By Peter Wallace
Juncus effusus
This listing of the plant species of Lorax Woodlands along with their photos was a project started in 2014 and is a simple listing of names and photos only. It will provide for the members of the Woodlands a base of the main species of the forest and by posting them, a site for others to help them identify their unknown species or to provide photos that they may use for their own purpose. The woodlands is currently a pioneer forest about 70 – 80 years old but the ecology varies from wetland and swamp to mixed conifers and hardwoods with almost every variation in between except for barrens, dunes and coastal. This variety of ecology types gives a good mix of species.
I identified the plants initially in the field and took photos of them to help me narrow them down to the species level through using reference books and websites. The photos were mostly taken with a small instamatic digital camera and as such some of the details for the original identification are not photographed and most are not photogenic beauties; this website is not a photography project. Most of the photos presented here were taken of plants actually present on the property or its boundaries but in some instances better photographs or photographs of the same species at different times of the season were taken off property by me while hiking Nova Scotia trails but these photos have not been identified as such. Regardless all species presented are on Lorax Woodlands and I have taken all the photographs.
The main references I used for identification are:
- Boland, T.: Wildflowers of Nova Scotia
- Boland, T.: Trees and Shrubs of the Maritimes
- Newcomb, L.: Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide
- Chambers, Legasy, and Bentley: Forest Plants of Central Ontario
- Barron, G.: Mushrooms of Ontario and Eastern Canada
- Petrides, G.: Trees and Shrubs (Peterson Field Guide)
- Walewski J.: Lichens of the North Woods
- Cobb, Farnsworth and Lowe: Ferns of the Northeastern and Central North America (Peterson Field Guide)
- https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/ has a great dichotomous key if you manage to gather the facts as well as good photos of individual plants and their parts.