Parasites, not pinecones, at Virginia Beach park

As trees leaf out in fresh greenery and dainty ferns unfurl in the understory at First Landing State Park, other smaller, more unusual plants are doing their spring thing this time of year, too.

Look beyond the stunning new green that keeps your eyes riveted and check carefully along the sides of the trails as you walk. You might be surprised at what you see.

The other, day for the first time this year, I saw that fresh squawroot had popped up from the leaf litter. These prickly-looking, yellow-brown structures with white unflowerlike blooms are reminiscent of the remnants of a young pinecone after a squirrel has eaten its share.

As squawroot ages, it turns dark brown and still has some pinecone qualities. But in its old age, it looks more like a skinny, dead pinecone.

Squawroot is believed by some to have medicinal qualities, and it was used by Native Americans for many ailments. It got its name because Native American women used it as a cure for female problems. Another name for this nongreen plant is cancer root, which again refers to its ability to treat medical problems.

I thought at first that cancer root referred to the fact the plant is a parasite, living off the roots of trees, mainly oaks. Squawroot gets all its nutrients from those roots, though fortunately there are usually not enough of the odd little parasites around to kill the trees.

Spanish moss is another of the oddities among the park’s flora. Though squawroot doesn’t look like a plant, you know it is alive because you can see it coming up, getting taller and fading away. But Spanish moss might as well not be a plant at all. Sometimes called graybeard, it just hangs out on the trees and doesn’t appear to change.

But Spanish moss is more of a real plant than squawroot. Not even a parasite, Spanish moss is an epiphyte. While it must hang from a tree for support, the moss gets its nutrients from the air and from rainwater.

Though Spanish moss takes nothing from a tree, it can grow in such abundance that it might shade a tree’s leaves or weigh down its branches to the point of breaking them.

Look closely this time of year, and you sometimes can see the only sign of life you will ever see on Spanish moss, a tiny bloom where two branches of moss separate. A little yellowish seed pod develops there soon after.

Spanish moss is favored as nesting materials by birds. It was used for stuffing pillows and mattresses and was even said to have been used as baby diapers by Native Americans.

Beware, however, of picking up a clump of Spanish moss from the ground. Chiggers live among the moss and could cause you no end of itching.

While walking in the park in May, you also might come across some beautiful wildflowers that are true flowers in every sense. You still have to look carefully to see them among the trees that take center stage this time of year in the park.

Last weekend wild blueberries were in full bloom. Carolina jasmine’s yellow flowers covered vines snaking up into trees and also dropped to carpet the area underneath. Look for wild pinks – dainty little low-growing pink flowers – and tiny, twin white blooms on partridge berry that grows along the sides of some trails.

All those and more are blooming in the park, a place that – on the surface – doesn’t appear to have a blooming thing.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS

Tuffy Braithwaite took a video of an osprey that caught a fish too big to carry: “Easter Dinner Just Slips Away.” Get the link on my blog and also see a photo of a lime green luna moth that Vicki Cousins took at her home in Cypress Point.

Cathy Williamson had a rare sighting of a swallow-tailed kite, with its long, black, forked tail, over her Kings Grant home. According to Ned Brinkley, editor of the North American Birds Journal, the sighting was the first of the year in Virginia. Rarely are more than two or three of the birds seen here each year.

The migration season is here. Harry Ramsey sent a photo of a rose-breasted grosbeak that stopped off on its northward migration to feed in his Foxfire yard. See the photo in the gallery with this online story.

Karen Beatty sent photos of a great-crested flycatcher, a prothonotary warbler and a parula warbler at Stumpy Lake Golf Course.

Stuart McCausland photographed four black vultures up close on his deck in Brigadoon. The birds were sparring over a squirrel carcass and paid him little mind, posing for the camera in an almost regal way.

Judy Liberman photographed a king rail up close in the road in her Lake Shores neighborhood. Because it appeared injured or ill, she took it to a wildlife rehabilitator. See both photos in Thursday’s Close Encounters in the print edition of the Beacon.

Gwynn Trinder sent a photo of a huge bullfrog by the pond in her Bay Colony yard. Another smaller bullfrog is perched on its back as though it were a comfortable seat, but the frog probably had other things in mind. Female bullfrogs are bigger than the males! See the photo in the gallery with this online story.

Barbara Zimmer photographed multiple great egrets in their pine tree rookery at the corner of Waltham Street and Indian River Road in Chesapeake.

Kathryn Bateman said she was “stunned and outraged” to see teenage boys chase a mother duck and 15 babies with their boat in the canal along Entrada Drive in Lago Mar. “They killed the mother, leaving all the orphaned babies on their own with little chance of survival,” Bateman said. She asks that anyone who has information on the boat or the boys call the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries crime line, (800) 237-5712. The investigating officer is Jeff Drummond.

Robert Capria sent photos of a dragonfly that took a big dip in his pool and had to be rescued by Capria.

Robert Klages observed a female ruby-throated hummingbird gathering cobwebs from the eaves of a house in Princes Anne Hill. Klages assumed she was going to use the cobwebs as nesting materials. Jeanette Winsor reported both a male and female hummingbird in her College Park yard.

Ronnie Shank photographed a young red-tailed hawk dining on a rabbit in his Laurel Cove yard. Shank worries that if the hawk could get a rabbit, it also might capture one of his toy poodles.

He is building a pergola to make it harder for the hawk to swoop down in his yard. Does anybody have any other advice? E-mail me.