A Plant Post

I can’t leave this area of Ontario without remarking on the flora. As noted in my Point Pelee post, this area extends as far south as the 42nd parallel. And with Lake Erie as its southern boundary it has a very moderated climate (northerners would call it mild, but it still gets winter).

Saturday Matey and I took a short stroll through beautiful Kopegaron Woods Conservation Area.

This can’t be more than a couple hundred acres, but is one of the prettiest woods I’ve walked through. The back drop is soaring old oak trees.

I was startled to see this little sassafras seedling.

Then I saw there was sassafras everywhere, and some were 30 feet tall. This is probably the only area of Canada where they grow.

The same is true for the tulip trees.

I could only get good photos of the seedlings, but they were also part of the canopy.

And there were a lot of ferns,

including cinnamon fern.

What I discovered in that little woods inspired my to post about all the lovely plants I’ve seen in this area.

Like this chinquapin oak, again not a normal Canadian tree.

“False” Solomon’s seal, with its inflorescence at the end of its stem, is a common woodland plant.

But “true” Solomon’s seal, whose flowers hang from nodes along the stem, is pretty rare. On these plants the flowers have gone to seed, but I was still delighted to see them.

And I love Equisetum, a nonflowering plant that has been growing since the dinosaurs were around.

I saw a lot of it, and two different species.

And just this morning while walking Matey I saw this lovely wild iris along Sugar Creek.

With this climate it’s not surprising that there is agriculture all around us. We’ve seen acres of ginseng being grown under shade nets, muck land just north of Point Pelee and thousands of acres of greenhouses. Leamington, 10 miles west of here, is the “Tomato Capital of Canada”.