a few photos from my trip to NC

It's been a good two weeks since I got back from my trip to North Carolina, and I still have a few photos that I'm looking to share despite that I don't have time right now to really do a full writeup like I usually do.

We're definitely getting into the later parts of the spring semester now and I'm starting to feel a bit of a time crunch. I'm finding that as a new graduate student I'm constantly having to juggle four rather sizeable projects: taking classes, teaching classes, doing research for my thesis, and working for the botanic gardens. I found it a bit difficult to prioritize it all at first: the teaching and botanic garden work is what pays for me to be here, but in the end its doing well with the coursework and putting together a good thesis that will allow me to stay here and receive a degree. The way I usually end up weighing it out is to make sure I can keep all the balls in the air but be absolutely certain that the coursework one never touches the ground... easier said than done though, especially in some of the courses based more on cumulative memorization where you're responsible for a large amount of material by the end. Ironically doing this blog over the winter actually helped me out a bit when taking Plant Taxonomy this semester as I had a little bit of a jump start when it came to flower parts and fruit types and such. Still a little ways to go though, the carpel concept still seems to be eluding me...

Bletilla striata

Anyway, spring has been weird here, as it has just about anywhere else. The hot temperatures pushed the early to mid spring Magnolias out about a month earlier than I was anticipating seeing them, and then the temperatures dropped a bit slowing everything down. Unfortunately, some of the mid-late spring Magnolias I was hoping to cover here seem to be some of those plants that got caught in the middle, getting close to their peak just about at the same time the cold snap hit. I've been keeping an eye on them, but there's still a few too many dead flowers on the plant at any given time to really get a good photo. Now with another heat wave who knows what will happen. I did however see the Magnolia tripetala and Calycanthus floridus blooming which I'm hoping to get a few photos of so maybe I'll find some time to talk about those in the future.

Anyway, in no particular order (well, in the order I took them), here are a few photos from my trip to the JC Raulston Arboretum and elsewhere in Raleigh, NC.

A Crepe Myrtle,  or Lagerstroemia. Despite that these are frequently dismissed by horticulturists as "Crap Myrtles' due to their ubiquitous use in the Southeastern US, I still consider myself a New Englander for the time being and think of this as a 5' max shrub, so seeing this champion at the JC Raulston Arboretum was quite impressive.

This is Equisetum. I think it's a real neat plant and am likely to blog about it again later so this won't be the last time you see this photo. This is actually from the North Carolina Botanic Gardens in Chapel Hill, NC.

Styrax, the plants I'm doing my M.S. Thesis on, were not in bloom, so this is an image of a close relative, Sinojackia rehderiana (Rehder Jacktree). A pretty nice tree I think, though it apparently has some disease issues.

Magnolia liliiflora, one of the parents of the Saucer Magnolia... now just need to get a picture of the other one...

A saw a ton of Redbuds (Cercis canadensis) on the drive down to NC, particularly in the parts of I 95 in Southern Virginia . The JC Raulston Arboretum has the national collection of Redbuds, but most of them were actually finishing their bloom by the time I was down there. Redbuds are also known for flowering prolifically on the stem, as this plant is (not sure if it is C. canadensis or another species)

An obligatory Magnolia photo. This is 'Coral Lake'

This is a stand of Loblolly Pines (Pinus taeda), at a State Park I drove through right before heading back up to NC. I like this photo as when looking from top to bottom, you can really see how much of a scar a paved road leaves on an ecosystem.

Well, those are my featured photos... figured I'd get them up before they're too far out of date. Hope to be talking about Magnolias and Calycanthus soon!