Heavy Heart

Visited two of my favorite places yesterday, and while I came away with some nice finds that I will discuss in a different post, I also came away with a heavy heart.  My heavy heart was in response to the land management techniques that I am seeing employed with greater and greater frequency.  I debated titling this post "The Sterilization of Appalachia", and in the following paragraphs I hope you will understand why.

We have come to a point in our culture where the best response to anything we do not like is to kill it.  Humans are doing this to each other, and we are doing this to the land we have called home since the dawn of Creation.  If you don't like that person, don't like that plant under the powerline or along the side of the road, don't like that groundhog digging holes in the bank, kill it.

As I hiked The Ridges in Athens, Ohio I came upon a powerline on the south side of the property.  They had done some work in the powerline early in the year, but imagine my shock and surprise when encountering it this time and finding that it had apparently been nuked.  Not hardly a single living thing remained.

The especially sad part of this for me is that I did my graduate research at The Ridges.  I cannot begin to tell you how many trips I have made to the former home of the mentally ill.  It would appear to me that somebody is still mentally ill.  One of the things my floristic inventory of the site back in 1994 found was that powerline cuts had the greatest species richness of any habitat on the site, including different age woodland habitats, wetlands, or fields.  As you can see in the photo above, there is no species richness in this shot, because there are no species.

On my trip home I visited another of my favorite botanizing sites, Ohio Route 56 between Athens and Ash Cave.  Along this stretch of road are some very interesting plants, plants that one does not see everyday.  In fact, I believe I commented in an earlier blog post that I believe this stretch of road is one of the most botanically intriguing of any state road in Ohio.  

This stretch of road however is also now under attack from poor land management practices.  I observed herbicide being used with reckless abandon and mowing practices that force the question, "Why?".  In the past, I have collected seed of several milkweed species, thistle, Indian Plantain and other wonderful butterfly plants along this stretch of road, but sadly, as far as this year is concerned, there will be no seed to gather because it all got chopped down.

Now, don't get me wrong, I understand that the power company does not want trees growing into the powerline.  I understand that for safety reason the edge of the road needs to be clearly visible.  But why can't we hire people to go into the powerline and cut down the stuff getting big and leave the rest.  Why do we need to mow a full 45 feet from the edge of the road (I measured).  It would seem that the only possible answer is, "because its there."

I know a lot of folks do not understand the value of this roadside habitat, and while its not the best habitat it is still beneficial, as evidenced by the photo below of two swallowtails and a fritillary enjoying the nectiferous bounty of a roadside thistle.  Your home landscape can provide the same bounty.  A photo that I did not stop to gather was of a roadside ditch that had been hit with herbicide.  The front yard of this home had a putting green lawn that extended to the ditch which was reduced to bare dirt, every living plant which had called the ditch home having been nuked.

My prayer as I wrap this post up is that at some point people will learn that a world exists beyond ourselves.  I pray that we come to the respectful recognition that God thought it important to populate this world with other organisms besides us, and that those organisms deserve a place to carry out their short but valuable lives.  That God expects this.  

Family Trip

Downy Rattlesnake Plantain

Water Horehound (Lycopus)

Hog Peanut

Scary bridge!

Devil's Trumpet fungus

Ragweed, with merely toothed leaves

Gorgeous campsite

Yes, there were fish in the pond!

Last week the family and I took a two-day camping trip to Lamping Homestead, a Wayne National Forest site just south of Graysville in Monroe County.  My oldest daughter's boyfriend had never had a primitive camping experience, so we thought we would educate him.  For our family, the site was a little more developed than our usual camping outings since there was an outhouse on site!

Lamping Homestead, as the name implies, is the site of an old homestead established by the Lamping Family in the 1800's.  The site had a two-acre pond, a couple hiking trails, and even a family cemetary, although we did not learn where the cemetary was until we were actually leaving and stopped to chat with a forest service employee.  For camping, there were a few sites under some white pine next to the pond, and there were some other sites tucked away in a pocket of deciduous hardwood.  We chose the sites next to the pond as they seemed less buggy.

The Lamping Trail made a loop starting from the east end of our camping area.  Not very far down the trail, hikers were taken over one of the most bizarre bridges I have ever seen.  I could not decide if it was intended to have a curvy nature, or if it was just that rickety.  We all crossed it and it seemed adequately stable, but was kind of scary to look at!

On the trail we came to a point where the "short loop" intersected with the "long loop".  Considering the knew problems I have been having the past couple months, I lobbied for the short loop and was glad I did.  The short loop was 1.5 miles and plenty far for my knee.  I discovered later that the long loop would have been 3.5 miles, and probably farther than any of us were prepared to handle.

The trail took us up a fairly steep, muddy climb onto a bench just below the ridgeline.  The soil was acidic and therefore home to some interesting plant life such as Spotted Wintergreen and the Downy Rattlesnake Plantain pictured above.  I sincerely thought I had missed my opportunity to photograph this small orchid, so I was quite pleased to find it, although I had a terrible time getting the lighting quite right.  The forest was quite dark and since I had several other people with me, I did not want to make them all stand around waiting for me to try a bazillion flash settings.

Made an another interesting find after the trail had descended and was heading back toward the lake.  Ragweed!  I know, normally ragweed is not exciting, but this one was different.  I am accustomed to ragweeds having deeply lobed leaves.  This one had no lobes.  I later learned that ragweed living in marginal habitat will sometimes exhibit this lobeless leaf feature.

Some of the other things we saw along the trail were Hog Peanut, Aster, and a very odd looking mushroom apparently called Devil's Trumpet.  Back around the lake I also found Water Horehound.  Or at least I think that is what it is.  Water Horehound and Field Mint look very similar.  The teeth on the leaves are not quite as robust as I would expect for Water Horehound, but the leaves had virtually no odor, whereas Field Mint is very aromatic.

The species total for the year currently stands at 493, with a few things still needing identification or confirmation.  Planning to make a swing down Clear Creek Road today in search of milkweed seed (Poke Milkweed) and Gaura biennis.

Weed Day

Ragweed

Carolina Lovegrass

Lamb's Quarters

St. Andrew's Cross

Now that the tomatoes and cucumbers are coming on, our family is spending more time at the garden on our property in Hocking County.  Or at least trying to!  And while the tomatoes, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, and watermelon are doing reasonably well, the weeds in the garden are doing amazingly well.  A tribute to plenty of rain and cooler temperatures.

So I figured I should add some of the garden weeds to the One Thousand Flowers project, afterall, weeds are people too!  The Ragweed and Lamb's Quarters are really starting to become established in the garden. It was no time before my son and daughter were having allergy fits.  They tried to blame my dad's dog for their sneezes and snots because it didn't really kick in until after they went inside the grandparent's house for restroom pit stop.  I'm sure the ragweed was more likely to blame than Julie the dog however.  Julie is the sweetest dog, although rather odd to look at (sorry I didn't think to take her picture).  She is an apparent cross between a border collie and a basset hound.  Border collie appearance on a basset hound frame!

Had a weedy grass in the garden that I did not remember seeing in years past, perhaps because in year's past we did a better job of keeping the weeds knocked down than we have done this year.  The grass is Carolina Lovegrass.  Sort of a handsome grass, as far as weedy grasses are concerned.

My son and I did cruise the rest of the property a little and came across a subtle beauty, hiding in among the grasses out in the fields.  St. Andrews Cross is a type of Hypericum (St. Johnswort).  I find the petal arrangement very interesting, sort of in an X pattern, a pattern one does not see in nature very often.

Our visit to the garden ended with a surprise visit from a cousin of mine.  Kenny Minehart and his wife Rose stopped by to visit my parents.  I had not seen Kenny and Rose since the early 90's when we lived out on our family property (where the garden is) and they lived on the next ridge over.  It was nice to get to visit with the long lost cousins.

After Weed Day, the official count for the One Thousand Flower project stands at 485 species, although I still have some identification work to do.  I suspect the final count will land somewhere around 600 species by the time all is said and done.  A frustration I am having is how to get the oaks included in the count.  I missed the flowering season for them, working from the idea that it would be more helpful to get them in fruit with the acorns anyways.  I am now finding the acorns are up in the higher reaches of the trees, out of camera zoom distance.  I think my best chance is going to simply be to photograph the acorns as they fall to the ground and take accompanying photos of leaves and buds of the tree from which the acorn fell.  We'll see how it goes!

Pleasant Surprises

Buttonweed

Peppermint

Swamp Mallow

Graffiti artist

Ditch Stonecrop

On Monday I visited The Ridges in Athens and then stopped by Clear Creek Metro Park on the way home.  The theme for the day was surprises.  My first surprise was this beautiful graffiti drawn on a concrete pillar that was holding up an ancient water tank.  I am not normally an artsy person.  My idea of art is normally the shapes of the cut-outs on the outhouse door.  But what was drawn on this concrete pillar made me pause.  My hope is that this artist will find a forum to display their work in a more well traveled place than a remote rusty water tank.

