Wildflowers and Sunshine- Highbanks Hike Continued

As I drove to work this morning, as I was curving around the off ramp and stopped at the traffic light, rain drops began to hit my windshield. I then realized that mixed in with the liquid water was semi-frozen slushy snowflakes. They were gone as soon as they came, but is was no-doubt-about-it snow.

And then just as I accelerated up the ramp to I-71, on my way home this afternoon, the heavens opened up once more, this time releasing wind driven heavy rain, and mixed in, big, wet, slushy snowflakes. With the high clouds that let quite a bit of light through, it was a strange sight. I'm just glad we're not going to receive the 6-12" of snow our local weatherman Jim Ganal predicted for my homeland, Northeast Ohio. Tom (fishing guy), have fun with this one, can't wait to see pictures.

With all this talk of snow, why not head back to last Thursday, a glorious spring day bursting with native wildflowers? I can't think of any reason not to, so here we go.

The other Tom (Mon@rch) that we all know and love apparently needs a baby fix, so why don't we give him one?


Here's Weston and Mom, wearing a wonderful little cap made by his Aunt Rachel. She's studying to be a nurse practioner in Virginia, so we'll have two advanced practice nurses in the family soon. Thanks Rachel, he wore this hat well.

Here we are at the trail head, near the nature center at Highbanks. We picked up on the pileated woodpecker trail, which winds through beech-maple-oak forest ravines, eventually down to the floodplain of the Olentangy River, and back up again. There were plenty of bloodroots, as you saw from yesterday's post, but several other interesting things were blooming as well.



Like this little guy, which I think is long spurred violet (Viola rostrata) but I looked at it only to take the picture. I remember way back when, 10 years ago, when I saw my first spurred violet at Eagle Creek State Nature Preserve. Ohio has over two dozen species of native violets, and this is one of them. Compare this one to the violets in your yard, and you'll see that they don't have this long spur.



The first flower I typically see each spring, without fail, is spring beauties. Although I had seen some by the time I had taken the violet image, it wasn't until I caught a few Dutchman's breeches just beginning to unfurl that I got both species in a picture. Look carefully, the breeches are the solid over exposed white flowers in the top right with feather divided leaves, while the spring beauties are in the lower left, with linear spongy leaves.



And what is spring without an early blooming sedge? I believe this is Carex pensylvanica, Pennsylvania sedge, which is a common early bloomer in mesic to dry woods.



As we walked, the trail dropped down to a small head water stream that cuts down to the bedrock of the area, the Devonian aged Ohio Shale. Same bedrock here that is in Cleveland that they find gigantic armored fish fossils called Dunkleosteus in. It also is the source of Central Ohio's home radon issues.



After leading us down, the trail led us back up the ravine on the other side. From this location, I could see the opposite eroding bank, and I spotted one of the concretions that I have blogged about before, even comparing Megan's pregnant belly to one of these round rocks. This shot was at full telephoto from about 100 feet away, and I would estimate the boulder to be about 3 feet in diameter. The jury is out about how these round concretions formed in rather flat, finely bedded shale, but my sister agency has put out a great fact sheet that is well worth a read. Would you believe that one of these concretions found at highbanks metropark actually had a devonian aged fish jaw fossilized in the center of it? They've got a picture of it at highbanks. Obviously, I'm finding it more interesting now than when we were there, or else I would have photographed the fossil!

Thanks for joining us on part two of our Highbanks adventure, tomorrow we'll make it down to the river, see what's inhabiting the upper reaches of the floodplain, and find out what bird species are already building their nests.

Tom

Rock Hard Mussels

After our high waters receded, weathered dead mussel shells (sometimes called sub-fossils) that have been scoured up by the surging water are strewn about the river and banks. Here are some of the more interesting shells from my walk on Sunday morning.

The little ones are non-native Asian clams.

More Asian clams, there are millions of these in the Olentangy

And finally, ancient sea creatures embedded in some Delaware limestone.

Tom

Home

My home from 1981~2001

There is no place like home. There is no place like home- that's how I remember Dorothy hoping those words would bring her back to Kansas. But it is certainly true, as we all long for home, no matter how much we may deny it. Coming home brings with it a rush of memories, some good, some bad, but for all, I think we all hear a homing signal (pun intended) that will eventually lead us back to where we got our start. What memories do you have of home? I go home to visit my parents, my grandfather, and my brother. But for the botanical side of me, seeing a red maple tree brings me back home.

