The "weedy" remnants of my front lawn, where Viola sororia, common blue violet, has taken charge. Easily overlooked, it seeds itself readily without any help from me (or any other gardener). Yet this species is native to New York City. It's one of my iNaturalist observations from my garden for this year's City Nature Challenge.
Today, Sunday, April 29th, is day 3 of the global City Nature Challenge, which continues into tomorrow. Building on the explosive popularity of iNaturalist as a platform for observations, this gamified bioblitz pits cities against each other, to see which can identify more taxa of living species in a 96-hour period.
NYC is currently is 6th place globally, and 4th nationally. There are still plenty of opportunities to join special events organized for New York City, with events in 4 of our 5 boroughs today, and more tomorrow.
I wasn't able to take part in yesterday's festivities. This weekend, I have to get my garden ready for this season's garden tours. Armed with only my phone, I kept an eye out for anything I might see, uncover, or unearth. I was rewarded.
I came up with 16 observations yesterday. In addition to Viola sororia introduced at the top of the post, I observed:
- Moss, one species
- A weedy Prunus (I think)
- Taraxacum officinale, dandelion
- Slug, adult and eggs
- Cepaea nemoralis, grove snail
- Shell of another unknown snail
- An earthworm, genus Lumbricus
- Spiders, 2 species
- Millipedes, maybe 2 species
- Centipede
- Armadillidium vulgare, Common Pillbug
- An unknown fly
And not a vertebrate among them. There were plenty of birds, and the occasional squirrel, in the garden. I wouldn't have been able to get close enough with my phone to any of them to get a decent photo.
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