More rain in NC-WV today. As compensation, I was mesmerized by the intense green inferno of an Appalachian forest after a steady downpour. Photos from Scott Run Trail in Coopers Rock State Forest.
From top: Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), whose roots were once used as a substitute for true sarsaparilla in root beer; deerberry (Vaccinium stamineum); sulphur shelf fungus (Laetiporus sulphureus); Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) twins; a red eft, the juvenile stage of the eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens); and Indian cucumber (Medeola virginiana).
I’ve got a new product on my website! A few weeks ago was the Girl Scout Camp Timbercrest in Western New York for their Friends of Group’s Fall Work Weekend, and I designed the shirts for their event! With Friends of Timbercrest's permission, I’m putting the red eft design on my online shop, starting with organic cotton tote bags.
Any product sold with that red eft design will have 10% of its profits donated to the Friends of Timbercrest, who volunteer to make sure the camp is maintained for future girl scouts and campers to visit. Just at the Fall Work Weekend, the group updated the markers on many of the trails, stained the outside of the Dining Hall, created paddle and canoe racks for the boat house, and removed dead and dangerous trees. If you want to see more of what the group does, you can visit their website here.
The one thing that excites me more than a pop-up summer thunderstorm is a walk in a damp, dripping, glowing-green forest after the storm has passed. The forest's living essence is made all the more real and immediate by the intoxicating perfume of decaying things, creatures flitting like ghosts through the leaves and underbrush, and clinging raindrops unleashed from the treetops by an evanescent breeze. Photos above are from a hike this morning on Glade Run Trail in Coopers Rock State Forest.
From top: common boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum), which is closely related to Joe Pye weed, and sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale); the deep purple-red berries of common elderberry (Sambucus canadensis); hollow Joe Pye weed (Eupatorium fistulosum), which can attain a height of 7 to 8 feet; eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), whose tattered wings show the wear and tear of summer errands; a colony of gregarious fungi, perhaps cross-veined troop mushroom (Xeromphalina kauffmanii), which grow in huge numbers on decaying hardwoods; a red-capped bolete, perhaps Leccinum longicurvipes, which is symbiont with oak trees; an eastern newt (Notophthalmus viridescens); white wood aster (Eurybia divaricata); bigleaf aster (Eurybia macrophylla); cowbane (Oxypolis rigidior), also known as common water dropwort; bluestem goldenrod (Solidago caesia), a woodland goldenrod with flowerheads in the leaf axils; and Appalachian oak-leach (Aureolaria laevigata), also known as smooth false foxglove, which is semi-parasitic on oak tree roots.