California Woods

March has decided to come in like a lamb here in Cincinnati. After last month's bitter cold, snow, ice and slush, today's sixty degrees felt heavenly. I grabbed my camera and binoculars and headed out to California Woods to hike the trails. I was hoping to catch some early emerging wildflowers but there were none that I saw. I did spot my first Turkey Vulture of the year though. Of course, some of them don't migrate all that far south in the winter; they just mosey down to Kentucky or Tennessee for a couple of months before heading back this way.

The park is collecting maple sap for syrup and many of the trees near the nature center had buckets attached. One was overflowing so I helped myself to a few drops of the faintly sweet sap. It helped convince me that spring is truly on its way.


There was a nice stand of horsetails in the park and I hunkered down to get a few snaps of them. They get the name horsetail from the feathery fronds that sprout up later in the year. Horsetails are primitive plants, reproducing from spores or rhizomes and they have been around since the reign of the dinosaurs. The stalks contain crystals of silica and were at one time used for polishing and scrubbing pewter ware; their other common name is scouring rush. They prefer wet soil and I found these growing along the flood plain of the Lick Creek.