mertensia's Favorites

Thanks to@margaretcurtin for ID assist. Spikelets densely pubescent, leaf blade is also but with pubescence less than a millimeter long, (for this metric, ignore the longer stiff straight hairs on the leaf margin) and the plant is fully prostrate and in very sandy open habitat almost on the ocean shore. This is a state watch-listed species and known from only Southern New England.

I didn't have enough light (or patience) to attempt a photo of the leaf hairs that could be zoomed in to see how the hairs branch, but I attempted it with a digiloupe. (For once my uncooperative phone camera worked.) Velvety yellowish hairs under the leaf. Leaves shaped like water oak or laurel oak but no red oak group pointy tip. Flaky bark like a white oak. This one appeared to be embracing the pine.

I've had a pin in my Google Maps elsewhere in this tract for a couple years now. There's an herbarium record I want to follow up on. (Nothing rare; I want to compare it to the weird Monotropa uniflora I found elsewhere in Jasper County.) But I was never going this way on Highway 11 before. When an iNat observation of a lifer oak popped up in the same tract AND there was traffic on 75 encouraging me to take the alternate route to Piedmont NWR (20 to 11), I decided to finally check out this spot on my way to Piedmont.

This is a powerline ROW on a tract that three or four different maps show as Oconee National Forest, but for some reason there are private property signs along one edge (Feldspar Rd) which I only saw because I drove down to see if there was an easier place to park. (There is a place to park on Highway 11, but I was hoping to not leave my car in such a visible spot.) (I now have a dashboard sign that says NOT BROKEN DOWN. LOOKING AT FLOWERS.)

After looking at all my maps (and seeing several iNat records from different people in the tract), I concluded that here at least was Oconee NF or at least, I was very unlikely to get into trouble based on all of these maps supporting that reasonable belief. Still, I didn't go far into the ROW. This is a longwinded way of saying that there may have been more Oglethorpe oaks present, but between my anxiety about an imagined unpleasant encounter and all the flies aiming for my eyes, I didn't go very far. I also wanted to make it to Piedmont NWR.

I really want to explore this spot more. If there is an uncommon oak here (plus some cool bugs), what others treasures are here?

I'd like to go back, but not alone, and maybe after contacting the Forest Service and/or adjacent property owner (and probably some of the iNatters who have been here, too) to ease my paranoid lawyer-y anxiety about accidental trespassing.