Biking the Hoosier Uplands, Summer 2008

This year I found many wildflowers on our trips through the hills and valleys in and around Monroe County. Each picture got uploaded with a ride story, but I needed to get them altogether in one place for perusal.

Let’s start in April with violets and phlox:

May
During our May 5th ride through Morgan Monroe State Forest, Jojo spotted this yellow ladyslipper by the side of the road while climbing Bean Blossom hill. The wild geraniums were everywhere by in the semi-shaded roadsides. These were both new discoveries for me, I had seen the geraniums, but never a ladyslipper.

On May 23 we found blue flag growing in many of the drainage ditches along Bottom Road. Although it is always strikingly red, the fire pink is named “pink’ for the notch in each petal (as if from pinking shears). Jojo found this Solomon’s Seal, it can be hard to see because of the green flowers.

June
Most of the spring flowers are still around, but now the summer flowers really start to come on.

In August I got some great shots of the American Lotus out at Pine Grove. Lotus has to be one of the most beautiful flowers and strangest seed pods of any plant out there. There is a scientific concept that is commonly known as the lotus effect, and it refers to superhydrophobia, which means water is forced to bead up, to assume as close to a spherical form as it can considering the effect of gravity. Playing with water on a lotus leaf is like playing with mercury (something I did as a child of the 50’s), it just balls up.

In September I started finding this yellow flower growing in the damp soil along the shoreline of Lake Monroe, and the blue flower grows along the sunny roadsides.

Surprisingly, in September the lotus flowers were still blooming, and I got some cools shots of the seed heads forming. As I was looking at one of the flowers, and poked my finger in to see what was there, and couple of petals fell off, and I saw a bumble bee had been sleeping there for the the night! He took off, and I got a shot of the seed pod while it was still the same yellow as the petals themselves and just starting to turn green in the center.