Nature-based Games

My wife enjoys playing games - scrabble, scattergories, cribbage, etc - but we had only a handful of games that I liked to play with her. I was beginning to get tired of them, so I took to the internet. Were there new quality games coming out all the time and we just didn't know about them? The answer was yes. For the next few years we delved into the world of European-style board games, where we learned new terms like “worker placement” and “engine building”. But there are a few games that we really like that revolve around the natural world, and we learn a little along the way, whether we planned to or not.

The most science-based game we have is called Ecologies. It was originally designed by a biology professor to teach students about biomes, food webs, and ecosystems, but it has become a popular card game. The deck of cards contains 77 unique organisms throughout seven different biomes. Players build food webs using cards in their hand. Each web starts with a biome card and a producer, an organism that only needs sunlight. These become the foundation for the rest of the food web. Each card has a point value, and the first player to 12 points wins, but watch out - there are cards that your opponent can play to negatively affect your biomes. There are two subsequent decks that have their own unique biomes as well. Pictured is the swamp biome from the second deck, Ecologies: Bizarre Biomes.

We’re also backyard bird watchers, so when I read about Wingspan, I knew it was a game we had to try out. Designed by Elizabeth Hargrave, who has a love of birds and spreadsheets, each player takes turns gaining food to attract birds to their habitat. For example, a roll of the food dice, which is done through a birdhouse, may give me fish to feed a brown pelican to play in the wetland habitat. The birds can also lay eggs in varying types of nests which add points. Each of the more than 170 bird cards accurately reflects its diet, nesting habits, and habitat. After four rounds of play, the player who has the most points wins.

Elizabeth Hargrave’s second game, Mariposas, also has a nature theme. This time you are shepherding four generations of monarch butterflies from Mexico through eastern North America, as they stop to feed on flowers such as yarrow, tickseed, and coneflower, and stop to breed on milkweed plants. After three seasons (rounds) of play, the player with the most points wins.

Each game offers its own unique strategies and challenges when playing so each time we play, it’s a different experience and we learn something new. These games are a great way to spend some time with nature when we can’t actually be in nature. If you're interested in any of these games, Ecologies is probably the most straightforward with Mariposas being my second choice. Wingspan is a great game, but it can be challenging to play at first. If you want to learn how to play these games in a social setting, check out Game Night Charleston in Park Circle or Here Be Books and Games in Summerville or you can watch play-throughs of the games on YouTube.

Fringed Orchid

I’ve been wanting to search for native plants to photograph in the Francis Marion National Forest for a long time, but it has always seemed like a daunting task, with the combination of the immensity of the forest plus the heat and humidity of summer. But an opportunity arose this summer that I could not ignore.

A neighbor and a native plant enthusiast began posting photos of his trips into the forest on social media, including some stunning fringed orchids that I knew I had to photograph.

Since the end of summer was approaching, I needed to act fast if I wanted to photograph these plants while they were still blooming. After getting directions to the area of the forest where they were located, I set off early one morning in order to beat the heat. I was prepared for a long search in the woods, but I actually spotted them from the road as I slowly drove by.

It ended up being a relatively quick trip, but it worked out well, because it started to rain heavily within thirty minutes of being there. As an extra bonus, I didn’t even notice the praying mantis photobombing the orchid until I looked at the photos afterward! Can you find it?

Purple Knotweed

While waiting on the arrival of hurricane Florence in 2018, I decided it was the perfect time for an indoor photography project. While most of my subjects can be found close to my North Charleston home, I sought out the smallest flowering plants I could find in my own yard. I wanted to examine these overlooked plants more closely and what I found was a fascinating and beautiful world.

I didn’t have a name for it at the time, but purple knotweed grew all around the edges of my yard, anywhere grass didn’t grow. When it blooms in the late summer and fall, it’s just a sea of small purple flower spikes. Like most of the subjects of this show, I had no idea what I would find on closer inspection. I never imagined there would be so many flowers, their tight buds accented by even smaller hairs.

I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface while photographing this plant, and would like to take more photos of it during other stages of its development.

Ladies Tresses Orchid

I never paid much attention to the handful of flower spikes that popped up in my front yard every May, until I heard Amanda McNulty on SCETV radio talking about the Lady’s tresses orchids that would fill her yard every summer. Sometimes it takes an “aha moment” to identify a plant, and that’s what happened to me.

