Changing Things Up

First, no baby.  Our due date is Monday.  We are anxious.

Second, the oak is gone.  It is a giant weight lifted off our shoulders, literally.

Third, I will say again, Instagram is THE BOMB.  I'm loving it.  Two photos a day, one in the morning, one in the evening.  And I'm meeting other amazing people there who produce wonderful photographs.  And I'm seeing a wide variety of styles of macro images, which leads me to today's post:

I'm bored of using the same old lenses in the same old style, and today, I turned my eye away from the technical to the artistic. Using an ancient Vivitar zoom designed for the Pentax screwmount film cameras, coupled with an adapter and extension tubes, I came up with the following imagery for today's blog.  The theme will become clear. After all, it is October!

Think of us, think of Megan, and send us labor vibes!  We need them.....

-Tom

Autumn Leaves

Thank you to River Mud, Scott, and Beyond my Garden for chiming in on yesterday's barrier island post.  Today, it's just pretty pictures. Happy fall.

-Tom

Autumn Bouquet

Yesterday an image from my morning commute, and today, a photograph from my lunch break, this time with the "big gun".

How many species you can identify?  I don't have an answer...but I'm counting them up myself!

-Tom

Adams Lake Prairie State Nature Preserve

Last Friday before the moss workshop, I had the fortune to visit several State Nature Preserves in Adams County. The first stop of the day was Adams Lake Prairie State Nature Preserve, where I found the blackjack oak seen in the oak quiz post. There are some top notch botanists who identified this oak right away- some without ever seeing it in the field.

Little Bluestem and Red Cedar

Adam Lake Prairie is a tiny prairie patch on a hillside in Adams County. Of all my botanical travels to Ohio's hotspots of diversity, I have visited Adams County the least. It is known for its xeric limestone prairies. If you've been following along at Steve Willson's Blue Jay Barrens blog, you are familiar with this type of ecosystem. Some of these barrens also can occur on shale, and that is the case of Adams Lake Prairie. Although small, if you ever find yourself in Adams County, Ohio, not too far from the town of West Union, this little botanical wonder inside Adams Lake State Park is definitely worth a visit.

The shriveled leaves of Prairie Dock.

You nailed blackjack oak, but how about this one?

The hills created by the Allegheny Mound Ant are a common sight in this part of Ohio.

And finally, here's a violet for your perusal. I talked quite a bit about the stemless blue violets over over last weekend with Daniel Boone (yes, a real person for those of you that have never met Dan!), one of the midwest's most enthusiastic and prolific botanists. This past field season, he went on a quest to find all of Ohio's violet species, and in the process, helped us understand more about one of our endangered species, the bog violet, Viola nephrophylla.

The leaf above isn't bog violet, but I'm sure Dan would know it right away. Unfortunately, I'm itching for Tom Cooperrider's book right now, but it's a few miles away on the bookshelf at the office. Can someone pinch hit for me?

Tom


View Ohio State Nature Preserves in a larger map

Columbus Welcomes Autumn

Blendon Woods Metropark, Saturday September 26th, 2009

Saying Goodbye to Autumn

Megan and I finished up the major raking today of our yard. Most of the Bur Oak leaves are piled on our devil's strip (aka tree lawn) waiting to be sucked up by the giant Worthington leaf machine. It is hard to believe that Thanksgiving is near, and Megan and I will be traveling to little pond Maine once again. It was only five weeks ago that we were there to witness the blaze of glory that is the north woods in fall. I took these series of images on the afternoon that we left. The light was muted by a thick layer of clouds, allowing the colors in the leaves, no longer shrouded by chlorophyll, to shine.

The yellow leaves of the fall-flowering witch-hazel against the appropriately named red maple.

Witch-hazel above, red oak below.

A pair of red maple leaves.

The leaf of a fallen red maple, with fronds of bracken and white pine needles.

Red maple, with American beech below.

American beech.

Huckleberry

And finally, a view across the pond, showing the yellow tamaracks (a deciduous member of the pine family) that grow in the bog that rings Little Pond.

Tom

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Fall Color- It is not too late

Veteran's Day. Both of my grandfather's were a part of World War II, but to me, the whole idea of myself fighting in a war is a bit distant and something that I consider to be of the most minute possibility. I suppose it was quite different back in the late 1930's when my grandfathers were teenagers. Veterans day, for me, is a day off work to take pictures and naturalize.

It isn't too late to see fall foliage, and to photograph it. I thought it was. This morning at about 10:30 I strapped on my telephoto lens hoping to catch a few birds with the camera. The sky opened up a bit and very nice light poured around me in Kenney Park. The warm air didn't hurt either.

First up we have the forest floor. Right now, in Kenney Park, it is covered with the leaves of silver maple. The leaves of first year garlic mustard plants, a horribly non-native invasive plant, can readily be seen at this time of year. The leaves look a bit like violets, but their venation and the scalloping around the edges of the leaves set them apart.






The leaves of trees are not the only things that show bright colors. I noticed this tangle of grapevines, Vitis riparia, hanging down above the Olentangy River.










Silver maples line the banks of the river, and they are the last trees in Kenney Park to transform into their fall colors.











Fairly large silver maples line the river. The corridor of trees that lines a river is critical. The trees prevent erosion, provide detritus and nutrients to the stream in the form of leaves, and shade the stream, keeping the water cool during the warm summer.










While mostly yellow, these silver maple leaves were washed with red.

Maple leaves everywhere.....
















































Fall offers a time to explore see things in a different way. I hadn't come across any oak trees until this morning in Kenney Park. This stunning red oak, Quercus rubra is steps of the path and I have walked by it hundreds of times.

Two new tree species for the park in one day? Sure enough, as I stopped to see the red oak, I noticed this small bitternut hickory tree. Which hickory could this be? A quick look at the buds, those yellow things at the end of the twig, gave it away. Carya cordiformis, or bitternut hickory.

Tom

Dedication

I'm glad to see that someone recognized what a very unique place Kenney Park is: