Purple and Silver

 


Well, now I have to confess, as you can see, that I have not mowed the lawn since coming home from hiking. No one cares, out here in the country, except me. But I can justify it by finding beauty in the weeds. This is some kind of witch grass. I'm not going to get more specific than that, 'cause I "don't do" grass. (I'll stick to sedges for complicated IDs.) It's fluffy and purple. But look what happens to it in the early sunlight with dew on it...


Now it is magical- a treasure of silver.


Maybe it is precious, sparkling gems, with crystal spikes.

Blue-Stemmed Goldenrod

I thought that since we were talking about blue things, we'd do another one. This is blue-stemmed goldenrod, Solidago caesia. It's a bit of an oddball. Think about where you usually see goldenrod... out in fields, glowing in the full sunshine, right? But this one will grow in partial to full shade. In my "kingdom" it grows in the cemetery.


It's also different from most other goldenrods in that the flowers grow in the leaf axils. That just means that the flowers are arranged along the stem, growing from where the leaves meet that stem.


Here is a picture taken nine days ago. The flowers are still buds, and you can really see where they grow. You can also see the blueish cast. As the plant ages, the stem will become darker, almost maroon. The stems are weak, and the plant tends to lean over.

How many different kinds of goldenrod do you know?

Blue Spine

 




Remember that line of fungus from two days ago? The picture above is a closer view of one of the same kind. It was on the other side of the trail. Does it look blue to you? It did to me too. That's an unusual color for a mushroom/fungus, so I thought it might be easy to ID. Yet, I didn't want to get my hopes up because I'm not very good with mushroom identification. I mostly look at pictures in the books.




Here it is again. You can see that it has that blue velvety top, no gills, a shape like a funnel, and a short stalk. So I went hunting in the books. I found the exact match! It's the Blue Spine, Hydnellum caeruleum. Much to my surprise, it's a "tooth fungus." You would think that I would take time to look more closely at these fungi, right. But I don't seem to. I always hate to pluck, cut, break them up, lest someone else not get to enjoy them. Actually this is a silly attitude when it comes to fungi. It's not quite the same as picking wildflowers. If I am so concerned, I could look for one that's farther from the trail. Well, back to the identification.




A tooth fungus has teeth that hang down from the underside. All the ones that I knew about before this are big globs of things that hang on trees. Maybe I'll find my pics and show you some another day. But, I discovered that one of my pictures has a good enough focus to verify the teeth.



You can really see the teeth where that hole has been knocked in the body. It's labeled as inedible, but not poisonous, whatever that means. Probably tough and tasteless.

Just Another Hike

 


Maggie and I hiked again today, after spotting an out-of-town hiker. We were at one of my favorite local places, Bowman Semi-Primitive Area. It's an area of small glacial hills, all nicely wooded.



Pictures in the woods, in the sun, tend to be dappled and don't look nearly as special as our brains see them (horray for our brains), but I like this one with tall trees.



Ah! Here we are at the premier feature of this area, Bowman Lake. It's a glacial kettle hole, which means that it formed when the glaciers left a block of ice behind that melted right here. There are no streams that feed it, just runoff, and springs in the bottom. You can only walk to this lake, so it's a lovely, quiet place.



Who do you think lives here? Notice the acorn on the right, for scale. Whoever it is, they have a lovely garden just beside the door.



I thought of my friend rainfield as I took this picture. I wonder what it would whisper to him. The spider is not at home. Maybe she had to go grocery shopping because all she could catch was old leaves, and they aren't so tasty.


Finally, I just wanted to show you this space in the summer. You've seen it in the winter at Snowshoe Outing with SPW. This is a "blowout hole." It's a natural depression where there is little vegetation and the wind, at some point, just blew it deeper and rounded it. If I had pointed the camera the other direction you would see bare sand. Yet this is miles and miles from Lake Michigan. Underneath almost all our hills there is sand. They are just stabilized dunes, not rock.

That's plenty for today!

	See Late Winter Hike Around Bowman Lake
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Just a Hike

 


Today I helped to spot a hiker who is trying to hike the NCT in Michigan in sections. So Maggie and I took a little hike too. It was a LOVELY day. Nothing spectacular happened, but it was sure nice.


I'm not going to worry about any IDs today, just show you pretty pictures.




This is a huge white pine. I didn't even see the way the branches cross the saplings till I looked at it on the computer.
Do you like these? Good, because I'm spotting him again tomorrow, so there will be another hike.


North Country Trail, Lake County, Michigan, north from 5-Mile Road