Friday, June 1, 2018 at Cedar Bog

Tom, our friend, Pat, and I wanted to see the Showy Lady's Slippers. (Cypripedium reginae)  Since Tom and I have come to the bog,( which is really a fen,) quite a few times, we knew where they would be.

Tom headed off ahead of Pat and me.  We took time to look at other things along the way.
The large plant to the left of the boardwalk is a Great Angelica.(Angelica atropurpurea)

There is a closer look.

Pat liked these masses of tiny white flowers.  We meant to ask what they were when we returned to the Education Center but we forgot. I think someone told me a long time ago that they were Flowering Spurge.  Sometimes I remember correctly. 😀

Here is a closer look at them.

Pat and I both like to look at all kinds of wild things.  We saw quite a few of these dragonflies.  This morning I checked in my copy of Dragonflies through Binoculars and learned that this is a Common Whitetail female.  (Libellula lydia)  We saw the males, too but I didn't get a photo of one.

The white line is the boardwalk.  When we came to the fork we went right because I knew we were close to the Lady Slippers.  Tom was out of sight.  I really wanted to find him because I was beginning to be bothered by insects.  The  insect repellent was in the back pocket of his power chair.  I didn't find him but I found the Lady Slippers.

Pat loved them.  I knew she would.

About then Tom found us.  He came up behind us.  He had taken the fork to the left and turned back when we didn't catch up with him.

We all used the insect repellent, then headed back to the van.  thunderstorms were predicted.

This is how the sky looked above the parking lot.  There were a few drops of rain by the time we were settled in the van.

Surprisingly, those raindrops were the end of the rain until hours later.  But how were we to know?

Our Second Trip to Cedar Bog This Year...June 12, 2017

After our half hour visit to Cedar Bog on May 31, we decided we wanted to go back when the Grass Pink Orchids were blooming.  We invited our friend, John to come with us.  The tree we are looking at is a Yellow Maple.  It marks the "Y" in the circular trail.

At the "Y" we turned to the right.

The Tuberous Indian Plantain (Cacalia tuberosa) was beginning to be showy.  There will be larger flower heads.

A little further down the trail, I found this Milkweed (Asclepias)  One of the experts from the Ohio Wildflower Facebook site told me it was Poke Milkweed (Asclepias exaltata) one of two species of woodland milkweeds in Ohio.

Meanwhile, Tom was taking photos of a Damselfly, an Ebony Jewelwing male (Calopteryx maculata).  Damselflies usually sit with wings folded upright while Dragonflies usually sit with wings spread.

At the Sedge Meadow, Tom found the Showy Lady's Slippers still blooming.

Showy Lady's Slippers (Cypripedium reginae)

In the same sedge meadow, he found the first Grass Pink (Calopogon pulchellus)  We saw more further from the boardwalk and also more in the next section of Sedge Meadow that the boardwalk passed through.

In the second section of Sedge Meadow we found the Round-leafed Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia).  We knew where to find them because years ago we went on a guided walk.  The plants are very tiny, only a little bigger than the lid on a small jar of bread and butter pickles.  They are fascinating to me because they are very tiny, yet are a carnivorous plant.

Round-leafed Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)

Far out in the sedge meadow, we saw this plant.  Fortunately, Tom has a camera that could take the distant shot.

I posted this photo on Ohio Wildflowers and learned that it was Phlox maculata.

In this same meadow, Shrubby Cinquefoil were beginning to bloom.

Shrubby Cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa)

Below is a plant I find interesting.  I first saw it years ago when I was exploring with a park naturalist off the trail at Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary.  It was a rare oportunity to go into the usually unseen parts of the woods.  He explained that it was believed to have been called Nein bark by early German settlers because the bark peels off the branches.  The name, over time, has become Ninebark.  The flowers are not at their most beautiful showy selves in this photo.

Here is a crop of the photo above showing the long curving branches on which the old bark peels off in layers.

This is a photo that Tom took when we visited the bog last June 11 when the flowers were showy.

Ninebark (Rubus odoratus) a member of the Rose family.


There were a lot of Tall Meadow Rue Plants.  It is a species in which there are male and female plants are on different plants.

