Good morning and welcome to Indiana Dunes National Park and our Virtual
Ranger Hike Series. I am Kim Swift and I am here at the Heron Rookery Trail. I am
starting this morning at the west end parking lot in the west end of this
about a mile and a half one way trail that goes along the Little Calumet River
but the reason I'm here this morning is to explore and to do a little botanizing.
So what is botanizing? Well it's what bird-watching is for folks who love
birds right but I am out here looking at wildflowers. So I have a few tools here
with me I brought my handy Newcomb's guide to help me identify some of these
wildflowers and I have my trusty camera because that's what I like to do when I
come out and I brought a few you know supplies with me I've sprayed up with
some tick and mosquito repellent because this is tick season. We're here
in mid and late April and early May. This is a great time to come out here for
this trail but it's also a really great time for the insects to be emerging.
So I like to come prepared as you can see and spend a morning out here and
it's just gorgeous. The birds are singing and the sunshine
is coming through to the forest floor and I'd like to invite you to come along
with me and let's see what's going here the Heron Rookery Trail so are you geared
up? Are you ready to go? Alright let's hit the trail.
So the trick to good botanizing, I think is to bring a book I like, Newcomb's
Wildflower Guide. That's what I was taught with and I enjoy using it. And, I
gotta tell ya, you can only go botanizing with other people who like to botanize
cuz I'll tell ya I've brought friends
out and family members out on
the trail and they get a little tired of me stopping every few feet. Cuz here I am,
on this trail and I barely left the parking lot and I am surrounded by all
kinds of cool wildflowers. So if you really like doing this, I would recommend
coming on your own, at least when you get started because it takes some time and
you really have to take the time to get to know these wildflowers. And again
there's so many to get to know. Here's my my tip and the way that I go about trying
to identify using the Newcomb's guide and I'll use this beautiful white flower
here as a good example. The first thing you got to do is take a look at the
flower and distinguish what type of flower and it tells you right here at
the beginning of the guide how to do this so you count how many regular parts
it has well. In this case, this white flower has one, two, three, regular petals.
And I can see here from the other ones that it's the same, one, two, three. So then,
I'm gonna go here to flowers with three regular parts and I that's number three.
Now, what plant type is it? Does it have leaves? Are the leaves just at the base?
Are the leaves alternate? Are the leaves whorled? Well, in this case, look at these
leaves. They are all three clasped and whorled around the stem
around the pedal. So this would be another wildflowers with
opposite of whorled leaves. And then when you go down to leaf type, are their
leaves at all? Are the leaves entire? Meaning that they don't have any sharp
edges. Or, are the leaves toothed or lobed or are the leaves divided? So in
this case I would say that the leaves are entire, so that's number two. So then
that tells me that I have a three, and I have a four, and I have a two in here. And
so, I can go to the next section of the book and I can look for wildflowers
with that numeric designation, three, four, two. And it tells me to go to page 124.
Let's see if this works. Sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it does. Because I
kind of know what this plant is so this makes it a little bit easier for me. And
look at this, voila! Newcomb's is right. We are looking
at a large flower trillium. So it's a fun way to figure out what some of these
wildflowers are if you bring out your Newcomb's guide and just get to know
some of these really cool plants that are out here. And this trail is the
perfect place to do it. Nice. Oh hi.
So I'm taking a picture of this beautiful yellow shiny petaled flower
right here and I think actually I've helped to identify what this plant is
because it's shiny almost oily looking almost like maybe butter. Does it
make you think of? It does me and I believe this is a buttercup. But also to
keep on our theme of butter, I've just noticed, hopping along the bank here
of the little Calumet River, a bird that has a really bright yellow rump and it's
called the yellow-rumped warbler or as one of my good friends likes to call them,
butter butts.
So I'm wondering as I'm looking around at this amazing carpet of wildflowers
here at the Heron Rookery Trail, why are there so many flowers blooming right now
and why here? That's that's kind of got me pondering a little bit and so I'm
posing that question to you and maybe you can help me answer it. Or, maybe as I hike
along this trail I might find some clues as I go along. So let's let's see what we
can find as we keep on walking.
So as I've been pondering this question hiking along here, I think I've seen a
few clues. You know the first clue is the river and that's pretty obvious right.
I'm seeing all kinds of impacts of this river rising and falling periodically
throughout the year overflowing its banks streams flowing into the river and
all of this is bringing lots of new soil and nutrients into this plain. That's
this floodplain here on both sides of the river and you can see the
wildflowers just extend on the other side of the bank as well and they extend
way into these woods very deeply all around the river. And it occurred to me
we do have a couple other places in the park where these stream early
wildflowers bloom in in a large profusion like this. And the two of them
I think of right away are the Upland Trail which is at Pinhook Bog and near
Pinhook Bog which again is in a rich clay loamy soil that is from the moraines of
the last glacial period, right. And so that soil is it's much richer and much
deeper than some of the other areas of the park.