There are almost fifty species of lady’s tresses orchids in the genus Spiranthes, and they are worldwide. The ones in my yard usually bloom in May, near the beginning of mowing season, and since identifying them as orchids, I have been known to mow around them until they finish blooming.

The plant itself is hidden in the turf, but when the flower stalk emerges, they are very noticeable. They grow to more than a foot in some cases, and have a fairly thick stalk. The flowers are very small, with dozens of them forming a spiral around the stem, resembling ladies’ tresses. They are active for weeks, with the lower flowers blooming first while the uppermost ones are still forming.

Their blooms may be gone this year, but I look forward to May when I will see them again.

Kyllinga

All I knew about this weed was that it was called Kyllinga, and it seemed similar to nutsedge, but that was it. And when I googled it, most of the results are about how to kill it. It appears to be an unremarkable plant, but I was curious, so it was one of the “flowers” that I chose to photograph during my hurricane vacation. One of the reasons weeds are so hard to control is that they are so prolific. In the case of Kyllinga, each one of these spikelets is capable of producing a seed

After taking this photo, I just loved seeing the interplay of light and shadow among the spikelets as well as the stray seeds still left on the flower. When deciding which photos should be part of the show, this one was almost didn’t make the cut, but the more I look at it, the more I remember why I liked it.

Dodder

I was not aware of dodder until a couple of years ago, while driving along a road that I’ve used every day for the past fifteen years. One summer I noticed something orange and stringy covering plants along the side of the road. I was curious, but I always forgot to look it up. At least a year went by, and I finally figured out what it was. If you have never seen it before, imagine taking orange/yellow silly string and spraying it all over some plants. That’s what it looks like driving by, but what does it look like up close? Recently I was able to bring some home, including the plant it was attached to, in order to photograph for this show.

I was doing a little research and it was really interesting how it grows. It’s actually a parasitic plant - after seed germination, it finds another plant to twine around or attach to. It then inserts modified roots into the host plant, getting all of its nutrients and water from it. It even gives up growing in the ground once it attaches itself to a host plant.

I don’t know if I will see this plant again until next summer. At this time, there is no noticeable orange silly string in the spot where I took my samples from so I feel fortunate to have taken the photos I did.

Praying Mantis

Not too long ago, the strangest thing happened - I did a portrait shoot with a praying mantis. When there’s enough daylight in the evenings, I like to spend time in the yard, not necessarily doing work per se, but, maybe pulling a few weeds, turning the compost pile, or assessing future plans. I can be worse than a pet sometimes when it comes to tracking things into the house. In a little more than a week we found at least two praying mantises in the house, with the most recent one being on me.

I must have spent part of a Sunday morning in the yard, and returned to the sofa for lunch, when I noticed something on my shirt. It looked like a piece of straw or dead plant material that I must have picked up in the yard. But it wasn’t - it was a small praying mantis. And I knew what I had to do - photograph it!

I quickly set up an impromptu photo studio, throwing some black cloth over a chair and pulling out my camera. Since he was barely moving on my shirt, it seemed he would make the perfect subject. However, when I got him in the “studio”, he became more active and more challenging to photograph. After about a half dozen photographs, he was done with me, so I put him outside where he belonged but glad he made a pit stop along his journey so I could take his picture.

Monarch Butterfly Egg

Many people who lead busy lives never stop for a moment and watch the world around us. There is usually something interesting going on, but we just have to pay attention. One afternoon I took my camera to the the Park Circle butterfly garden, and I was captivated by a Monarch butterfly as she flew among the milkweed plants. Occasionally I would see her touch the tip of her abdomen to the plant, and I realized that each time she did that, she was laying an egg. I followed her around the garden as she started stage one of a new generation of Monarch butterflies (they can lay as many as 500 eggs over a two to five week period) until I got this photo. Since then, I have been able to photograph most of the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle with the exception of one emerging from a chrysalis so stay tuned for that one.

Milkweed with Fly

Most of these photos were taken indoors, where I could control the weather conditions - light, air current, and placement of the plant, or as much as the plant was willing to cooperate. Macro photography in the wild turns out to be more challenging than you think, but you never know what you may see. In this instance, I was still learning how to take photos like this, when I decided to give it one more try at the end of the day. I had read somewhere that shooting in the shade or late afternoon made it easier to get the black background.

