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| Mourning Cloak |
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| Indian-physic |
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| Great Coreopsis |
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| Angle Pod |
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| Purple Milkweed |
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| Great Spangled Fritillary on Butterfly Weed |
The plan for last Monday was to spend the entire day at Shawnee State Forest and Lynx Prairie. Unfortunately, my wife's truck got in the way of that plan slightly. On Saturday it died at a city park in Lancaster. So, rather than spending $90 to tow it home, and then another $90 to tow it to a repair shop on Monday, we just left it at the park, hoping someone would steal it! No such luck. Therefore, on Monday while my wife drove our Jeep, I drove the truck, successfully babying the gas petal to get it to the repair shop without it dying.
So my 274 mile trip south did not start until after 9AM. But, once I got to Shawnee, specifically Forest Roads 1 & 5, I was treated to some nifty finds. Perhaps the most surprising was not the wildflowers, but actually the butterflies. At a stop along FR5, I saw more Mourning Cloaks than I have probably seen my entire life. I estimate roughly 15-20 of these beauties at this one stop!
The flowers weren't bad either though. I found Great Coreopsis, which was a lifer for me. I also found several entire road banks of Indian-physic. Seems like I read at some point in the past that Indian-physic has been used medicinally to induce vomiting. I refrained from consuming.
I made a short detour to Lynx Prairie after Shawnee. I had been told not to expect much, and in fact there wasn't much blooming, but my whole purpose for going was a single plant. Scattered in the prairies was Angle Pod, a rather uncommon species of vining milkweed. I had seen it there once before, a few years back, and was so taken back by the beauty of the flowers that I had to be able to include it in the One Thousand Flowers project. While at Lynx, I did find a Butterfly Weed blooming, with a Great Spangled Fritillary doing its best to uphold the plant's reputation.
On the ride home, (yes, 274 miles on the motorcycle!), I made a detour into Vinton County in search of my favorite milkweed, Asclepias purpurascens, also know as Purple Milkweed. Feeling like I was running very late, I decided on a short cut, in an attempt to get to the Athens/Vinton County line a little quicker. My short cut, Ohio 328, proved to be very lucrative, yielding several Purple Milkweeds a mile or two south of New Plymouth. The plant in the photo above was an especially dark Purple Milkweed. Normally they are a bit pinker than this.
For the day I added a surprising 24 species to the year's total. I wasn't expecting that productive of a day. The year's total number of species now stands at 333. And the truck diagnosis you ask? The throttle body, oxygen sensor, and something else need replaced to the tune of $1300, which of course, we don't have! A couple phone calls and my wife found a relative who is blessing us with an early Christmas present. So all my stressing today over my truck ended up totally pointless. Don't you hate it when a full day of worry goes to waste!
