Sassafras is a beautiful tree that is often overlooked in the forest. With winter quickly approaching, colors begin to fade within the forest. Sassafras offers beautiful green twigs, red furrowed bark, and large flower buds. It also grows in unique ways from tall and straight to many branching trunks. When you go hiking along many […]
Trails from the Bent Twig Trail: The Cycle Continues
They’re back! The spicebush butterflies have been laying their eggs on the spicebush, Lindera benzoin and sassafras trees Sassafras albidum on the Bent Twig Trail and elsewhere. Some of those eggs have hatched into small caterpillars. Nearly a year ago, I blogged about discovering these along this trail, so it seems fitting to find them again as […]
Tales from the Bent Twig Trail: Learning to See
Learning to see involves knowing how and where to look. It requires developing a mental template, or the term I prefer, a searching image. I started to understand this concept decades ago while trying to find shark teeth on an island off the Georgia coast. Although this particular beach was known to have shark teeth […]
Tales from the Bent Twig Trail
Say the title of this blog three times and see if you don’t end up sounding like Tweety Bird! All joking aside, the Bent Twig Loop winds through a patch of woodlands just outside my office in the Bernheim Education Center. At least once a week I walk this trail attentive to the gifts, […]