Next Hike

The next hike will be on Saturday, 24th July.
We meet at the Ballpark in Gillies Bay at 10:00am.

Last week we had quite a large group on the hike including some visitors from off island who greatly enjoyed the Mt. Grant trail.

My photo is a recent one that I took while guiding our biologist visitors who have spent a number of days this summer doing research on the resident Western Painted Turtle. I spotted this bright and interesting flower beside the trail that leads in to Cap Sheaf Lake from the High Road. The flower stems of Pinesap are the only part of the plant which ever appears above ground. It's a parasite on fungus which lives in the soil and derives nutrients from the roots of pine trees, so it has no need for leaves with chlorophyll like most other flowering plants.

There seems to be some disagreement over the scientific name so I don't know if it should be Monotropa hypopitys or Hypopitys monotropa, but I do know it is found all around the Northern Hemisphere including Asia as well as Europe and North America. This specimen is unusually bright red for this species which is more often pink, pale yellow or even white.
JD.