Places, #1 - Petrel Point

I started this blog to make note of things I observed over the passing seasons in the rural landscape here in the Beaver Valley in southern Ontario.  But I have often thought of writing about other things.  The most common is simply other places, so starting now, I'll occasionally be posting a few photos and observations about other places we visit.  (The other story I'd like to share is about 'The Making of a Garden', our garden, but that will have to wait awhile).

When we visited Georgian Bay the other day, we carried on west to the Lake Huron shoreline, and the nature reserve owned by Ontario Nature at Petrel Point.  This is one of the most fascinating little bits of habitat in southern Ontario.  A shoreline 'fen', it's best known for its orchids, including this Grass Pink, or Calopogon, above.  In my mind it's one of the most beautiful pink colours of any pink flower.

Another orchid species that grows here and a few other places along the sandy flat Lake Huron shore is the paler pink Rose Pogonia.  Neither of these are fabulous pictures, but there is a boardwalk to protect the sensitive habitat from trampling, and we carefully stayed on it, getting what pictures we could from there.

This Tall White Bog Orchid is a distance away, but with some heavy cropping you get the idea - growing in the wet sand, surrounded mostly not by what looks like grass, but by wetland sedges and rushes.

The fen habitat is unique.  Although Hudson's Bay is bordered by thousands of square kilometres of it, this far south in Ontario it is very rare.  It occupies the wet band behind the shoreline edge, often marked by a low dune or ice ridge, and the first rise to higher sandy ground where the taller trees grow (on the left above).  Especially in the spring, it is usually 3-4" deep in water, and it is a very harsh alkaline environment for plants. It's easily subject to trampling, so all access to this fen is by the boardwalk.

Orchids my be the plants that draw people to visit, but there are a number of unusual other plants too.  Above is the very unusual flower of the Indian Plantain, composed of little five-ridged capsules, held vertically at the top of a 3 foot stalk.

And finally there are the insectivorous plants - here the Linear-Leaved Sundew, and the Pitcher Plant, both of which gain nourishment in part by capturing small insects and dissolving them.  The 3 or 4 dozen vertical Sundew leaves in this picture all have tiny hairs which wrap around their victims; the reddish 'pitchers' of the Pitcher Plants have downward pointing hairs that trap their victims.  Both very unusual plants to see - here growing in profusion.

Flowers in the Meadow

Some would call them all just 'weeds', but the wildflowers in the meadow are spectacular at the moment.  Yellow of the trefoil, cinquefoil and brown-eyed susans seems to predominate, but there are a lot of flashes of purple from the vetch and the viper's bugloss, along with white and pink.  It's just a jungle of grasses, weeds, and sparkling bright flowers.

The brown-eyed susans are just beginning; we'll have a large bright patch where I threw in some prairie seed mixture about 5 or 6 years ago.  They took 3 years to get started, but now they're spectacular.

It's impossible to capture the vision my eyes see, but here's my best shot so far.  I know I will go on experimenting with meadow shots to try and capture an image of the flowered landscape..

There's the light pale yellow of the cinquefoil, scattered here and there, fairly sparse compared to the others.

There's the bright deep yellow of the trefoil, widely escaped from pasture and hay mixtures, commonly lining roadsides at this time of year. It seems to be everywhere.

There's little point in trying to get pictures of the vetch without a European skipper or two; they're everywhere - these two locked in coital bliss.

There are three skippers visiting this viper's bugloss, one of the most unusual weedy plants in my mind.  Close-up it's beautiful, and it's one of the few true blue flowers, in places lining roadsides instead of the trefoil.

Put these together with the mallow, and at time it's just a jungle of foliage and colour, again with a visiting skipper or two fluttering through the picture..  

The musk mallow comes in both white and pink in our area; scattered blooms colour the meadow, the roadside and the ditches.

I'm linking this post to 'Today's Flowers'.

Flowers in the Field

At this time of year the daisies, buttercups, and hawkweeds - the 'King Devil' and the 'Devil's Paintbrush' - turn the meadow colourful with their blooms among the grasses.  Especially in the morning of a sunny day the flowers all come out and turn toward the sun, leaving the meadow sparkling with yellow stars.  But what the human eye sees is very hard to capture with a camera.  This is the best photo I've managed:

On the other hand, what the human eye does not immediately leap to, a close-up, the camera can capture beautifully.  The yellow hawkweed or King Devil seems most prolific in our meadow.

But my favourite is the Devil's Paintbrush, or Orange Hawkweed (not to be confused with the Indian Paintbrush found up in the Bruce Peninsula of Ontario).  It provides bright red-orange flashes among the dominant yellow 'weeds'.  Do I really dare call these wildflowers rather than weeds?

Again, a close-up captures a much better view of the incredible colours of these wildflowers.  How can something that looks so striking be considered a 'weed'?

At the same time, buttercups are dotting the meadow, and in some nearby pastures providing a carpet of yellow.  The pistils and stamens in the centre of the flower are such an identical yellow to the petals that it's hard to get a picture showing the details; there just isn't enough contrast.

