Grasses and palmettos under oaks.  Site of the mini bioblitz for this week’s Daily Species!

As you may have noticed, last week was pretty quiet around here and that was because I was severely limited in my activities by a nasty case of bronchitis.  Unfortunately, the illness hit me just as I was getting ready to go shoot a bunch more daily species, and I ran out of species in my archive!  Now, after a good dose of antibiotics, I am back to feeling good as new and getting back into the field.  It felt so good to get back outside as I spent three mornings in a row shooting and not only got caught up but am now back ahead of schedule as usual.  Thanks for bearing with me when it got quiet!

This week I am trying something a little different with the Daily Species.  On Sunday, as I was out looking for species to photograph, I came across a roadside scene that was quite striking due to the diversity of grasses and sedges that were blooming or going to seed.  I decided to do a very mini bioblitz and see how many different species of grasses I could photograph within about 20 yards of my car.  Now, since I am by no means a grass taxonomist, I only distinguished between very visibly different species.  I know there were more there, but I walked away with eight different specimens and through some help from folks on Facebook, they have all been identified!  The first was posted on Sunday, and they will run through next Monday.  Keep in mind that they all came from within about a 20 yard radius of the picture above.  Enjoy!

Montage of some of my favorite species featured so far.  Click to see it larger.

Today’s Blue Waterhyssop is Species #300 in the Daily Species series.  To celebrate, check out this composite with some of my favorite species featured so far.  I assembled this composite a few weeks ago as part of a grant application and decided to wait and share it today to celebrate this milestone.  Enjoy!

This montage shows five different species of Sunfish, all found in the same lake in downtown Orlando. (Click to view Larger)

For most of my childhood I lived on a small lake in downtown Orlando, and I spent a decent chunk of my free time in a canoe catching small fish.  As a kid, I called them all bream or bluegill, not knowing that there was actually a huge diversity of species in the sunfish family.  A couple weeks ago, I returned to those same fishing spots and caught a bunch of those same fish and started to identify the actual species with the help of charts from baitcasting reel.  Turns out, I had about 5 different species of sunfish in the lake and almost all of them were in a single location.  One of the great things about the Daily Species component of this project is that I am rediscovering the places I knew as a childhood and learning so many new things about the species I interacted with when I was growing up here.