North Carolina's famous "vertical bog"

In mid-July of last year, I was fortunate indeed to get to attend the 2025 Cullowhee Native Plant Conference, which began about 40 years ago. It is a humdinger of a natural history conference, one of the best that I have been to. I was there to speak about moths and their over-sized role in food chains, based on THIS BOOK.

Many experienced botanists attend this conference, and it wasn't long after arrival that I started hearing about the "vertical bog" or "hanging fen". It's only an hour or so away from the conference site, right along the Blue Ridge Parkway and near the highest elevations to be found in the area. Following the conference, I beat feet up into the mountains.

This marker isn't too far from the vertical bog. We're over a mile high at this point.

Here's the viewscape from the vicinity of the vertical bog. Dramatic scenery at every turn, and scads of interesting plants.

The vertical bog in all its glory. I prefer the term hanging fen, as that's what this interesting ecosystem is. Constantly flowing groundwater creates constant moisture, and alkaline conditions. Those rocks are full of interesting plants, including many species that an Ohioan fen enthusiast would be familiar with.

Another view of the fen. This spot made for fascinating botanizing, and I highly recommend a stop if you're ever in the area.

It didn't take long to spot familiar fen plants from the Midwest, such as this Grass-of-parnassus (Parnassia glauca). I wish this place were closer, as it would be interesting to visit it at different times throughout the growing season.

False Asphodel (Triantha glutinosa) was thriving on the seepy cliff face. This interesting lily was recently documented as being truly carnivorous. Its upper stem is very glutinous/sticky, and small insects adhere to it, die, and their soft parts are digested by the plant.

Another better-known botanical carnivore is also common here, the Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia).

A number of beautiful Club-spurred Orchids (Platanthera clavellata) grew in damp mossy spots. I was lucky to be there when this species was in full flower. Like many (most? all?) Platanthera orchids, this one is moth pollinated. Each flower is appendaged with an elongate nectar spur. Moths are probably the only pollinators that can a) hover in place in front of the flowers (which lack landing pads), and b) have proboscises long enough to plumb the depths of the nectar spur and in the process pollinate the flowers.

I was pleased indeed to see this small member of the St. John's-wort family (Clusiaceae). It
is the Canada St. John's-wort (Hypericum canadense) which is endangered in Ohio. It was only the 3rd or 4th time I had clapped eyes on this species.

This little shrubby St. John's-wort formed patches of showy ground cover, and it was completely alien to me. It turns out to be Appalachian St. John's-wort (Hypericum buckleyi). This species is a true rarity and extremely localized. It occurs in a smattering of sites in only eight counties, high in the mountains, where North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia meet.

One last species from my all too brief excursion, Michaux's Saxifrage (Micranthes michauxii), which was another "life" plant for me. This one, while not as rare and local as the previous Appalachian St. John's-wort, is largely limited to the same Appalachian highlands, although the delicate little saxifrage extends north into Virginia.

I'll look forward to another visit here someday, hopefully in July when there would be a whole new cast of botanical characters to ogle.

How to rank the world's most painful insect stings

 

Bald-faced hornets pack a stinging punch/Jim McCormac

How to rank the world's most painful insect stings

Columbus Dispatch

June 21, 2026

NATURE

Jim McCormac

While pain can be somewhat of an abstract thing, those of us who have been stung by a bald-faced hornet, such as the one pictured with this column, know that it hurts. I’ve been stung by the burly hornets several times. The shock is instant and electric.

One time, I came across one of their football-sized paper nests hanging at eye level in a tree. Ah, thought I – a rare chance to photograph these interesting hornets at close range. Normally, the big nests are much higher in trees. I crept ever closer, firing away at the insects as they came and went.

Suddenly – WHAM! An intense pain! A hornet had stung me on the hand in a drive-by stinging. I quickly retreated to my vehicle but soon grew irritated that a bunch of insects made me back down. Back I went, moving ever closer, capturing the hornets as they entered and exited the nest.

WHAM! Another electric shock by another drive-by stinger and I decided to leave them be. The warriors’ powerful venom had served its purpose – driving off potential enemies.

Incredibly, the sting of the bald-faced hornet is only Level 2 out of 4 (4 being the most painful) on the Schmidt Sting Pain Index. Here’s how the index’s author, Justin Schmidt, describes the sting of this hornet: “Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.”

If a 2 is equivalent to having your hand smashed in a door, what the heck would a Level 3 or 4 feel like?! We shall see.

