Fort DuPont Park needs more iNaturalist love

Fort DuPont is the second-largest wooded park in DC (Rock Creek Park is biggest). It has some great habitat, but it’s not on most people’s radar. There weren’t any BioBlitz activities there (it’s part of National Capital Parks East which had activities in both Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens and Piscataway Park), so I thought it could use a little post-BioBlitz iNaturalist love. I’ve only been there once before and didn’t make it very far. There were just a handful of iNaturalist observations from the park (@ahay, @athryn, and @steveramanand), so @reallifeecology (Jonathan Carpenter) and I met up on Friday to help remedy that!

Noteworthy observations:
-3 kinds of slime mold.
-Several kinds of moss with sporophytes.
-Mountain laurel in bloom.
-Recently fallen hemlock. It was the only one we saw and it was unclear why it fell. We suspected a possible lightning strike, but even that seems strange.
-Massive white oak. @reallifeecology got a photo with me in it for scale.
-The tick my husband pulled off later that night.

For anyone interested in adding more to the NPS Servicewide 2016 BioBlitz project (and therefore moving up on the leaderboard), this is NPS land! Come make some observations! You can easily see where we explored (link to map) so I encourage others in the area to check out other parts of the park as well!

Posted on May 31, 2016 05:58 AM by carrieseltzer