Saturday, May 24, 2008

More wildflowers

Seen last Thursday and one from today's 17 mile run on part of the Half Voyageur course (Peterson's Aid Station in Jay Cooke State Park to Carlton and back). As you can probably guess, no records were set on this run. We were out for a long, easy run and a chance to catch the trout lilies in bloom.

Violets (Thursday, Magney-Snively section of the SHT)


Not really violet in color, but there were lots of violet ones out too, especially at Jay Cooke.


wild ginger

Photo by Ed Dallman

They like to keep their flower hidden on the ground. These were on a slope next to the trail. Interesting method of getting pollinated - "ground-loving insects" ie: beetles.

Lots of other photos I wanted to show you, taken today, but I am having issues trying to rotate them so, to spare you all the hassle of turning your computers on their sides, I am not going to include them. Too bad as the photos were of:

yellow trout lily
white trout lily
spring beauty (different species than the ones from Thursday)
wood anemone
adoxa (few patches at Jay Cooke)
purple clematis

Long uphill climbs are useful for a lot of things - one of which is spotting wildflowers (and interesting mushrooms). I would not have seen the purple clematis otherwise. One vine with 4-5 flowers. That was it.

We also saw three porcupines. One on the way out. Two up in a pine tree. We had to search for those! As we were coming past the Hemlock Ravine on the Munger trail we heard some screeching noises. Looked up, saw a broad-wing hawk fly over and figured maybe it was babies calling out for a meal. Went searching for the source (you would think I know better after my last escapade with a mother hawk) and after a few minutes of following the noise came upon the two porcupines. Ah, forgot that porkies can be kind of noisy!

1 comment:

Chris said...

Until last week, I didn't realize that there were non-violet violets. I walked past a lawn that had entirely white violets, while all the surrounding lawns had "regular" violets.