Plants of Wisconsin Gallery

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Click on the locales you'd like to see:

- Cave Point Park (Door County)

- Devil's Lake State Park (Sauk County)

- Kenosha County

- Kettle Moraine State Forest (Fond du Lac & Sheboygan Counties)

- Juneau County (not including state parks)

- Parfrey's Glen State Natural Area (Sauk County)

- Rocky Arbor State Park (Juneau County)

- Sauk County (not including state parks)

- Tower Hill State Park (Iowa County)

- Whitefish Dunes State Park (Door County)

5. On the sandy, gravelly, and stony Lake Michigan shore of Kenosha grows one of the few species capable of surviving in the high-energy, low-nutrient environment of the open beach. This is sea rocket (Cakile edentula), a mustard-family herbaceous plant that is also native to salty Atlantic seacoast of Canada and the United States. As its specific epithet indicates, the plant is edible and has a distinct peppery tang.

1. Along the Lake Michigan coast of the Door Peninsula, at Cave Point County Park. Arbor vitae, also known as northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis), is the predominant tree species here, and it no doubt enjoys the calcareous, alkaline soil that has developed on the Silurian dolostone.

33. Botany would still be a huge field of endeavor if it were just the study of the plant kingdom. But it also encompasses the study of other forms of life -- fungi and algae, for example. And Whitefish Dunes is the perfect place to acquaint oneself with the fascinating symbiotic relationship involving those organisms. On this fixed backslope of a tall dune, Cladina lichens, known colloquially as reindeer moss, have found the environ-ment very much to their liking. (They are the rounded, silver-gray masses carpeting the ground.) Lichens are not true mosses; indeed, they're not plants, period. Instead, they are symbiotic associations of fungi, green algae, or even cyanobacteria. Some lichens incorporate all three.

22. Their spring flowering phase over for the year, these corn lilies (Clintonia borealis) are now setting fruit. When ripe, the berries will be a striking dark porcelain blue. This species is one of the most characteristic of the northern hardwoods and taiga (boreal forest) regimes.

21. Rocky Arbor also has quite an array of woodland wildflowers, including wild columbine (Aquilegia canadensis). Its red, white and yellow flowers, which New Englanders liken to their own church steeples, dangle con-spicuously along the lowland hiking trail.

23. Sedges, like their relatives the grasses, are all too overlooked, even by aspiring naturalists. One reason is that they are green-flowered and thus less conspicuous. Another is that they have the unjust reputation of always being painfully difficult to key out. As it so happens, this particular plant, fringed sedge (Carex crinita), is one of the most easily recognized of the bunch.

7. One of the glories of Black Spruce bog is its community of purple pitcher plants (Sarracenia purpurea). This shot shows detail of the unusual flower structure of this "carnivorous" species. Like this species most curious, tankardlike leaves, the flowers range in color from maroon to lime green.

6. One inflorescence of wild calla (Calla palustris) pokes up among the leaves of bog bean, Menyanthes trifoliata. On the sphagnum mat at Kettle Moraine's small but superb Black Spruce Bog. To the untrained eye, the portion of the calla visible here seems to be a single flower. In fact, it's a structure containing many miniaturized flowers on a column (the spadix) surrounded by a white spathe.

8. Other much-admired residents of Black Spruce Bog: pink lady-slipper orchids (Cypripedium acaule). Their flowers may be at the wilting stage here, but they're still the most eye-catching plants in the place.

20. Located just up the road from one of the most God-awful places on the planet -- the visual trainwreck that is the Wisconsin Dells -- Rocky Arbor State Park is the exact oppositie of that unbridled nightmare of lowest-common-denominator tourism. Here cinnamon ferns (Osmunda cinnamomea) and other free-sporing plants with ancient affinities thrive on marshy ground or next to moss-encrusted sandstone outcrops.

25. Diervillea lonicera, or bush honeysuckle. It's one of the North Woods' native shrubs. For once, a plant's common name is not all that misleading: this species is indeed a member of the honeysuckle family.

28. This park, on the south bluff of the Wisconsin River near Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen, was originally the site where lcally mined lead was turned into spherical shot. The lead was first melted; then it was dropped to cool in free fall within a high tower. Now the park serves as a refuge for those interested in regional history and botany. Here, a robust colony of maidenhair fern (Adiantum pedatum) perches on the sandstone bluff below the tower.

30. Some might think this species with compound leaves is a fern, too, but in fact it is an angiosperm, or flowering plant. Honewort (Cryptotaenia canadensis) is a carrot-family member found farther down the bluff face, not far from Mill Creek.

31. This liana (i.e., woody vine) has been the bane of many a hiker and hunter. Each of its leaves has three glossy leaflets, whose surface bears the chemical compound urushiol -- which causes mild to severe dermatitis in most people who come into direct contact with the plant. In other words, this is poison ivy, Toxicodendron radicans var. negundo, shown here in flower.

