Swamp Milkweed Pods

A triggered Jewelweed seed pod and seeds

You also saw the jewelweed, with its orange dangling flowers. The flowers are still present, but now we are seeing the fat seedpods as well. Another name for jewelweed is Touch-me-Not. If you lightly touch a seedpod, it will pop and the seeds will be shot out several inches or even feet away. This keeps the seeds from falling directly under the parent plant and competing for food and sunlight when they grow into plants themselves. Note in the photo how the split pod has a little curlicue, and the seed to the left. If you can catch a seed, remember if you peel the outer covering off it is a pretty pale blue inside.

A Monarch Butterfly Chrysalis

As you walk around the lake, instead of focusing on the algae on the water (which is natural and good, but doesn’t look so great), look instead at the beautiful things you can see. A Viceroy butterfly on a plant. The chrysalis of the monarch, a small green capsule with gold lines and dots on it, hanging from a branch. The caterpillar is curled up in there, changing into that orange and brown butterfly. You might see several Tiger Swallowtail butterflies, feeding on something on a piece of wood in the water. The weird and wonderful seeds of the Virgin’s Bower vine (also called Old Man’s Beard – can you see why?) are found on a vine twining on vegetation growing at the lake’s edge. We certainly are glad we didn’t cut that vegetation to “make it look better”. We think it looks pretty good the way it is. Most people walk right by and never see something like this. Look at the pretty pink seeds of the smartweed against the green of the plants around it. You can find something like this everywhere you look.

Tiger Swallowtails on Swan Lake

An orange and yellow Sulfur Fungus

Fall is also a great time to see different types and colors of fungi. Look on dead trees for a bright orange and yellow, sometimes very large, wavy fungus. This is the Sulfur Fungus, also called the “Chicken of the Woods” – at least, I think that is what it is. Mushrooms and other fungi can be hard to identify, and I am not an expert on these.

And of course, the leaves are turning and soon we will have wonderful colors. They look even better on a misty rainy day than they do in the sunlight. These photos were taken last year.

Glorious fall colors on Sweetgum Beech Trees

Come out and enjoy nature.

Photo Gallery

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Does anyone remember the old song about picking up paw paws, putting them in your pocket, way down yonder in the pawpaw patch? You can find the famous paw paws at Dunbar Cave right now, as well as at other places– and if you beat the possums to them, taste one – kind of like a sickly sweet very ripe banana. How do you know if one is ripe? Shake the tree (and duck) – if they fall off, they are ripe. Some people make breads and puddings from the pulp. We prefer to leave them for the possums and other creatures that need them for food. The leaves of pawpaw trees are also neat – they smell like green peppers.

Pawpaw fruits

Mistflower

If you come to the park this month, you will also see goldenrod, boneset, mistflower, snakeroot, thistles, jewelweed, asters, lettuces (nothing to do with the garden vegetable) and other flowers. The predominant colors are yellow, white and lavender.

Butterfly on Thistle

Some might call them weeds, but if you look closely most of these “weeds” are covered with insects, especially butterflies, getting a good meal. That is why we let our weeds grow and flower – to feed the inhabitants of the Natural Area and to provide shelter for them.

Jewelweed

The tiny orange spotted jewelweed is my favorite flower right now – if you wonder about the name, take a look at the photo – they look like little eardrops – and if you look closely, you will also see the water droplets shining like jewels. If you hold a leaf underwater, it looks like it is covered in tinfoil. The jewelweed is also good for poison ivy (rub the mashed up leaves on the rash) – and just plain fun. It will have seedpods that look like little okras – if you touch one it will shoot seeds out three or more feet (another name for this plant is touch-me-not. And if you can catch one of the seeds and peel it – the inside is robin’s-egg-blue and tastes like a peanut!

Our swallows are gone; soon we will be seeing ducks and warblers migrating through the area. The local Audubon Society will have a field trip to Dunbar on September 26 to look for those fall warblers – check out the Warioto Audubon Society website for details.