My next surprise was a large mass of Buttonweed.  I didn't realize that it was such a butterfly magnet and that it was a native.  There were several Cabbage White and sulphur butterflies enjoying the nectar of this pink ground cover.

I also made it a point to visit the wetland area at The Ridges that parallels Dairy Lane.  Among the several things I found there was Peppermint and Swamp Mallow.  I remember the Peppermint from when I did my floristic inventory of The Ridges in 1994.  I do not remember the mallow being there.  I guess things change over time.

On the trip home I stopped in at Clear Creek Metro Park.  It had been awhile since I had spent any time there, even though I live only four miles from it and drive through it every Sunday on my way to church.  While I found several things blooming that were new to the One Thousand Flowers project, the one that I was most pleased about was the Ditch Stonecrop.  I sincerely thought I had missed out on this one.  The only place I knew for sure to find it was at Hope Furnace, and on my last visit there this wetland species was nowhere to be found.  To find it growing along Clear Creek was a special blessing.

Man of Many Interests

Trumpet Creeper

American Germander

Hoary Edge

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail

Northern Metalmark

July 6, 2013
On Saturday July 6 I took a break from wildflowering (not really) and spent some time lepping (butterflying).  As the title of this blog post implies, I am a man of many interests.  Sometimes I view this as a curse rather than a blessing, although I know deep in my heart that it is the latter which is true.  I just never seem to get a restful moment because I am always pursuing an interest.

On this day, the other interest was the annual Athens County Ohio Butterfly Count, a project tied to the North American Butterfly Association's July 4th butterfly count project.  This year I had a whole new set of counters, including some students from the Athens Middle School Science Club.

Of course, I could not totally ignore the wildflowers, and at our first stop, the Ohio University research garden on West State Street, I added two new species, Trumpet Creeper and American Germander.  But this day was officially for butterflies.  We had quite a few Cabbage Whites and Orange Sulphurs, to be expected considering the weedy nature of the site.  But when we arrived at a prairie reconstruction project along the bike path that parallels the Hocking River, we began to pick up some new species, including Great Spangled Fritillary, Zebra Swallowtail, and Tiger Swallowtail.

Our second stop, after a yummy and nutritious lunch at Wendy's was The Ridges.  By the end of our time at The Ridges, most of the counters were tired or had other obligations.  So I went on alone to the final stop, Trimble Community Forest near Glouster.  At this site I added several new butterfly species including Spicebush Swallowtail and Hoary Edge.  But the prize of the day was toward the end of my visit at Trimble.  The excessive amount of rain leading up to the count had left the trail up the side of a hill very muddy.  Coming down the hill proved to be a rather treacherous adventure.  Nearly at the bottom of the hill, my right leg started to slide out from under me.  I ended up with my left hand in the mud supporting me and my face grimacing in pain.  I had been having some trouble with my right knee for two years, but this summer had proven to be especially hard on the knee.  Sliding down the mud encrusted hill on it proved about more than it could handle.

As I stood cursing the hillside, a small brown butterfly briefly appeared before me, sitting on Ox-eye Daisy.  My initial thought was a metalmark, but in Ohio those are quite rare, and I did not get that good of a look.  I was able to relocate the little guy on a nearby maple leaf.  Nearby!  Perhaps 20 feet away.  Metalmarks are notorious for being very aware of their surroundings.  I knew that any movement on my part would most likely accomplish at least one of two things: me falling in the mud again, and the scaring away of the butterfly. With the camera, I zoomed in as close as I could without sacrificing all resolution and snapped a picture, which not worthy of any photo awards, but good enough to confirm the bug as a Northern Metalmark.

Wounded but excited by my metalmark find, I limped back to the truck.  The day had yielded 32 species of butterflies, considerably better than I was expecting, since excessive rain tends to keep butterfly numbers down and it had rained for several days prior to the count.  However, the best part of the day was turning young people on to the beauty and excitement of butterflies!

Rhododendron

Rhododendron

Chimaphila

Gaultheria

Black Cohosh slope

Me acting stupid!

June 30, 2013
My son, youngest daughter and I took a trip to Rhododendron Cove in late June to get photos of the Rhododendron.  I had been there earlier in the year and had photographed Mountain Laurel but apparently I had walked right past the Flame Azalea without recognizing it.

