Fabulous find at Flora Quest 2012

When I last left you, I penned a post showcasing a cool find from a trip to Adams County, Ohio. That was almost a month ago, and I just found myself in Adams County again this weekend. This time I was at Flora Quest, which took place in and around Shawnee State Forest. The event, which was started in 2007, draws lovers of not only flora, but also fauna, from all around the state of Ohio and beyond. We spent a full day and a half in the field, looking for all of the wonderful gifts that Shawnee and environs has to offer. Given the incredibly warm spring that we've had, many plants are at least 2 weeks ahead of schedule, and many things that would normally be in bloom right now are well past their prime. The upside of this is that there are plants blooming now that we would not normally expect to see blooming until much later in May.

Honestly, I did not get many flower photos this year, partially because a hugely overcast day in a very wooded area made for miserable photo-taking conditions (especially since the flash on my camera is on the fritz), and partially because I spent a lot of time tuning in to the b-i-r-d-s. Nevertheless, my camera was always with me, and I was able to catch quite an incredible event with it.

First, though, a little bit of back story.

When I visited Adams County back in early April, I saw an Eastern Fence Lizard for the first time ever. Actually, we saw two of them that day: first a female, and then a male. One has to move quickly to catch these lizards, as they will immediately run for a tree the moment something starts coming its way. But we had some fast folks on hand that day who were able to carefully grab a specimen for observation (not to mention some very sharp-eyed folks to be able to spot them in the first place). The males and females are sexually dimorphic, meaning that the sexes can be told apart based on appearance. Below you will see first a female, and then a male. The females are more boldly patterned along the back.

If you turn them over, the difference between the sexes becomes more apparent. The female is plain-colored on the underside, whereas the male has a blue band across the throat, outlined in black, with blue also on either side of the belly.

Female fence lizard, with her plain belly showing

Male fence lizard, with blue throat band and blue on the belly
These lizards hibernate during the winter months, and once they come out of hibernation, territories are set up and mating begins. According to the ODNR species account for Eastern Fence Lizards, incubation lasts from 6-8 weeks, and then a clutch of anywhere from 5 to 12 eggs will be laid. Fast forward from April to May, when our Flora Quest group on Saturday was extremely fortunate, in that we came across a female who was laying eggs.

I've been able to make out 11 eggs in this photo, 6 directly behind the female (who is well-camouflaged among the leaves), and 5 more off to her right, near the right edge of the photo. The eggs are small, about the size of an M&M candy, but more oblong in shape. I'm not sure who in our group made this discovery, but we were all just blown away by it. Obviously she wasn't going to scurry away anywhere, since she was in the middle of some very important business. Given the incubation period of 6-8 weeks, that means that the female I photographed in early April could have very well already been pregnant when we caught her. Who knows, she could have been laying eggs on this very same day. (Saturday's lizard was in a location that is quite a distance from the early-April lizard, though, so it's definitely NOT the same lizard.)

Female Eastern Fence Lizard, laying eggs
Of course I felt very fortunate to have witnessed this in person, as I'm sure it's something I'm not likely to come across again. But I could not help but feel that we violated this process for her, and made it very stressful for her. She was right alongside the trail, and luckily she was off to the side enough that we weren't in danger of stepping on her. It was obvious that we had disturbed her, and I saw her draw in at least one very deep breath while I was taking photos of her. Whether that was part of her labor process, or if it was a stress response, I don't know, but I couldn't help feeling like we needed to leave her be as soon as possible. Luckily our group was small, so there weren't too many of us to cycle through, each taking photos. I just hope our presence and the attention that we paid to her didn't draw too much (or any attention) to her while she was in this very vulnerable state.

As we left her, we all wished her well, and thanked her for the story she enabled us to tell. Hopefully later this summer the eggs will hatch successfully, and the cycle will begin again.

More to see than just flowers

Today was a great day spent with great folks among great nature. I traveled over to Adams County to meet up with some like-minded folk for what has become an annual early spring gathering to check out the fantastic flora in that part of the state. As is often the case on outings like this, what was originally billed as a foray to look at spring wildflowers turned out to be much more than that. We enjoyed plenty of flora, to be sure, but all manner of fauna was appreciated as well.

This unseasonably warm spring that we've had has brought lots of butterflies out already. We saw many species today, many of which were in constant motion and impossible to track down with a camera. But there were a few very cooperative specimens, which I will share here.

An Eastern-tailed Blue, Cupido comyntas. Since this one was under the shade of a leaf the colors didn't come out as brilliantly as they might have if it were in the light, but you can still see that it's a charming little butterfly.
We came across another equally charming, but much more brilliant-colored butterfly right after lunch, and this one was a first for me.

This is a Juniper Hairstreak (or Olive Hairstreak, depending on who you ask), Callophrys gryneus. It stayed in this mud puddle for a very long time while we all ooohed and ahhhed over it and shot plenty of photos. Isn't it beautiful? The colors are so saturated that the photographs of it almost look fake.

