06/02/2011 - Robinson Bayou Sunrise Paddle

Header image of a pickerelweed flower.

1) Sunrise on Robinson Bayou.

2) Eerie view looking out from a box culvert under Dauphin Island Parkway.

3) Marsh-pink or Coastal Plain Sabatia (Sabatia calycina).

4) Arrowhead flowers (Sagittaria).

5) I don't know if it is the heat or what, but every time the kayak brushed up against leaves or stumps, the kayak got coated with ants. Ants were everywhere on today's paddle.

6) I stuck the camera lens as close to the fly as possible and it didn't move. It appears to be an Alabama long-legged fly (Condylostylus)

7) Strange things are going on with some of the bull-tongue arrowhead leaves. Got Milk?

8) See if you can follow this interesting maze where an insect started eating in a leaf until it was big enough to break out of the leaf and either crawl or fly away.

9) Thank you Rebecca and Sean for your recent wedding trash in Dog River. 

10) Are snails capable of having a quickie?

11) It is pretty easy to identify lanceleaf or bull-tongue arrowhead plants, but the taller plants with grass like blades without flowers are more difficult to identify. That might be a problem if you are trying to find cattails because of their edibility.

12) In this photo are two similar grassy blade looking plants with different flowers. The tall flower spikes are Saw Grass (Cladium jamaicense) and the smaller dark spikes are cattails (Typha latifolia).

13) The difference between Saw Grass and Cattails is the leaves of Cattails come together at the base as in this photo, whereas, with Saw Grass, the leaves are not confined to the base and they continue up the main flowering stem.

14) If the flower wasn't there, the easiest way to tell the difference between Saw Grass and Cattails is by the blades. In these cross sections, Saw Grass is on the left and it is sharply angled about 90 degrees on the inside, and the blade is relatively hard. They call it Saw Grass because if you run your finger along the edges of the blade, tiny barbs make it feel like a saw whereas the cattail blade is smooth. The spongier and softer Cattail blade cross section is the one on the right - it is thicker in the center and gently curved instead of sharp angled.