This time we were successful in bagging our quarry.  On the way in to the cove we past some other hikers and they confirmed that the Rhododendron was in bloom, although once we got to the top of the hill, I was somewhat surprised by how little of the Rhododendron was in bloom.

As we walked up the trail we encountered a large patch of Black Cohosh in bloom and I immediately put the kids to work looking for ants among the inflorescences.  A relatively rare butterfly, the Appalachian Azure, uses Black Cohosh as its caterpillar host plant.  I had found Appalachian Azure larva at Clear Creek Metro Park, only a few miles away, in 2011, so I hoped that perhaps it would be at Rhodie Cove as well.  We examined a couple dozen plants, but no luck finding ants.  We looked for ants because the ants farm the butterfly larva, and the dark colored ants are much easier to see against the white inflorescences than the white caterpillars.

Once we got on top of the hill, we also found Chimaphila and Gaultheria in bloom.  In all honesty, I thought I had missed the Chimaphila.  I was hoping I might find some going into fruit.  The acidic hilltops in the Hocking Hills region is great for plants in the heath family, including Rhododendron and Gaultheria.  Chimaphila likes acidic hillsides as well.

While we only found a few new species, they were good ones, plants that I would have found elsewhere only by luck.

Welcome Back!

Purple Fringeless Orchid

Cardinal Flower

Senna

Arrowhead

Sleepy Orange

I'm back.  I know it's been awhile.  I have a lot of catching up to do, pretty much the entire month of July.  The One Thousand Flowers project has continued on, I just have gotten lazy regarding blogging about it.  And, of course, I have awesome excuses.  The heat in the middle of the month totally wiped me out.  Would get home from work and didn't want to do anything.  Time has been at a premium as well.  Most evenings when I get home I work on writing my sermon for the next Sunday.  I guess when it all boils down, perhaps I have had writer's block, or maybe whatever the opposite of writer's block is.  Writer's Over-stimulation?  So many things going through my head, my mind bouncing from one idea to the next.  The past month I have only taken the time to tame those ideas which were absolutely necessary, sermons.

Well anyways, I awoke this morning with the idea of a couple short trips on my day off.  Wanted to go down to Big Pine Road in Hocking County to see if I could get held at gun point again, and then also to Clear Creek Metro Park.  On the way I stopped at the magical moth gas station (there are always great moths stuck to the side of the building there!) at Clear Creek, filled up the bike, and suddenly came to the recollection that the Senna and Cardinal Flower at work were blooming.  Which meant I had to get busy photographing these or I might miss my chance.  The only place I knew to find both was at Hope Furnace in Vinton County, considerably farther than I was planning to go.

I am glad I went to Hope Furnace however, finding everything I was hoping to find as well as a couple of unexpected blessings.  Among the things I was hoping to find were the Senna, Arrowhead, and Cardinal Flower pictured above.  Hope Furnace is the only place I know to find all of these at the same time.  I also found the cute little Sleepy Orange, a butterfly that uses the Senna as a caterpillar host.  I routinely find Sleepy at Hope Furnace, one of the few places in Ohio where I routinely find this bug.  Sleepy is much more common in Arizona, where it feeds on Cassia couvesii, a common desert shrub.

My best unexpected blessing was the Purple Fringeless Orchid.  Some of the folks on the Flora of Ohio facebook page had been talking about this lately, having seen it at Lake Hope, which isn't far from Hope Furnace.  I always feel so strapped for time however, I really didn't have time or interest in exploring new territory, so I was very pleased to find this lone individual at the edge of the swamp.

It would seem a lot of the wildflower activity right now is swamp species.  This is something I want to study a little bit further, probably this winter.  That is, the phenology (blooming season) of habitats rather than individual species or plant families.  Early spring is primarily woodland species blooming.  Then we went through a woodland edge and open field species phase.  Now into a swamp species phase with a new round of field/prairie species coming on.

I will try to get caught up on some of the other adventures from the past month or so, although I may not advertise them on my facebook page.  In my idealistic world, month old news is not news at all, but somebody may find it interesting so bookmark the One Thousand Flowers blog and revisit occasionally.  Oh, at Big Pine today I did not get held at gun point again.  And plant wise, didn't find much either.  Kinda disappointing!  ;)

By the way, the current species count stands at 439.  I think 1000 species is probably rather unlikely, but that's ok.  I've never been good at setting goals!  I'll just keep plugging away, having fun, and hopefully educating at least a handful of folks along the way.