Appalachia

We left the coastal plain of North Carolina on May 12, visiting Carver Creek State Park (SP) in the Piedmont the next day. Here we successfully searched for Nestronia umbellula, a new genus for us, and a hemiparasitic shrub in family Santalaceae, which includes mistletoes. A hemiparasite derives some nutrients by parasitizing other plants, often […]

Ghana

We’ve just returned from  a three-week trip to Ghana in West Africa, on a birding tour with Field Guides, Inc. Ghana is currently probably the best country to visit in West Africa for natural history pursuits. This was only our second trip to Africa, the first being four weeks in Kenya in 2006. The only […]

A Brief Prelude

Eileen and I were originally scheduled to leave El Paso and start a 9-month road trip in mid-January but we both experienced a string of medical issues that prevented us from departing until late February. This left us less than four weeks before we were scheduled to fly to Ghana in West Africa for a […]

Monsoonal Madness

We left northern New Mexico on August 4, heading towards the borderlands to look for plants dependent on monsoonal rains. On the way, we drove through Petrified Forest National Park to look for Parryella filifolia, a pea family shrub, which we easily located. Trees and shrubs can usually be identified even if not flowering or […]