It was difficult to capture this wondrous discovery in a photo, it just looks like mud. There was water "springing" out of the side of this ravine in several places!
Our group consisted of three sisters, one brother, and one brother-in-law, we drove north for about an hour, then west for 20 minutes, followed a two-track, then another two-track, then walked down from a field through a wooded hillside into a beautiful ravine.
We saw all sorts of interesting things, fungi, liverwort, Beechdrops, trees, water...
Beechdrops (Epifagus virginiana) Broomrape family, with a bumble bee.
This plant is parasitic on beech trees ("Epifagus" translates to "upon the beech"). Note the lack of leaves. The dried stems of beechdrops can often be found through the winter.
This was a fun place and I'd like to visit again someday, maybe in the spring.
Our group also visited Nordhouse Lake which is in the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness Area, a 3,450 acre listed
wilderness area within the Manistee National Forest. It is located north of Ludington Michigan and is best known for its 4 miles of undeveloped Lake Michigan shoreline.
4 comments:
We did have fun with our siblings! They like to poke around in the woods like we do, amazing. I think I could find that place again and it would be interesting in the spring. Nordhouse Lake was gorgeous, too. The red pods on the Buttonbush, the wildflowers still blooming. And I saw a Life Plant - Common Pipewort. One of those put-it-in-your-memory-bank days! Thanks for the visuals, M :)
Great shots of the beechdrops-those are not easy to get a good photo of. I like that liverwort too. I don't know why I never see them.
We rented a house once and the owner made a big deal about us having our own spring right there on the property. It had beautiful, clear water that just bubbled up right out of the ground. I got home one day to find a backhoe on the lawn and a huge hole in the friveway. The town worker running the back hoe told me the town had lost thousands of gallons of water through the broken pipe that was the source of the "spring." They had been searching for it for months!
Maybe we like to poke around in the woods because we did a lot of that growing up? We could probably find the place in the spring, but would we take Chuck? There were several wildflowers still blooming at Nordhouse Lake, Wild Mint, Common Pipewort, Cardinal Flower, American Germander, goldenrods, asters, Kalm's Lobelia, Heal All, Spotted Knapweed, Sand Jointweed, Bouncing Bet, Queen Anne's Lace, maybe a few more. It was fun.
:)
Thanks, Allen, they weren't the best. I lose patience bending down to take their picture, I should just sit down next to one, that would be better.
That's quite a story about your rented house and the "spring". Good thing you weren't buying the house!
:)
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