Botany in the Southeast U.S.

Botanist/Ecologist in the Southeastern U.S. Glades are my specialty. My interests include hiking, reading, cats, rollerblading, botany, entomology, and mycology. All pictures are my own unless otherwise stated.

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Not a lot of botanizing this winter, but I have gotten to visit some beautiful places and see some cool fungi.

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A typical Arkansas summer. From northern Arkansas to southern Arkansas.

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Sifting back through some older photos. These are from a hike in March 2023 along the Buffalo National River in northern Arkansas.

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A very wet and muddy spring hike at the end of April 2024. Ozark-St. Francis National Forest in Arkansas.

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Spring hiking around northern Arkansas. I haven't been out hiking much this year yet, but hopefully I'll manage to get out more at the end of April to catch some more spring wildflowers.

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Summer 2023 on a wet prairie in the Ozarks.

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Photos from August and September 2022. Various species found on a wet prairie in Arkansas.

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Photos from a beautiful spring hike in May 2022 in the Ozarks near Ponca, Arkansas.

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Pictures from a hike on December 31, 2021. We started out early on a foggy morning in search of waterfalls and found four salamanders and lots of fungi along the way.

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Some assorted spooky fall/winter photos from around Arkansas in honor of the approaching Halloween holiday. Fall is one of my favorite times to hike in Arkansas, especially on overcast days. It makes for some great photos.

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For the past couple of months, I have been working on a degraded prairie in Arkansas. Most of the prairie is dominated by invasive fescue grass and invasive Bermuda grass, among others. Luckily, the prairie has recently received an herbicide application to help manage the invasive grasses, but it will be a while before the prairie is restored. The video and photos featured are from before the herbicide application.

Blue vervain (Verbena hastata).

A gray hairstreak ( Strymon melinus) in the foreground and an eastern tailed-blue (Cupido comyntas) in the background enjoying some white clover (Trifolium repens). White clover is common in lawns, fields, and many other habitats in North America, but it’s actually an introduced species from Europe.

Green antelopehorn (Asclepias viridis).

Tall green milkweed (Asclepias hirtella).

A view of one section of the degraded prairie. The majority of the prairie was used for cattle grazing at some point in its history. 

American lotus (Nelumbo lutea) growing in a pond on the prairie.

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A beautiful sandstone glade that I got to visit in northern Arkansas in December of 2020 on a cold, cloudy day. The property owners cat followed us all day as we hiked around.

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The last of the photos from my April 2021 trip out to Blackburn Bluffs Preserve in northern Arkansas.

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More photos from an excursion to Blackburn Bluffs Preserve in northern Arkansas in April 2021.

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Photos from a recent trip to Blackburn Bluffs Preserve in northern Arkansas. I was lucky enough to be able to camp here for a couple of days and participate in a BioBlitz on the 300 acre property. We had a pretty good rainfall the first night of camping so there was plenty of water on the property and a higher creek crossing than usual but the wildflowers were in full bloom. I’ll be adding more photos from this trip in the days to come.

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An eastern comma (Polygonia comma) walking around a dry stream bed at Blackburn Bluffs Preserve.

A view of the stream bed at Blackburn Bluffs.

A glimpse of the bluffs through the trees on the other side of the stream.

What I believe is witch’s butter (Tremella mesenterica) on a rotting tree limb.

An old rock wall that meanders along the side of an old branch of Blackburn Creek. The wall follows along about a quarter mile of the old stream bed and this is probably the most intact portion of it.

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A few more photos from Blackburn Bluffs Preserve in October 2020. The last photo is a stream crossing that is required to access the main part of the trail. Also, in the last photo you can see the top of an old deer hunting cabin built by the previous landowners on the far side of the creek which is where the trail starts. Blackburn Bluffs Preserve is actually a privately owned piece of property that is meant to be a wildlife corridor along an interstate. A trail was established here for basic maintenance purposes (there are invasive plants present that will eventually have to be dealt with) and for occasional supervised excursions for small groups.