Beak Grass on the Ausable River

This past week I made a brief stop to the Ausable River near Arkona.  I was hoping to find more Harbinger-of-spring on some floodplain areas I had scoped out.  As time was limited to about 45 minutes I was only able to walk a short section of the river but any time spent on the Ausable can turn up some interesting finds.

ATV ruts are good for something...Wood Frog breeding.  Just kidding, ATV ruts are good for nothing.  I found this egg mass along with about 10 others in a rut on the trail.  Wood Frogs are early breeding amphibians (for this part of North America) along with Spring Peepers, Western Chorus Frogs and a number of salamander species.

 
Some sections of the slopes are near monocultures of Chinquapin Oak (Quercus mulenbergii).  The crown branching of this species take on a 'wavy' form - the older the tree the more pronounced. Some of the older trees have developed impressive canopies with lateral branching that runs parallel to the ground.

Aside from a couple of Sandhill Cranes that flew over, it was pretty quiet for wildlife down in the valley.  A few Muskrat tracks in the mud here and there.

The one rarity that I visit from time to time is a fairly healthy population of Beak Grass (Diarrhena obovata).  I was first introduced to this species at this location by Tony Reznicek in 2012.  Tony said something that day to the tune of "If you wanted to find the next mega rare plant, I'd look here in the Ausable River valley".  It was found on the Ausable in 1988 by Dorothy Tiedje and is also known from a spot or two on the Thames and Sydenham.  You'd think that as a floodplain plant this species could be fair game anywhere downstream between Arkona and the Pinery.    Beak Grass is very rare in Ontario, listed as S1 (usually 5 or fewer occurrences in the province).  I would estimate that I saw about 0.75ha of it growing in patches  on the banks of the river; it's doing well where it is actually found!

A shot of the "obovate beaks", which kind of stick out from the culm (stem) at sharp angles like an Elm bud does.  I'm looking forward to revisiting this spot again this year!