I'm back, after a weekend of searching far and wide in two of my favorite southern Ohio counties. The cameras saw heavy duty, their memory chips choking on 1,700 images. I saw some cool stuff - some very cool stuff, in fact - and will be posting the best of it later. For now, some colorful images that vividly illustrate that Old Man Winter's clutches are not far off.
An Adams County field turned lemony with the pyramidal sprays of Canada goldenrod,
Solidago canadensis, with dashes of white from tall boneset,
Eupatorium altissimum.
Damp woods and ditches still sport spikes of great lobelia flowers,
Lobelia siphilitica.
Virginia creeper,
Parthenocissus quinquefolia, vines, their leaves turned rich red, reclaim a long fallen barn.
The beautiful rose-magenta flowers of creeping aster,
Eurybia surculosa, rise from a battered habitat. Despite man's best efforts to eradicate this rarest of Ohio asters, it persists still.
Divergent racemes of whitish fruit thrust from the deep maroon leaves of sourwood,
Oxydendrum arboreum, our only tree in the heath family (Ericaceae).
The signature aster of fall, New England aster,
Symphyotrichum novae-angliae, is starting to push forth its stunning purple flowers.
4 comments:
Nice post, Jim. Looking forward to the other things you saw. I'm heading down to the Adams/Scioto county areas on Tuesday and have the Creeping Aster on my list!
The creeping aster should be in fine shape then, Andrew. Its habitat is a disaster, though! Hopefully it'll pull through and survive the lunar landscape that it now lives in.
I was a bit taken aback a couple weeks ago when I first found the area. It's bad enough they allow logging in Shawnee state forest (who knows what other rarities they are affecting) but to see the Aster hanging on with such devastation around it was troublesome. You may have an incredible view across the rolling hills but not worth the potential price payed. Is that spot still the only known location for it in Ohio?
Hi Andrew,
Yes, that tiny patch is Ohio's only known station for the aster. Shawnee, as you know, is full of such mega-rarities.
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