This is where cranberries come from!

At a recent trip to Triangle Bog in Kent, Ohio, I snapped a picture of a cranberry blossom. They're pretty small (click on the picture to see a larger version). If you want to see a picture of cranberries in the same bog, click here.

Cranberries in the bog

My husband and I recently visited Triangle Lake Bog State Nature Preserve, which is near Kent, Ohio. We wanted to see what the cranberries looked like this time of year. Here's where the cranberries are in the bog (click on any of the pictures to see them larger):

A bit of a closer view:

The cranberries add color to the greens and browns:

Thanksgiving must be close if the cranberries are this red:

Carnivorous pitcher plants grow alongside the cranberries in the bog:

Ooh, this one would go well with turkey and gravy:

Some of the sphagnum moss was turning color, too:

Here's the boardwalk through the bog. The bog would be too treacherous to walk without it:

The ferns have run their course:

The pitcher plants are turning mostly red from their usual green with red accents:

It makes them seem even more unusual:

This one's eating late-season mosquitoes:

The pitcher plants are pretty viewed from the side, too:

Where the bog ended and the trees began, we spotted beaver damage:

This mossy path led us out of the bog:

Thanksgiving will be here soon and I'll think of the bog while buying cranberries from the grocery store and making cranberry sauce.

Ferns

On our bog walk, we also saw some interesting ferns:

Spider

My husband and I went for a walk today at a nearby bog. I found a spider in its web:

There are probably lots of creepy crawly things for it to eat in the bog:

Click on the pictures to make them larger (if you're not squeamish).

Gone to the bogs

My hubby and I visited Triangle Lake Bog yesterday. We had a lot of fun taking pictures. There's a boardwalk trail so that you don't sink into the bog, never to be heard from again:

It was morning so the spiderwebs were pearled with dew:

And many of the plants, too:

This little maple has sprouted in the midst of a carpet of cranberry plants:

The cranberries are ripening:

The bog is home to a couple of varieties of carnivorous plants, such as the pitcher plant:

I'm not sure what these flowers are, but they added a splash of yellow to the greens and the hints of red that will be followed in earnest soon by the colors of fall:

Another unknown flower adding to the colors of the bog:

The sphagnum moss grows thick everywhere under the plant growth:

A colorful pitcher plant:

And a few more:

These were nestled in with the cranberry carpet:

The sphagnum moss is soft and so cushy:

It's said to be antiseptic, and the dry moss is absorbent. The Native Americans apparently used it to dress wounds, and as a diaper of sorts.

We visited another nature preserve on which can be found a couple of other boggy areas, but we only hiked through a small section of it's 427 acres. We're planning on a return visit soon.

Bog Walking

On Labor Day my family and I visited three bogs which are close by here in northeast Ohio. The bogs were created when pieces of glaciers broke off as the ice sheets retreated northward 12,000 years ago. Kettle lakes formed from the melting mammoth ice chunks and set in motion all of the conditions necessary to create a bog. Bogs are very acidic due to the large quantities of sphagnum moss which grow in the cool, moist bog environment.

The paths led us through thick vegetation.


We saw lots of beautiful flowers.

And vegetation.

And a few critters.

The scenery was beautiful.

Cranberries grew in two of the bogs.

Arrowroot plants grew among the cranberries. If you click on the picture (or any of them) you'll see it close-up (at least on my computer that's the case):

Here is something interesting, the bogs are the sole places to find the only carnivorous plants that grow in Ohio:



I don't know what this one is called, but it's not very big - those round-ish parts with the sticky, bug-trapping hairs are only about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in diameter:


And there were pitcher plants there too. They fill with water. Bugs get trapped in the water and can't get out because of the fine hairs on the plant which all point back down toward the water. The bugs decompose in the water and the plant absorbs the nutrients:



Here are some pitcher plants nestled with some sphagnum moss and other greenery:


Another shot with pitcher plants, sphagnum moss, and other bog plants:

There were signs of beavers at one of the bogs:

When we were finished searching for the last of the blueberries along the path at our final bog, we walked a mossy carpet back to where we had parked the car.

Some of the things we saw today are at the southernmost reach of their habitat and are not found elsewhere in Ohio. The unique environment has preserved a special little world of plants and animals. We had lots of fun visiting those worlds today.