One of my favorite walks is from the Group Shelter A to the Old Fort and back. This is a rewarding walk for viewing wildflowers and I’ve
been trying to walk it weekly.
The route, which I described here, here, and here. Things, in the way of
Spring wildflowers, were starting to warm up on my most recent walk, documented
here and here.
We’d had a lot of cloudy, rainy weather - the forecast indicated it would start raining at about 1:00 pm - so I was trying to get this walk in before the rain started. The light level was low so photographing
presented a challenge and I had to use more artificial light than I like but… I
found a few ‘new’ flowers on this walk.
A couple of Dwarf Cinquefoil (Potentilla simplex) were blooming, as
was
this plant that I think is a hawthorne (Craetagus sp.)
Black Cherry (Prunus serotina) trees were blooming.
The Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) had leafed out nicely.
The buds on Deerberry (Vaccinium stamineum) bushes were just starting
to open.
Most of the Strawberry (Euonymus americanus) bushes still
had triplet flower buds although many had lost one of the buds.
Many Eastern Sweetshrubs (Calycanthus floridus) buds had
opened. The opened flowers were brown compared with the deep maroon of the
buds. The opened flowers blended with the green leaves and were harder to see.
The shoreline was becoming increasingly green compared with
a few weeks previously.
As I approached the cliff, I noticed some small trees with
white flowers that I think I had only seen once before in either Oglethorpe or
Wilkes counties. These were Carolina Silverbell (Halesia carolina); the trees
ranged from about 5 to 15 feet high. Luckily many of the flowers were at waist
to eye level and easy to photograph. In a few years, these may be beyond reach
and will have to be enjoyed at a distance.
The Mountain Azaleas (Rhododendron canescens) – at least
that’s my identification based in the fact that the tubes were slightly sticky
to the touch – at the top of the cliff were in various stages of blooming.
When I looked over the edge of the cliff, I could see a
Mountain Azalea and Trumpet Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens) flowers.
The Mountain Azalea was putting on quite a show.
The Trumpet Honeysuckle flowers were just starting to open,
while…
those at the top of the cliff were developing nicely.
To be continued…
Related
posts:
No comments:
Post a Comment