Fishing was cold, but botany was hot!
After watching some of the Bassmaster Classic on
ESPN, with last
week's fishing tournament on the Potomac River, and up into the Nanjemoy,
we had to go fishing. These pro's made it look easy, catching lunker after
lunker on the falling tide, from SAV grass mats, primarily using
blue-colored, soft plastic crayfish, on weighted worm hooks.
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Mark and I caught only three bass on the day, but had several good strikes.
I lost a big fish in spatterdock. I was using a senko worm and Mark was
using a Berkley Gulp batwing frog. |
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Mark and I paddled into flooded timber of a beaver swamp that was dominated by
open water, mixed with buttonbush and occasional willow,
black gum and red maple. Some of the buttonbush was still in flower,
but most were already going to seed. |
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This portion of swamp was at least 10-acres in size and had literally
tens of thousands of creeping bladderwort, also known as two-flowered
or humped bladderwort ( Utricularia gibba, with a synonym name of
U. biflora ). This bladderwort is Maryland highly state rare (S1), critically
imperiled in the State because of extreme rarity. We hit the motherload!
All of the matted emergent vegetation you see in this photo is the bladderwort
in bloom. |
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The plant is hard to get a photo of because of its multi-layering, and
difficulty to get it into focus. It naturally occurs in sluggish swamps, bogs
and fens. This portion of the Mattawoman is dark tannic colored, and averaged
three feet deep. |
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Here is a close-up of the flowers, which stand about two-inches high,
and are about half the size of a dime. |
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This particular clump was growing from a hollow knot of a fallen tree,
in the water. |
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We have a little cubby on the top of our cooler, and I tried to spread the
bladderwort so that you could better see its floating root system.
The black dots in the photo are under-water bladders, which makes the
plant a carnivore. When swimming prey, such as aquatic insects, touch the
trigger hairs surrounding the mouth of the bladder, a trapdoor-like flap of
tissue swings open and the bladder quickly expands, sucking the tiny critter
inside. Enzymes are secreted to dissolve the prey into nutrition for the plant.
How cool! |
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Another flower along the banks that was at peak bloom was the pink wild
bean ( Strophostyles umbellata ). It is a southeastern US native legume
(nitrogen fixer) of sandy soil, and flowers from August into September. |
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A close-up of pink wild bean |
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This plant is marsh St. Johnswort ( Triadenum virginicum ). It occurs in
bogs and swamps and is also a southeast native, and flowers from August through
October. |
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This is the only species of several St. Johnswort's that is pink and not yellow. |
Mark Burchick
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