White Oak Sinks

I finally went to a place in the Park called White Oak Sinks.  It was really cool!  Saw lots of great flowers, a few caves (entrances only) and a waterfall.

Wild Geranium, Geranium maculatum.

Here is a millipede, Sigmoria sp.  These milipedes smell like cherries when they you pick them up.  They curl up into a call and secrete a substance also found in cherries.  I was trying to find out exactly what it was
and I found several different answers.  Cyanic Acid?

Here is the same millipede when it isn't freaked out!

This rock has some of my favorite plants on it!  Stone crop, Sedum ternatum, is in bloom.  There are also two types of ferns: Walking Fern, Asplenium rhizophyllum, is the long skinny one that doesn't really look like a fern.  The second fern, I am tempted to call a Polypody Fern, Polypody sp., but now that I have a field guide in front of me, I am thinking it might be Resurrection  Fern, Pleopeltis polypodioides.  Next time I go out there I'll have to bring the fern book and take a closer look.

Here is a closer look at Stonecrop, Sedum ternatum.  it is very succulent and is usually found growing on rocks.

Sorry, I don't know what kind of snail this is...just a cute one!

Saw lots of Wild Geranium, Geranium maculatum.

More Wild Geranium, Geranium maculatum.

One of the many pathways leading to White Oak Sinks.

Here is another millipede, but this one does not smell like cherries.  Millipedes are great.  I can pick them up and don't have to worry about getting bitten.  Unlike centipedes which are poisonous carnivores, millipedes eat decaying leaves and help turn leaf litter into soil.  On each segment, they have two legs, where as centipedes only have one.

This was interesting.  I have heard that violets hybridize and I think this is what has happened here.  At first glance I thought it was Common Blue Violet, Viola sororia, but it may have hybridized with something else.