{"id":637,"date":"2009-10-22T10:17:11","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T18:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/?p=637"},"modified":"2010-06-10T10:24:05","modified_gmt":"2010-06-10T18:24:05","slug":"celebrating-bolin-creek-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/2009\/10\/celebrating-bolin-creek-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrating Bolin Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_638\" style=\"width: 234px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.crane-fly-orchid-leaf+coral-fungus.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-638\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-638\" title=\"flora.crane-fly-orchid-leaf+coral-fungus\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.crane-fly-orchid-leaf+coral-fungus-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.crane-fly-orchid-leaf+coral-fungus-224x300.jpg 224w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.crane-fly-orchid-leaf+coral-fungus.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-638\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Winter leaf of crane-fly orchid emerges next to a coral fungus along the edge of Bolin Creek in the Adam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tract nature preserve. Photo by Ken Moore.<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>By Ken Moore<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fall, and we have a winter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth of exploring along Bolin Creek ahead of us. I took my own solitary preview walk last Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>My favorite access begins at the well-marked trailhead in Wilson Park that enters the Adams Tract nature preserve. An uphill walk through mature piney woods leads on over the oak-hickory forest and down through the beech-maple forest to the edge of the creek. All along the way, I could not help but pause frequently to admire mighty specimens of pine, oak, tulip poplar, beech and maple, each with an interesting story to relate, if only we knew how to talk to trees.<\/p>\n<p>Well-worn trails lead in all directions along the creek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s corridors and on up into the Carolina North trails. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a close-to-home adventure to see if you can get yourself lost in these hundreds of acres of connected forests. If you succeed, you are never far from a trail that leads to a road or adjacent residential community.<\/p>\n<p>It was a difficult choice Sunday for me to abandon enjoying the colorful wildflowers and grasses of fields and roadsides to enter the darker world of the forest. I was rewarded in rediscovering the beauty of fall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lively awakening in so many ways.<\/p>\n<p>The presence of so many different types of fungi (mushrooms) hugging the forest floor and clinging to fallen and standing trees reminded me that my mushroom guide was of little help left unattended on an indoor bookshelf. I took extra time out to appreciate a clump of coral fungus, so appropriately named for its underwater look-alike. This particular one seemed affectionately accompanied by the leaf of a crane-fly orchid, newly emerged for its seasonal growth to take advantage of the winter sun soon to be streaming through the leafless forest canopy. Numerous coral fungi are scattered about the forest floor. Some are edible and some are poisonous, so, unless you are an expert, enjoy with your eyes, but don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t touch.<\/p>\n<p>I was surprised to see a few flowers of the witch hazel already open. They usually wait until closer to December. The leaves are just beginning to take on their beautiful golden-yellow tints, and a lot of them sported those characteristic little witch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hat-shaped insect galls perched on the leaf\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s upper surface. You can always identify a witch hazel if you find those little witch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hats, because that particular insect lays its eggs only on the leaves of witch hazel.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_639\" style=\"width: 234px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.witch-hazel-+-buds.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-639\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-639\" title=\"flora.witch-hazel-+-buds\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.witch-hazel-+-buds-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.witch-hazel-+-buds-224x300.jpg 224w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/flora.witch-hazel-+-buds.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-639\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The little witch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hat insect gall is a tell-tale mark of a witch hazel leaf. Photo by Ken Moore.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>We are fortunate here in our Piedmont that fall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s awakening goes on and on for weeks. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s as exciting as springtime, with something new to discover with each trek outdoors. A great companion to help you appreciate the diversity and brilliance of our local fields and forests is Fall Color and Woodland Harvests, an easy-to-use visual guide to tree colors and nuts and berries by C. Ritchie Bell and Anne Lindsey.<\/p>\n<p>Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t miss the year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s annual Bolin Creek Festival from 1 to 5 p.m. this Saturday at Umstead Park in Chapel Hill. In addition to lots of activities for children, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Kid Fun,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll meet a lot of the local folks who help care for the Bolin Creek corridor and get to help paint the Bolin Creek Community Mural.<\/p>\n<p>See <a href=\"http:\/\/bolincreek.org\">bolincreek.org<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ken Moore It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fall, and we have a winter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth of exploring along Bolin Creek ahead of us. I took my own solitary preview walk last Sunday. My favorite access begins at the well-marked trailhead in Wilson Park that enters the Adams Tract nature preserve. An uphill walk through mature piney woods leads on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,3],"tags":[5,616,364],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-ken-moores-flora","tag-bolin-creek","tag-fungi","tag-witch-hazel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/flora\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}