Nature walk

Today at work I walked out a little way on the Bandy Creek loop trail that is just behind the visitor center. I'm putting together another Junior Ranger program, and I was thinking of doing a nature walk. I wanted to see what there was nearby that I could stop and talk about. I ended up seeing quite a lot!

 

My plan is to focus on trees. We're going to be tree detectives, looking at ways to identify different types of trees, and even studying their dead bodies! (Logs, snags and stumps.) But I had to take a picture of this one in order to identify it later!

 

This is a black tupelo tree, or blackgum. I've seen blackgum trees before but the leaves on this one are a lot bigger than what I would expect. It's probably just a slightly different variety. 

This flower I recognized from my hike on the Middle Creek trail - pipsissewa! I tried to get a picture showing the underside of the flower, but it just would not come into focus. This side view shows it a little, though.

 

As I walked along the trail, I glanced down and was surprised to see Indian pipe!

These are plants, although they look like they should be fungi because they are dead white - it's also called "ghost flower" or "corpse plant". That dangling cup, which is what makes it look like a pipe, is actually the flower. These plants are not green because they do not have chlorophyll, which is what most plants use to transform sunlight into nutrients. Instead, they are parasitic, getting nutrients from fungi that live on the roots of trees underground.

You can tell they pushed up suddenly, shoving leaves out of the way.

There was something interesting on that leaf...

A snail! Hanging sideways on a leaf, blowing in the breeze... That was quite a climb, getting up there! And now we know who's been eating some of those holes in the leaves!

Eyes open!

These are galls, on the leaves of a poison ivy plant. Poetic justice!