Green Sphagnum:
Reversing my path, I scoured the pond where I had found
Utricularia macrorhiza (any U. geminiscapa?) but did not find any other species. The trial by
train-underpass was repeated succesfully, and I slinked back to my rental car with no law enforcement encounters.
My next stop was a well known bog near the University of Connecticut. I had visited this
site on a previous trip to the campus a few years earlier. That trip was memorable because it was during an atypical,
early winter thaw. On that trip the snow covering the bog
had all melted, but the bog was still frozen over. The conditions were completely ideal for bog exploration
since I could walk wherever I wanted, traversing the frozen surface of the open water like a wetland messiah.
I remembered from that previous trip that the Sarracenia were very
pretty. Indeed, when I returned to the now-quite-moist-and-gushy site, the pitcher plants were exceptionally lovely. However,
my eyes were drawn again and again to the lovely colors of the Sphagnum. One patch of electric green moss (shown
above) was particularly striking. Sadly, I was unable to capture its true its vibrancy in my photographs.
Perhaps one reason these plants looked so fabulous was that the autumn deciduous colors were in full strength. The
red, orange, and yellow fall
leaves of New England are spectacular. Perhaps the contrast with those warm colors was why
this patch of electric green Sphagnum was so delightful.
Although people love to take leafy photographs of fall colors, I did not even try. I
doubted I could add anything new to the already existing library of such images. Well, except for one photograph...
