Lava Tree State Monument

Lava Tree State Monument is a small park with a loop trail. The lava trees (molds of tree trunks formed when lava flowed through a forest) are older than the ones seen along Chain of Craters Road.  Many of them were upright – look like totems, the hollow from where the tree trunk once was not visible.

Many of the ohi’a lehu trees has ferns growing and other epiphytes growing on their shaggy trunks – those plants providing more green than the leaves from the tree.

I had not seen mushrooms or shelf fungus in Hawaii until Lava Tree State Monument…and here they were brilliant orange. They reminded me of dried orange peel.

Sometimes the trees must have been horizontal when the lava surrounded them.  Some of the lava trees are mini-communities of small plants, lichen and moss.

I was always startled by the orchids that thrive just about everywhere on the wet side of the island (i.e. the Hilo side…the Kona side is too dry for tropical plants except where extra water is provided by the resorts.

Some of the lava trees are overgrown but the black – almost shiny – lava makes a stark contrast to the green plants.

The route to the monument passes through Pahoa, the small town that was threatened by a lava flow in October-November 2014.

Previous Hawaii Posts:

• Getting to Hawaii
• Thurston Lava Tube and Kilauea Iki Trail
• Chain of Craters Road
• Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden

Intimate Landscapes – October 2015

I enjoyed Eliot Porter’s Intimate Landscapes book (available online here) enough to think about my own photographs from a similar perspective and will start a monthly series this month with my ‘picks’ that fit the criteria: smaller scale but not macro, multiple species, and artsy.

I liked this first one because of the colors…and the tenacity of the plants growing on the rocks sticking out into the lake. The colors from the landscape are a blurry reflection in the water surrounding the plants.

The next one is close to a macro image. It is beech nut hulls and lichen in the mulch. Again the colors – golden brown and pale green – were what drew my attention.

The newly fallen leaf – surrounded by older leaves and pine needles (some of which were shed after the leaf fell since they over it) - appealed to me as did the hint of a red leaf peaking from under one of the brown leaves.

I was surprised to notice so many plants growing in this scene – moss, lichen, shelf fungus. That may be a rhododendron at the back. This intimate landscape is teaming with plant life!

Mt Pleasant Farm – September 2015

A few weeks ago I walked around the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm on a wet Saturday morning. I was with a birding group but didn’t manage to get any good bird pictures. Instead there were shelf fungus that looked a lot like pancakes layered with whipped cream and

Milkweed bugs maturing as the milkweed seed pods reach maturity.

At this point it started to mist heavily and even rain for short periods. The milkweed seeds spilling from pods quickly filled with droplets

As did other plants. The thinnest parts of the plants seemed to hold the most moisture.

Eventually I gave up trying to capture the scene, tucked my camera under my windbreaker to keep it dry, and just walked on enjoying being outdoors.

Mt. Pleasant Farm - June 2015

I am missing treks to Mt. Pleasant Farm for elementary school field trips. Since they have ended I’ve been doing other things/other places but I did take one short hike around one of the loops last week - just because I was missing the place.

The water lilies in the water feature of the Honors Garden have buds.

The summer flowers are beginning to unfurl.

The early ones - like butterfly weed - are already attracting butterflies.

I was thrilled that a bluebird stayed on a branch long enough to be photographed.

This is my favorite to bring groups to look up the stream and ask ‘which tree trunk has been has been across the stream the longest.’

One sharp eyed second grade student looked through the foliage and pointed out the shelf-fungus on the stump beside the stream nearby.

Last but not least - the milkweed is just about to burst into bloom. Hopefully the Monarch Butterflies will find the plants and plenty of eggs….and set the stage for a larger than usual cohort of Monarch Butterflies in summer 2015.

US National Arboretum - Azaleas

Another area I enjoyed at the US National Arboretum this past weekend was the azalea collections. The vistas of the gardens - pleasant shade with pathways and shallow stairs - invite exploration.

