#azure bluets

[vandaliatraveler]

Bald Knob Trail at Canaan Valley Resort State Park offers breathtaking panoramic views from two spruce-clad summits, Bald Knob and Weiss Knob. Bald Knob overlooks Canaan Valley to the west (top photos), while Weiss Knob overlooks the Red Creek Valley to the south. I take the manual route up the trail (a strenuous vertical climb of 800 to 900 feet in about half a mile) but you can also opt for the ski lift on Weiss Knob, when it's operating. This time of year, a walk through the red spruce forest on Weiss Knob is a real treat for wildflower nerds like me, with various beauties, such as yellow clintonia (Clintonia borealis), the gorgeous and delicate starflower (Lysimachia borealis), painted trillium (Trillium undulatum), Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense), and mountain-loving red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa), in bloom.

[themcphotographer]

Pigs in a flower forest

[vandaliatraveler]

In honor of fishdetective, yet another barrage of tiny flower close-ups - courtesy of the riparian habitat along Dunkard Creek.

From top: early saxifrage (Micranthes virginiensis); azure bluet (Houstonia caerulea), also known as Quaker ladies; Dutchman’s breeches (Dicentra cucullaria); great white trillium (Trillium grandiflorum); swamp buttercup (Ranunculus septentrionalis); twinleaf (Jeffersonia diphylla); and sessile trillium (Trillium sessile), also known as toadshade and toad trillium.

[vandaliatraveler]

Icons of the National Road, Part 5. Fort Necessity National Battlefield commemorates the site of one of the earliest battles of the French and Indian War. Shortly after ambushing a French expedition led by Joseph Coulon de Villiers, Sieur de Jumonville at a nearby mountain glen, Colonel George Washington ordered his Colonial militia to construct a “fort” - little more than a stockade surrounded by breastworks - at Great Meadows in anticipation of an attack by the French. Sure enough, on July 3, 1754, Jumonville’s older brother, Louis Coulon de Villiers, led a French and Native American force in an assault on the fort, which was defended by the Colonial militia and small number of British regulars under Washington's command. After a day-long battle in the rain, Washington was compelled to surrender and sign a confession admitting to Jumonville’s assassination. It was the first and last time in his career he would surrender to the enemy. 

In addition to a reconstruction of the fort and its earthworks, the park includes a visitor center with a museum, the Mount Washington Tavern, General Edward Braddock’s gravesite, and Jumonville Glen.

[vandaliatraveler]

I got some COVID relief time this afternoon at Toms Run Preserve, where the first wave of spring wildflowers has faded away and been succeeded by the next one. Among the new arrivals: violet wood sorrel (Oxalis violacea): Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum); heartleaf foamflower (Tiarella cordifolia); aniseroot (Osmorhiza longistylis); hooked buttercup (Ranunculus recurvatus); and wild comfrey (Cynoglossum virginianum). Meanwhile, golden ragwort (Packera aurea) and azure bluets (Houstonia caerulea) are just reaching peak form. A few more highlights from my visit: blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolium); an enormous Dryad’s saddle bracket fungus (Cerioporus squamosus); and Virginia grape fern (Botrypus virginianus), an unusually beautiful plant also referred to as rattlesnake fern.

[vandaliatraveler]

Toms Run Preserve protects several adjoining tracts of old growth woods on the steep hills overlooking the Monongahela River and includes the lower section of Toms Run, which plummets through a narrow, rhododendron and hemlock-lined gorge before pooling up in a gentle, marshy lagoon at the river’s edge. The West Virginia Land Trust had planned to dedicate this idyllic preserve later in the spring, but COVID-19 has put the formal ceremony on hold. In the meantime, the trails through the preserve’s lovely old woods are informally open to the public. This morning, rue anemone (Thalictrum thalictroides) was the shining star, but droopy-petaled wild blue phlox (Phlox divaricata) downy phlox (Phlox pilosa), and azure bluets (Houstonia caerulea) were getting ready to make a show of their own.

[fitzhughkarol]