Greenbrier: A Namesake
Greenbrier is the name of a MarylandState Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains, on the westward slope of SouthMountain. The park is named for a vine that is plentiful in its woods.The plant Greenbrier...
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Raccoon Fight
In the predawn hours of October 28, piercing shrieks and snarls of unknown origin had the Greenbrier State Park camp hosts trembling in their beds. At first light, the hosts were able to determine that...
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Bittersweet Story
This brightly-berried vine is thriving near a grove of pines on the Big Red trail in GreenbrierState Park. As I made my rounds on the last day of 2010, I first noticed tiny yellow petal-like clusters...
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Gobbler Wild
On December 31, 2010, not far from the entrance to Greenbrier State Park, I spied a small flock of wild turkeys wandering through the woods. Meleagris gallopavo is not the prettiest of North...
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Skunk Cabbage Flowers February 2011
Amidst patches of ice in a marshy area of Greenbrier State Park, the Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidis) is flowering when I visit on February 16, 2011. This is one of my favorite plants because it...
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Botanical Bonanza of May 2013
This lengthy, wet and cool spring of 2013 is making the plants of South Mountain very happy it seems. My walk on May 19 gathered a virtual bouquet of botanical lovelies with a few insects and a spider...
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A Mushroom Sampler
A short hike on South Mountain after a day or two of rain yields a nice sample of fungi diversity. I did not harvest the fungi to enable a close look, obtain a spore print, bruise or cut the flesh to...
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