It has been a crazy, yet very busy and fun few days. Yesterday, I tagged along with Jeff and four others. Jeff was looking for Jack-in-the-Pulpit or as I have always called it, the Green-dragon (Arisaema triphyllum).
So I hope most of you have visited Lake Mineral Wells State Park. If not it should be on your need-to-go-see parks. This side of the park has great rocks for the rock climbers.
It did not take Jeff long to find the first Jack-in-the-Pulpit!
In fact, we ended up finding a lot of them. At least several hundreds. Indeed, that was great news as the plant is rare in North Texas.
So most of the plants were barely up. In fact, many were hiding in the leaf litter. This one on the right was the only one we found this far along. Certainly, Jeff will be back to see it in full bloom at the park.
A very cool tree!
Web-spinners (Order Embioptera) or sometimes called Footspinners. Moreover, I was lucky and saw another example of them today on another outing. However, I will go into them a little more another day. Still I did not get to see the actually insect but I know what to look for. now 🙂
Another cool find was this Resurrection Fern (Pleopeltis polypodioides)! In fact, this was the first time Jeff had seen it at this park. Pretty cool!
Scars and the embedded barbwire in a tree. We were at the park’s boundary.
There were many lichens on the rocks. The Neon Chrysothrix lichen is one that likes dead wood.
Way up high near the top of large boulders was a lichen called Usnea strigosa. However, a few were within reach. Very cool for me to see so much of it!
The rocks, plants, lichens, mosses and all the critters would certainly be worth your time to put this state park on your list!
Who would have thought that the dandelion seeds created that vortex – amazing photo of that.
Looks like a wonderful park. Love those boulders
That’s such a great park!
Very beautiful park! I had no idea that plant went that far west. I always assumed it was very eastern…
Jeff even knows a spot of it west of 287!