Columbine Flowers Found in the City Forest, Bangor

It has come to my attention that the columbine I have been photographing for the last 3 or so years is not Wild Columbine.  Apparently Wild Columbine is reddish with yellow.  The ones I have been photographing are pink. I mean, they are growing in the forest.  The pink I have seen in more than one place, but perhaps that means very little.  This past week, I was lucky to be looking low and found the most brilliant, incredible Columbine flowers I have ever seen.  So, again I go and look them up.  For sure this is wild. And there IS a blue Columbine, but I am not seeing one that looks like the one I photographed AND it is native to the Rockies (Colorado-Arizona).

Anyway, until I can get these flowers accurately named, let's just call them Columbine, and make note that they were found in the forest.

 

 
This photo below I got from Wikipedia which shows the Wild Columbine (east coast variety), colors as defined by my books and internet.  Photo by Sage Ross.  Notice the reddish flower with the yellow inside.  My flowers are one solid color.

Spring 2010

 Rowena and I enjoyed many day long walks in the City Forest. New leash ordinances kept us on the rougher trails, but that wasn't a bad thing. We very rarely saw another dog (maybe 2 on the rough trails all summer) and rarely any people either. There was the occasional mountain biker. What we found was plentiful star flowers, blue bead lilies, bunch berries, lady's slippers and trillium to fill the whole forest. There were some flowers that were fairly new to my brain this year too. The raven family has grown into a shiney flock. My season ended with two ravens playing in the sky.


Bittersweet was the ending of our summer of forest walks. In July Rowena and I went to Saxl park for some photos and fun and Rosie was attacked quite viciously by another dog. This did scar her (emotionally) as it was just added to a couple of other dog charges and attacks from the year. It scarred me as well and made me a tad agoraphobic. We increase our activity and we get out there, we make ourselves vulnerable to things like that. After July our trips to the forest got less frequent and I feel like we were robbed of more photos of all the changes going on in the woods. By the time we returned, many things were going by and the woods was going silent of birds. The two ravens playing was the last I saw or heard of the ravens that year.

Here is a collection of some of the photos we took with the Canon this past season. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed taking these pictures.

May Flowers in bloom



Star Flowers  in bloom






Blue Bead Lily in bloom

Sheep's Laurel or Lamb Kill in bloom (one of my favorites)

Unknown flowers on a bush.

Indian Pipes- are actually not a fungus or mushroom like I always thought.  It is a flower! (The Heath  Family)

Fringed Polygala

Wild Columbine

Low Bush blueberries



High Bush blueberries





Painted Trillium

Touch-me-Nots

Pink Lady's slippers

Pearly Everlasting



Pink Strawberry blossom



Lady's Slipper with Bunch Berry blossoms

Leatherleaf?

Thistle with Bee



Pink Wild Lupine

Raven