What to See This Week

Prairies shine in the mid to late summer. By now, many of the grasses and forbs have grown to full height, many reaching well over your head. This photo was taken at Dutch Fork Wetlands where cup plant is in full bloom, accounting for the majority of yellow flowers in this photo. The majority yellow flowers are broken up by spots of purple and white.

There are several sulphur butterflies native to our area with some more common than others. Pictured here is the cloudless sulphur, easily distinguished from the more common clouded sulphur butterfly due to it being noticeably larger and lacking the black borders on the upper surface of their wings that clouded sulphurs have. 

This cloudless sulphur butterfly fluttered around a patch of wild senna at Dutch Fork Wetlands, stopping occasionally to lay an egg. Without seeing the butterfly, it would have been hard to know to look for the tiny eggs on the leaves! Wild senna is one of their most important host plants and I plan to check back in search of the beautiful caterpillars once they hatch.

This week features another wonderful brilliant red native wildflower. Pictured here is cardinal flower, a type of lobelia that thrives in wetter soil. The shape and color of the flower are perfect for attracting hummingbirds, making it right at home within the Bird Watching Garden.

These round fungi are popping up all over the Woodland Garden. This is a common earthball, also known as a pigskin poison puffball. While have some visual similarities to puffball mushrooms, they should not be mistaken for each other! Common earthballs are firmer with a dark purple-ish inside whereas true puffballs are spongy and white on the inside. 

Earth stars, like the previously mentioned mushrooms, also form their spores within their fruiting body as opposed to an outer surface. However, you are unlikely to mix them up with any other fungus! A bizarre-looking fungus, earth stars consist of a puffball-like center with a hole from which spores are released and several rays made up from an outer layer. Before that outer layer splits and forms the rays, the fungus starts out looking like the round object to the right of the photo.

This imperial moth was found already deceased on a forest trail. Likely nothing was wrong; it had just reached the end of its life cycle. Imperial moths are a type of giant silkworm moth, our largest and showiest moths. Giant silkworm moths have beautiful colors, patterns, eyespots, and sometimes tails. In this moth family, the adult moths do not have mouthparts. Instead, they survive off fat stores from when they were caterpillars, giving them a very limited amount of time as adults. Their only focus while in the adult stage is on mating and laying eggs.

If you are especially lucky while taking a walk in the forest, you may run into an eastern box turtle. Pictured here is a male, identified by his red eyes, brighter coloration, and indented plastron (underside of shell). Box turtles on average live about 30 years in the wild but it is possible for them to exceed that. They face many threats including loss of habitat and danger crossing roads, so their population is in decline. These incredible turtles are Ohio’s most terrestrial turtle species with box turtles spending the majority of their time in forested areas or wet meadows, although they will visit shallow pools or streams. Keep your eyes peeled in the Deep Woods area for a chance to spot one as these turtles are quiet, slow-moving, and well camouflaged in the leaf litter.