Stevens Creek Heritage Preserve with Master Naturalists

April 2nd I went on a hike at Stevens Creek Heritage Preserve as part of my Master Naturalist Curriculum through Phinizy Swamp Education Center with Ruth Mead. The focus for yesterday was on wild flowers.

It was my first time to site and it was really beautiful with a great variety of plants. I still haven't seen a snake this year outside of Phinizy Swamp and I was disappointed not to see one yesterday.

Another issued I had was spending the day taking pics for my first time in quite a while with my DSLR only to discover when I got back home that I didn't have the memory card in. It would have been easier to make some of my identifications with those pics, but I was able to identify much more than I normally would have been able thanks to the presence of experts, my handout, and http://www.namethatplant.net/where_stevenscreek.shtml

The wild flowers were beautiful, but personally I really enjoyed the trees. I finally got a good identification on a tree that I had been trying to figure out. It is the American Hophornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) and it is so common around the Euchee Creek.

-I also learned how to identify elms by the asymmetrical size of the leaf at the base.

-I saw and young oak sapling whose leaves seemed me to mimic the three shapes of a sassafras tree so I misidentified it.

Posted on April 3, 2020 03:31 PM by anthony296