And in patches here and there, along the roadside ditches and beside the old fences, the daisies are in bloom - sometimes enough of them to make a field look white.  Getting them to stand still long enough for a good picture was a challenge.

We notice the bright colours, and  think of the pretty flowers, but when you look closely, the details of nature's design are really incredible, all in a field full of weeds.

Flesherton Hills Wetland

Went on an interesting organized walk at Flesherton Hills wetlands yesterday, a place I had never been to.  But I'll be going back, 'cause it's a gem of a natural area right on the edge of Flesherton.  Easy trails, and it's accessible from the two schools in town.

It's partly old fields and some reforested pine, but in the middle of this are several large ponds, some of which are active beaver ponds.  And decorating the surface of the water were large rafts of bright yellow water lilies, all out in bloom.

There were lots of other things to see, like dozens of large croaking bullfrogs; perhaps I'll post their pictures tomorrow.  But the yellow water lilies were definitely the bright spot in these wetlands.

Yellow Lady's Slippers

So what shall I choose to share with you tonight I ask myself.  I think I've taken 200 pictures today alone!  I'm getting carried away with this photography thing.  Thank goodness it's all digital, so you can just wipe out all the ones that are blurry or poorly exposed without wasting film!  (And I am experimenting a lot, learning as I go, so I do end up with a lot that are deleted quick)  .

 

How about these Yellow Lady's Slippers? These have been one of my favourite wildflowers since the mid-sixties (gosh that's nearly 50 years since I first saw them).  My mother took me as a teenager on a trip up the Bruce Peninsula, on one of the very first Ontario Nature weekend outings, and that's where I was introduced to the beautiful orchids of the peninsula.  The Yellow Lady's Slippers are probably one of the most common, growing even in roadside ditches (where we saw one the other day), but still they're beautiful.

Recently (as in the past week), I've seen these growing in 3 different places, one of which was a roadside ditch, after our fern hike on the Bruce Trail.

Close-ups!

So I got a new macro lens for my camera - for one of those 'big' birthdays - and guess what?  I'm hooked.  I could be out there all day taking close-ups of anything and everything.  I now have so many pictures to share that I don't know where to start!

This is 'just a weed', a goat's beard, growing in the meadow in our backyard.  It's one of those sun sensitive plants that opens in the light of morning, and turns to face the sun, a pattern known as 'phototropism'.  Standing in the right location, the meadow is twinkling with little yellow dots everywhere you look.

 

 When you look closely, it's amazing, the stamens and pistils and the pollen grains all visible in great detail.

And this of course is 'just another weed', one of the most prolific - 2 or 3 weeks ago the fields were yellow with these dandelions.  Now they've gone to seed, and you understand why they're so prolific when you see the number of seeds ready to blow across the landscape.

And again, when you take a close look, it's so intricate.  The patterns of nature never cease to be amazing.

Marsh Marigolds

For nearly the past two weeks the ditches and low spots have been filled with the bright yellow blooms of the marsh marigolds.  These ones I found on a road east of Old Baldy when I was heading for a hike to look at wildflowers.  They always seem to brighten up the roadside in wet spots so much, sometimes following the course of a tiny stream like a yellow ribbon across the lowlands.

A little tricky to get pictures of though, 'cause they're usually growing in a few inches of water.  I didn't get wet taking these, but the tripod did.

Spring Wildflowers

There is just nothing like the first 3 weeks of May, when the woods turns green and the spring wildflowers come out.  Growing fast to get their blooming in before the leaves of the trees come out and shade the forest floor, numerous wildflowers bloom in a remarkably short period of time.  We all know the trilliums, featured below before last week's snowstorm.  Here are three more of some 25 we saw on a Bruce Trail walk last weekend.

This beautiful red trillium is outlined by the sun shining through the petals, brightening the dark red colour.

This dog-toothed violet, or trout lily, conveniently grew in front of a stump where I could get a clear picture.

Foamflower, one of the lacy white flowers of the deep woods, seen on the Mac Kirk side trail on top of Old Baldy.

Spring Wildflower Season

It was Tuesday morning, a beautiful sunny day and spring was bursting out all over.  We headed into the woods on a quiet trail, came to an old fencerow marked by huge old maple trees and some remnants of a line of stones, and turned off where our trusty leader took us.  A few moments later we were looking at a carpet of trilliums.

It's actually rather hard to give a photographic impression of a carpet of trilliums in the woods.  The human eye can keep it all in focus, and appreciate the bigger view, the details of individual flowers or trees and the light filtering through. But a camera won't do all of that at the same time easily.  But I was determined to try, so I had brought my tripod, intent on using some longer exposures to create a greater depth of field, and keep all the flowers in focus.

I think it actually did a pretty good job.  I've just discovered the advantages of longer exposures on a tripod for pictures, shooting in manual mode to control the exposure - more work and lugging a tripod, but better pictures in the end.

Meantime, the next two weeks are the most beautiful of the year in the woods, so I'll be out with my camera as much as I can!  Enjoy it while the flowers last!