Because we had been to the Brighton Dam Azalea so recently - I’ll feature the other things in this garden first in this post: looking down at wildflowers,

Following the noisy rustling through leaves (Eastern Towhee),

Looking up at shelf fungus growing an a dead tree,

Looking straight from some stairs at galls on an oak tree, and

A pine shaded by a large magnolia ….golden cones, sparse needles, lacey bark.

Of course there were plenty of azaleas to photograph as well!

Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge

Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is a large refuge in several segments. It has only been a refuge since the 1990s so much of the area is still recovering from being drained/farmed. There was an area planted in colorful grass - different enough from what we had been seeing to stop for some photography.

A butterfly was so involved with a dandelion flower that we had plenty of time to take pictures from multiple angles.

Wild turkeys were enjoying the leavings in the cornfield.

Later in the day we drove to Columbia NC where the visitor center for the refuge is located. The center was already closed but there is a boardwalk along the edge of the Scuppernong River. You can see the time level via the rings of the pine pollen at the base of this cypress stump.

The boardwalk meanders over the marshy areas back into the forest where there were several shelf fungi.

The cypress stand in the soggy areas - sometimes surrounded by water.

A lone pied-billed grebe was looking for dinner.

A turtle was catching the last of the day’s sun - ignoring the green debris on his back.

Last but not least, as we walked back toward our car - there was a snake on a branch hanging of the water. Is that a bulge toward the middle? He may have already had his dinner.

Master Naturalist Field Trip - Part 1

Last Saturday was the day-long field trip for our Master Naturalist class. It was very cold but everyone bundled up and headed out from the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum. We saw a replica of the type of cabin that would have been on the property when Banneker lived there and marveled that the property was purchased with 7,000 pounds of tobacco. Dried tobacco is very light so we assumed it must have still been green…but that is still a lot of tobacco.

One of the first stops was the Banneky House built in the mid-1800s - long after Benjamin Banneker’s time. Our focus was the rocks on its exterior! This wall showcases Ellicott City Granite with the small, very dark pieces being amphibole.

We started to walk down the pathway of the park to the Trolley Trail that would take us into Ellicott City. The trolley stopped in 1959 and the rail to trail occurred in the 1990s. The forest was not an old forest and there were some houses (some very new ones in the mix) built fairly close to the water. The weather has been too cold for wildflowers to be blooming but there were other things of interest. I always stop for shelf fungi and these with gray/white/rust rings were nestled into some green lichen….the color and texture was eye catching.

There was water trickling everywhere…and the most seemed very green against the backdrop of rocks and brown leaves left over from last season.

The bed of moss has fruiting bodies! Note that the height of the whole plant is only about 2-3 inches.

We saw frogs eggs - but the frogs were silent in the cold (and probably burrowed somewhere to keep warm).

There were swirls in some of the rocks beside the trail. Thinking about the metamorphosis of rock under pressure requires a conscious effort to understand a timescale that is beyond our normal comprehension.

We get down to Ellicott City in time for lunch. The decision to eat at a restaurant (and warm up) rather than picnic was welcomed by all.

I noticed the cairns in the little park across from the restaurant. At least two types of rocks were easy to spot!

The post that marks the water level above the normal river height during various floods is at the river end of Main Street in Ellicott City. The one in 1868 is at the very top of the bridge railing. That would have flooded two floors of the buildings! At that time the area would have been heavily farmed - most of the forests would have been fields so the water would have run off quickly from a storm. The 1972 mark is from Hurricane Agnes. Some forest had grown back but there was beginning to be a lot of housing development. More has been built since then. What would happen if a storm like Hurricane Agnes happened again today? A lot of impervious pavement has been added to the watershed. Are there enough forested buffers and rain gardens to slow down the flow of stormwater during a big storm?

After lunch, our group carpooled to the Avalon area of Patapsco Valley State Park. I’ll post about that part of the field trip later this week.

