Shaw Nature Reserve

On Friday, my cousin Mike and I went on an expedition to check out Shaw Nature Reserve, which neither of us had ever been to! It's just outside St. Louis County on highway 44, near Gray Summit, about a 45 minute drive for us. It would have been a five dollar entrance fee for each of us at the visitor center, but Mike has a membership with the Missouri Botanical Garden, so we got in free!

I was dismayed to learn that the larger road loop is closed on weekends, because I had been looking at the trails online and the one I was hoping to do was too far to walk. However, there were a lot of others to choose from, and we ended up improvising pretty well. We started by driving out on the shorter loop that was still open. It was prairie on all sides, with a few isolated trees and forest in the distance. We stopped at the first parking area, which was for one of the houses on the property, and the wildflower garden. The garden was beautiful!

There were a lot of interconnecting paths. We walked along a few of the loops and then took one that headed out into the prairie.

There was so much of this wild bergamot! It's a type of mint and the bees were really going after it.

Sadly, no real bison were available.

White wild indigo.

Here's Mike, helpfully providing scale as to the height of the grass.

I am pretty sure this is black cohosh.

Phlox! These were all over the place.

There were different types of prairie grasses, but this had a particularly striking silhouette!

White asters and gray-headed coneflower. We have both of those in our yard at home.

Also purple coneflower! We have a LOT of that this year - I'll have to post some photos.

We were walking through prairie, next to forest, and suddenly came upon this!

These are lotus - that big weird thing in the middle is the pod, and is apparently edible!

Looping through the woods, we found another pond. This one was inhabited!

Can you spot the frog?

How about now?!

False Solomon's Seal, with berries.

We got further into the woods for a while, which was nice - it was really getting HOT.

We had a map, but it took a few tries to make sure we were actually heading back to where we started! Finally we were back into the landscaped wildflowers.

This is Royal Catchfly.

This one is called "Mexican Hat". ¡Olé!

The last part of our walk was in the sun again, so we headed up to Bascom House, which had exhibits inside. And AC. We stayed in there a while just to cool off, and then when I went to the restroom I splashed my face and arms and head and face. Then since it was already noon we headed back to the car to go have lunch.

Queen Anne's Lace blowing in the wind - next to the parking lot at Bascom House. We drove the rest of the way around the loop, back to the parking area near the entrance, where there were some picnic tables.

The tables were under an oak tree, so there was good shade, but we were looking out onto the prairie; and we were up on a hill, so we had a strong breeze the whole time! It was really wonderful, as we were still recovering from the heat of our walk.

After our break we went back out to do another walk. We drove around the loop again and parked at the Wolf Run trailhead.

That pale purple is all wild bergamot! I took this picure through the car window, then realized there was another car coming behind us so had to keep going.

Before we started on the trail, we went across the road to check out some big cypress trees by a pond.

I do not remember what Mike was pointing at. I do remember that I spotted some beaver sticks along the shore!

Branches and reflections.

One reason we picked this trail is because it showed on the map as being mostly in the woods. We wanted shade. Right after we entered the trees, we saw one with a warning sign!

Parts of the trail did go along open areas. Some of it was prairie, some was more like savannah, with trees scattered out among the grasses.

Butterfly milkweed!

I'm not sure what this one is, but it was very pretty close up.

More prairie/savannah above. Below, after we had been walking through the woods a while, we came out into what I think might have been a glade; it was open, but had a completely different look. It had none of the bergamot and coneflowers we had been seeing previously.

We took a side trail that looped around a small lake. I got very excited when I noticed something in the water...

See those circles in the mud just below the water's edge?

Those are fish nests! The fish scoop them out and lay their eggs in them, and then stick around to keep watch on them!

The ones we could get a good look at were all bluegills.

We kept seeing more and more of them!

Another zoomed-in view!

Aliens have landed here...

Back into the trees and around the lake - looking across to where I took the previous picture!

Blackberries! Obviously they don't match their name, but we did each find one that was relatively ripe, if not sweet!

This part was nice and shady, but unfortunately the last part of the trail was back in the sun, so by the time we got to the car we were overheated again! We drove back to the entrance and went in the visitor center to cool off for a few minutes. I refilled my water bottle with ice water from the cooler, and since there was a whole extra bottle I dumped a bunch of ice water on my head, which helped for a while.

At that point it was just a long drive back on the highway, 44 to 270 - but then I missed the exit and continued toward downtown! At Mike's suggestion I ended up getting off 44 and going through Forest Park, taking the scenic route back to his house in Jennings. It was definitely a good choice - my brain was a little too fried to have taken 70!

Anyway, this was a really gorgeous area. I'll have to go back there again - maybe in the fall when the heat won't kill me, I'd like to see some of the glade trails! And I'll have to put it on the list for early spring flowers as well.