Readers’ wildlife photos

Today we have some lovely plant photos from reader Rik Gern of Austin, Texas, whose notes and IDs are indented. Please click on the photos to make them larger.

Here are some more pictures from Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum) is ubiquitous there, but for me at least, hard to photograph. When I took these pictures last August I had just replaced my old Canon PowerShot SD400 with a Panasonic DC-ZS70 and felt confused and overwhelmed by all the bells and whistles. What looked to the eye like a soft pattern often got translated by the camera as bright spots of blown out light. Fortunately, a few pictures came out alright.

How’s your fern? I like how this one shows the “fingerprints”. Nature sure loves those fractals!

 In the clearings you can see how ferns seem to float above the leaves and grasses on their skinny stalks.

Having lost its chlorophyll, this fern stands out nice and bright before returning to the forest floor:

Here’s a fern doing an early morning impression of an evergreen!

Moss is as common as fern in Northern Wisconsin. I believe this is pincushion moss (Leucobryum glaucum).  The closeup looks like Cousin It at a rave, and the second picture pulls back to show it in a wider context.

Wherever the forest has been cleared, prairie grass is sure to show up. I could not determine what genus and species these were, but both were growing in the same cleared patch.