Tall Meadow Rue (Thalictrum polygamum) with male flowers.

Tall Meadow Rue with female flowers.

All along the trail we saw butterflies but none of them stayed around long enough for Tom or me to get a picture.

We were finishing our walk when Tom found this Red Admiral.  It was down in the grasses so interested in whatever was there that it stayed for a bit longer than the other butterflies.

Red Admiral ( Vanessa atalanta rubria)

Cedar Bog, May 31, 2017

We had plans for the day.  We would go to Cedar Bog after making a quick stop at Key Mobility in Xenia to have Kyle adjust the power chair lift in the van.  The lift turned out to be problematic.  Eventually, Kyle decided there was something wrong with the lift that he had never come across.  He put a loaner lift in the van and promised to work on our lift.

By the time he had tried everything he knew and called the lift help line several times, we had only a short time to visit at Cedar Bog.  We decided to go anyway because wildflower enthusiasts were posting pictures of the Showy Lady's Slippers.  We saw them several years ago at the end of their blooming season and Tom wanted to get photos of the flowers at their peak.

He found them.

It was late in the day and mostly overcast so the lighting was easy to work with.  I finally was able to get a good photo of the map of the trails.

Because it was late we took a very short walk, only went down the boardwalk to the right to the first opening  because the Showy Lady's slippers close to the trail there.

I was surprised at the number of other things we saw on our walk.

We saw this snake slither across the boardwalk.  Neither of us knew what kind it was.  It didn't have the pattern of the Massasauga  which was pictured on the sign near the beginning of the trail.  Nevertheless, we waited for it to move off into the foliage before we moved on.

There was a variety of butterflies.  This one sat long enough for Tom to take its picture.

The large broad leaves of Skunk Cabbage covered much of the forest floor.

One of the prettiest flowers was this one.  I think it is Flowering Spurge.    There were masses of it in the old field meadow before we entered the woods.

As we were leaving, Tom took one last photo...

Southern Blue Flag Iris.

I had never seen these irises here so I had a bonus on this half hour walk.

A Visit to Cedar Bog in Champaign County, Ohio, June 6, 2016

Tom and I spent several pleasant hours at Cedar Bog on Monday.  We made the trip because we had seen on Facebook that the Showy Lady-slippers (Cypripedium reginae) were blooming.  We found them shortly after we started down the trail.

The bog  has a boardwalk through it which makes it easy for Tom on his scooter.

 There have been some improvements. There are now helpful signs that explain  special features of the bog and also comment on the plants and animals found there.  I think I would have noticed them if they had been up in 2012 since we were with Tom's best friend who was in the plant nursery business most of his life.  Gary would have liked reading them.

I remember from my first visit to the bog 35 years ago that Terry told us that Cedar Bog is really a fen.  To remember the difference between a bog and a fen, he told us, "Bogs clog, Fens flow".

This sign shows the streams in blue that flow through the fen (Cedar Bog).  The pale lines are the boardwalk.

I was expecting lots of mosquitoes so I sprayed myself with plenty of insect repellent.  I have been at the bog when they have been fierce.  On this day, a steady breeze was blowing and the insects weren't a problem.

We found lots of Lady-slippers. We also found other plants and we met a botanist who was doing a survey who identified some of them for us.  In particular, he showed us a Poison Sumac which we had heard of but never come across.  I had already noticed the sign describing it but I didn't concentrate on it as I should have.  I was glad to have the plant pointed out to me since I am extremely allergic to poison ivy, one of its relatives.

The botanist also identified a Meadow-Rue for us, first by the botanical name which I didn't remember.  He gave me a common name also which I also didn't remember but I did remember that he said the plant has purple nodes on its stem.  I posted the photo on Ohio's Wildflowers and Flora where a botanist was kind enough to identify it as most likely Thalictrum dasycarpum.  One common name that I found in one of my wildflower field guides is Purple meadow-rue.

The same botanist on Ohio's Wildflowers and Flora identified the rest of these photos.  I am pleased my niece sent me the address for this site.  People post beautiful photos on it and many people are kind and help with identification.

Shrubby cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa)

Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolious)

Great Angelica (Angelica atropurpurea)

Indian Plantain (Cacalia)