Integrative Natural History of Minnesota's North Shore, Part 24: A Touch o' the Green | Gooseberry Falls State Park
As it so happens, I'm posting this essay in maximized chlorophyll on Saint Patrick's Day. I hope my Irish-descended friends will appreciate this and remember me in their wills.
This close-up is the companion of my Part 23 photo. Both were taken in the same spot, on a ledge of North Shore Volcanic Group basalt near the park's Middle Falls. As is obvious here, this outcrop was very densely colonized by native ferns and flowering plants.
The ovate-leaved herbaceous plant serving as the groundcover understory is Cornus canadensis, known in the vulgar as Bunchberry. It's blooming merrily away with what appear to be four-petaled flowers, but in fact each of those are inflorescences, compact clusters of small flowers surrounded by showy white bracts. The latter are modified leaves that mimic true petals and perform the same function.
Above the Bunchberry mat rise, on dark and wiry stems, the juvenile fronds of Oak Ferns (Gymnocarpium dryopteris). Their pinnae or leaf segments are light-green and somewhat inrolled. That's a sign that they're still newly sprouted and have yet to achieve full size and develop a protective cuticle layer. No doubt that maturation process proceeded quickly in the days that followed this one.
To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit
my Integrative Natural History of Minnesota's North Shore album.
Integrative Natural History of Minnesota's North Shore, Part 24: A Touch o' the Green | Gooseberry Falls State Park
As it so happens, I'm posting this essay in maximized chlorophyll on Saint Patrick's Day. I hope my Irish-descended friends will appreciate this and remember me in their wills.
This close-up is the companion of my Part 23 photo. Both were taken in the same spot, on a ledge of North Shore Volcanic Group basalt near the park's Middle Falls. As is obvious here, this outcrop was very densely colonized by native ferns and flowering plants.
The ovate-leaved herbaceous plant serving as the groundcover understory is Cornus canadensis, known in the vulgar as Bunchberry. It's blooming merrily away with what appear to be four-petaled flowers, but in fact each of those are inflorescences, compact clusters of small flowers surrounded by showy white bracts. The latter are modified leaves that mimic true petals and perform the same function.
Above the Bunchberry mat rise, on dark and wiry stems, the juvenile fronds of Oak Ferns (Gymnocarpium dryopteris). Their pinnae or leaf segments are light-green and somewhat inrolled. That's a sign that they're still newly sprouted and have yet to achieve full size and develop a protective cuticle layer. No doubt that maturation process proceeded quickly in the days that followed this one.
To see the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit
my Integrative Natural History of Minnesota's North Shore album.