THE LOST FORTY

It was very cold yesterday, not as cold as today where our thermometer registers only 10 below, but cold nonetheless at about 8 above zero.  Still it was sunny and lovely, so we decided to take a hike.

At least once per year, especially in the winter, I want to take a hike to the 'Lost Forty' in order to see the spread of 'Princess Pines'.  Princess Pine is the common name for this beautiful, tiny, pine-tree-looking plant.  They are somewhat rare and in no other place that we have hiked have we seen them.

They are really this brilliant a green and in some spots this prolific, as well.

"Common Name: Club Moss, Running pine, Staghorn club moss, Wolf claw club moss, Ground pine, Running moss, Princess pine - The common name describes the club-like appendages at the end of a long stalk that extends upward from the moss-like basal plant, the overall effect is a  moss with clubs.

Scientific Name:  Lycopodium clavatum  - The generic name is from the Greek words  lukos meaning wolf and podos meaning foot; the tips of the branches are reminiscent of a wolf  paw.   The specific name is from the Latin clava meaning club which accentuates the club-like extensions.

Club mosses are the vestigial relict of the earliest  land plants which evolved in the Devonian Period  about 395 million years ago. Members of this group of plants included  tree lycopods of the extinct genus Lepidodendron that were up to 100 feet in height whose deposition and decay during the Carboniferous Period engendered the world's major coal fields. The club moss is not a moss since it is vascular; mosses are  non-vascular bryophytes. Botanically, vascular refers to the evolution of  specialized xylem and phloem cells that provide for the fluid transfer necessary for nutrient provisioning and sufficient for complex structure.  Club mosses are often referred to in the vernacular literature as lycophytes or lycopsids in reference to earlier taxonomies that  placed them in the divisions Lycophyta and Lycopsida, now in desuetude due to the revelations of DNA associations. Club mosses are now generally grouped in a separate class,  Lycopodiopsida.

The life cycle of the club mosses, like that of the ferns, is a combination of a spore producing phase (sporophyte) and a sexual phase (gametophyte), an arrangement that appears to mark a transitional phase in the evolution of plants. The cycle nominally starts when a single  spore among the billions produced successfully germinates and forms one of two different pre-sexual bodies called prothalli. While some prothalli are photosynthetic and epigeal, growing on top of the soil, most are  hypogeal, buried by accumulated debris or faunal motive activity to depths of up to 4 inches." (Excerpted from The Hikers Notebook, to access online go to: http://www.sierrapotomac.org/W_Needham/ClubMoss_040110R090318.htm)

We started our hike uphill wending our way through all of the tree-fall from Freddie's hillside cut last winter...it was not easy, but did keep us warmed up.

We are within the 'Lost Forty' approaching the Princess Pines.

It is truly a lovely spot and feels quite magical.

I was sufficiently bundled up against the temperature, and except for my hands getting cold when I took photos, I stayed plenty warm.

These miniature 'pines' are slowly spreading, and each time we come to this spot, they have multiplied, though not in huge amounts.  They appear undamaged year after year, and we have a tendency to keep this location secret, in order to keep them that way.

It definitely was a cold day, however it was both physically and mentally invigorating.  The hour and a half hike proved to be a spiritual renewal!!