I got to visit a nice mossy filled swamp today. Please enjoy this photo of said swamp.
49 notes
·
View notes
A friend from Cranesville Swamp
4 notes
·
View notes
Cranesville Swamp
0 notes
I was looking through an older folder on an external drive when I came across the photos above from a visit I made to Cranesville Swamp two falls ago. I had the images ready to post and then plumb forgot to do it. Appalachia’s mountain bogs are beautiful in any season, but in the fall, deep crimson, maroon, and orange-yellow hues seep into the sphagnum and create a memorable collage. One of the more interesting plants found growing here and at Cranberry Glades is the purple pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea). Someone had the bright idea of transplanting these voluptuous carnivores from Eastern Maryland back in the 1930′s, and they managed to survive and spread aggressively, putting native plants, such as the sundew, at risk. Anyway, they eat flies and produce truly weird-looking flowers, and many people seem to enjoy finding them in the bogs.
200 notes
·
View notes
In the cold sphagnum bogs of Appalachia's higher mountains, small cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos) sends out delicate, vine-like stems with small, leathery leaves that root where they come into contact with the damp peat. A trailing perennial shrub in the heath (Ericaceae) family, the plant is found throughout the Northern Hemisphere and as far south as the mountain bogs of West Virginia and Virginia in Central Appalachia. Small cranberry forms fragile, drooping pink flowers in the spring. These flowers are replaced by lustrous red berries from late August through October; they contrast sharply with the dull-brown-red sphagnum of late autumn. The edible berries have a familiar, sweet-tart flavor and were once favored by Native Americans as an accompaniment to wild game. The above photos were taken along the South Prong Trail in the Red Creek Plains of the Monongahela National Forest and the Cranesville Swamp Preserve.
20 notes
·
View notes