Short Walks at Belmont - March 2015

Yesterday when I was at Belmont Manor and Historic Park the snow was gone and I made short walks during and after the short class I attended. One focus was to get pictures of the trees before the leafed out for a project I am working on to produce materials of a Belmont Tree Tour. But it was a nice day and I was easily side tracked. From a photographic perspective I am more interested in the close ups - like the English elm branch with buds, lichen and moss.

The bald cypress by the pond is interesting because it is a surprise. It is a survivor north of the usual range for the tree. It is easy to identify even in winter because of the knees and fallen needles.

The swallows seemed to be taking over the blue bird boxes. This pair seems to be very proprietary about this particular box already. They both would fly away and return to the same box again and again.

There we shelf fungi growing on a tree that was upright but appeared dead - or near dead.

Some of the interior was hollow and exposed - cracking along ring lines and other trunk structures.

As I walked along nearer the manor house there were periodic patches of crocus. At my house the bulbs have not started blooming quite yet.

The wind had blown some sycamore seeds down. The ones on the tree were too high to get good pictures so it was a bonus to get the pictures. This is one tree I can identify from the bark!

Southern Magnolias are easy to identify too. They keep their leaves and already have buds.

There was also an empty seed pod from last season on the ground - probably blown off by the wind just as the sycamore seeds were blown.

Some trees have places where large branches were cut that are fractured much like the dead tree…but are very much alive. This was from an English Elm that appears to be surviving well enough.

Last but not least - I hiked into the forest to take a look at another magnolia. I’d been told it was a cucumber magnolia but none of the trees is large - they are all in the understory. I’ll have to watch it as it blooms.  It may be an umbrella magnolia instead.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 4

Last Wednesday was the fourth of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. Snow was not in the forecast….but there was still some on the ground. As I walked from the parking lot to the building, the fog was hanging in the low places and into the forest; daylight savings time made a difference in the lighting as well.

The two topics for the day were

• Microbes, Mosses and Mushrooms and
• Humans and the Landscape

I did the pre-reading for both modules and the factoid that popped out was that the cell walls of mushrooms are made of chitin (the same molecule that makes insects’ exoskeletons!). How had I missed learning that in the mycology class I took back in the 70s?

Another key learning from the beginning topic of the day was the logistics of the lecture. The instructor had her one year old son with her! I thought it was would be distracting (and eventually he was taken off to another room by a helper) but the lecture was interesting and he provided some of the lighter moments of the morning. It is not something that could be done for every class but I am thinking more often about ways we can blur the divide between work and the other things we do in our lives. The industrial age forced us to make work totally separate - but humans didn’t evolve in that kind of environment. Our interests were multi-faceted with only short bursts of total focus. Concentrating on one thing for a long period of time (the way many jobs are formulated) can be stressful simply because the human brain and body did not develop in that environment.

Later in the day we hiked into the woods and found lots of fungi. Slims and jellies

Shelf fungus

With pores (rather than gills) underneath

Lichen

In the afternoon we had two lectures. The first gave a history of the human development of the land along the Patapsco River (near our classroom). The story included John Smith (noticing red clay), a harbor just below the falls of the river was the second busiest harbor in Maryland after Annapolis until is silted up, the deforestation to feed the iron forges and heat houses, the mills (flour and textile), the floods, and trains - the first cars pulled by horses before steam engines were developed. Much of the around the river is deforested and is a heavily used state park. Floods are still a problem. The one caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 took many years of recovery.

Switching gears - the next lecture was from a wildlife perspective. The impact of plants and animals brought to the New World was discussed. Some introductions were accidently but had a huge effect: earthworms changed the forest floor from deep mulch with lots of moisture to drier places….and changed the understory; chestnut blight took away the biggest tree in the forest. There is more forest in the area now than there was 100 years ago but the deer population is so large that plants in the understory are increasingly thorny invasive plants. We’ll have another lecture on invasive plants in week 6.

At the end of the day, I thought about my expectation that the lectures couldn’t all be as interesting as the first few - but the ones this week were still the same high quality in terms of material and presentation. And the weather is enabling more outside treks….makes it even better!