Field Report- July 7, 2025

What’s blooming on the trails in early July? In the wet areas, you can find buttonbush, water-hemlock, swamp rose-mallow, smooth rose-mallow, cattails, arrowheads, creeping water primrose and climbing hempvine. In the open fields, you can see pineywoods goldenrod, alternate-leaved seedbox, rough sunflower, swamp sunflower, winged sumac, poor-joe, roundleaf eupatorium, slender mountain-mint, rattlesnake master, bitterweed, common… Continue reading Field Report- July 7, 2025

Slime Mold

Have you ever seen slime mold? This one is Fuligo septica. Its common names include dog vomit slime mold and scrambled egg slime mold. At first the mold is bright yellow. As it matures, it turns brown or black. I found this one at the edge of the woods. I’ve seen it several times growing… Continue reading Slime Mold

Box Turtles

Have you seen any box turtles (Terrapene carolina) this summer? I’ve seen three box turtles just in the last week, so I decided it would be a good time to learn a little bit more about them. Box turtles move very slowly. Their territory is usually under two acres and they have a very strong… Continue reading Box Turtles

Bug Encounters- June 2025

When I’m out taking pictures of flowers, I often find interesting bugs on the plants. Bugs are tricky to photograph because they move, and very often they are tiny! These are some of the bugs that I’ve seen over the last week. Many of them I’ve never seen before. I tried to identify them as… Continue reading Bug Encounters- June 2025

What’s That? June 20, 2025

What are these orange spikes on the serviceberry fruit? It is a fungus called cedar-quince rust (Gymnosporangium clavipes). This fungus actually has an interesting life cycle. It starts with an infection of a plant in the juniper (Juniperus) family. In the late spring after a good rain, the fungus produces a large orange clump on… Continue reading What’s That? June 20, 2025

Quiet Nature- June 16, 2025

Enjoy some quiet nature today with a green tree frog (Hyla cinerea). They are everywhere right now, if you look carefully.