Schmidt (1947-2023) was an academic entomologist who specialized in the order of insects known as Hymenoptera. Ants, bees, sawflies and wasps make up its ranks, and as many of us know, the females of many species can sting, often inflicting significant pain.

Ever the analytical academic, Schmidt wanted to objectively measure this pain, and rate it by species. And what better way to do so than to intentionally get stung by as many bees, wasps and their allies as possible, then place the pain levels somewhere on a scale from 1 to 4. During his long career, Schmidt was stung over 1,000 times, by approximately 100 species of Hymenoptera. That’s dedication.

Level 1’s are the mildest stings, such as from tiny bees known as sweat bees. Many species occur in Ohio, and they are important pollinators. Schmidt’s description of a typical sweat bee sting: “Light and ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.”

Some Level 1’s, like the great black wasp, look ferocious but pack no punch. Here’s Schmidt’s sting assessment: “Simple and presumptuous. Your younger sibling just nipped at your pinkie finger.”

The sting pain increases dramatically with each level, as in the Level 2 bald-faced hornet mentioned above. Another common Level 2 in Ohio are western yellowjackets. They’re the ones that can put picnickers in a tizzy when they try to drink from soda cans.

Schmidt: “Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W.C Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.”

I am unaware of any Level 3 or 4 stinging insects in Ohio, and for that, I suppose we can be grateful. We do have an interesting and beautiful species of velvet ant (a type of wasp) known as the “cow killer.” That sounds ominous but is the stuff of urban legend. Schmidt only rated its sting a 1.5.

A western species, Klug’s velvet ant, is a legitimate 3, and Schmidt describes its sting thusly: “Explosive and long-lasting, you sound insane as you scream. Hot oil from the deep fryer spilling all over your hand.”

How could a sting get any worse than that?! Only a handful of species achieves Level 4, including the tarantula hawks of the southern and southwest U.S., the bullet ants of the tropics and the warrior wasp of California and South America.

Here’s Schmidt’s flowery prose regarding a tarantula hawk sting: ”Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has just been dropped into your bubble bath.”

I have seen many bullet ants in the Central American tropics, and we always alert the group to their presence, and with good reason, once one reads Schmidt’s description of their sting: “Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail embedded in your heel.”

Fortunately for us, most stinging insects do not sting unless there is no other resort. The production of venom is biologically costly, and it does not behoove them to waste it. And unless one has dangerous anaphylactic reactions to stings, none of the Ohio stingers are any more than a mild, short-term annoyance.

Next time a yellowjacket nails you, be grateful it wasn’t a bullet ant or tarantula hawk.

Naturalist Jim McCormac writes a column for The Dispatch on the first and third Sundays of the month. He also writes about nature at jimmccormac.blogspot.com.

A great black wasp is all bark and no bite/Jim McCormac

Dickcissel, along with a few photo notes

 

A Dickcissel, freshly landed in a Canada wild lettuce, which served as one of several regular singing perches for the little cardinalid (this species is in the same family as the familiar Northern Cardinal).

In this next shot, he has summited the plant and is delivering his mechanical-sounding onomatopoeic song: dik-dik-cis-cis-cis!

Like so many other denizens of the Great Plains prairies, Dickcissels reach the eastern limits of their breeding range in Ohio and occur in varying numbers each year.
Ross County, Ohio, June 21, 2026.

PHOTO NOTE: More reach is a very desirable thing when it comes to bird photography, and to that end I acquired Canon's amazing (but pricey) EF 800mm f/5.6 prime lens about a decade ago. This lens has been worth its weight in gold and enabled me to obtain scores of shots that I could not have gotten with a lesser lens. It has its detriments, I suppose, other than price, the main one being its weight. The 800 weighs about 10 pounds. No one is going to be handholding this beast for long, so a very stout tripod is a must. I use a Gitzo, along with a Wemberly head. That combo probably adds five or so additional pounds. Once one is used to carrying this rig, it isn't a big deal, though, and I routinely cover serious ground on foot with it.

For these shots, I used Canon's 1.4x teleconverter, which gives the lens a whopping 1120mm of reach. You can be a long way from your subject and still get high-quality keepers. But it comes with a cost: the loss of one stop (the lens' base aperture goes from f/5.6 to f/8). So, plenty of light is desirable, if not a must, when using this combination. And it doesn't work football field length miracles, but it does allow me to be far enough away from my subjects that they often ignore me and behave naturally, which is what I want. Also, the further one is from the subject, the harder it becomes to get tack-sharp images. The teleconverter also can create more softness to the subject, which is exacerbated the further away one is.

