Sometimes a bumper sticker just speaks to you. That was the case with this one.
We spent the morning at the fens and dunes at Vermilion Point. There are always nice plants and insects to find here.
Not far from the parking lot there is a small patch of Spotted coralroot. This year we got to these nice orchids a bit late. There were nine plants in a square meter.
Hidden among the reproductive stems of the mosses was a “somewhat” cooperative grass-veneer. Susan has been searching for some rare, or at least unusual members of this group of small moths. As a result I am getting to see more than I would in a typical year.
About 25 cm from the moth I found this inundated clubmoss. This is what I do when Susan is getting definitive photos of micro-moths, look at nearby things.
The Great lakes gentian weren’t quite open yet. But this is always a good site to find them.
There’s a lot of pearly everlasting in bloom right now.
Great, or English sundew (Drosera anglica) was abundant this year. In fact it far outnumbered Round-leaved sundew, which is usually more common.
Not everything is easy to identify. This is a gall on a juncus plant. Years ago I worked on this for some time before realizing that it was a gall. The insect in the gall is a “psyllid.”
It is always fun finding sundew flowers. This is the flower of the English sundew.
With the water-levels being quite low, we were able to get quite close to the numerous horned bladderworts.
We found scattered numbers of Tuberous grass-pink, another of the orchids that we typically find here.
A major score, in my opinion was finding a Nymphula moth. This is a moth with an aquatic caterpillar. We sometimes get them at our cabin, but almost every year find them in the fens here.
Marsh skullcap is a dependable plant to find where we typically stop for lunch.
Speaking of lunch. Here’s where we stop and eat.
More tomorrow…
Michael's Place 