Not many days left to share from my van trip! Got two more hikes I did before my last 2 national parks! Had to rush home for some camping trips and to get ready for the fire season! Exploring some more lakes as the Upper Peninsula is just jam-packed with them! The first lake was Buck Lake, and the second was Star Lake, the latter being my favorite of the two! I know I’ve said this before, but being back in the coniferous forests is so nice! They will always have my heart! These lakes had marshlands with some awesome new plants to explore, including ferns and club mosses. I also spent some time learning about trees! Got some awesome photos of the water too. Sooooo jealous of how many pretty lakes are just sprinkled over the Upper Peninsula.
My plant focus is the interrupted club-moss ( Lycopodium annotinum), a clubmoss in the…you guessed it, clubmoss family Lycopodiaceae. (Side note: I’m finding a lot of clubmosses look very similar, and it could be a similar clubmoss.) Clubmosses are cool because, like ferns, they still reproduce via spores! These plants will produce cones at the tops of their stalks that contain spores, which will be blown by the wind and help the plant reproduce. Spores have been used to treat rickets and to make “fly gunpowder,” a highly flammable aerosol used in early flash photography and even movie effects.
See you around!
Cheers 🍻
The Fools Journeys 
Leave a comment