Tuesday, August 1, 2023

Minnesota state flower: Showy Lady's Slipper in the bog swamp forest

 https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/small/public/2015-10/slipper.jpg?itok=AFIF_G6h

 I saw this on "my" land but I could not believe it was actually what I suspected it was!!

It's the State Flower!

 This flower has a long life span; some may be 100 years old.

The lady's slipper is uncommon in Minnesota. Population can be hurt by wetland drainage, road construction, tree cuttings, and illegal picking and uprooting.

Wow - last night I finally did the Natural Resource Inventory GIS analysis of "my" land - and this is the results:

 Drainage Index of 69

 The higher the DI, the more water the soil can supply to plants

In the LLWW Hydrogeomorphic classification system of Tiner (2003) many Lakebeds fit loosely into the Terrene Flat/Slope groundwater-dominated throughflow category.  Bogs are Terrene Flat Outflow wetlands because they only receive water from meteoric [rain/snow] sources, but they recharge adjacent fens, which are contiguous with the bog over the larger lakebed landform

 Wetland occurs on a nearly level landform, is not significantly influenced by
flooding from a stream, river or flow-through ditch and has predominately mineral
soils


PEM1DFreshwater Emergent Wetland
TEFLVRTerrene Flat VerticalSeasonally Flooded/Saturated Emergent Wetland

 soil productivity rating of 9 out of 100 with 0 being the worst

https://files.dnr.state.mn.us/assistance/nrplanning/bigpicture/cwcs/habitats/14.pdf 

 Of special concern is the Veery bird with probably 1 to 10 breeding pairs per 100 acres in that area. I have a breeding pair of Veery I think that returns - so pretty big deal! about 20 bird species of concern and 2 mammals....

No comments:

Post a Comment