Nature Study: Golden Rod & Wooly Worm

This week's nature study was the Golden Rod (Solidago altissima) , one of our favorite fall flowers and the KY state flower. We drove to the nature trail at Great Crossing park and walked a little ways until we found a stand of them ready for study. Golden Rod are composite flowers, meaning each spray of gold holds hundreds of individual flowers. We studied the taxonomy of the plant kingdom earlier in the day and put our new knowledge to good use when we discovered that while the golden rod spread seeds on the wind, they reproduce by rhizomes on the roots as well. This makes a patch of golden rod clones of one another. Cool!

We always get a little more than we bargain for...we ran across a huge lichen we've yet to identify...any ideas?

Of course we played a bit!!

And we came across a Wooly Worm!! Growing up where the annual town event is The Wooly Worm Festival, I didn't think much about it at first. However, this appears to be the first time the kids have run across a "wooly bear." They all enjoyed having him crawl up and down their arms. We brought him home to see if we could coax him into a pupa and watch the metamorphisis to moth...but after a little research, we discovered that the Wooly Worms buries itself in the ground over the winter and emerges as the Isabella Tiger Moth in the spring. The cold is a must to jumpstart the transformation, so he'll have to go back out into the garden. Maybe we'll meet him flying around the front porch light in April!

We found a cool lychen