I'd love to play with Canon's new RF-mount f/8 1200mm lens, but then I'd surely want it. And I might have to sell my vehicle to do so. It costs about $23,000, new. I cannot imagine having an additional 400mm in reach beyond the base 800mm in one lens, and if the 1200 is like all other Canon telephotos, I am sure that it is crazy sharp - sharper than my 800 + 1.4x converter = 11200mm combo is.

Rose Pogonia, a beautiful orchid, and two photographic tactics to document it

 

Brown's Lake Bog, a relict kettle bog in Wayne County, Ohio. It is owned by the Ohio Chapter of The Nature Conservancy. There isn't much open water left. The natural process of ecological succession dooms these interesting habitats eventually. Its ultimate fate is to become forest, following the shrubby succession that we see in the foreground. The treelet at the front left is one of our most interesting and beautiful bog plants, Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix). Were it not infused with urushiol, the same itchy substance in Poison Ivy, I have little doubt that this sumac would be sold in the nursery trade.

I first saw this place probably 30+ years ago, and it's probably been 15-20 years since I last visited. Shauna and I made the trip up last Monday, June 15. There's lots of rare plants in this bog - indeed, nearly everything in Brown's Lake Bog is rare, even if not formally state-listed as is the protagonist of this post.

As always, click the photo to enlarge.

Mid-June is the time to catch Rose Pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides) at the peak of its glory. The little orchid is listed as threatened by the Ohio DNR's Division of Natural Areas, the Department's botanical and ecological agency. There are probably hundreds of these orchids blooming in a good year.

We were there literally at the crack of dawn, when the light is probably best for botanical photography. A good thing, too, as it became a bright sunny day and those are terrible conditions for plant photography, except at the very beginning or end of the day.

The only tricks to making the shot above were 1) going prostrate on the boardwalk to get on my subject's level (very important in plant photography) and 2) finding a subject largely free of immediate background subjects that would create a cluttered look and minimize the focus on my target. I was - as nearly always these days - using my Canon R5. The lens is Canon's amazing 180mm f/3.5 macro, possibly the sharpest lens Canon has ever made. My settings were f/11, ISO 200, and 1/13 second exposure.

The shutter speed may seem slow, and it probably wouldn't work if one was handholding the camera. It'd be hard to impossible to get sharp images. Especially with the old, discontinued 180mm macro lens, which is heavy and lacks image stabilization. But unless I am using flash with this setup, and that's primarily for insects, I almost always work this rig off of a tripod. That's what I did here, using my tiny Oben CIT-1000 tripod. When its legs are splayed out, the tripod is flat on the ground, and your camera rig isn't much higher

Once I have a composition that I like, I fire away using the camera's two-second timer delay feature. That way, nothing is touching the camera when it fires, eliminating any possible human-caused movement. Of course, if the plant moves due to breezes, the shot will not be sharp. That's another reason to be afield very early, when wind is often absent or far less than it might be as the day progresses.

This is the same plant as above but using black velvet. This technique can be overdone, but it is cool on special occasions such as this. I use 8.5 x 11-inch sheets of black velvet with sticky backs. I glue them to cardboard of the same dimensions, for rigidity. Then merely hold or otherwise place the velvet behind the subject, which can create a dramatic visual effect as well as eliminate any and all background distractions while doing no harm to the plants.

Settings will always vary from the same shot without the velvet, due to changes in how the camera's sensor interprets the light with and without the velvet. In general, I prefer wider apertures with plants - anywhere from f/4 to f/7.1, typically - but velvet allows for the use of narrow apertures as there is no background clutter that would create a lot of undesirable mess behind the subject if very small apertures were used.

For this shot, I chose f/16 while keeping the ISO at 200. This dropped the shutter speed to a very slow 1/6 second, but who cares what the shutter speed is as long as the subject isn't moving. Shutter speed, at least under good plant photography conditions, is the least important setting in my opinion. I have taken many plant shots at multi-second exposures (up to 10 seconds!) and they are tack sharp. Wind, even mild breezes, is not the plant photographer's friend and windless periods are the best time to shoot plants.

Plant photography would seem easy on its face, as they don't move. It is certainly easier than shooting a Chimney Swift in flight, or a hummingbird darting around a flower patch. Nonetheless, making good botanical imagery involves some patience, thought, and special camera techniques.

House Centipede

 

Here's my CCC (Cute Cuddly Critter) of the week. I found this House Centipede (Scutigera coleoptrata) in my garage the other night, and it is probably the largest one that I've seen. At least four inches in length, counting the legs. It's hard to tell which end is which, but in the full body shot, the head is at the bottom. In the other photo, we're looking right into its face, and you can see the venom claws.

