Walk this way...(a la every Mel Brooks film)

Welcome to Moan Woods

What better way to spend a your Independence Day than with a walk through our woods.We have a wealth of interesting plants, animals, and fungi in our woods and I've included a spattering of them here for your viewing pleasure. I hope you enjoy it. Note: You may have to click on the photos and to enlarge them enough to see the details.

I'll start with the trees and work my way down through the different strata.




We have a fairly mature canopy of trees on the property with the majority of them being yellow poplars such as these shown above. We also have a a few hickories and lots of white and black oaks.

We've also made an attempt to increase the diversity of our forest through the planting of a few new trees. This does not account for the trees we've planted in the yard, but this photo shows all the trees we've planted in the woods since we moved in. The trees/shrubs are (clockwise from top left): river birch, longleaf pine, mountain laurel, common persimmon, and baldcypress.



The lower tier of the forest is filled with all kinds of neat things. We have a plethora of understory trees (and yes, El Guapo, I do know what a plethora is). These are some photos of the more unique understory trees. Last year we had a bumper crop of white oak acorns, so the majority of the small trees are white oak. These are (clockwise from top center): sassafras, magnolia (Likely Bigleaf Magnolia), witchhazel, and red mulberry.


We also have a lot of ground cover of the non-tree variety. These are (clockwise from top center): black raspberries, wild ginger, wild strawberries, ferns, and jack-in-the-pulpits. The neighbors once reported that we also had mayapples, but I was never able to find any.



Also, because I love word play and I really want to say that I am a fun guy, I have included a group photo of some of our fungi.



While I was out enjoying taking some photos of our woods for you all, I happened upon this as well.




I hope you've enjoyed my guided tour of Moan Woods. Our plan is to work on a trail system this winter. It's too stinkin' hot to work on it these days and the ticks can be pretty terrible. I'm also working on ridding our woods of viney things such as grapevine, trumpet creeper, Japanese honeysuckle (invasive), poison ivy, and the occasional non-vine that I suspect is Chinese privet (invasive).

Happy 4th of July Everyone!!!