Zizania Aquatica, Wild Rice

This morning, I joined a group of esteemed Botanists- Dan Boone, Jim Decker, Brian Riley and Jim McCormac on an exciting expedition near Bellfountaine, Ohio.  Along the way, we stopped to see a Zizania aquatica population discovered by my botanical sensei, Rick Gardner, a few years ago.  This state threatened grass grows right in the clear water of the silt bottomed Little Darby Creek.  I've looked for this plant in the Lake Erie Marshes for quite some time, but I've never found it.  It was once common along the coast, but now it's mostly gone due to anthropogenic changes in the Lake Erie ecosystem.  I'm glad that I got to see and photograph it today near Plain City.

 Tom

I've also posted this at "Ohio Flora", a new blog all about Ohio's native and naturalized plants.

Davis Memorial State Nature Preserve

Dolomite gorge at Davis Memorial.

Sometimes you see so many interesting things in one day, it seems like I could write dozens of posts. That's how I feel about my early November trip to Adams County. For me, these posts are a way to remember and cement into my brain the names of the plants that I observed. Hopefully, you enjoy seeing what I saw as well!

If you've been following along, you'll remember the first stop of the day was Adams Lake Prairie State Nature Preserve, then on to Chaparral Prairie State Nature Preserve. Completing a trifecta of Adams County Preserves (there are even more that we didn't get to!), we headed over to Davis Memorial State Nature Preserve.

Davis memorial is underlain by both Dolomite and Shale. Where the dolomite is exposed grow many interesting plants. Proving that field botanizing is most definitely doable in November, we saw:

Walter's violet, Viola walteri. Very much a southerner, southern Ohio is the furthest north this species grows in the U.S. It is an Ohio threatened species.

Tall larkspur, Delphinium exaltatum I had only seen this species once before, at a fen near Springfield, Ohio. Beautiful when flowering, this species is rare throughout its range, and is a candidate for federal listing by the United State Fish and Wildlife Service.

And one of my personal favorite pteridophytes, walking fern, Asplenium rhizophyllum. This one doesn't seem particular to calcareous habitats, however, it does seem to be fairly frequent on the dolomite gorges of southern and southeast Ohio.

That wraps up a trifecta of Adams County State Nature Preserves. Next we were off to the moss workshop, held at the Edge of Appalachia Preserve. I'll have more on Ohio's largest privately owned protected natural area in the next post.

Tom

Welcome to Shawnee

This past Wednesday, I traveled with my botanical sensei, Rick Gardner, and several of the Ohio Natural Heritage Naturalists to the Shawnee State Park and State Forest region near Portsmouth. What a great time we had. We headed to a place called picnic point, all 20 or so of us, to check out some of the interesting plants that grow along the forest roadsides. Yes, roadsides. Many of the rare plants at Shawnee like disturbance, and therefore, are home along the steep cuts of the narrow forest roads.


One of the first plants we ecountered was Eupatorium album, white thoroughwort. Although this species is listed as potentially threatened in Ohio, I heard Rick say "i've only seen this a few times in my life". You just don't hear Rick say those things very much!

The natural habitat on the ridge tops in the picnic point area is comprised of species that can tolerate the acidic, dry habitat. In the photo above is blackjack oak, Quercus marilandica on the left, and Pitch Pine, Pinus rigida, on the right. The only time I see these species is when I travel to the extreme southern dry ridges of our great State.


Other woody species we observed included chestnut oak, Quercus prinus, and black gum, Nyssa sylvatica, among others.


The understory of the open forest was covered with huckleberries, blueberries, and greenbriar. My legs were scraped up after we walked through this stuff- I should have been wearing my jeans instead of my lightweight nylon hiking pants.

Butterflies are always plenty whenever I travel south. Although the day wasn't particularly "lep-ful", this hackberry butterfly did enjoy sucking my sweat from my hat. It stuck around for several minutes.
Here you can see our illustrious group. You may even recognize a few folks.

Rick is the leader of the trips, and it doesn't go unnoticed. How many other botanists get fanned by a giant leaf when they begin to perspire? Unfortunately, this was the leaf of a nasty non-native species, princess tree, Paulownia tomentosa.

If you're a gardener, you may recognize this plant. Its relatives in the genus Ageratum are commonly used in the nursery trade. Pictured above is our native blue mistflower, or Conoclinium coelestinum, formerly placed in the genus Eupatorium. This species is also used as a garden plant.

