NOTES FROM THE FIELD
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his section is devoted to showing images of wetlands and their biota. We encourage contributions from anywhere in the world. If interested in contributing please contact Ralph Tiner, editor at ralphtiner83@gmail.com. For this issue, I asked Steve Eggers, senior author of “Wetland Plants and Wetland Communities of Minnesota and Wisconsin”1, if he would be willing to share some of his excellent photographs of wetland plants to brighten up the usual drab winter we experience in North America at this time of the year. He agreed and provided 32 images and accompanying text that you’ll see below each photograph. Enjoy! n
Showy Lady’s-Slipper (Cypripedium reginae).A spectacular orchid well known and revered, selected as the state flower of Minnesota. Common habitats include coniferous swamps, hardwood swamps, bogs, fens and floating mats. Interestingly it can tolerate pH ranges from acidic to alkaline. In its natural habitat, an individual requires at least 14 to 16 years to produce its first flower (Smith 1993). Photograph location was an opening in a coniferous bog, Lake Bemidji State Park, Beltrami County, Minnesota.
Yellow Water Crowfoot (Ranunculus flabellaris). Another aquatic buttercup found in quiet waters of lakes and streams; also occurs in marshes and is sometimes stranded on muddy shores. Photograph location was the shoreline of Mille Lacs Lake, Mille Lacs County, Minnesota.
1 Available for downloading via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Digital Library - https://usace.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p266001coll1/id/2801/.
26 Wetland Science & Practice January 2021
Swamp Thistle (Cirsium muticum). A native thistle of sedge meadows, wet to wet-mesic prairies and calcareous fens (another common name is fen thistle). Instead of flower heads with stiff spines as in most other thistles, flower heads are weakly spined and sticky because of a gummy resin. This specimen was in a calcareous fen community within the Savage Fen Scientific and Natural Area, Scott County, Minnesota.