Munroe Falls, where my parents live now and have lived since I was born, sits in the glaciated region of the Allegheny Plateau. The once flat plateau was eroded down through the eons, and once the Wisconsin glaciers plowed through 20,000 thousand years ago or so, things really got jumbled up. Gentle hills and ravines now make up the landscape. Glacial erratics dot the ground, and the soil is a thick, sticky clay. And very acidic. All making excellent habitat for the aforementioned red maple tree that I just don't see here in calcareous western and central Columbus. The red maple was the tree I grew up with. Oh, a few maples and oaks, and even a sassafras, but red maple ruled the yard.

Red maple has smooth bark when young, but it eventually becomes rough and flaky with age.

Wild black cherry, with its distinctive dark plated bark, is also common here.

Sassafras, with its deeply ridged chestnut colored bark, also makes for great campfire kindling.

A few red oaks are getting bigger each year in my parent's back yard.

My parents live in suburbia. You can drive for 20 miles in each direction and not see any signs of rural Ohio. It wasn't always like that, as their neighborhood was once an farm. Their street cut through an old apple orchard. The land here was too steep for crops, but apples, and possibly cherries, grew where my parent's house now sits. There aren't many apple trees left- actually, they have all died, at least the ones in our yard. The woods behind their house were once reserved for a park but now is young forest that serves as a convenient yard waste dumping ground.

The woods are dotted with spindly trunks sweet cherry trees (Prunus avium) that look like somewhat like black birch. Their trunks no more than two feet in diameter, i'm not sure if these trees escaped or were actually planted long ago. They were always distinctive. They bled this gross amber colored sap that looked like puss from a wound. To the touch it felt like rubbery jelly. The bark, which strips off in horizontal bands, was always good for starting the backyard campfire. Those were the woods. Throw in a massive pin oak, a few red oaks and sassafrass, a white ash, a sourgum, and a wild black cherry, and you have the whole woods. These are the trees that remind me of home.

I also mentioned the shallow ravines that carve through eastern Summit County. The streams in this part of the state lead to the Cuyahoga River, and I was lucky to have such a stream in my backyard. This is where I caught creek chubs and black nosed dace. I moved up to catching two-lined salamanders under rocks, and then finally wised up and learned about the red backs and slimy salamanders that hid in the leaf litter further up the slopes from the creek.

A bend in the creek. It doesn't have a name, but I spent my childhood exploring this stream and it provided the basis of my love for natural history.

And finally, I got into the rocks themselves. The Pennsylvanian sandstones, siltsones and shales at the bottom of the ravine were rich in fossils. 280-320 Million year old fossils. I first remember thinking that I was finding dinosaur bones, but later, I would learn that the fossils were from ancient of the horsetail plants that we have in Ohio today in the genus Equisetum.

This fossil now sits in my paren'ts backyard. Several years ago, I brought it up from the creek and ravine pictured above. It warps my mind that a plant left this impression in sand at least 280 million years ago to create what you see here.

All of these things reminded me of home. Growing up, took them for granted, and I shouldn't have. Today I travel across Ohio, but still haven't found this same combination of geology, topography and biology that defines home for me.

Late winter sun shining on red oaks and red maples, Munroe Falls, Ohio.

Old Stomping Grounds

Megan and I were in Munroe Falls, Ohio today and yesterday to visit my parents and brother and celebrate my brother's twenty-fourth birthday. The weather yesterday was clear and warm, perfect for visiting a few places where my love of natural history was nurtured as a small child.

Behind our house in Munroe Falls ran a small, spring fed stream lined with sandstone and shale. It was here that I found some really cool stuff growing up. I managed to rediscover many of the things that I found fascinating when I was a kid.

Here you can see "The Creek". It is quite sunny there now without the leaves on the trees. Notice the sandstone strewn about. These rocks are perfect habitat for an animal that I would spend hours catching-- the Two-lined Salamander.


I wanted to see if the salamanders still lived in the creek. It did not take me long to find one. I overturned one of the large pieces of sandstone to reveal this little guy.


Satisfied at finding the two-lined salamander, I next turned my attention to the rocks under which the salamanders hide. I had always noticed strange parallel lines running through the sandstone. I later learned that the sandstone here was full of fossils from ancient plants called horsetails. The rocks in the stream are at least 286 million years old, and formed when non-flowering plants like the horsetails, which are considered a "fern ally" dominated the landscape. After looking for about 5 minutes, I managed to find this specimen. Although weathered somewhat, you can clearly see the ridged outline of the plant. I really think these fossils are amazing!