Sunday, March 6, 2011

Ice on the Trees Part 2

I took the pictures of the power plants from a boat launching dock at the end of the Saginaw River. As I was looking around, I noticed how the trees had more of a layer of ice on them, so I decided to take some pictures.

I kind of liked this shot. It was sort of what I was looking for. If you look at the branch close enough, you can see a thin layer of ice on it.

I'm told that these are Oriental Bittersweet which is an invasive species to Michigan. Looking at the wikipedia entry, it looks like this was introduced to control soil erosion along roadsides. It looks very similar to the American Bittersweet and it hybridizes pretty easily with it. The plants are poisonous. But it still looks nice.

This is probably a better example of what I was going after. The fence behind this provides a contrast sort for the ice so that you can see it much better.

I think this one does it even better, the ice really stands out against the grey sky.

I liked this one because the drops seemed to freeze right as they were falling off.

1 comment:

Ben Connor Barrie said...

The second plant is Celastrus orbiculatus (Oriential bittresweet). It is closely related to the native celastrus scandens (American bittresweet). C. orbiculatus is a vicious invasive in Michigan.