The 2008 Blomquist Foray was held at Hungry Mother State Park, Virginia, during the weekend of April 4th to April 6th.
Hungry Mother State Park is in southwest Virginia in the area of Grayson Highlands, Mount Rogers, Clinch Mountain, and Jefferson National Forest. See http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/state_parks/hem.shtml.
Early arriving participants explored the vicinity of Hemlock Havens Conference Center on Friday afternoon. Saturday field trips headed to Comers Creek Trail area near the town of Troutdale (N36.7116° W81.4740°), and to Whitetop Mt. in the Mount Rogers National Recreational Area (N36.6381° W 81.6056°). We spent Sunday morning exploring limestone outcrops in the Raven Cliff Horse Camp area (N36.7726° W81.1511°) in Wythe County.
On Saturday evening, Brendan Hodkinson gave an informal talk on the lichen flora of Virginia; Gary Perlmutter talked about his recent Mason Farm (Chapel Hill, NC) lichen inventory, and Blanka Shaw introduced the Duke University Herbarium online databases.
Please send your lichen data to Brendan, and your bryophyte records to Blanka, so that we can provide a summary to the Jefferson National Forest botanists.
Thanks to everybody for a great meeting, Brendan & Sarah Hodkinson for organization, and Fred Huber for enabling us to collect!
Links to the Images from the Foray: Sarah, Blanka&Rich.
B. Shaw, April 30, 2008
DUKE COLLECTIONS | Vascular Plants | Algae | Bryophytes | Fungi | Lichens