Two field trips for this year’s annual meeting, both of them in the vicinity of Stuarts Draft on the western slope of the Blue Ridge.
Gary Fleming led the walk to several sinkhole ponds in the Maple Flat area of the George Washington/Jefferson National Forest. Limestone/dolostone account for the sinkholes, but unlike the karst landscape of Lee County, here the soft stone is overlaid by alluvium/colluvium and a layer of clay. One of the specialties of this site is Boltonia montana, only recently scientifically described.
Nate Miller was our guide to Cowbane Prairie NAP, a wet meadow. I would have done well to bring my LaCrosse boots. I didn’t get great images of any of the specialties here (and they were not in flower, anyway). The group enjoyed multiple plants of Bottle Gentian (Gentiana clausa). On a goldenrod, a Spotted Cucumber Beetle (Diabrotica undecimpunctata) made for a nice image, after cropping. It’s probably time for me to start paying more attention to orthopterans.