Monocacy River Natural Resource Management Area

You won't often see me write negatively about a place set aside to preserve nature. This place, though, didn't seem to offer a whole lot. Don't misunderstand; I'm glad it exists - every pocket of wildlife and natural resource management is valuable. However, purely as a place to go spend an afternoon I wouldn't recommend it - especially not with the plethora of other options available to residents and visitors of this area. The Monocacy River Natural Resource Management Area caught my eye on a bike ride this Saturday, and, looking for something to do early Sunday afternoon, Laurel and I packed up Franklin and set off to check it out.


There is more to the place than we witnessed; perhaps a second visit beginning from the other access point is in order. However, from where we started there wasn't much. In the parking lot off of Maryland 28 were a couple of historical signs and some posted rules (no alcohol, closed at dark, etc). What there wasn't was any sort of information about the trail systems or what facilities it might possess. No maps or handy wildlife guides, either. The immediate area consisted of one rocky trial that appeared to lead to the river bank 100 feet or so away, and one muddy trail disappearing into the woods. Now, to a mycologist like myself that muddy trail looked promising, but it turned out not to offer much even in that department. As Laurel put it, "the two main features of this place seem to be mud and poison ivy." Other than the mushrooms shown below, the only specimens I saw were uninteresting or rotten.

I think these mushrooms belong to the genus Marasmius, but are possibly Mycena. I'm basing this upon the gracile stem that turns almost woody where it connects with the substrate, which in this case was a stick under leaf litter.

Now, I do have to admit that there was some variety in the wildlife we spotted, including a broad range of wildflowers and other ground-covering plants (mayapple, sorrel, ground ivy, etc). In my efforts to photograph some butterflies (which mostly failed) I stumbled across an eastern box turtle. In addition to the butterflies, other insect life was teeming - which was interesting, ticks notwithstanding. Yet the trails themselves were poorly maintained and unmarked. At times we were wading through wet, sticky, deep mud with no provision for going around. We did enjoy a few very pleasant moments where the trail crossed a streambed, but the water was high enough (and the surroundings disappointing enough) that we opted to turn around rather than get wet. I really have little else to say about the day, so I will get on with the pictures.

Daisy fleabane (Erigeron strigosis) was growing quite thickly at the beginning of the trail.

The painted lady (Vanessa cardui) is what the Audubon guide calls "perhaps the most widely distributed butterfly in the world."

What's up with this turtle's beak?  I don't know, but that white glob doesn't look normal.

I thought maybe I could name this millipede using online resources...but the other 9,999 species had something to say about that.

I did learn something from this hike, at least. I had identified this plant as lyre-leaved sage in my Naturalism on Speed challenge (I saw it every day, and I went with sage instead of ivy because it was upright). The leaf shape, and the sheer volume of it, corrected me. This flower is, in fact, ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea). This is why I was glad that I got well over the goal of 550 species.