Flowers that are blooming now include Swamp Milkweed, a pink ballerina-looking flower that can be found at the edge of the lake; Ironweed, a rich deep purple flower with a stem that can reach 9 feet or more; Orange Coneflower, found in one spot along the lake shore (looks a lot like a black-eyed Susan); Creeping Primrose, a yellow flower that actually grows in the water at the edge of the lake; Wild Sensitive Plant, that looks like a small mimosa tree, has small yellow flowers; Tick Trefoil, with three leaflets and a pealike lavender or pink flower (this will later have the brown triangular seeds that stick all over your clothes); and Tall Bellflower, with blue flowers, found growing near the rock walls on the way to the cave.

Clematis fruit

We also have the fruits of flowers from earlier in the summer – the alien looking fruit of the Wild Clematis and the round green ball (will turn dark purple later) that is the fruit of the Yellow Passion Flower.

Our crayfish are coming out onto the banks of the lake and making chimneys to hide while they shed their exoskeleton and the new one hardens.

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The workers are Teenagers Brooke, James and Kevin; and Scott, who is twenty years old. They have been at the parks since early June and will work through July. They have done everything from cleaning bathrooms and picking up trash to mowing and weed eating. All are working hard and hopefully having fun as well.

Brooke in particular impressed us during her first week on the job when she came upon a copperhead, and not only did not scream or run, but calmly picked it up and moved it off the trail using the “trash grabber” she was carrying.

A Northern Copperhead

The workers have also completed or are currently working on three large projects involving improvements to the trails at Dunbar Cave. According to Park Manager Bob Wells, “this trail maintenance is long overdue because it is extremely labor intensive, and having these extra workers has allowed the staff to make these improvements to provide a better experience for our visitors who use the trails.”

Trail Reconstruction

An example of erosion on an old section of the trail

The first project relocated the beginning section of the Short Loop and Recovery Trails, which had major erosion problems. If you have walked the trails in the last few months, you probably noticed that there was a big gully down the center of the trail, caused by water runoff from the street above. This gully got wider and deeper each time it rained. To correct this, the trail was moved away from the problem area. A new section of trail was laid out, trees and vegetation removed, the ground leveled and the section joined to the older trail system. The old section was blocked off to prevent visitor access, and the gully filled in with rocks.

Walking Bridge constructed

The Walking bridge

The second project was a bridge built by David Britton and Joe Smiley, park employees, with the help of the new workers. This bridge spans an area of the trail, in a low spot, that gets extremely muddy after heavy rains. Visitors, trying to avoid going through the mud, were widening the trail to an unacceptable level (a trail that should have been two feet wide was becoming six to eight feet wide in places) and were also trampling the vegetation, including rare flowers, on both sides of the trail. Having this bridge will stop this damage to the trail and to the surrounding ecosystem.

Erosion Control

The third project, under the supervision of Seasonal Interpretive Ranger Tim Smith and Mr. Britton, with the assistance of Seasonal Interpretive Ranger Michael Fulbright, involves replacing old erosion blocks and placing new blocks where needed. These blocks, which are installed across steep areas of the trail, are designed to divert water that runs down a trail after a rain (on a trail all vegetation that would stop the runoff has been removed), and prevent the soil from being washed away. This helps to stop erosion of the trail such as the gully mentioned above. Some visitors, rather than stepping over the blocks, walked around the ends, widening the trail and eventually removing the vegetation to the sides, which caused the water to run around the ends instead of being caught and stopped by the blocks as intended, leading to more erosion. Our workers have spent many hot hours and continue to work at removing old blocks and digging out the ground, placing and reinforcing the new blocks.

We invite you to come to the park and check out the new additions to the trail and to meet our workers.

Photo Gallery

Yellow Passion Flower

A Blue Bird on a Blue Bird box

Our Barn Swallows, which have nested under the dance floor at the cave every summer for years, are not nesting there this year. They returned in the spring, and began to nest, but then abandoned the area. There were several nests that either fell or were knocked down, which may have caused them to leave. Luckily, we have had two pairs that nested at the visitor center, each raising three broods of young. One pair nested on the porch supports of the building nearer to the old pool area, the other was on the opposite side of the building outside our bay window.

On a more hopeful note, the Purple Martins, which had nested in our houses for years and had not been here for a couple of summers, did return to the houses and raised young. They will be leaving us this month, migrating for the winter, and hopefully will return next March.

Our blue bird boxes have also been used for nesting.