Take a close look at this one. Yes, this is a blazing star, but this is Liatris aspera. I wonder why I haven't seen this species in the garden trade like spiked blazing star, a native that almost anyone that has hung around a suburban yard in the past ten years might recognize?

Shawnee is always a interesting place, with fascinating flora and fauna. And this trip didn't disappoint, with some particularly cute creatures running all over the place- But that will have to wait to tomorrow. Megan just brought down some great homemade salsa from our homegrown tomatoes. But we don't have any chips- time for a quick run to Kroger!

Tom

Living it Up on South Bass Island

Expecting party pictures? Well, I don't have any, but yesterday I was immersed in the fairly amazing party culture of South Bass Island, aka Put-in-Bay, which is the small party village on South Bass. Why did I go here, you may ask? Yesterday the Ohio Heritage Naturalists ventured to the island to meet up with Lisa Brohl and Debbie W. of the Lake Erie Islands Chapter of the Black Swamp Conservancy.

Our goal? Explore some of the more interesting shoreline areas of the island, which is basically a giant rock of dolomite. Where the dolomite meets the water, many interesting and rare plants grow- these systems are shoreline alvars, a very rare great lakes plant community.

Here we are exploring the Shoreline alvar.

Harebell, Campunula rotundifolia, abounds on these cliffs and slump blocks. This plant is extremely rare in Ohio, and is listed as a threatened species. This small and delicate flower is perhaps the poster child, at least plant wise, for this community. As Lisa explained to us, the real poster child of the community is the federally threatened Lake Erie Watersnake- Protecting its habitat also ensures the protection of the alvar community.

I always love taking pictures of people in front of interesting signs, and all the more interesting when the signs have a big "do not" painted across them.

The shoreline alvars have prairie affinities, including the native species\mountain mint (perhaps Virginia?- I didn't look at it well enough) and Big Bluestem.

Here's Rick Gardner, my botanical partner in crime, looking sneaky.

We also went out to east point, and waded across to Buckeye Island.

After east point, we drove through down town put-in-bay. What a nightmare. I was driving, and dodging all the pedestrians, golf carts, go carts, mopeds, bicyclists, tourist jeeps, buses and vans was crazy. No pics, as I was driving.

Our last stop was on the west shore of the island, to look at more shoreline alvar habitat. From this vantage point, we could see bands of microcystis algae- an indicator of water quality problems.

Here, Len is examining a sapling blue ash, Fraxinus quadrangulata.


Isn't that a beautiful hunk of dolomite? The shoreline alvars of the Lake Erie Islands are extremely rare Ohio plant communities. We were lucky to explore these area, all thanks to Debbie and Lisa and the Lake Erie Islands Chapter of the Black Swamp Conservancy.

Tom

It's Always Nice to Find What You're Looking For

As many of you know, my job involves looking for rare plants and high quality natural ares in the Lake Erie watershed portion of Ohio. Searching for rare plants is a combination of knowledge, intuition, sticktoitiveness, extreme attention to detail, and sometimes downright luck. Last week, I searched for the tiny one flowered wintergreen at Oak Openings Metropark for about 3 hours, only to come up empty. It was the only sight know for that little plant in Ohio, and if I can't find it in the next week or two, it will probably be considered an extirpated species instead of endangered, because it won't have been seen for over twenty years.

Today was a different story. I went to relocate Iris brevicaulis at Dupont Marsh State Nature Preserve, adjacent to the Huron River in Erie County. Coupled with the knowledge of where the plant had been found, and the knowledge provided to me by my guide today, Brad Phillips of Erie Metroparks, were were able to locate this beautiful iris within about 5 minutes of stepping off the trail. A good day, indeed. This species was last documented from Dupont Marsh in 1991. It differs from our other blue irises, mostly distinctly, by its short, zig-zag stem, spreading perianth (the flower), and its 6 angled capsule (if fruiting).







Here's the more common iris of the Lake Erie marshes, Iris versicolor. I snapped this shot at the Navarre Unit of the Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge while co-worker Rick Gardner and I were surveying the vegetation of the diked marshes in the area, so very close to the Davis-Besse nuclear power station.



Notice how much longer the flowering stems are in the directly above, and then compare that with the low flower image in the next image up- the Iris versicolor flowers are the same height as the leaves, whereas the Iris brevicaulis flowers are hidden amongst the lower reaches of the blades.

It's always nice to find what you're looking for, and today, that is exactly what happened.

Tom