
Balance
Balance acting in nature and life. Uwharrie National Forest, NC. All images © Andy R. Bobyarchick
Balance acting in nature and life. Uwharrie National Forest, NC. All images © Andy R. Bobyarchick
This is Moccasin Creek in Uwharrie National Forest, North Carolina after an extended period of rainfall. At least three sediment trails are visible. The light orange and tan in the thalweg of the stream is the result of sediment influx upstream some distance. (The stream is flowing away from you.) …
Water ripples are forming in very shallow water of a Piedmont stream as it flows over orange bedrock. The rock is a metamorphosed argillite (fine-grained sedimentary rock) whose present color is the result of weathering in an oxygen-rich environment. Algae has grown preferentially in planar, nearly vertical fractures in the rock called joints.
The stream is in Uwharrie National Forest, North Carolina.
Image © Andy R. Bobyarchick.
This fungus Laetiporus cincinnatus is one of the varieties of “the chicken mushroom” (or “chicken of the woods”), so-called because of its stringy flesh and the perception by some fungus eaters of a chicken-like taste. This species often grows at the base of a live oak tree and sometimes separately but …
These are images of mushrooms from the Uwharrie National Forest in Montgomery County, North Carolina. The fungi are from the genus Amanita (Basidiomycetes > Agaricales > Amanitaceae). The bulbous stem base and other features put these in Amanita section Lepidella. I have not attempted to determine a species. These are relatively young. When mature, they will have a characteristic mushroom shape with gills.
The Amanita are very common in North Carolina. Some are edible but some are also deadly, and the variants are hard to identify. The caps of these specimens have not opened yet. Early on, they may look like puffballs, but a cross-section (see one of the images below) will show the developing mushroom shape. These particular mushrooms have swollen, bulbous stem bases that are conjoined. The stem and base are somewhat shaggy. The caps are covered by dense warts. These species do not discolor when bruised (some Amanita do), have a mild scent, and a dense flesh like bread dough.
All of the images you see here are from a relatively small area under a hardwood, mainly oak, cover and in very rocky soil. As usual, I discovered these specimens on the way to doing something else, in this case geologic mapping but I expected to see many fungi because it was June, peak season, and not long after heavy rain. Enjoy the mini-tour.
All images ©Andy R. Bobyarchick.
Shallow water corrugates as it flows over the curved surface of Brown Mountain granite in Wilson Creek, North Carolina. Crests in the flow act like lenses creating many suns between many vales.
Flat Creek southeasterly through Lancaster County, South Carolina. The stream feeds into Lynches River, that farther southeast joins the Great Pee Dee River. The Pee Dee joins the Waccama River at Georgetown on the SC Atlantic Coast.
Flat Creek carries a heavy load of sediment. Where this image was made, the stream crosses the Pageland granite, a pluton that is about 300 million years old. The granite is coarse-grained and sheds considerable quartz and feldspar grains as it weathers and erodes.
This image is a 180° panorama around a meander bend in Flat Creek. Lower water velocity on the inside of the meander causes the coarser sediment load to drop out to form a sandy point bar. The near bank of the river is being undercut by erosion on the outside of the meander where water velocity is greater. In time, the stream channel will migrate toward this cut bank.
It’s difficult to see in the shadows, but in the lower left corner of the photograph a tributary trickles into the main channel, and there are abundant beaver tracks there. Beavers use the tributary mouth as a slide.
In the lower right corner of the photograph you can see a boulder of Pageland granite. It’s rounded shape is characteristic of spheroidal weathering of a larger mass of granite bedrock.
Not far to the southeast, Flat Creek crosses from Piedmont igneous and metamorphic rocks into sedimentary rocks of the Sandhills.
This image was made late on a Spring afternoon under a brilliant blue sky reflecting off the water’s surface and under the long shadows of hardwood trees yet to put out theire leaves.
This image is ©Andy R. Bobyarchick
High Rock Lake is one of several impoundments on the Yadkin-Pee Dee river system in the North Carolina Piedmont. Flat Swamp Creek is, or was, a tributary to the Pee Dee River. After the High Rock reservoir filled Flat Swamp Creek became a narrow, northeast-trending arm to the larger lake. …
Ripples are periodic waveforms throughout the natural environment. These subaqueous asymmetrical wave ripples in sand under the Pee Dee River in North Carolina are created by oscillatory wave motions normal or slightly oblique to the shoreline.