This is how caves are formed, water rushes out of cracks in the rocks

We are doing cave hikes almost every day (we get a break on Mondays and Tuesdays). The cave is still muddy from the flooding in May, but has dried out a bit – or our visitors have taken a lot of the mud out on their shoes!

]]> http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2009/07/08/news-from-the-dunbar-cave-state-natural-area/feed/ 0 http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2009/05/30/whats-going-on-at-dunbar-cave/ http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/2009/05/30/whats-going-on-at-dunbar-cave/#comments Sat, 30 May 2009 18:00:42 +0000 Dunbar Cave State Natural Area http://www.clarksvilleonline.com/?p=20362 What’s going on at Dunbar Cave is an occasional piece written by Park Interpreter Amy Wallace

We did our last school group yesterday. It was a fun time, considering we had to slog through four to five inches of mud to get through the first room of the cave. The heavy rain we had the weekend of Mother’s Day flooded the first room of the cave and halfway into the first passageway, depositing sticky slippery clay mud. On that Saturday morning, the water was up to chin height (estimate, we didn’t wade in to see exactly how high it was).

While I was sitting at the cave entrance waiting for a group one day, I saw an Eastern Phoebe feeding her young at the nest at the cave entrance and a Carolina Wren flying to a nest in the window of the old concession stand. In fifteen minutes I heard a Red-Shouldered Hawk, a Gray Cheeked Thrush, a Blue Jay, a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, a Common Crow, a Yellow-throated Warbler, a Black-and-White Warbler, a Parula Warbler and a Black-throated Green Warbler. In the same amount of time I saw a Green Heron and a Great Blue Heron. You don’t even have to walk up on the trails to see birds – these were all at or near the cave entrance.

Our best flowers right now are the Indian Pink, Wild Petunia and Wild Clematis. All can be found along the lake trail.

Purple Larkspur

Many flowers are blooming – more and more every year. The best right now are the Fire Pink, bright red splashes of color on the hillside above the lake; Dwarf Crested Iris, the small blue and yellow flowers that grow in patches on the hillside, patches that are getting larger every year; and the Violet Wood Sorrel, lavender trumpets with a yellow throat and leaves which look like shamrocks. This is a great year for the wood sorrel, it seems to be everywhere. We also have shooting star, larkspur, and spring beauty, among others.

Of course, things change every day – I swear that there were flowers out in the afternoon that were not  there in the morning. Most of our flowers are more plentiful every year (as long as no one picks them) – some have disappeared, either due to habitat change or human destruction, but those are the minority.

A Pileated Woodpecker (Mike and Jean Drummond's Birds of Texas)

The birds are also coming in, back from winter elsewhere, either here for the summer or just passing through. Yesterday I saw a Yellow-throated Warbler, a Black and White Warbler, a Black-throated Green Warbler, and a Yellow-throated Vireo, all for the first time this year. I also had a wonderful sight of a Pileated Woodpecker, which is here all the time, but the sun caught its crest just right and it glowed a bright red.

Many of the trees already have leaves, but the beeches are just before leafing out. They have golden brown buds that are 1-1/2 to 2 inches long – hard to believe that leaves are packed into those buds. I was glad to find some beeches (they are the ones with nice smooth bark) that WEREN’T carved with initials or names – far from where people pass on the trail.

I also did my good deed(s) for the day – freed four Jack-in-the-Pulpits – they (and other flowers) sometimes come up through a tear in last year’s leaves on the forest floor and are kept from opening up by the leaves tightly packed around them – I pulled the leaves off from around them so that they could open up and grow freely. I like to think they were grateful.

One good thing about tromping is you discover things you did not know were there – we had thought that most of our Lycopodium (a primitive plant, evergreen and low-growing, not found in many places, which was once plentiful on the park), was killed by the extreme cold and then a drought two years ago, but I came upon a large patch growing in the middle of the woods.

We hope you will come out and enjoy the life, beauty and peace of the Dunbar Cave State Natural Area.

Cave Tours are available Saturday and Sunday at 1pm and 3pm. Cost is 5$ per person. Each individual must bring their own flashlight. Call for reservations (At least one week in advance, Mon-Fri 8am-4:30pm) 931-648-5526