32. This understorey tree has a different type of defense, and is a common sight in central Wisconsin woodlands. It's Zanthoxylum americanum. While it often goes by the misleading common name of prickly ash -- it certainly is prickly, but it's not directly related to the true ash trees -- I prefer the alternative name of toothache tree. This refers to the fact that this rue-family species, which is related to citrus trees, was used by American Indians and early settlers as a dental remedy.

34. Other lichens prefer to colonize surfaces of tall-growing plants. Here, several foliose species have practically covered the lower trunks of this tree in the park's foredunes section. Incidentally, the term "foliose" refers to the almost leaflike form of this lichen type. In contrast, the lichens shown in the preceding frame are "fruticose" -- a reference to their shrublike habit. Indeed, reindeer moss resembles miniature shrubs so faithfully that it is harvested, tinted dark green, and used for mock vegetation in model-railroad sets.

35. Another extremely hardy colonizer of the park's challenging environment is the prostrate plant extending itself across bare sand in the foreground. It's Juniperus horizontalis, or creeping juniper. Like its more upright relatives, it reproduces by producing fleshy cones that are almost always mistaken for true berries. In fact, this rugged plant, which is so tolerant of harsh weather and fast-draining substrates, is a conifer, with a lineage that extends much farther back in geologic time than that of flowering plants.

36. Facing the lee, inland side of a large dune. Here a thin soil profile has developed, and it's enough for these striking paper birches (Betula papyrifera) to thrive in. No other tree species is quite as evocative of the North Woods and upper Great Lakes shorelines as this one. Actually, though, it is a volunteer species that establishes almost pure stands quickly after fire or logging has removed older woodland. So its prevalence today is, to a lesser or greater extent, a sign of widespread alteration of the environment.

9. Another locale, another pink lady slipper. This plant, caught at the height of its glory, grew in sandy, acidic soil developed from the eroding sandstone butte known as Castle Rock, in Camp Douglas.

10. A closeup of the flower shown in the previous photo. While lady slippers are now considered one of the more primitive lines of the orchid family, the flower structure, which forces a deluded bee to pick up pollinia (sticky clumps of pollen grains) before it departs, is nothing less than a marvel of unconscious design.

2. This best of state parks has such an excellent native-plant community that it may seem awfully unfair to emphasize this aggressive woodland invader, garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolaris), instead. But this plant should be familiar to everyone -- so that its very detrimental ecological impact can be better understood. This plant is the blooming, second-year form of this biennial Eurasian species, growing along the southern end of the park's East Bluff. .

3. But here, in the same locale, the first-year form of garlic mustard seems to be wilting before its time, instead of crowding out native herbaceous plants of the forest floor. What's going on?

4. Aha. That's the answer. In a desperate attempt to curb the spread of garlic mustard, parks officials use a variety of eradication techniques -- including the judicious use of herbicide (not pesticide, really, as the sign says).

11. An ancient plant for an ancient setting. This species of liverwort, Marchantia polymorpha, grows in large colonies on the wetter portions of the canyon walls in Parfrey's Glen. Arguably the closest surviving relatives of the first plants to inhabit the land, liverworts are stemless, rootless, and leafless -- their padlike green bodies hug the surface they grow on. (The pen gives the scale.)

12. On the rocky forest floor, not far from the stream that carved the canyon, grows as diverse array of spring ephemerals -- herbaceous plants that sprout, flower, and set fruit before the tree canopy fills in. The plants in bloom here are miterwort, Mitella diphylla.

15. Early meadow rue, Thalictrum dioicum, is one of the most interesting of the spring-blooming woodland species. As its taxonomic name indicates, it's dioecious -- male and female flowers are borne on separate plants. This speci-men is staminate, or male.

17. On a damp and misty day in spring, the red cedars (Juniperus virginiana) near the site's entrance sport these odd-looking, gelatinous masses. They are the sporing form of the fungus known as cedar-apple rust, Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae.

18. Here the development of the hornlike telia structures that shed the spores are more apparent. Some of the spores will find their way to this species' alternate host, apple or crabapple tres, where the fungus will form yellow spots on the leaves and fruit.

19. This bracket fungus, Ganoderma lucidum, has a lot more human admirers than cedar-apple rust does. This cluster, growing on a tree trunk deep in the Glen's canyon woods, shows its beautiful laquered aspect. This species has been prized for centuries in both the New World and the Old for its reputed medicinal properties.

27. Another view of the Van Hise Rock -- this time showing a colony of yellowish Xanthoria fallax lichens. These hardy composite organisms are often colonize bare rock surfaces, and the acids they secrete as metabolic waste products begin the long process of organic weathering and soil formation.

26. In Abelman's Gorge in Rock Springs stands the famous Van Hise Rock, studied by generations of geologists. (For a full view, and for a description of its geologic significance, visit my Wisconsin Geology Gallery.) This landmark has its botanical allurements, too: here a colony of the lithophytic blunt-lobe wood fern (Woodsia obtusa) is growing quite happily in a joint in the quartzite.

Would you like to learn more about the plant communities and ecology of this diverse and fascinating state? Check out my Courses, Tours, and Lectures Pages for educational events focused

on the botany

of Wisconsin.