In spite of cold and wind, we had an enthusiastic group of walkers, eager to be educated and entertained by Boot Boutwell.
A good crowd showed up on a cold, windy day. Boot started us with a quiz: what is this?
The right answer? It is the dried stalk of a sensitive fern, with large spores.
A walker holds Boot's collection of selected winter weeds.
The flower from a Queen Anne's lace in winter.
Boot shows us the berries of the invasive common buckthorn, berries that are not wise to eat.
Examining the buckthorn.
Another invasive: the pretty but troublesome oriental bittersweet.
One of Boot's favorite winter weeds books.
Examining a detail with Boot's magnifying glass.
The upright berry clusters of staghorn sumac.
Oriental bittersweet, the invasive, climbing over the native staghorn sumac.
Another invasive much hated: the multiflora rose.
Boot shows us a different form of sumac: smooth sumac.
Smooth sumac berries hang down, rather than standing up like staghorn.
A gall on an aspen leaf.
A gall on a goldenrod stalk.
Boot cuts open the goldenrod gall and reveals the insect livng within.
A walker take notes along the way.
A hairy poison ivy vine detached from a dying tree.
A giant burdock leaf has survived the frost. Boot shows us the leaf miner that has tunneled inside the leaf.
Boot discovers an insect that lives right through the winter: a daytime lightning bug, that has no glowing apparatus.
A brave dandilion blooms in the sub freezing weather.
