Five Forks BMP

For the second field trip of 2011 I organized a trip to a BMP (detention basin) in the Five Forks area of James City County. Most BMP's aren't worth a second look, but this particular one was constructed along a local stream and has a nice selection of native wetland plants. I scheduled the walk to coincide with the blooms of some swamp doghobble that was growing along the edges of the BMP, but there was a very small turnout since there was a competing plant walk on the same day to see sweetleaf in bloom.

We started off looking at the nice selection of vines growing on the edge of the BMP: crossvine, grapes, poison ivy and (yuk) Japanese honey suckle.

The crossvine had a very interesting structure within the flowers, with crossing stamens leading to butterfly-shaped anthers.

Another interesting thing about the flower was the smell. One of the field trippers noted that the crossvine was supposed to have a mocha scent, so I gave it sniff and sure enough, it smelled just like coffee grounds.

Speaking of scents, another flower that I had never bothered to smell before was the tulip tree flower. They have a wonderful vanilla scent.

After looking at a couple trees, we ventured into the bottom of the BMP. I didn't bring any boots, but luckily someone else did and he was kind enough to get in the mud and pluck a bloom of yellow pond lily for a close up view.
I'm still a little confused with the pond lily. Depending on the source, the number of species ranges from 1 to 25. I'm not sure there is a final consensus yet.

Not too far away from the pond lily was the swamp doghobble I wanted to see. It was a little difficult to get to however. We had to make our way through a thicket of sapling trees to find them.

Swamp doghobble has long racemes of bell shaped flowers which are sweetly scented. Standing next to the doghobble you could see the lush stands of cinnamon and royal ferns on the other side of the swamp, but we decided to leave those for another day.

A couple other plants we spotted on the walk: willow, elderberry, swamp dogwood, and American holly. The dogwood wasn't in quite in bloom the day we were there, but when I went back a week later, the white flowers seemed to be everywhere.

You can see all my photos from the walk here.

Sandy Ridge Wildlife Trail

While I was down in Duck, North Carolina for the Thanksgiving break, I took in a trip down to Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge consists of 154,000 acres along the Albemarle Sound, and is known for its reestablished population of red wolves.
There are several trails in the preserve and my friends Susie and Jeff took me to the Sandy Ridge Wildlife Trail, which they had been to before. It has a great 2,300’ boardwalk that takes you through a swampy forest of pond pine (Pinus serotina), bald cypress (Taxodium distichum),
swamp bay (Persea palustris) and other trees.

It was an interesting walk, with a different palette of plants than I'm used to here on the lower peninsula. But since it was the end of the season, there wasn’t much in bloom. I did see a couple asters, smartweed, sagittaria, and a bit of hempvine. And there were some brilliantly colored blueberries here and there.

Though there weren't a lot of flowers, there was a nice variety of fruits. Some of the plants in fruit were black-druped inkberry (Ilex glabra),blue-gray druped southern wax myrtle,red druped American holly

black berried greenbriar,double black druped swamp tupelo,

amber druped poison ivy,

dark blue-black druped swamp bay,
and these red berried plants which I hadn't seen before. The fruit clusters looked a lot like those of greenbriar and I knew there was a red fruited species. A bit of research determined that it was coral greenbriar (Smilax walteri).
By the way, drupes are fleshy fruits with seeds encased in stony endocarp and berries are fleshy multi-seeded fruits resulting from a single pistil (is that clear now?).

Mixed among the fruiting plants were 4 shrubs with dried seed capsules. I immediately recognized two of the plants, sweetspire (second from top) and clethra (bottom), but there were two plants were new to me.
The first shrub was fairly low with wide evergreen leaves. I suspected it was a Lyonia, though the leaves were different from the species I knew, Lyonia mariana. Also the branches were strongly ridged. The dried fruit capsules were coarse and grew on a thick stem.The other shrub I couldn’t id was taller and had sprays of dried capsules hanging from the branches. Some of the leaves were bright red.
Once I was home, I went through my guidebooks and discovered that the plants were fetterbush (Lyonia lucida) and titi (Cyrilla racemosa). So even though it was the end of the season, I was happy to see these two plants in their native habitat for the first time.