And then the other place is also along the Little Calumet River just farther
downstream, Chellberg Farm and Bailey Homestead. You can also see these really
great wild flowers blooming along that Little Calumet River Trail. So I think
part of our answer about why here is this river, the Little Calumet River
helps feed this and helps to provide good nutrients into the soil along this
area here. Now to answer the question why now, I think that's also
kind of obvious that you look at where I see all this sunlight coming into these
woods right now. The leaves have not come out on all these trees, right. We have
a real good rich woods here which is also another clue as to why here. We have
black cherries and we have beech trees and we have sycamores all growing in in
these woodlands. But they haven't leafed out yet, so lots of sunlight is reaching
the ground and so these little wildflowers are taking advantage of that,
right? That's why they're called spring ephemerals. They come up for a short time
and they take advantage of this light that is hitting at the forest floor
before all the leaves come out and this is is just a great
opportunity for us to be able to witness this amazing display of wildflowers
right here and right now. So I've been returning here to the Heron Rookery
every year for twenty years that I've worked here and so I've come to feel
like these are these are friends that return and I come to greet them in the
early spring days. And so, I have gotten to know them and know little features
about them and you will too if you come and and get to know them and learn about
them using some of these guides. And so, as I sit here on this log I can greet a
number of them by just just looking right here at my feet. So, we have
bloodroot the flower has already finished but the leaf is very
distinctive this really large kind of low lobed leaf in here of the bloodroot.
Then we also have the spring beauties, again easy to identify with it's really
simple leaves coming up at the bottom and really pretty honey guides, I call
them, that lead the insects right to the center where the nectar are. If we kind
of look around on this side, hepatica is just finishing up this very distinctive
shaped leaf with the the different colorations in it helps me I know that
this is a hepatica. And the hairy stems on the flower also, not that one, this one,
the hairy stems on this flower kind of give me a clue that that's my friend
hepatica. Now this one is just getting ready to bloom. This is lovely solomon
seal and in a week or two these little green buds will open up and have white
bell-shaped flowers. And I know this is the solomon seal which is a little
different from some of its cousins because it has those flowers hanging
under this tall stem here. So say hi to all
these friends just right here. It's really great to see them again.
Oh look at this here's the prairie trillium in full bloom.
Remember the large flowered white trillium we saw earlier?
Well here's its cousin. And again, you can see some of the common features, three
leaves, three petals, the leaves all in a whorl, but obviously some differences
here in that the leaves are modeled and the the flower itself is more of a red
and deep purple. But this is what we call prairie trillium. So this is some more
evidence of that rise and fall of the river here right you can see we're
overflowed its banks. It's created quite a mess and as well as the streams kind
of flowing out into the river have been rising - with all of these
nice spring rains that that we have. And it really is true right, April showers
bring May flowers. And in this case it brings a lot of mud as well. So be sure
and wear your good boots when you come out here and not your good hiking
shoes.
Oh goodness, look at this display there's all kinds
of spring beauties, buttercups, violets,
and some of the ruanemone
that we had identified before all on this hillside. Not to mention, I also see
some of the prairie trillium up there and I see some geranium, they are getting
ready to bloom as well. What a glorious display. So this wild
flower here doesn't need a book really because it's so distinctive. These
long stalk here with these really adorable little flowers, that if you use
your imagination can you see some pants? Maybe? Or, pantaloons or breeches as they
used to be called. That's the clue for this plants name. We call them Dutchman's
breeches and it's a really sweet wildflower that comes up here in profusion.
And this, the leaflet kind of has this fern like look to it and is very
distinctive and easy to identify. Not a lot of them left. We're kind of at the
end of their blooming profusion but there's still lots of other things to
identify just right here. Again we have more of our prairie trillium that we've
talked about, spring beauties, and then oh, look right here. Here's one that we've
missed but it's really fun. The trout lily has a little yellow or white flower
that comes up. Again, we're past the prime of it but that leaf is so distinctive I
guess some folks think it looks like maybe the color of trout and the pattern
that a trout has on it. And that kind of takes us back to our river because the
trout are running right now in the Little Calumet River.
So I just love sycamore trees. I think it's their bark really, that fascinates
me because it changes as you go up the tree and it gets whiter at the top. Almost
looks like a bone. Like bones and other colors and patterns of the bark are
really fun to notice. And different ages of the trees look very different. The
other cool thing about sycamore trees is that they tend to get hollowed out in
the center so a lot of animals take advantage of that and make their homes
in sycamore trees, owls, squirrels, raccoons. So it's always fun to see who
else may be enjoying our sycamore trees out here. And this little Calumet River
bank is a great home to the sycamores. They like their their roots to be wet
and they like water so you don't see them too often in other places in our
park except along this trail. So, I hope you haven't really enjoyed this little
hike that we've done today on the Heron Rookery Trail. This is a great time of
year to be out here but actually any time of the year you can enjoy the Heron
Rookery Trail. It's a great path for hiking, for exploring bird-watching,
fishing, a lot of folks to take advantage of the the river and catch a lot of
really cool fish in this area too. My interest is botanizing and wildflowers
but maybe yours is something else. Regardless, we have something for you
here at Indiana Dunes National Park and with all of our different trails, so I
hope to see you on another one soon.