ROAD TRIP 2006: WESTWARD, DAY 1

Set out on my return voyage yesterday, down 95, across the Tapenzee, and down the Garden State Parkway. Lord Whimsy’s LiveJournal is among the very few personal blogs I read, and he often posts tantalizing photos of the flora and fauna in his native Pine Barrens. Since he was kind enough to provide the location of a particularly productive bog in the region, I decided I would take the scenic route across the great state of New Jersey and inspect.

The Pine Barrens are a little known but occasionally celebrated region of semi-wilderness in south central New Jersey, and that is and was the limit of my expertise. From what I could observe, it is an flat area with arid and sandy soils. The eponymous pines are short (relative to my native white pines), craggy, with three needles per fascicle. The expansive wood seems constantly pierced by long, straigt dirt roads at an angle to highway. John McPhee has written a book on the place that I may have to check out. Why I should cultivate a fascination with a forest a continent away from where I live I do not know, but that is just the kind of thing I do.

Anyway, the bog was right where it was supposed to be, and what a bog it was. We had visited a bog in my field botany class in college, a small kettle bog of the Northeast replete with carnivorous plants and other unique acid-adapted plants. The bog I visited today was much larger, and everything was in flower! There were pitcher plants, sundews, a beautiful orchid called an arethusa, sheep laurel, and plenty of other things lacking placards to identify them. Pictures!

Whimsy’s Bog

Spatulate-leaf sundew (Drosera intermedia)

Thread-leaf sundew (Drosera filiformis)

Pitcher plant (Sarrecenia purpurea)

Pitcher plant flower

Front side of the pitcher plant’s flower

Sheep laurel (Kalmia augustifolia)

Arethusa (Arethusa bulbosa)

Arrived at Dave’s haunts of old in D.C., dropped in on a Williams happy hour where we saw Angel Simmons, among others. Today, to North Carolina, and much smoked meat!