The Hanover Conservancy sponsored a wildflower hike in the Shumway Forest on Moose Mountain. It was led by Alice Schori who identified many wildflowers for us and pointed out interesting characteristics of them. It was very informative.
Seven of us forgot to check the web for a possible date switch, so we arrived a day early for the hike. This worked out great for photography because Saturday was overcast. Soft overcast is much better for flower, forest, and people photography than contrasty sunlight. So the next group of photos were taken before the official hike.
Below we see Wild Oats on the left and a Red Trillium emerging on the right.
I believe the pair of photos below show an emerging Wild Sarsaparilla. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Along the path near the pond, I found quite a lot of Goldthread.
And some “Old-man’s-beard”, a lichen that is an indicator of a healthy forest.
I found a Trout Lily partially encased in a dry leaf, a fairly common sight with many spring flowers.
On the left below is a Field Horsetail, a non-flowering plant in the Genus Equisetaceae that dominated much of the earth hundreds of millions of years ago. I believe the plant on the right is a Sensitive Fern.
I used my little LX7 P&S camera to make the photo below of a Red Trillium. It has great wide angle macro capability and a fast lens for shallow depth of field.
The official wildflower hike was led on Sunday by Botanist Alice Schori. On this hike we found hundreds of blooming Trout Lilies.
We also found some still-blooming Hobblebush (below left) and Dwarf Ginseng (below right). These photos are somewhat misleading because the Hobblebush flowers are over 10 time larger than the Dwarf Ginseng.
The central portion of the Hobblebush has tiny flowers with stamen and pistils. They are surrounded by much larger flowers, about an inch in diameter, that are sterile. Their function is to attract insects to pollinate the inner cluster of fertile flowers.
We found an emerging Painted Trillium, the new Town Flower of Hanover.
We hiked the Tower Road, seen below, before hiking the newly-named Tom Linell Ridge Trail to the Appalachian Trail on our way to the South Peak of Moose Mouintain for lunch.
Along the way we saw thousands of Spring Beauty flowers.
At South Peak we had great views of the mountains to the east and Goose Pond below.
We had a relaxing lunch in an area filled with other hikers and then headed down. It was a great way to spend part of Mother’s Day.
