Late summer in the Morton Arboretum

[jtb1951]

DW and I went for a long walk through the Morton Arboretum this weekend, enjoying the sunny (albeit hot!) weather, and checking out the late summer foliage, especially the restored tallgrass prairie (which used to cover most of Illinois, before it was all dug up for farming) which is (literally) at the height of its summer growth (taller tham me:)!). Hope you enjoy!

John.

[Strawberry Curls]

John, these photos are amazing. You have such a wonderful eye for composition. Thanks for sharing. --Alice

[tangential1]

Awesome pix John!:)

Do you happen to know what those purple berries on the red vine are? I've never seen anything like that before.

[Pat Floyd]

Thank you, John, for the beautiful photos. Are the people in the pictures you and your wife?

Tangential 1, John can correct me if I'm wrong. The berries are poke berries on pokeweed, not found in the West. The berries are on a long twig, not a vine. In the spring, the tender leaves of this plant make a mild-tasting cooked green called poke salet. I have never had it raw. My mother told me that when she was a child, she and her friends made ink from poke berries.

[jtb1951]

Thank you, John, for the beautiful photos. Are the people in the pictures you and your wife?

They are indeed! We took some photos with ourselves inserted for scale because I had promised a photo of full grown prairiegrass for one of our daughters East Coast friends, and indeed several of the grass types are considerably taller than me (6'1")!

Do you happen to know what those purple berries on the red vine are? I've never seen anything like that before.

Hi, Erin, and thanks for the kudos! Pat is right on; that is indeed pokeweed with pokeberries, and the tender leaves are often used in southern cuisine to make pokesalet,sallit,salad(those of us of a certain age remember the song "Poke Salad Annie!), which is apparently a little tricky because the leaves contain a toxin that has to be properly boiled out for safe eating!
Thanks Pat for the info!!

John.

[tangential1]

Thanks for the info! That's really neat; I had no idea!

I feel I really should try to get out to the midwest and east coast at some point; you all have some really cool nature to see.

[Pat Floyd]

John,
I'm especially glad to see pictures of you and your wife, to put faces with words. And for the first time I've gotten a satisfying picture of what tallgrass prairie is like. My imagination hadn't matched the reality. Thank you.
Pat

[Bachi]

Very nice pic's John thanks, again.