The Cranberry Glades

48 this morning. It's been a lovely week with temps just below freezing most nights and days in the upper 50's to low 60's. Warmer today, with a wind coming out of the north that speaks of rain and colder weather to come.

I have been a bad blogger lately. Not because I have nothing to say, but because I have had this cold/sinus thing back again and it has just made me so sluggish and not feeling like doing much of anything. I hope it soon passes; I understand it's going around so I do hope all of you have managed to avoid it.

I realized today that I never posted the photos of our visit to West Virginia's cranberry glades, an unusual geographic feature as it is a bog on top of a rather high mountain. There are plants there found only much farther north and some that are only found in the Arctic, although I wonder, with global warming, if those plants are still living in our bog.

So here's a look at our visit. It was a chilly, blustery day, gray and overcast, but that didn't matter. The cranberry glades were still beautiful. I should explain that the name comes from the low-bush cranberries that actually grow here.

There are boardwalks all through the glades, and visitors are asked to stay on them to protect the fragile plants in the area. There are many orchids here, and in spring the bloom can be amazing. I have yet to see that, something for the future.

The colors this time of year are subtle, but still beautiful. The white spots you see in the photo are cotton grass; below it are the red leaves of the cranberries. No berries this time of year; those were earlier in the season.

These red berries are Mountain winterberry (Ilex montana). They're not edible by humans, although I think birds and other wildlife may eat them.

I don't know what this bush was except colorful.

And more color--tiny seedling evergreens, probably balsam fir that is abundant here.

The red leaves are the cranberry plants; such a nice contrast.

A better picture of the Mountain Winterberry.

I do not know what this patch of white was. It almost looks like packing material, but maybe it was shredded wood, carried here by the beavers that live in the glades?

I loved the colors of this plant along the walkway. Again, I don't know what it is. I have one in my flowerbeds, dug up somewhere in the mountains years ago, but I've never identified it. It almost looks like shamrock leaves, but mine gets quite tall.

Another species of wildlife in the glades?

The perfect Christmas tree? But it would be the bad person who cut it.

Lots of prints in the mud--deer mostly.

Here you can see the beaver's handiwork.

There were so many kinds of moss here. The glades are a place for noticing all the little things, taking time to stop and examine.

Mountain laurel lines the path in places. It blooms in June/early July. In pioneer times, explorers wrote of laurel thickets so dense a man could easily get lost in them. 

That's a few of the photos we took on our walk. We hope to return in June, when the orchids may be in bloom. Even if we miss them, there will still be plenty to see.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.