Fall Tree Walk

I had a big turnout for the last plant walk of the year on October 23rd. At least 35 people showed up or joined us mid-walk. We took a stroll around downtown Williamsburg and crossed through the William & Mary campus and over to Colonial Williamsburg. Unfortunately, we were about a week early for the best color, but there were a few trees that had begun to turn.

We started at the Williamsburg Library where I was ready with a sticky, gummy horse apple (Maclura pomifera) from a nearby osage orange tree. Some scientists have theorized that these fruits, native to Texas, were eaten by prehistoric mammals like mammoths and giant sloths.

The library also had a couple small native trees, sweetbay magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) and redbud (Cercis canadensis). The redbud even had a few pink flowers growing out of the trunk, which is typical for the species. For some reason it thought it was spring.

Several people asked me to identify a tree with serrated leaves (shown below). It's a sawtooth oak, and there are lots growing in downtown Williamsburg. I think I gave out the wrong botanical name on the field trip. The correct name is Quercus acutisima. Unfortunately they are not native and kind of aggressive seeders.

After looking around the library, we walked over to the sunken gardens, passing a male osage orange and the curious shrubs below. They all had the same shape, but different colors: orange pine green, and peacock green. Turns out that they all arborvitaes. The brown ones were dead, the pine green were healthy and the peacock green ones were spray painted. It's been a tough year for container gardening.

At the sunken gardens we walked under the dark shade of several beeches (Fagus grandifolia) and a large elm (Ulmus americana) that had yet to turn it's usual brilliant yellow. Here's a picture from last year
Beyond that was an enormous white ash (Fraxinus americana) with a limb that hangs ominously over Jamestown Road. Then we crossed the street to look at the national champion water elm (Planera aquatica) which is right in front of the Campus Center. Although it's not super big, it has a nice trunk with pretty mottled bark. Here's a picture from last winter.

We then wandered through Merchant’s Square and the farmers market where we found a fringetree (Chionanthus virginicus), though without the blue fruits (seen below) that you sometimes see in the fall. Not far away was also a hawthorn (Crataegus sp.), which was in fruit.

Heading down Duke of Gloucester street we came across what looked like a sugar maple (Acer Saccharum), but I think I heard that some of the sugar maples in CW were actually black maples (Acer nigrum). Black maples have curved points on the lobes as appeared to have. I'm not 100% sure about that though.

Walking further into CW we came across a yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea) and a yellow buckeye (Aesculus flava). Yellowwood is a midwestern native that has gorgeous flowers in the spring. It’s a member of the fabaceae family (bean family)

The yellow buckeye is similar to our red buckeye though it grows further west. You can see a picture of it's bloom here.

Walking past the CW nursery, I put Cynthia Long on the spot to identify a flower growing over a fence. Of course it was no problem for her to identify - swamp sunflower. This large yellow flower is a great late season bloomer.
One way to identify it, other than bloom time, are the narrow leaves.

Along the palace green, we stopped to look at another member of the fabacea family, Kentucky Coffeetree (Gymnocladus dioicus). Supposedly, its large seed pods were used by pioneers during hard times as a coffee subsititute.

The pods look a bit like dead rats hanging from the tree. Here's one from the Norfolk Botanical Garden.

The leaf is also interesting because it’s doubly compound. Pictured below is a single leaf.

On the other side of the palace green behind the Robert Carter house, we came across a witchhazel in bloom, which was appropriate for the upcoming Halloween.
Next to the witchhazel was a grove of american hazelnuts which were putting out its catkins which will be quite showy later in the winter.

On the way back to the library we took the path between the Palace and the Matthew Whaley school where we spotted some goldenrod, possibly gray goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis).

There was also some Carolina cherrylaurel in fruit (Prunus caroliniana).

Thanks for coming out guys, and I'll see you next spring when the field trips start back up!