Ground beans
This elegant plant can climb like a vine, but often looks like ground cover. Its most well-known common name (“hog peanut") is dismissive if not defamatory in origins; it was a food that Europeans ...
Overview of dams at Wadsworth
The Coginchaug River powered four mills in the Wadsworth area. An impoundment slightly behind Big Falls powered a cotton mill, but only some stonework and concrete water-structures remain; The Pist...
Powder mill falls
The Coginchaug cascades over three nineteenth-century dams as it flows through the park. (Big Falls itself was leveraged for waterpower, too.) This is the middle of the dams, and the easiest to mis...
With long wings like a cape...
This resembles a dobsonfly or an alderfly, but neither of those has these pale patches midway down the wing. My best guess is the Dark Fishfly (Nigronia serricornis or Nigronia fasciatus). If anyon...
Norway maple
This species of maple is most readily distinguished by the seed samaras which splay outward much more dramatically than those of any other (including sugar maple, which its leaf most resembles). I'...
Catalpa at the Coginchaug
Catalpa is prevalent elsewhere in town, and it turned up today for the first time in my exploration of the park: small trees growing on a part-time island in the river. Other catalpa trees are bloo...
Giant Laurel in bloom
This tree is the matriarch of the park, aging and a bit hobbled, but holding her dignity. This year's blossoming season has begun!
