Photos from a mid-summer hike in the woods surrounding Friendship Hill National Historic Site, a short drive from where I live in Morgantown. The park borders the Monongahela River, where pawpaw (Asimina triloba) is a dominant species in the riparian woods of the floodplain. The fruit are rapidly maturing and will be ready for harvest in September, which means one thing for me: pawpaw ice cream. Also, our gorgeous native hibiscus, swamp rose-mallow (Hibiscus moscheutos), also known as eastern rose-mallow and crimson-eyed rose-mallow, is at peak bloom along the river's moist banks.
More wonderful finds (from top): starry campion (Silene stellata), also known as widow's frill, a graceful, summer-blooming forb that should be planted more frequently in native wildflower gardens; a common earthball (Scleroderma citrinum) growing in the crease of a moss-covered log; a lovely black-and-gold flat millipede (Apheloria virginiensis) fleeing from the photographer into the leaf litter; a bronze fern (Sceptridium dissectum f. obliquum), which, like all grape ferns, depends on mycorrhizal fungi for nourishment in the early stage of its life; a cranefly orchid (Tipularia discolor), which was growing in close proximity to the fern and also depends on mycorrhizal fungi for survival; pale-leaf woodland sunflower (Helianthus strumosus), whose luminous yellow flowers seek sunny openings at trail edges and along streambanks; and the cream-colored, bell-shaped flowers of American bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia L.), an attractive, suckering shrub of floodplain forests.
