After work today, I decided to take the dogs on some trails near my house that follow along the Middle Patuxent River. I like these trails because they’re not paved, and once you get on them, you rarely see anyone else along the way. You can still hear some of the traffic from the major highways surrounding the area, but for the most part, you have the illusion that you’re lost in nature.

Today, I was fortunate to see 6-7 deer out on the trails. They didn’t stick around long enough for me to take their picture, but they are quite magnificent creatures, especially the males with their large antlers. I’m not sure what the true rating of cleanliness for this river is, but I’m often encouraged when I see several frogs, water bugs, and freshwater asiatic clams in the riverbed. Of course, the clams themselves are introduced, but that’s for someone else to worry about.

The aquatic vegetation is not very rich in this waterway. I suspect that is due to a combination of too much shade, and too little still water to allow plants to get rooted. I have spotted what appears to be a species of Polygonum, both in the water and along the banks, but little else of interest. Nevertheless, it really is a beautiful river that I enjoy visiting. I hope you enjoy the pictures as well.

This past weekend, Aaron from GWAPA and I decided to go on a small collecting trip at a reservoir about 30 minutes away. It was a warm, humid day, but we braved the heat and found some really interesting stuff. Like my Florida trip, the water levels were well below their normal levels, exposing most of the aquatic foliage to the air and sunlight. Most of the species that we found had to be able to grow emersed from the water. A striking example is this field of emersed Rotala ramosior.

One of the few exceptions was this little gem that we found in amongst a huge patch of Hydrilla. We believe it’s some form of native Sagittaria or Vallisneria. None of the leaves that we found were much longer than 4-5 inches, so we have high hopes that we’ll experience the same thing in our tanks. The crinkled, or slightly spiraling leafs could have a very nice mid-ground potential is they stay that size.

There was no shortage of Polygonum available around this reservoir. We found at least two distinct species, although I didn’t take any as I don’t find many of this species appealing in an aquascape. As you can see, there was lots of nice driftwood available too, but we didn’t take any of that either. In fact, the few pieces that we were interested in were tree stumps where the water had carved out amazing crevices throughout the root system. Unfortunately, those roots were still very much planted in the ground!

Below is just another example of where we were finding plants. In among a ton of tiny toads, there was more Ludwigia palustris than anyone would ever want. Rotala ramosior was also mixed in with other non-aquatic plants.

After the last weekend’s GWAPA meeting, a few of us headed out to a drainage ditch, where there were supposedly a few eriocaulon plants to be found. We wound our way through some of the more rural parts surrounding Leesburg, VA, until we finally came to this run-off ditch, pictured below.

Sure enough, we found a number of plants there resembling an eriocaulon species. So, we dug one or two out to try in our tanks. I was currently without tank space to dedicate to this, so I left the task up to a few other GWAPA members. Pictured below is a bad picture of what we pulled out. Upon further inspection, it seems unclear whether this actually is one of the rare eriocaulon decangulare species found in Virginia, or whether it’s just an eleocharis species. If anyone has any insight, please speak up.