Last visit to Illinois Beach State Park

Two months ago today, when we made our last visit to Illinois Beach State Park, we explored an area farther north than where we’d stayed at the Illinois Beach Resort. The highlight this time was a small stretch where the waves coming westward on Lake Michigan crashed against the shore and shot straight up. The water surged so quickly that as a photographer I adopted a strategy of setting the camera to a high shutter speed (in this case 1/2000 of a second) and taking lots of pictures in the hope that at least a few would capture the action. This one gives you a pretty good feel for what was happening.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Greenity*

At the risk of greening you out with a third post in a row that’s heavy on that color, here’s another view of common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca, this time from Illinois Beach State Park on June 14. I no longer remember what cast the pleasantly undulating shadow on the left side of the leaf, but one lobe of that shadow worked to highlight the lone gall there.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

---

* We don’t normally stick a Latin-derived suffix on a native English word the way I’ve done with greenity, but some hybrids (for example outage) have entered our standard vocabulary. In searching the Internet now I see that I’m not the first person to come up with greenity.

Not from Neil Young

In 1969 Neil Young may have wanted to live with a Cinnamon Girl, but in the Volo Bog State Natural Area in Lake County, Illinois, on June 7th of this year I was content to spend a few minutes with a cinnamon fern, Osmundastrum cinnamomeum.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Not from Syria

From the Volo Bog State Natural Area in Lake County, Illinois, on June 7th, here are some buds of common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca. Its distribution across America is wide, but that doesn’t excuse the botanist who jumped the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and named this species after Syria.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Dogbane

On June 14 in Grant Woods Forest Preserve in Lake County, Illinois, we saw dogbane flowers of two types: spreading (pink, Apocynum androsaemifolium) and prairie (white, Apocynum cannabinum).

Did you know that botanists recently moved the whole milkweed family inside the dogbane family?

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

A tale of two junipers

The other juniper that Melissa pointed out to us at Illinois Beach State Park on June 6th was a species that forms broad, low mounds, Juniperus communis. Here’s a picture from the overcast morning of June 9th showing a prominent common juniper mound in the foreground and several others farther back. The yellow-orange wildflowers are the hoary puccoon that you saw closer views of a few weeks ago.

Whenever I come across the species name communis I’m accustomed to finding out that the plant in question is native to Europe, where Linnaeus and other early botanists considered it “common.” I was surprised, then, to learn that Juniperus communis is native on several continents. Here’s what the website of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center says: “Although commonly a tree in Eurasia, Common Juniper is only rarely a small tree in New England and other northeastern States.  In the West, it is a low shrub, often at timberline. Including geographic varieties, this species is the most widely distributed native conifer in both North America and the world. Juniper berries are food for wildlife, especially grouse, pheasants, and bobwhites. They are an ingredient in gin, producing the distinctive aroma and tang.”

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Creeping juniper

Melissa told us on June 6th at Illinois Beach State Park that two kinds of juniper grow on the dunes there. The one shown here from a photo outing three days later is Juniperus horizontalis, which lives up to its species name by staying close to the ground as it creeps along the beach. Note the mostly immature fruit in the second picture. (Both photographs look predominantly downward.)

In Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose quoted from Meriwether Lewis’s journal entry of April 12, 1805, written in what I think is now North Dakota: “This plant would make very handsome edgings to the borders and walks of a garden…. [and it is] easily propegated*.” Lewis had called the plant “dwarf juniper,” which Ambrose interpreted as creeping juniper.

* Neither Lewis nor Clark used standardized or even consistent spelling. The quoted sentence, with just one mistake, is an example of Lewis’s best spelling.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

White wild indigo

On June 14, Melissa took us to the Grant Woods Forest Preserve in Lake County, Illinois. Among the native flowers we saw there was Baptisia alba, known as white wild indigo. From the second photograph you can see that some of the wild indigo was mixed in with spiderworts (Tradescantia ohiensis).

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Wild iris

From the Volo Bog State Natural Area in Lake County, Illinois, on June 7th, here’s a wild iris flower, Iris virginica.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman

Female redwing blackbird

Look how different the female redwing blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) is from the male. Like the previous photograph, this one comes from the Volo Bog State Natural Area in Lake County, Illinois, on June 7th.

© 2016 Steven Schwartzman