MUDRUN-2012 The RU Recreation Program ran the 2nd annual RU Muddy Run this past Friday (September 28). The course wound its way through the EcoPreserve and finished up in the nearby rec park with a series of hurdles, a wall, barbed-wire army crawl and of course, the mud pit. Over 500 students participated.
Late in August, the trail crew spied an unusal wildflower, slender ladies’-tresses (Spiranthes gracilis), blooming in the large meadow. Ladies’ tresses is a native wild orchid with white blossoms (with a green interior lip) in a spiral along a twisted green spike of about a foot long. When I checked today, the blossoms had withered but the basal leaves and spiral flower spike were still evident. Photo by Daniel Torres.
Dr. Wansoo Im instructing Rutgers ecology students on how to operate mobile phone interactive mapping application for capturing geolocated ecological data in the EcoPreserve. Check out the Interactive Maps linked on the side bar or top menu.
Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum) are unfurling their mini-umbrellas. Elsewhere spring beauties (Claytonia virginica) and trout lily (Erythronium americanum) carpet the forest floor. While the white and pink blooms of the spring beauties are everywhere the yellow flowers of the trout lily are few and far between. It takes number of years for the trout lilies to build up the energy reserves to bloom but the speckled foliage is still wonderful addition to the forest floor. Anecdotal accounts suggest that some species of wildflowers were much more…