By Steve Roark
Volunteer, Cumberland Gap National Park
Anyone who has walked in the woods has seen areas of rock or soil covered with a thick, green carpet. Moss often just blends into the forest background and goes unnoticed, but it is an old and venerable life form unique to most plants you find.
If you drive down the road right now and see patches of blue in the spring green hayfields and pastures, it’s liable to be lyre-leaf sage. I have it in my fields, as do my neighbors. It’s always been around, but I normally only see it along roadsides and field edges. It is in the same family of plants as the herbal sage used as a condiment.
In simpler times people gathered their own fish bait, and a trip to the fishing hole started in the garden digging worms or walking grassy fields to catch grasshoppers.
These days most folks are too busy and just go to the bait shop. But particularly if you have kids, hunting for bait can be a fun and learning experience, putting them more in touch with the natural world.
Gathering your own also allows you access to bait not commercially available. Here is a short list of some bait you can find locally.
Ground Ivy (Glechoma hederacea) is a small plant that’s possibly in your yard but keeps a low profile so you may not know it. But if you’re ever mowing and suddenly pick up on a minty smell, then you for sure have it. The plant is worth a close look, for its petite bloom and leaves are striking. It has been given many names over the years, including Creeping Charlie, Crow-Victuals, and Gill-Over-The-Ground.
As a botany enthusiast and student of medicinal plants, I keep running across plants with recurring name components. The terms balm, bane, and wort come up often, so I decided to see why. Prepare to delve into the world of ethnobotany, the study of plants used by humans.
As you know, Easter Sunday is not locked down on the calendar. I knew it had something to do with astronomy, so I did some research to figure out the how and the why. My findings were complicated, but here is my best shot at it.
Easter is defined as a “moveable feast,” meaning it is not a fixed to a set calendar date.
Mulching around trees and flower beds offers several benefits, such as soil moisture retention, reduced weeding, and keeping yard equipment a safe distance away from plants. Shredded bark is a popular mulch to use, which requires periodic touch up as it gradually decomposes. However, I have seen landscapes where a lot of mulch was routinely added every year whether it was needed or not, creating an overly thick layer of mulch that can injure or even kill the plants you are trying to benefit.
By Steve Roark
Volunteer, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park
One sure sign of Spring and warmer weather is to take a walk in the woods and see the first wildflowers popping up. One of the earlier blooming flowers in our area is Bloodroot.
On a cold January morning in 2007 the Washington Post conducted an experiment. They invited Joshua Bell, one of the most famous classical violinists of our time, to play music at the Washington DC Metro Train Station. No introductions, no fanfare, simply stand on a busy walkway and play. He did six famous pieces written by J.S. Bach on a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.
The American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) is very common in our area and is to me one of the nobler trees in the forest. It has never been in high demand for timber, and so many beech trees have been left to grow large and majestic. The bark is silvery gray, smooth, and easy to identify even from a distance.