Tag: Lexington WMA

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02/03/2024 Lexington WMA walk

Briar the german shepherd dog solemnly waits in the car for her adventure to begin as I load the car.
Ready to go!
Briar the german shepherd dog smiles up at me, wearing her orange safety vest, from a wash filleed with brushy and little bluestem. the dam of Lake Dahlgren is in the distance.
We looked around behind Lake Dahlgren. Here is all I put on iNaturalist. I put a few of the prettiest ones here in the post directly too.
I'm holding the dried stem of the plant "seedbox". Its two visible seed pods are a distinctive cubic shape with a hint of roundness on each side, and a hole in the middle top.
I recognized Seedbox (Ludwigia alternifolia) from its fun pods! We have some in our garden.
Briar the german shepherd, wearing a blue harness and a bright hunter-orange safety vest smiles down from a ravine top at me.
liverwort leaves on damp brown sand
Liverworts!
I point at a tiny green patch of moss on sandstone while Briar sits baffled but smiling nearby.
Dog for scale next to moss.
Briar the german shepherd dog stands in her orange safety vest on a big exposed ridge of sandstone, with bluestem grass and cedars and oaks in the background. she is looking out of frame and smiling.
The clouds came and went. It was cool and breezy but I did okay with just one layer of long sleeves.
Splitbeard bluestem seed tufts lit up by sunshine against red sandstone
Splitbeard bluestem is so pretty with its tufts. I think this picture would be a fun puzzle.
eroded red sandstone leaving nodules. bluestem and goldenrod and other dead plants at the top of the eroding edge
Nodule habitat
round red and dark brown sandstone nodules in softer sand
Close up
I found some nodules in the sandstone!
a blackberry stem and leaf, the stem has whitish speckles
Blackberry stem
close-up of blackberry stem and a bud, showing the white patches with dark centers
Maybe not lichen
I thought this blackberry stem had lichens, which would have been unusual, but I think maybe it was a fungus.

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07/16/2023 birthday girl

A black and red coated German Shepherd Dog wearing a hunter orange safety vest lays in the grass in a green prairie valley with lots of yellow flowered compass plant stalks around her. The sky is filled with low dark gray clouds and some small trees ring the valley.
Briar the dog had her sixth birthday today. We took a walk at Lexington WMA! The low clouds and a breeze kept us cooler than usual for July.
Briar the red and black coated fluffy German Shepherd dog is wearing a hunter orange safety vest and sitting next to a seed-covered stalk of Arnoglossum. She is sitting in grass that’s almost her height and very green with various native forbs around her, including yellow compass plant. Her tongue is hanging out and she looks happily at the photographer.
Occasionally I asked Briar to sit so she wouldn’t scare a bug we were looking at.
Briar the fluffy German Shepherd Dog lays full length in a very orange mud puddle in exposed red Sandy loam. Her ears are alert and she glances back towards the photographer. Prairie grass surrounds the puddle and oaks are in the background.
Even with the cooler than typical July weather, Briar still enjoyed laying in her favorite mud puddle. Cool is mid 80s in July!
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05/05/2023 Lexington WMA quick visit

Oxalis violacea
Carrot leaf Lomatium now done
Hot dog already
Baptisia bracteata
Briar on a hill
Prairie parsley blooming
Salvia azurea leaves
Echinacea leaves
Mystery leaves
Oxalis violacea lives in sunnier spots than I expected!
Arnoglossum species buds
Arnoglossum farther along
I think butterfly milkweed
Calylophus primrose
Penstemon cobea buds
Briar enjoyed a big mud puddle then ran right towards us dripping wet.
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12/2022 backlog of infrastructure and little babies

Yesterday, 12/31, I finally glued on the rain barrel cap holders that the Chef 3D printed for me! I used epoxy after cleaning both surfaces with ethanol.
Paula got solar powered outdoor lights for Christmas and has used them to make the path to the compost visible! Edit: thanks to Mom for inquiring if we can turn the lights out. Yes we can! It’s important not to pollute the dark with more light than we use at any given moment.
I am hoping these tiny seedlings are the annual bluets that sometimes grow in this part of the yard. Keeping an eye on them.
A tinier potential annual bluet seedling next to the comparatively large wild geraniums. These two pictures were 12/31/2022.
12/28/2022, the Ratibida columnifera rosettes survived the big cold!
Two Verbena halei rosettes also exist and made it!
Finally, and very thrilling, two potential Penstemon oklahomensis seedlings! They don’t appear to be hairy leaves like some other common seedling volunteers. Stay tuned.
Shackleton enjoyed a leashed walk in the same excellent 12/28 weather.
Jeanne kindly sent us some Salaginella riddellii- Riddell’s Spike-Moss. We put the biggest chunk in the rainbow garden (in green of course) on 12/25.
We put a smaller piece of the spike moss in the cactus planter.
12/25 was so nice we also moved some volunteers. This is the big root of a poke berry! We moved those along the back fence where another pokeberry lives. We also moved several ampelopsis from random spots in the yard to along the south fence trellis.
A blackjack oak acorn with a sprout on it! We planted this exciting find (12/24) into a pot on 12/25. Fingers crossed for a spring sprout.
Judy gave us an adorable toad house! I have placed it near the veggie beds. Please come eat our earwigs, toad friends.
12/24 checking the pot containing Sedum nutallii from Jeanne. The sedums seem to have made it along with Verbena rosettes (V. Halei??) and other intriguing volunteers.
Going somewhere! Wow!! Happy briar in the car.
On 12/24 we visited the lake at Lexington WMA. This seasonal creek was frozen solid! The lake was too. Briar wears her hunter orange.
After the deep freeze, only the top tips of the recently transplanted rosemary got frozen. They were pressed down by the sheets. But the sheets protected the rest of the plant!
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Sunday field trip to Lexington WMA

Butterfly milkweed.
Wild heliotrope.
Had leaves like greenthread but a yellow center on flower.
Compass plants all facing what we think was east.
Bigger view of the compass plant valley.
A megachilid bee on butterfly milkweed!
A whole field of Echinacea!
Rosa sp.
I know this one. I’ll look it up. Edit: wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), thanks Mom 🙂
Happy!!!!
A Dun Skipper on prairie bluets.
Asclepias viridiflora (thanks Abby and Mom!)
Shade good for fluffy dog.
Another view of the Echinacea field.
Note the matching orange dog in background.
I remember this plant.
She tried to get humans to join her but we’re no fun.
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Funnel-lily on weekend expedition

Hiking with Paula and Briar today. We saw several cool early spring plants, as well as first of season for us on Scissor-tailed Flycatcher, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, and Black-and-white Warbler.

Thanks to Mom for identification of carrot-leaf lomatium!
A common spring favorite! Fringed puccoon!
As we were about to leave, I saw a little hill that looked like it might have interesting lichen rocks or something else good there. Sure enough!! Paula found blue funnel-lilies! Two plants. The other had two buds.
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Lexington WMA

A bit more cast iron forest this afternoon, not just the garden!

Probably a Common Buckeye butterfly caterpillar.
Neat shelf fungi on a blackjack oak that has been burned in the past.
Spring Beauty flower. Saw just a few!
Moss with undeveloped capsules (thanks Jeanne!)
Mexican Plums blooming had just a few bees on them. It was windy.
Briar helped look for frogs.
A round bit of moss.
Close up of Mexican Plum flowers.
Cardamine sp. (Thanks for ID, Abby!) You can see the leaves/rosette here.
Flower of Cardamine sp. There were lots in this damp area. You can see in both pictures some nearby sedges.