Plants Amaze Me: 09/01/2013

September has been a busy month for me and filled with many fun adventures including a trip to Minnesota!
Once a week my husband Mike and I go for a walk at Riverside Park in Ottawa County Michigan. September 2nd we went to Bass River Recreation Area instead. Bass River Recreation Area (BRRA)) adjoins Riverside Park at one end and has Max Lake right between them.

Bass River Recreation Area

Mike asked to go to some special places at BRRA with me to look for an interesting wildflower that blooms here only at this time of the year. We found it blooming!

It is called Fringed-tip Closed Gentian (Gentian andrewsii). This native perennial plant is 1-2' tall. Multiple stems can emerge from the taproot, usually this plant is unbranched. The central stem is round, hairless, and either light green or purple. The opposite leaves are up to 4½" long and 2" across, and sessile against the stem.

We also walked to another super secret area of BRRA to find Nodding Ladies' Tresses Orchid. Usually only my sister Marie and I go to this area, and other than an occasional hunter, no one else visits this area (it was mined for gravel), now Mike is in on the secret but I know I can trust him.

One of our secret areas at BRRA.
We found Nodding Ladies' Tresses Orchid blooming.

We also saw these wildflowers that day...

Purple Gerardia

Chicory

Cardinal Flower

Frogfruit

The next day (September 3rd) my sister Marie and I went to Bass River Recreation Area. We had a great surprise on this day! In mid August we found many gentian plants growing in an area near the Ladies' Tresses but the gentian were not yet blooming. We had not found any gentian in this area before so we looked forward to seeing these plants bloom. Marie tied a marker in a tree so we could find this spot next time.

Gentian plant in August

The next time Marie and I came back to this site was about three weeks after we found the plant (not blooming), we found the exact spot and to our surprise we saw that these gentian flowers were white with no purple! They were beautiful plants, we had never seen these before. We tried to make them into a new variety but as it turned out, they are a color variation of the Fringed-tip Closed Gentian. It was a very exciting find!

We have been near here before and I wonder now if these gentian were here for years and we just missed them? Well we found them now and you can be sure we will check on them every year.

I brought Mike to see them the next week. There were even more in bloom and Mike was quite impressed. Marie and I went back to see them September 20th and they were turning slightly brown, but most were still blooming.

A Surprising Discovery!

Ottawa County Michigan, here are more pictures from our woods. The skinny fox visited often, and other fox, a Pileated Woodpecker, raccoons, deer, woodchuck. There was a disagreement between a fox and opossum.

As usual the Truth Cam records
the moon phase, temperature, date, and time.
Photos at night are black and white, color during the day, sometimes. I was out of state for 5 days and came back to find the trail camera had taken over 1,000 pictures while I was gone.