On Saturday, May 17, I traveled to Lodi, WI, to visit a marsh there with my Botanist friend Beth Middleton. Beth works for the USGS at its National Wetlands Research Center in the heart of Cajun country, Lafayette, Louisiana.
Owing to a very late spring, the Marsh Marigolds pictured to the left--one of the many wetlands plants the marsh features--remained in beautiful bloom.
Lodi Marsh is owned by the DNR and became in 2002 a State Natural Area. In addition to the Skunk Cabbage--pictured on the right--that informs the area, the marsh also supports a number of threatened prairie moths I hope to get pictures of early in August.
Beth works to get this site included on the Ramsar List, marking the area as a wetland of international significance. You can at this site read a bit about the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran.
I posted photograhs from this area of prairie (Burr Oak) and wetland (Marsh Cat Tails) through which flows Spring Creek, whose cool, spring-fed waters support native Brown Trout.
I will return over the summer to this area and plan to add more photographs to the slide show and to land a trout or two.
My Botany friend Beth asked me to add the following photograph of the plentiful granite rocks scattered throughout the marsh area. She wrote me that "these are small glacial rocks in the stream created by the springs, which form the heart of the hydrology of these calcareous fens. Because this area was at the very edge of the glacier, and at the edge of the Driftless Area, the limestone bedrock is intact and visible on the bluffs. The small rounded granite rocks were deposited by a thin layer of glaciar covering the limestone bedrock."
Owing to a very late spring, the Marsh Marigolds pictured to the left--one of the many wetlands plants the marsh features--remained in beautiful bloom.
Lodi Marsh is owned by the DNR and became in 2002 a State Natural Area. In addition to the Skunk Cabbage--pictured on the right--that informs the area, the marsh also supports a number of threatened prairie moths I hope to get pictures of early in August.
Beth works to get this site included on the Ramsar List, marking the area as a wetland of international significance. You can at this site read a bit about the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, signed in 1971 in Ramsar, Iran.
I posted photograhs from this area of prairie (Burr Oak) and wetland (Marsh Cat Tails) through which flows Spring Creek, whose cool, spring-fed waters support native Brown Trout.
I will return over the summer to this area and plan to add more photographs to the slide show and to land a trout or two.
My Botany friend Beth asked me to add the following photograph of the plentiful granite rocks scattered throughout the marsh area. She wrote me that "these are small glacial rocks in the stream created by the springs, which form the heart of the hydrology of these calcareous fens. Because this area was at the very edge of the glacier, and at the edge of the Driftless Area, the limestone bedrock is intact and visible on the bluffs. The small rounded granite rocks were deposited by a thin layer of glaciar covering the limestone bedrock."
Small Granite Rocks at Lodi Marsh
The rather unique geology of the area also affects in special ways the flora and the fauna. As Beth points out, " The Lodi Marsh State Natural Area (SNA) in Dane County, Wisconsin (USA) is reported to have a large number of unusual prairie moth species, which depend on the fen/dry prairie gradient. Unusual pollinators are found in these high quality habitats including the Silphium borer moth (Papaipema silphii; federally endangered species); Papaipema nelita; Papaipema rutila (Mayapple Borer Moth); Papaipema beeriana (Blazing Star Borer); Otto Skipper (Hesperia ottoe); Euxoa spp.; Richia grotei; and Newman’s brocade (Meropleon ambifuscum), following collections in the past years."
The previous Wisconsin DNR link adds further information in this regard. Lodi Marsh supports an extraordinary high moth diversity because, as Beth's preceding graphic undercores, of area's rare wet-fen-dry-prairie transition, the intact Oak Savanna (Burr Oak abound), and the fact that the moths use this entire gradient. And I hope later in the summer to get lucky and include some pictures of the moths, beginning in August. Click on the links for further information and some photographs of the species in question.
On May 27, I made a quick trip to Lodi Marsh and took more photographs, mostly of the flowers, for I experiment with a new macro camera lens. You can view these new shots on the link to the photography slide show.
I had planned some fishing, but Linda, my wife, and I took long walk instead on the trail and then slipped down to the marsh--tall grass and some tricky footing shorted the trip. We will wear boots next time.
I will return in a month.
The following flower appealed in particular to me.
On May 27, I made a quick trip to Lodi Marsh and took more photographs, mostly of the flowers, for I experiment with a new macro camera lens. You can view these new shots on the link to the photography slide show.
I had planned some fishing, but Linda, my wife, and I took long walk instead on the trail and then slipped down to the marsh--tall grass and some tricky footing shorted the trip. We will wear boots next time.
I will return in a month.
The following flower appealed in particular to me.
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