Can
you identify what's in this photo?
Each Wednesday morning
on Camp Lutherlyn's Facebook page
the Lutherlyn Environmental
Education Program posts a photo.
Readers
have all morning and afternoon
to
make their best guess about what the photo is.
Around
6 pm LEEP provides the answer and a brief explanation.
Each
week's What is it Wednesday post
will
also be posted on the Nature of Lutherlyn blog,
after it is posted on Facebook,
sometimes
with additional bonus information.
In
addition to bringing you current editions of What is it Wednesday
on the
Nature of Lutherlyn blog,
we
will be reposting old editions,
creating
a What is it Wednesday archive.
This
photo was posted as a What is it Wednesday on
April 10, 2019.
And
the answer is....
Spring beauty is actually the name of this small flower, which
is one of the first to appear in early spring. It is in the category of
wildflowers known as spring ephemerals: flowers that bloom quickly on the
forest floor early in spring, before the leaves of the trees have emerged to
blanket the forest in deep shade.
We often see our first sighting of spring beauties each year
on the trail to Chapel Rock, during LEEP staff training in the first week or
two of April, and that is when and where this one was spotted.
The practice or study of tracking the changing of the
seasons by tracking when certain animals, plants, and phenomena are observed
year to year is known as phenology. It is a fun hobby and can also be an
important scientific tool for picking up on trends changing over time.
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