The end of July 2013, Marie and I started our day at Lamberton Lake Nature Preserve near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Owned by the Land Conservancy of West Michigan.
Then off to Rogue River Park, a Kent County park, address 6300 Belshire Avenue Belmont, MI 49306. Rogue River Park is a staging area for White Pine Trail State Park.
The fleshy tubers of common ground-nut, a twining vine, were an important food for Native Americans, and the plant has been researched for agricultural use as a food crop.
Redwhisker Clammyweed
(Polanisia dodecandra) Caper family
This native plant is a summer annual about 1-2' tall. Each flower is about 1/3" across, consisting of 4 white petals, 4 triangular sepals that are dull green to reddish purple, 8-12 stamens, and a reddish purple pistil. The lower to middle leaves are trifoliate, while the upper leaves are simple; both types of leaves alternate along the stems. Each fertilized flower is replaced by an oblong seedpod up to 2½" long that tapers at both ends.
After several miles hiking around Rogue River Park area, we drove north to Rockford, Michigan. We visited the Memorial Park and Rum Creek Nature Trail.
That was our day!
2 comments:
excellent photos as usual! I saw chicory blooming today too. I've never seen it bloom this late before.
I've never heard of redwhisker clammyweed-that one sounds worth looking up!
I like the waterfall.
Thanks, Allen. We still have quite a bit of chicory blooming especially were it was cut along side the road.
Marie and I found redwhisker clammyweed a few years ago in a ditch. It was a mystery plant to us for awhile, but we did figure it out. It has upright pods, they are just barely visible in the pictures. We were thinking it was a bean or pea, but it is in the Caper family. So this was only the second time we found it.
The waterfall looked like there had been some sort of structure at that point in the creek, maybe an old bridge.
:)
Today we saw our first Fringed Gentian of the year!
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