Devil's Hollow

We went for a stroll at Devil's Hollow in Sewickley with folks from the Fern Hollow Nature Center. It was part of one of their excellent classes for homeschoolers, on the topic of wildflowers. Devil's Hollow is near their Nature Education Center. The exercise they were conducting was to identify flowers using Newcomb's Wildflower Guide. That is certainly a worthy goal, because the book identifies flowers based on simple observations, a great exercise for kids. We didn't make much progress down the trail, but we did see some lovely flowers. 

Yellow violet.

I personally chose not to get this particular book, but I know it has its fervent admirers. I have "A Guide to Common Pennsylvania Wildflowers" by Carol A. Sanderson, which is organized strangely by bloom time and includes only enough flowers to be minimally useful; "Wildflowers of Pennsylvania" by Mary Joy Haywood and Phyllis Testal Monk, which is organized by plant family but does not list these families in the table of contents, forcing me to flip through all of it nearly every time; and "The Plants of Pennsylvania: An Illustrated Manuel" by Ann Fowler Rhoads and Timothy A. Block, a hefty tome which leaves nothing out, but is awkward for non-botanists to use. No wildflower guide is perfect... sigh...

Soon after we arrived, a kid pointed out a spider on a flower excitedly to another kid. I started looking for it myself, hoping to see if it was a jumping spider, an orb weaver, or maybe even one of those cool spiders that hide inside flowers hoping to ambush pollinating insects. But instead the second kid spotted it quickly and began stomping on it! I was pretty horrified. I thought this child, who looked to be about 10, was much too old to behave like that. I've honestly never seen any kid killing bugs on a nature walk. As a mom, I find it wicked awkward to correct other people's kids, so I chose to keep it zipped. But that surely wasn't an ideal way to handle it... I wish I could have thought of something brilliant and funny to say in that moment that would have pointed out how pointlessly destructive that was without coming off like a jerk. Offending people never helps get any legitimate point across.

Wild blue phlox.

We moved here from a homeschooling community in which nature education is highly prioritized. But the down side to a high regard for nature was the persistent attitude in the larger community that nature is so precious and fragile that kids shouldn't touch it. I have been yelled at many, many times for  allowing my son to wade in a public park. An amphibian egg mass survey we were doing together at a nature park was a real drag, because although we were wearing florescent vests and carrying clipboards, which made us look kind of official, we were always reported to park rangers for wading, a requirement for the job. At a super popular public garden, a friend's daughter was screamed at for (seriously!) just touching a rhododendron bush. At a river, my son was severely scolded for skipping rocks, because "that might hurt macroinvertebrates!" (Yeah, I'm not sure how that lady walks across a yard with bugs in it without a massive guilt attack...) Etc., etc. Believe me, not allowing kids to get up close and personal with nature is not going to endear it to them. You can't love what you don't know. And what you don't love, your'e definitely not going to fight to protect. But it's pretty hard to argue that allowing kids to deliberately kill things in a nature park for the heck of it, is good for anything. 

Wild geranium.

White violet.

Jack in the pulpit.

May flower.

American giant millipede.

Red velvet mite.

Stonecrop.

Mayfly larva.

Virginia waterleaf.

Virginia waterleaf.

Japanese honeysuckle.

Apheloria virginiensis. Maybe. Definitely a type of cyanide millipede. So don't eat them, or touch your eyes after holding them.  Otherwise they are harmless vegetarians.