Shawnee- Baby Herps and an Orange Orchid- Camera Critters

Almost one week ago, I started this little adventure to Shawnee State Forest with the Ohio Heritage Naturalists, so I better finish it up- I'm sure most of you forgot where we left off- with the Liatris aspera, a beautiful blazing star.

We walked down and back a grassy forest trail that was full of the liatris, when I spotted a few of our naturalists on their knees, hunched over looking at something. Sure enough, it was a tiny, newly hatched five-lined skink, with a bright blue tail. We saw several of these tiny lizards throughout our adventure. Ray was kind enough to hold the skink for the camera.

I had noticed that not all of our naturalists joined us for this little side trip. Mind you, it was getting ridicuously hot by this point, and the humidity was up there as well. Jason and Weedpicker Cheryl said that it was actually cooler on the ground in this position. I'll let them explain it, but they were lined up like they were going somewhere on an imaginary roller coaster ride or something like that. I snapped the picture quickly, they were up and with us again in a flash.

Ahh, the beautiful view from picnic point. From this vantage, theOhio valley can be seen- Ohio on the left, and Kentucky on the right. You can just barely make out the river city of Portsmouth, Ohio, now a shadow of its once former self. It actually was home to a National Football League Franchise called the Portsmouth Spartans. The team left for Detroit in 1934- they're now known as the Detroit Lions.

In addition to the grand vistas, there was plenty of interest at a much smaller level at picnic point. A tiny eastern fence lizard was basking on one of our van's Goodyear tires. The "r" in Goodyear gives quite a size reference- these newly hatched lizards were really, really little.

Jenny Richards, the naturalist at Shawnee State Park, found several other eastern fence lizards, and as I promised Kelly, here she is holding one of these little reptiles. I'm sure we could have found many more, but we needed to pack up our vans and head back to Columbus.

However- We couldn't miss the opportunity to stop and see this botanical wonder- the yellow fringed orchid, thanks again to Jenny. I've seen this species one other time, I believe, in the Oak Openings west of the Toledo. What an amazing plant. More orange than yellow, it was a great way to end our day of botanizing and naturalizing.

Tom

See what we found during the first part of our Shawnee Trip

This is my Camera Critters post for this week.

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

Adams County Teems with Life

Isn't this butterfly weed, covered with eleven (can you count more?) great spangled fritillaries, spectacular? We had a great time botanzing and naturalizing on last Friday's trip to Adams County, which one of Ohio's southernmost counties on the Ohio River. No names today, please just enjoy the photos of these plants and animals. Thanks to the Ohio Heritage Naturalists for a great trip.









Tom

The Bugs of Crawford County

A wonderful time photographing The Bridges of Madison County yesterday. Oh wait, I mean the Bugs of Crawford County. Woops.


First, the beetles:



This yellow and black one may be a bug, on second look? What do you think?

Sorry for scaring the crap out of you, little lady beetle.

The Bugs:

The Damsels:
I'll give you ten points if you can name any one of these species.




And finally, this gigantic fishing spider. It wasn't eating the slug, but we did watch it eat several smaller spiders that dared to walk near it. Lightning fast, what an amazing creature.


Again, we had a great time yesterday doing a bioblitz for Crawford County along the upper portions of the Sandusky River. This river is a hidden gem of northern central Ohio.

Tom

A Dragon for Warren

For those of you that know Warren Uxley at the Crawford County Park district, he really wanted to see a black shouldered spiny legs in Crawford County today along the Sandusky River. We were doing a bioblitz today, and Warren had to leave just before the sun came out and the dragons really started flying. I can't be certain, but if I had to guess, I would say that this is a black shouldered spinylegs, judging by its dark shoulders, abdominal spots, and long hind legs.

Tom

Update: I just check the Ohio Odonata website, and according to the maps there, although they are a little out of date, the last published or documented occurrence of this species is from before 1950. Unforuneately, this photo wouldn't pass muster with the records committee, but it just shows you that there haven't been many folks finding this species in Crawford County recently.

Janet and the Jumping Spider

Janet is brave. As she says in this video, "I love spiders". Visit Midwestern Native Plants for more of her adventures. This little guy, or big guy, is from Cave Lake YMCA camp, which graciously hosted our Ohio Heritage Naturalist group this past saturday. I've seen and photographed this type of spider before, but I never knew that you could hold them. They have green eyes- you might just be able to get a glimpse of them when I zoom in a bit. As far as the movie goes, I made it on the old Mac G4 that DrJaymez hooked me up with. iMovie is quite fun. Any other nature bloggers using Macs?

Tom

Featured comment from Janet herself:

"Oops, I forgot to tell you. That is the Bold jumping Spider, Phidippus audax. The chelicerae are what is green, instead of the eyes. It can be distinguished from the Regal Jumping Spider, Phidippus regius by the flat black spots on its abdomen around the three white one. It is hard to see unless in the right light, but it showed up in my pics."

Today's Flowers- the Lily-Leaved Twayblade

I've had the opportunity to view and photograph this subtly colored, amazingly intricate orchid twice this year. It is native to the eastern deciduous forests. Isn't it quite stunning?

This is my contribution to this week's Today's Flowers meme.

Ohio Heritage Naturalists at Cave Lake

Little Wood Satyr, Megisto cymela

Yesterday, I traveled with my co-worker Rick G. and met up with our Ohio Natural Heritage Program volunteer group, the Ohio Heritage Naturalists. We botanized and naturalized Cave Lake, a YMCA campground that has family camping, and in the future, will house more facilities, while keeping the significant natural areas intact. This site in western pike county is located in a dolomite gorge, which was long along ago dammed to create a recreational lake. A significant cave, Frost Cave, overlooks the lake, and some of the gorge is still present, with tall dolomite cliffs and a beautiful waterfall. Here's a look at some of the critters and geologic features we observed yesterday. It was great to be out with everyone and learn many new things.

Golden Backed Snipe Flies, Chrysopilus Thoracicus I'll let you interpret their behavoir. Kudos to Janet for knowing the name of this striking insect.

Some type of Orb-weaver spider.

Eastern Fence Lizard, Sceloporus undulatus

Eyed Click Beetle, Alaus oculatus


And here is the fantastic waterfall below the dam,



And finally, a look out from Frost Cave to Cave Lake. Deep within the reaches of this cave, in the dark zone, lives the Frost Cave Isopod, Caecidotea rotunda, known from only four other caves in the entire world.

Tom