Wild Flower Hike

Today I went on a wild flower hike at Boulder Lake Environmental Learning Center which is the same place I went snow shoeing last winter. My drive was 35 minutes. Our leader was a master naturalist and he is into orchids. He said orchids call to him. He found this very rare coral root orchid right next to the learning center parking lot. This orchid (see the little red sticks?) do not photosynthesize at all. They get all their energy from the fungus that grows on it's roots. This orchid lives below ground for years and years. When the orchid feels it has enough energy, it will come up to flower. So it lives underground from 4 to 8 years and then sprouts to flower and form seed pods. I never heard of this before. The fungus doesn't benefit at all from this arrangement. I thought all plants photosynthesized. I don't understand how this fits into the plant kingdom although I can't place it in any other kingdom either. A bald eagle flew right over our heads while we were here and a pair of Eastern Kingbirds were fighting.

This is sarsaparilla. The white blossoms look like a round firework display and the leaves above are bronzed.

I can't remember what this purple flower was but we saw a yellow warbler, a chestnut sided warbler, a veery, and a blackburnian warbler. I looked out in the pond and saw something swimming. Another lady spotted it in her binoculars. Two otters swam by and frolicked on the shore.

We are still walking down the gravel road away from the center toward the road. This is a columbine, one of the few spring flowers that are red.

We left the road and are hiking on a poorly maintained show shoe path. The walking is difficult. This is a nodding trillium. There is a blue jay that keeps yelling at us for some reason.

I thought he said this was a nodding lady slipper but I must have got that wrong. Maybe it's a pink lady slipper that hasn't turned pink yet.

This is bellwort. We also saw lots of flowers on blueberry bushes, service berries which are the same as June berries, strawberries and chokecherries.

Here is what I came to see! Isn't she lovely? This is a pink lady slipper. We were told to wear boots that could get wet. Most people had wellies on. I wore my waterproof hiking boots because they are more comfortable. While I was taking this photo water rose up and got into the shoe lace holes on my left shoe leaving me with a wet sock. I also picked up 9 wood ticks. But it was worth it because this is one beautiful orchid. With my binoculars I could see dozens of these pink blooms in the distance.

These are carnivorous pitcher plants with flower buds swelling. These will bloom later in the summer. We saw maiden hair fern, reticulated fern and interrupted fern. And we saw Labrador tea plants. I drank Labrador tea once. It wasn't very tasty.

Our walk was supposed to be 90 minutes but we were out there over 100 minutes. On my way back to my car I stopped to take a picture of these painted turtles.

After our hike I drove to the public access to eat my lunch. I can see why they called it Boulder Lake. Actually it is a reservoir. The water level is very low. The learning center has 1800 acres. The property is owned jointly by Minnesota Power, the University of Minnesota at Duluth, and the Department of Natural Resources. Some private lots are sprinkled in here and there. I watched people fishing and they were pulling in some big northern pike and walleye. Boats were coming in and out. This place is so beautiful I ended up hiking around and looking at stuff until 5:30. The plant of the day is the pink lady slipper, the animal of the day was the otter, the butterfly of the day was my first yellow swallowtail butterfly of this year, the bird of the day was that eagle that flew so close to us, the reptile of the day was a leopard frog that I almost stepped on, and the fish of the day was a northern pike that I saw a young guy catch and he let his friend's two elementary school aged children net and hold and release.