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Sea
oats Uniola paniculata grew along dunes, beaches, interdune swales and
well back into
the woodlands in sunny openings of sandy soils. |
 |
With
my telephoto as far as I could take it, I got this shot of a bald eagle who was
hot and
wanted to be left alone, while he sat relatively hidden and overlooking
a rice field opening.
This was the only photo of several that looked good and
before he flushed.
Osprey were common.
|
 |
Alligator-weed
Alternanthera philoxeroides is a noxious weed conducive to mosquito
breeding, which grew in large aggregates along the forest edges of swamps. |
 |
Beauty-berry
Calliparpa americana is a fairly common shrub of live oak and maritime
woods.
This was the only plant I observed all week long that was still in
flower, with most already
forming axillary clusters of seeds, which turn bright
magenta in the fall. |
 |
We toured a 4,000-acre historic rice plantation
by boat with many canals filled with sawgrass
and floating water hyacinth, an
alien invasive ornamental. |
 |
The cabbage palmetto Sabal palmetto, a
wind-adapted species is the State tree of South
Carolina and is common along the
coast from southern North Carolina through the northern panhandle of Florida,
and with its highest concentration in South Carolina. |
 |
Spanish
dagger or Spanish Bayonet Yucca aloifolia has very sharp-pointed and
ridged leaves, which drew blood on my fingertip (as my brother laughed). Unlike
our Maryland yucca, this evergreen shrub can grow a trunk a grow 5 to 10-feet
tall. |
 |
Marsh
primrose, a species of tidal-water or marsh primrose that I have not yet been
able to
key out. I saw it numerous times along the sunny shorelines of the rice
plantation, mixed
with sawgrass. |
The Carolinas - Part III
