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Sunday, May 4, 2008

South Mountains State Park

This is where I spent my day yesterday. South Mountains State Park. http://www.ncparks.gov/Visit/parks/somo/main.php

That is the Jacob’s Fork River. I love sitting out on the big rocks in the middle of the river and hearing nothing but the water rushing by and the wind. There was a squirrel who felt the need to fuss at me from his tree every so often though.

There is a lovely waterfall to see if you hike up the mountain. I didn’t hike up there today though, so no pictures. You can see it at their website linked above if you’d like.

I took lots of pictures of plants while we walked around. I don’t know what most of them are yet. I really need to work on my identification skills, but here are a few I recognize.

This is a Pawpaw tree (Asimina). You can see the dark purple flowers here. They’ll turn into fruits soon.

PawPaw

This is Dog Hobble (Leucothoe D. Don) I’ve heard it’s called this because a hunter’s dog will try to run through it when on the chase only to get all tangled up in the stems.

Dog Hobble

Dog Hobble

There was loads of Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia L.) Although they weren’t flowering quiet yet.

Mountain Laurel

There were also quite a few dogwoods (Cornus) along the river bank. So lovely, you don’t see the branches at first so they just look like white flowers floating in the air.

DogWood

There were lots of Tulip Poplar (Liriodendron) trees as well. Here is a flower and some leaves that the tree decided to drop onto my lunch plate.

Tulip Poplar Leaves and Flower

And lots of Rhododendron (Rhododendron L.) Which I’m not particularly fond of: P

Rhodedendron

UpClose Rhodedendron

I'll post the rest of the pics as I identify them.

Oh one more thing. After a rest I picked my backpack up from the ground and there was a caterpillar on it. I let it crawl onto my hand and took it over to the plants to release it. I held it near a leaf expecting it to crawl from my hand onto the leaf. Instead it sat on my hand and began eating the leaf! LoL it was amazing. I gently pulled away from the leaf and released it onto a stem of that plant instead. Crazy bugs.


1 comment:

Gail said...

Katy, thanks for visiting my blog, I love having visitors, grin. I see your a knitter, I also have a quilting and crazy quilting blog @
http://galynn-bhmc.blogspot.com/

Love your nature pictures, looks like a very pretty place. I think spring is finally here, YA!