Here, intrepid blogger and stunt butterfly handler extraordinaire, Jim McCormac, holds the hairstreak on his finger to give a sense of the scale of this tiny creature. I am happy to report that Jim's finger came out of this unscathed. No naturalists (or butterflies) were harmed in the making of this photo.
More fantastic finds coming up!

In search of the ephemeral

Crocus flowers in bloom
Spring is a season for celebration. It is a time of bursting forth after a long season of gray dormancy. Such bursting forth is noticeable in eye-catching flowers like crocuses, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinth. Also there are trees that catch our eye with their beautiful blooms and blossoms, like magnolia, cherry and redbud. We can also hear spring coming alive, as the peepers and toads sing their songs of love, birds serenade us, and maybe we'll even hear a group of bees as they work on pollinating a blooming fruit tree. Birds can be seen carrying nesting material. Gardens start getting cleaned up and lawnmowers start roaring.

All of these, such obvious signs of spring.

There are, however, flowers out there that are not so easy to spot; flowers that, although small and fleeting, are very much an important part of the early spring landscape. These are the spring ephemerals. Their bloom time is short, sometimes lasting only a few days, if that. They take advantage of the fact that the trees are not yet in bloom and soak up all energy of the sun that a still-open forest canopy offers. And finding them requires some effort. You will likely have to get your knees dirty if you want to really see them, as seeing them from a standing position often does not afford you the best view of their true beauty.

Going on expeditions with those who know where to look helps, too!

Leavenworthia uniflora - Michaux's Gladcress. Had the morning been sunny, the flowers themselves would have been showier, but we made do with seeing any portion of these Ohio rarities at all. At right is the basal rosette that we began to see everywhere once we found the first flower or two.

The very unique leaf of the Virginia Waterleaf plant.

Common Wood Rush

White Trillium flower, ready to bloom

Spicebush blooms

Field Pansy in a sea of Dead Nettle

Mouse-tail (Myosurus minimus) - an Ohio rarity
Driving around rural Adams County, our caravan stopped here and there, pulling off the road to poke around in a field, a nature preserve, a cemetery, and a seemingly nondescript patch of land that's actually a lovely little cedar prairie. Someone would shout out, "What are we looking for?" "Something that looks different!" would be the reply. Eventually, a sharp eye would latch on to the object of our searching. And then, on hands and knees, we would each get down and look at the specimen, often not much more than an inch tall. We would look around, trying to find yet a better, more beautiful, more fully bloomed specimen.

Little Whitlow-grass, in fruit (Draba brachycarpa) - another Ohio rarity. This is a flower that grows best in dry, sandy soils, and benefits from regular disturbance. This was one of our cemetery finds.

Pennywort (Obolaria virginica)

White Trout Lily and Yellow Forest Violet. The forest floor was literally covered with Trout Lilies in flower and in fruit.

Twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla)
Now here I am, several weeks after our excursion into small and rare mustards (officially known as The Annual Adams County Ohio Lilliputian Mustard Expedition and extensively written about at Ohio Birds and Biodiversity, Weedpicker's Journal, Red and the Peanut, Nature Remains, and Indy Parks Nature Blog), internalizing some new botanical vocabulary, and making sure to pay better attention to even the tiniest of flowers on my own property. The season of ephemerals has just about passed, but I will keep a better eye out in years to come.

Getting my nose to the ground

This post finds me tired from a full day in the field, but the pressure is on after spending the day with a group of fellow nature enthusiasts and flower lovers, several of whom are bloggers themselves - who will be the first to post? Some photos have already made their way to Facebook thanks to others in the group, and I'm too wiped out to do a full-blown post myself, but here are some highlights from a wonderful day spent wildflower hunting in Adams County, OH.


Old barns abound in rural southern Ohio, this one made all the more picturesque when framed by a field brimming with Purple Dead Nettle.

Even though I was only about 2 hours WSW of Athens County, some flowers are much farther along in Adams Co. then they are in Athens Co. For example, in Adams County, some of the Bloodroot has already gone to fruit (it's just started to bloom here in Athens County)!

Our trip today was not only a feast for the eyes, but for the nose as well, as one location was full of Wild Leeks (AKA Ramps - or, if you want to say it with the proper accent, "rAImps")

Our group clogged the back roads of Adams County. I'm sure all who drove by wondered what kinds of cool things we were up to!

I always like to get shots of the folks I'm with on these trips, showing how immersed we get with our subjects. You know it's serious business when the paparazzi come out!

While we saw many neat flowers today, a number of which were life plants for me, this was by far my favorite, simply due to its bizarre nature. Tricia West and I spotted this at just about the same time. It looks like a Rue Anemone as far as I can tell, but it looks like a double-flowered form. Pretty cool!
More to follow soon!