This species is endemic to the Mediterranean region but now occurs nearly worldwide and is typically associated with houses and other such structures. Centipedes are venomous and some species can issue nasty bites, but not this one. It does have a venom gland and injects venom into prey via its forcipules (venom claws), but it isn't harmful to people - if they can even penetrate skin, although this big boy might be able to. But they are nothing to worry about, although centipedes certainly wig some people out.

With some 15 sets of legs, a House Centipedes glides like a living feather across the walls. One at full tilt can cover nearly 1.5 feet a second! So, when you're awakened by the soft brush of a feather on your cheek, only to discover it is one of these centipedes, have no fear - it can't hurt you And they are working to rid your house of various insects and spiders.

As always, click the image to enlarge

Birds of Cedar Bog: talk, followed by a tour of the bog

On Saturday, June 20, I am giving a presentation on the breeding birds of Cedar Bog, followed by a trip around the bog's (actually a fen) boardwalk. The event starts at 9 am and is over around noon. My presentation will be geared around the breeding species of the bog - a very diverse assemblage for a 450-acre site.

While the walk may veer into a natural history free-for-all - there is so much interesting ecology, rare plant species, and unusual animal life such as skinks, endangered Elfin Skimmer dragonflies, and much more - I will do my best to prioritize birds. It should be a blast, and we will see lots of stuff.

I believe it is $5.00 per adult, $4.00 for children, and kids 5 and under are free. Hope to see you there, and complete details are RIGHT HERE.

Northern Cardinal nest in backyard

 

This Northern Cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) has shown great taste in selecting a particularly showy spot: a thick liana of Trumper-creeper (Campsis radicans) vines only about two feet from my kitchen window. I should say "cardinals" as even though the female does all of the work regarding nest construction, the male assists with site selection, and feeds her while she is engaged in construction.

Here she is, busily weaving together her nest. This shot was made yesterday morning (June 11, 2026), and it's been about a week since I first noticed the commencement of construction. The nest appears to be nearly complete. While the nest is in a difficult area to avoid regular disturbances, I will do everything within my power to see that they have success.

While cardinal nests don't look like much at a glance, they are more complex than it appears. There are four distinct layers: a very rough twiggy outer layer, a loose leafy zone, grapevine strips, and a soft inner bowl of fine grasses. Interestingly, the rough-looking cup is not directly anchored to the branchy substrate, it is more or less just wedged into place.

As cardinals can nest quite early in spring, I imagine this is a second nesting.

A male Brown-headed Cowbird (Molothrus ater) performs his "Dracula" courtship display to a seemingly disinterested female. Cowbirds must be given credit for their interesting courtships, and this activity, if successful, leads to the production of cowbird eggs.

An ever-vigilant female cowbird, scanning her surroundings for potential host nests. As I am sure you know, cowbirds are parasitic in that the female dumps an egg(s) in host nests of unrelated species. Many species can serve as hosts, and the Northern Cardinal is a common victim/host.

Today, I was out back with a contractor doing some work for me, and we were about 30 feet from the nest. Suddenly a female cowbird flew in and landed on the ground, perhaps 10 feet from the nest. She then walked over to the base of the Trumpet-creeper vine and flew up to the nest. She didn't stay long, and after her departure I took a quick look within and she had not laid an egg. However, the cardinal has not yet laid any eggs, and as I understand it cowbirds mostly dump their egg (sometimes multiples) in nests that already have host eggs. My hunch is that she'll be back after some cardinal eggs appear.

This may be a case in which I will feel the need to intervene. While Brown-headed Cowbirds are not "invasive" or "nonnative" they have expanded their range tremendously. Why? Us. People. Cowbirds originally were tightly tied to bison herds, which they stayed with and depended upon for food. The cowbirds feed on insects and other fare disturbed by the bison's feet. One still sees this behavior, although cows are now the herding animals that they follow. When we opened up the eastern deciduous forest region, cowbirds aggressively pioneered new and favorable habitats and learned to exploit cattle.

As bison herds are quite nomadic and often not in one place for extended periods, the cowbirds evolved their nest parasitism habits. This freed the adult birds from the lengthy process of parental care. Just let someone else do the dirty work for you. Unfortunately, cowbirds are hard on their hosts. The young cowbirds often get a jumpstart on host species and outcompete the rightful young. While perhaps playing god a bit, I want "my" cardinals to have the greatest possible chance of successful reproduction.