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.

American Mower!

I do not get on my environmental high horse very often.  While I do not always like how Americans treat Creation, either publicly or privately owned, I recognize the fact that in America we have the freedom to do what we want on our property.

With that said, America's obsession with mowing is about to drive me insane.  I am fully expecting the next big popular reality television show will be called, "American Mower".  The object of the show will be to use a stock, push or riding mower to mow the largest amount of space in a given time or to mow through a section of lush beautiful wildflowers without bogging down and stalling.

Pictured above is Glade Mallow, Napaea dioica, a relatively rare plant in Ohio.  This patch of Glade Mallow happens to be at the entrance to the village of Sugar Grove from US33.  It grows on either side of the entrance into town, or shall I say it use to.  I had noticed the plant there for several years, but just this year, with the One Thousand Flowers project, did I take the time to pull off to examine it more closely.

Now, Glade Mallow can only be see on the south side of the entrance road into Sugar Grove, because the highway department opted to mow down the entire population on the north side of the road.  I have experienced this multiple times during my big wildflower year.  One day seeing a plant growing, arranging my schedule such that I can go back to take photos, only to find that the plant in question has been mowed down in the meantime.

I can understand that mowing is required for safety reasons.  But I have seen examples of this mowing extending a full 100 feet away from the road.  Isn't this a bit extreme?  How many rare plant populations have been wiped out by over-zealous lawn mowers?

One thing I have decided is that some people mow out of boredom.  I see private citizens mowing roadsides, well away from their homes, blank looks on their faces, and I have to think it is because they have nothing else to do.  Once upon a time I lived in Indiana, and a common joke I would tell was that one could drive a golf ball from Muncie to Richmond without ever going in the rough!  Maybe these people think they are beautifying the roadside.  Personally, I find flowers far prettier than half-inch tall grass.

Roadsides provide a unique habitat, because they are periodically disturbed.  And while I can appreciate that we do not want deer, moose, or elk habitat directly next to the road, what is wrong with insect habitat within 100 feet of the road?  I have seen wonderful monarch butterfly habitat, several feet from the road, destroyed due to the mowing of beautiful patches of milkweed at the peak of bloom.

Cochise County, Arizona takes the mowing obsession to a whole new level.  Rather than mowing roadsides, they blade the roadsides.  Several years ago I discovered Yerba de Zizotes, Asclepias oenotheroides, growing along a roadside in eastern Cochise County.  At the time, it was the only known population of this milkweed in Arizona.  I counted nearly 40 plants along this roadside.  When I returned five years later, the number of plants had been reduced to zero.

In part, this is why projects like One Thousand Flowers, annual butterfly counts, mothapaloozas, etc, are so important.  We are destroying habitat, both locally and globally, at alarming rates.  It is important to have a record of what we are destroying, so that perhaps hearts can be changed before plants and animals disappear from our state forever.

Making up Lost Ground

Water Hemlock

Leatherflower

Bur-reed

Yum!

Last week I took a couple days off work, to get some wildflower time as well as some time away from the chaos of normal life.  While it didn't really work very well, as far as getting away from the chaos, as the chaos was always awaiting my return, it did work well to see some new and different things.

It is that same chaos that has put me behind on posting updates about the One Thousand Flowers project.  I have trouble posting about trips that happened a week ago, feeling like old news is no news at all.  But I do have some folks who are interested in the project, and at some point in the future these posts will be used to jog my memory as I write what will most certainly be a massively popular book about the big wildflower year, so I present the old news, even if it is old only to me.

A week ago Monday I tried to get caught up on some relatively nearby locals that I had not visited in awhile, among those Rutherford Swamp east of Nelsonville and The Ridges in Athens.  Frequently when I visit the Athens area, I like to take the back way home, along OH56 through Carbondale, Coonville, Starr, New Plymouth, and other small towns that nobody has ever heard of.  I truly believe that this stretch of OH56 has some of the most unique roadside botanical life of any 40 mile stretch of road in the state.

Near Carbondale a swamp can be found right next to the road, and this swamp always yields some interesting things, such as Water Hemlock.  Cicuta maculata, like many members of the carrot family, is extremely toxic.  Reports that I have heard is that consuming just a small quantity of this plant can cause 'violent vomiting'.  Not sure that I have ever experienced anything approaching violent vomiting, but I am sure that I never want to!

Another interesting plant in the swamp is Bur-reed.  I do not see it very often, and therefore it holds a special place for me.  The flowers are quite showy and the leaves almost have a succulent feel to them.

Blooming a little later in the summer will be Swamp Mallow with its gynormous, dinner-plate size flowers, and Button Bush, with its showy little floral balls, which the swallowtail butterflies will cling to for nectar.

Just around the corner from the swamp, a little farther west, is another wonderful little spot along OH56.  In this spot I have found Purple Milkweed and Four-leaf Milkweed, neither of which is as common as the more recognizable Butterfly Weed and Common Milkweed, both of which occur along this same stretch as well.  Also along this stretch is Leatherflower, a type of Clematis.  Much like the milkweeds above, Leatherflower does not qualify as rare, but it is a plant you don't see everyday, which gives it a special place for me!

I have also included a photo of a lovely spring found along this same stretch of highway in Carbondale. Sadly, this lovely orange water is a common feature of the southeast Ohio landscape.  The water in these parts is very iron-rich, and when that iron-rich water comes in contact with air, it turns orange.  For this reason, many people who live in these hills and hollows must invest in water treatment systems for their homes, so that their clothes, dishes, and everything else isn't stained orange.