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.

First, a general view. The trees are mostly pitch pine (Pinus rigida) and black-jack oak (Quercus marilandica).

The pines are well adapted to fire: the cones only open after a fire.


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


Incipient amber.


Apparently, the oaks are starting to succeed the pitch pine because of wildfire suppression.

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.


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


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.

Holly. Festive holly. This stuff grows in trees at least 20 or so feet tall.

Lichen, right on the sandy ground.







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


Ahhhhhh…..


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?!

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.

See his golden eye? Just about now is when he barreled into me to say hello.



Not bad for an hour or two.