A fenny day (original post 7/8/12)

The last Botany Bender on 7/1 took me and my stalwart companions, Elizabeth and Rebecca, up to a couple of Illinois Nature Preserves in McHenry County--Lake-in-the-Hills Fen and Oakwood Hills Fen.  We have decided prairies are scratched from the list of contenders for the time being, since they're so sad and dry right now.  Since fens are spring fed, they're still reasonably damp and not stressed by all the drought, so they're the best places to be right now...especially on blistering hot days, when you can bend down and cool your palms in the icy water.  More than once during the trip, the desire to throw oneself face-first in the shallow streams was mentioned.

We were fortunate to run into a Plants of Concern monitoring group at LITHF, who trusted we were not poachers and showed us around the exposed limestone seep where they were monitoring the Tofieldia glutinosa:

Other bad-ass inhabitants of the fen included the state-endangered tufted bulrush, Scirpus cespitosum...

...and the state-threatened slender bog arrow grass, Triglochin palustris:

The hill prairie yielded one lonely flowering Hill's thistle (state-threatened):

We then headed over to Oakwood Hills Fen about 15 minutes away, an Illinois Nature Preserve that I'd never heard anything about.  It was another pristine alkaline fen with sparkly clear water, perky clumps of tufted hair grass, and an unabashed profusion of Lysimachia quadriflora:

One of its listed inhabitants was the northern bog orchid, Habenaria hyperborea, and we finally found an understated little population of 4 plants perched above the waterline:

One of the red-headed stepchildren of the Habenaria genus, evidently.  And then, as we were leaving, Elizabeth found this dapper little chap enjoying the cool spring in the shade: