A recent controlled burn here has left a patchwork of new growth of sedges, rushes, and grasses, which will be punctuated with fireworks of colorful flowers later in the year.
other fun finds included:
a well supported bench on high – probably useful for waterfowl hunting.
a spontaneous terrarium.
nice views.
a brisk walk at Cowles Bog (named for your hero and mine, Henry Chandler Cowles) yields early flowers and fruits in wintry landscapes.
Coking is part of the steel-making process. So the “steel industry waste” with spontaneous vegetation at this Acme Steel site is not slag, like at most other sites on the Slag Map, but what often looks like charcoal briquets made of fly ash.
We found a snake friend taking advantage of the raking sunlight.
Check out another visit to the same site a few years ago: Indian Ridge Marsh and beyond, IL • November 2020
It’s that time of year again – spring ephemerals at Sand Ridge. They never get old.
upland woodland friends, sprouting from under the oak leaves.
here’s the hummocks that enable the fen orchid
this little wetland is on sandy soil in a swale among the aspens.
a younger grove is undergoing restoration and in a decade or so, may harbor high quality orchids and sedges like this one.
A boat launch at Wolf Lake and a hydrological connection to Powderhorn Lake are new initiatives by the Forest Preserves and State Park. The connection between these bodies of water is an important one in reconstituting the wetland complex that has characterized the Calumet Crescent in the last 10,000 years.
Looking south towards Powderhorn, this new naturalized channel was constructed in an empty, perennially flooded lot. This green infrastructure is beneficial to the surrounding human community (decreasing local flooding) and connecting the animal communities.
Walking north, a buckthorn protected path affords coverage for waterfowl hunters (remember there is a gun club close by and hunting is legal in William Powers State Park) or coyotes, flanked by the transition zones between land and lake.
The real action though comes from the beavers. We’ve seen beaver dams around Powderhorn Lake in the past – I wonder if these beaver clans were already connected overland, or if the coming months will be first contact between the populations! I hope someone is using this behavioral, range, and host tree preference data to learn lots about these local ecosystem builders!
With no one else around, there was a liminal feeling to the masses of Phragmites topped with a cloudy gauze covering the winter afternoon sun.
Remember earlier this year when I mused on whether the slag depression with Phragmites and grasses west of the slag cliffs might foster a Spiranthes population? MY FRIENDS, IT DOES.
I parked across the railroad tracks and walked in near the hay bales. I audibly squealed when I saw the first orchid! Check out the video below where I get very excited and wax romantic about this little mesic slag landscape.
Old maps call this spot Gun Club Ponds, and it doesn’t take long, after walking the narrow strip between the railroad embankment and wall of Phragmites, that the gun club comes into focus.
A good place to look for waterfowl.
there’s slag here too!
a tunnel of european buckthorn leads us to the ponds.
it’s big leaf season as we head back over the tracks to the Indian Ridge Marsh parking lot.
In the great slag reconnaissance of 2022, we finally visited a whole host of sites from the slag map for use in botanical surveys next year. This looks like a spot that has the usual suspects, and some new friends, like the woolly plantain (Plantago patagonica) – a species I haven’t noticed on slag before!
Calumet Region Adventure Club 