Saturday, November 26, 2011

they don’t look barren to me

The New Jersey pine barrens are no such thing. There’s all sorts of great stuff going on in there.
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First, a general view. The trees are mostly pitch pine (Pinus rigida) and black-jack oak (Quercus marilandica).
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The pines are well adapted to fire: the cones only open after a fire.

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Plus they have this neat trick of being able to launch branches any old place, just straight out the side of the tree.

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Incipient amber.

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Apparently, the oaks are starting to succeed the pitch pine because of wildfire suppression.
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OH! We found several of these. This is an oak, leaf, obviously, and it’s got this puffy sphere attached to it, about 2.5” in diameter.

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Here’s one that had broken open.  I’m assuming it’s a marble gall, the baby-house of a type of parasitic wasp.

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That’s the exit hole. Wikipedia informs me that oak galls contain tannic acids, and that “traces of iron-gall ink  have been found on the Dead Sea scrolls”. Wow.
One more tree, and then we’re going to ground level.
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Holly. Festive holly. This stuff grows in trees at least 20 or so feet tall.
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Lichen, right on the sandy ground.

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I wasn’t kidding when I said the ground was sandy.

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Ahhhhhh…..

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A type of lichen in the Cladonia family, usually called “cup lichen”. I like Kevin’s name better, though: “golf tee lichen”.
This next one completely stumps me. It looks like a cross between a mushroom and an herbaceous plant. WTF?!
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As I took picture after picture of this stuff, a family with a brown lab walked by. You can see him in the photo below.
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See his golden eye? Just about now is when he barreled into me to say hello.

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Not bad for an hour or two.

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