Category: Wild Flowers

A Great Day Two At The Great Marsh

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For day two of my camping trip I spent the afternoon out on the Great Marsh Trail. It had rained the night before and most of the morning so all of the vegetation was coated with water when I arrived. By definition a marsh is a pretty wet and moist environment, and after a good soaking rain it is even more so. Pretty much the perfect conditions for this sort of trail, in my opinion. As the image above shows, the slugs pretty much agreed with me, though this one was trying to hide behind a leaf.

A fairly typical stretch of the trail. It was impossible to pass through without getting your pants soaked from all the wet grasses that crowd in on the trail. Synthetic materials are great for this because they dry out so fast. So even though my pants were soaked through by the end of this stretch, they dried out pretty fast and were not uncomfortable.
When I began to really get into nature photography I did not think of grasses as being particularly interesting subject matter. But they have turned into one of my favorites. They mostly lack the spectacular colors of a lot of wild flowers. But I find their patterns, textures and details to be truly fascinating.
It is not easy to get a straight on head shot with most flys. They tend to bug out if you spend much time positioning the camera. This fella did not seem to mind my antics and he sat still long enough to get shots from several angles.
Bees can also be difficult to get clear photographs of. Even when they are working on a flower they are constantly twisting and turning. I have found that I keeping shutter speed high makes it much easier, even when doing so means using suboptimal ISO and aperture settings. Photography is a game of tradeoffs. Learning how to balance competing factors is part of the learning process.
This is a good time of year for Lilies. The Great Marsh trail has a very nice patch of these beautiful orange one’s just past the observation deck.
Water drops and filamentary plant fibers make a great combination. To me this image looks like interconnected neurons in the brain. There are many patterns in nature which appear in very different ways at vastly different size scales. I have seen very similar patterns of voids surrounded by filamentary structures in models of the distribution of galaxies throughout the universe. Just one of the many ways in which I find nature to be endlessly fascinating.

Spring Marches On

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It is late spring, everything is lush and vibrant. There is a some filling in still to come. Trees will soon be filled out and grasses and ferns will begin to dominate many areas of the park. The transition from spring to summer is more subtle than winter to spring, but it is just as much fun to watch. With all of the Lupine blooming in the western part of the park it is easy to neglect the trails around Beverly Shores on the east side. The Dune Ridge, Beverly Dr. loop is one of my favorites and it was overdue for a visit.

Yellow Salsify grows tall, so it can be difficult to get a top down view of its flower. This particular one is a bit past its prime and was wilting a bit which allowed me to get this nearly head on shot.
The morning had been foggy, which left many small droplets of water on these grasses. I find their magnifying effects irresistible and I always have to take a few photographs when I encounter a scene like this. I find it easy to get carried away however and could easily spend most of an afternoon doing nothing but photographing these lovely drops.
Spiderwort is always fun to work with. It is easy to focus your attention on the rich purple hues in the flowers. But the buds beneath them are worthy subjects themselves. It was a sunny day with strong contrasts between the shadows and the brightly lit flowers. I had to over expose the flower in order to bring out the buds.
The Dune Ridge portion of the trail does indeed wind its way along the top of a forested dune. From it you get some great views down into this recently reclaimed portion of the Great Marsh.
Zooming in a bit we can see a group of birders down on the closed stretch of Beverly Dr. which makes up the second half of my trail loop for the day. This happened to be the weekend of the Indiana Dunes Birding Festival, and as such I encountered a lot of people out on the trail looking for birds, of which there are a great variety this time of year.
This small Orb Weaver was hanging out in the middle of his web when I came walking up. I guess he saw me because he quickly scurried over to the fern, though it was not much of a hiding place. I suppose if you are a spider and you detect movement of anything larger than a golfball you run and hide.
Blue-Eyed Grass is a favorite treat. One little flower petal atop a single blade of grass. Well it is not technically a grass, but that’s unimportant. The pollenating visitor was a nice extra.
Fleabane amidst the reeds and grasses at the edge of the swamp. The slightly elevated abandoned roadway cuts through the middle of the swamp and provides some really nice views.
Look up from the close in view of the Fleabane and grasses and this is the view you get. Unlike a lot of boardwalks which cross marshes and swamps in the area, the roadbed provides a view which feels more like being in the actual swamp.
Campion. Not native but I don’t think it is considered invasive. It seems to get along with the local ecosystem nicely, as opposed to running rampant like Garlic Mustard. Makes it easier to enjoy coming across it.