Over Memorial Day weekend, twelve budding botanists outfitted with notebooks, boots, and mosquito netting followed Janet Marr through fen, Superior shoreline, wet swale, woodland streamside, and sandy lakeside.
At the Michigan Nature Association preserve at Cat Harbor, they observed fen vegetation with special adaptations to survive in a low nutrient, acidic environment. These include the pitcher plant which digests its insect prey in juices held in its modified leaves.
After lunch at Esrey Park, the group visited the Michigan Nature Association’s preserve there to find round-lobed hepatica topped with lavender flowers.
On Sunday, they visited the northwest side of Gratiot Lake in search of bloodroot and maidenhair fern along the rich streambank, and jack-in-the pulpit in a lakeside swale.
Virginia Jamison graciously opened her home for a perfect lunch stop (with her daughter Dorothy’s cookies for dessert and a bonus circa 1938 log cabin tour!)
At Eagle Harbor’s Eliza Lake, they examined a patch of fushia gay-wings. Or as Janet would say—Polygala paucifolia.
They also learned that “glabrous” means “smooth” and “dioecious” means “having separate male and female flowers!” In fact, everyone learned more Latin and Greek names and botanical terminology than they imagined possible in two days.
In their “classroom” at the Eagle Harbor Community Center, they used microscopes to closely examine the plant structures botanists use to categorize and describe plants.
Participants had a good time, came away with knowledge they can use, and expressed a greater appreciation of the joys of looking closely at nature.
