The Urban Pantheist

I think Zari appreciates me as a naturalist, but isn't too happy with me as a photographer. This is right as she noticed the ferns among the cattails.


None of us present knew the identity of this wildflower. A little digging turned up "swamp cinquefoil," Comarum palustre, found in wetlands throughout the northern part of the northern hemisphere.


I appreciate the reassuring messages on the boardwalk.


I hadn't thought about it before, but I guess they must trim back the cattails that come up through the boardwalk.

Then we went and found Six Mile Cypress Slough, not far away. It's all boardwalks through cypress swamp. This great egret was right by the gate, sort of a wildlife emissary for the place.

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I took Jim and Charlie to Stony Brook Reservation last week. I found a section of the woods that had burned a couple months ago.

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In our last hours in Puerto Rico, we went to the Jardin Botanico at the University of Puerto Rico. I took more pictures there, in a few short hours, than I did on any other day of the trip. We do love botanical gardens, what with their conveniently labeled plants and attractiveness to wildlife. This one was a bit undermaintained, with some crumbling bridges and neglected pathways, and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. Nonetheless, it was a great ending to our vacation. I'll break this into two or three posts, so as not to overwhelm you.

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As seen in my sneak preview post, this is my Dad on the balcony of Casa Cubuy, the lodge we stayed for two nights. This place is way way at the end of a tiny road way up in El Yunque National Rain Forest.

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My boss asked me if I knew of a good field guide to ferns and mosses (and "understory plants," as he called it) of the Northeast (North America) region. I had to admit that I didn't, but I would like to! I would love to ID the ferns and mosses and liverworts and horsetails and club-mosses (princess pine! I own a vintage copy of the Golden Guide to "Non-flowering plants" which covers fungi and lichens as well as spore-producing plants, and the Audubon guide to New England which has a few pages on Bryophytes and ferns and such. But a look on Amazon shows only a guide to the Northwestern region--curse them and their wonderful biodiversity!--nothing for us in the snowbound NE.

So, am I missing something? Is there another guide out there that covers what we're looking for?

I wish the "North Woods" series had one. The have the spider guide that I consult every time I find something with eight legs, and a tantalizing guide to lichens that I don't own yet, it would be nice for them to cover ferns and mosses.

Thanks in advance!

My father and I went to the Fannie Stebbins Wildlife Refuge in Longmeadow Mass. today. It's a large protected wetlands near the Connecticut River and the Mass/CT border. It's kind of amazing that we've never been there before--my dad just found out about it from a friend--Dad has lived within a couple miles of the place for the past 33 years.
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It had been a while since we visited Dane Park, and we discovered lots of tiny life forms. It was delightful.


This wildflower appears to be a kind of bellwort, or Uvularia; I've never seen it before, which was very exciting.( Read more... )