Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens – 3
/Continuing the posts about our hike at Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens in Washington DC…today the topic is everything I noticed other than the lotuses and dragonflies.
I looked for a shelf fungus on one the trees near the entrance that I’d seen over several years. It was gone but there was some pancake looking fungus patches on one of the high branches!
There were other flowers blooming:
Pickerel Weed. In past years it attracted tiger swallowtail butterflies. I didn’t see any in the gardens this year.
Hibiscus. Not as many as in previous years. This one was growing at the edge of one of the ponds.
Water lilies. There were none of the giant lily pads that have been at Kenilworth in previous years and some of the ponds usually filled with water lilies were open water…but there were enough for a few pictures.
Button bush. Again – not as many as I remembered. I wondered what happened to them since it seems like they would be durable along the pond edges from year to year.
Trumpet vine. A robust native. My mother planted one in the 1960s in a corner of our back yard and then battled it with pruners to keep it from deconstructing the fence.
We walked on the boardwalk out to the mash and river. I was hoping to see herons but didn’t spot any.
At the very end there was a tree with lots of seeds growing in the loop of the boardwalk. It looks like a tree of heaven….a non-native and very invasive. I was surprised that it had not been cut down.
It was getting hotter, and we headed back through the gardens to the car. I was glad I had some cold water to drink on the drive home!
