Quaking Bog Beauty

Over in Theodore Wirth area of The Cities there is a beautiful wooded hiking area that we have been to many times. But the part we usually go to is the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden -- a perfect length of trails for little people and well-tended with extremely patient, kind, kid-friendly park rangers. I'd seen another area farther on from the Wildflower park called Quaking Bog but had never stopped. Last week I took the kids. It was supposed to be an hour long activity and then I had packed lunches with water bottles for everyone (that I left in the car). Then we proceeded into the absolutely beautiful, perfect-weathered-day forest. Somehow a loop of a trail turned into 2 hours of hiking (half of which was me completely lost with a 6,4,3 and 2 year old. (I ended up carrying Thea for the last 1/2 hour.) I'm not sure where I turned wrong, but I was completely disorientated. Oh well. Because we finally found the bog and it was completely and utterly worth it. One of the most beautiful places I have found in the cities. A bog is a wetland found in a cold-climate, short-growing-season climate. Here is an interesting (if you like knowing about vegetation and history and habitat type things, like I do) link explaining a little more about the bog. I wished that three people, especially, had been there -- Brad, my dad, and Olga Helmy -- Olga! -- there are sun dews in this bog -- but I had the kids with me and so couldn't go slow enough to find them. I didn't know sun dews were in this area!! (They are pretty carnivorous plants -- hooray!)

Atticus was annoyed with me by this point -- tired and hungry and trying very hard not to be impressed by the bog -- though the other kids were pretty enthusiastic.

The ground was mostly sphagnum moss and very sponge-y --- the plastic walkways were sort of spring-y suspended over the ground -- neat, strange. The only other time I've ever walked on this kind of turf was up in Alaska when I visited my friend Olga at Denali National Park.

So pretty too!

See how it looks like zillions of stars?!

See the mushroom?

Thea Belle liked it because it looked like a pancake.

 

I think they are birch trees because their bark is more papery, shred-dy than aspen, right?

Is it purple loosetrife? It looks too delicate to be that -- more like a phlox -- but I am not sure.

 

What kind of mushroom is this? I could only find that it is in a group commonly called cup fungi.