's-rocket were growing in the grass. This member of the Mustard family was introduced from Europe as a garden flower.

These are the dried seedpods of the Stinkweed/Pennycress plant. Introduced from Eurasia, it grows in fields, gardens, roadsides and waste areas. Grows April to October in Alberta. Stinkweed contains large amounts of Vitamin C. Took this ages ago with my old Olympus C750, not with my new FZ18.