Johnston Mill Nature Preserve- Old Field Trail
It's the first time in several weeks that I've made it back to JMNP. While my partner had her horseback riding lesson, I wandered out into the rain (later snow) to review what I've learned from NCBG classes.
Time of day and weather conditions didn't make for great picture taking, so much of what I noticed I didn't shoot: heartleaf, crane-fly orchid, striped wintergreen, and trout lily leaves with flowers closed tight.
Looking for other bits of green while on the wooded portion of the trail, I noticed running cedar growing amidst some Christmas fern (photo). That area of the woods appears to have sustained significant damage from Hurricane Fran (1996).
Dawdling as I do, I didn't make it far down the trail before having to turn back. I made it to the Shagbark hickory, which I was the first I'd noticed. There were many old, shaggy-barked white oaks visible from the trail before then. But the tree that really caught my eye was a sourwood with three large, interwined branches.
Speaking of sourwood, there's an area where red maples and sourwood are the predominant understory trees. When I was focused on the trunks of the sourwoods, I noticed that some stump sprouts were very smooth-trunked and easy to confuse (at least for me) with the red maples. I also noticed a red maple sapling with branching as crooked as a sourwood, and it was only when I looked at the bud arrangement that I figure out what it was. When I have more time, I want to spend some time further disambiguating this for myself!
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