Flowers!
Utricularia striata closer up.
Pretty, don't you think? Incidentally, some old-timers call this
plant U. fibrosa, but they're wrong. Name change!
Driving around with Dave was fun. Dave's taste in music is, shall we say,
challenging. He likes all kinds of music, as long as they include
Goth, Metal, and maybe post-Industrial. Alternating lovely episodes
of exploring quiet boglands with sessions of
goth-death-metal expressions of
black angst and daemonic-charnel-pain music was new to me. It fit, oddly,
with my New Jersey memories of wetlands and the Jersey Devil, so I felt
right at home.
Let me tell you just a little about the Jersey Devil. This is a legendary
beast spawned by Mrs. Leeds in 1735 (one variant of the
story places Mrs. Leeds at Egg
Harbor, just a few miles south of Dave's and my explorations). This marauding
daemon was so vile that an attempt to exorcise the entire Pine Barrens
was made in 1740. It returned 150 years later. Sightings continue to the
present.
