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Blue sedge Carex glaucescens is one of
the more common of the 100-plus species
of grass, sedge rush plants that can be found in coastal plain wetlands,
backwater
swamps, pocosins,wet pine and/or cypress savannas and seepage bogs. |
 |
Golden-club or never-wet Orontium aquaticum
is a beautiful obligate wetland plant that
has a spring flowering yellow-white spadix (club) that stand up and over the
vegetation. |
 |
I chased this green anola Anolis
carolinensis along the fence in my brothers
backyard. Once he hopped up into a turkey oak and felt safe, he did his
territorial
dewlap thingy. The anola can change from this typical green to shades of brown,
but nothing like a chameleon. |
 |
I observed this five-lined skink Eumeces
fasciatus while walking along
the Saluda River in Columbia. |
 |
Blue or great lobelia Lobelia siphilitica was mixed with false nettle
along a forested swampy edge. |
 |
American water lotus Nelumbo lutea is
a native, obligate wetland perennial that occurs throughout the southeast, but
is considered relatively uncommon. It occurs in Maryland,
but is a rare plant occurring in only a few locations such as the Mattawoman.
I caught
this photo between rain events and I could not get the flower to stay open
(as I was sinking into the wetland). |
 |
This is the colorful seed pod of the lotus. |
 |
Bull frog peeping through mosquito fern
Azolla caroliniana. The native fern was mixed
with duckweed and is green in the shade, turning red in full sun. It's
called mosquito
fern because the thick mats of the fern prevents mosquito breeding. The
fern is
a nitrogen-fixing plant and has been harvested as a green-manure covering for
rice
paddies to improve growth. |
The Carolinas - Part II