Unlike other photos, this time I saw the fly foraging for dinner while I was focusing on the flower. I took several shots as the fly moved around, but none of them were quite as good as this one. You might say I got lucky!

Dollarweed

Under the right conditions, every plant flowers, but some are more famous - or infamous - for their leaves. Dollarweed is one of those plants. It gets its name from silver-dollar-shaped leaves and is the scourge of everyone who wants the perfect lawn. I see it pop up in my yard in areas that tend to stay wet, and in places where the grass has gotten a little thin.

While most of these plants in my yard were unknown to me until recently, dollarweed was one that I was familiar with. Though it wasn’t until I happened to be sitting on the lawn that I noticed it flowering and decided to take a closer look. The cluster of flowers were so tiny - this photo doesn’t even come close to doing it justice.

This is another plant I’d like to get to know better, taking more photos of, trying to get a better look at its elusive flowers.

Wild Garlic

There are more than 500 species of alliums, many of them are cultivated for their showy flowers, but there are many that grow naturally, like wild garlic. I begin noticing them in the fall - their foliage is thinner and more upright than the grass around it. It also stays green, a different shade than the grass, which is starting to go dormant at this time of year. When they bloom they form a golf ball-sized cluster of tiny flowers, which are packed so tightly that it’s hard to isolate just one. And they have much more color than one would realize close up with lime green ovaries and the bright yellow pollen.

They’re not just all show - in the past, these perennial herbs have been used for medicinal purposes. Native american tribes used wild garlic as treatments for asthma and high blood pressure, and as a digestive aid.

Chamberbitter

When you buy your first house, there are things you probably never thought about before - like weeds. Mostly you just want to get rid of them, but when I started studying to be a master gardener, I wanted to know what they were - before I killed them.

I remember chamberbitter from those early homeowner days, and I remember thinking it looked like a tiny mimosa tree. Apparently I’m not the only one, because one of its nicknames is mimosa weed. It usually wouldn’t get very big, but it was everywhere. Every so often, a few of them would go unnoticed, and they would grow large enough to produce seeds. In fact, they produce a lot of seeds, and they can do it as early as two weeks after their own germination.

Maybe that’s why they have another nickname - gripe weed. But there is an upside. In South America they are believed to be good for the treatment of kidney stones.

Root Beer Plant

I don’t see root beer plant, or Piper auritum, very often around Charleston, but it’s one that people should consider growing, if only for its culinary value. Known as Mexican pepperleaf to some, it has an anise flavor, and has a variety of uses. It can be used as a wrap for curing cheese, or while cooking meat or fish. It is sometimes added to mole sauce, and it can even be made into a liquor!

The white cylindrical stalks are actually flowers that bloom in the summer. They look fairly smooth, but on closer inspection, they actually have a rough texture. And until you notice a few leftover grains of pollen do you realize every one of those bumps is a flower!

Also known as hoja santa, or sacred leaf, the name alludes to a Mexican legend that the Virgin Mary dried the young Messiah’s diapers on its branches. While it’s native to Mexico and Central America, it does well here, dying back in the winter. I’ve had this mystery plant in my yard for almost a decade, and it wasn’t until now that I found out how interesting it is.

Bahiagrass

I remember Bahiagrass from my childhood. In the summer when you waited too long to cut the grass, or even when you didn’t, there they would be - the Y-shaped seed heads sticking up above the lawn. I considered them a scourge, until I looked closer.

Bahiagrass is native to South America, and was introduced into the United States in Florida, where it was used as a forage crop, and it primarily grows in the southeast. Because it is aggressive and drought-tolerant, SC Department of Transportation began using it as erosion control along highways and on slopes, which lead to one of its nicknames, and what my grandmother calls it, “highway grass”.

While it is planted for forage, I don’t know anyone who intentionally grows it in their yard. I think it just shows up, by wind, runoff, or a landscaper’s mower. I have a yard full, and it’s fine most of the year, but in June when it starts growing, I have to mow twice a week just to manage it.

I continue to loathe cutting it in the summer, but maybe I’ll remember how interesting and beautiful it looks up close.