Rich Cove Forest is where I lose time!  Days seem to compress as I crawl about on hands and knees, finding endless combinations of herbaceous plants to delight me and the lens.  Finding rich cove forest isn’t hard if you’ve ever driven the Blue Ridge Parkway in early May.  A quick glance out your window and you’ll often see carpets of trillium and squirrel corn and many others blanketing the ground on a steep, protected, moist slope.

In nature there are distinct botanical neighborhoods, groupings of trees, shrubs and herbacious plants that occur together.  Rich Cove Forest is an assemblage that is perhaps the most prolific, at least in terms of the herbacious plant layer.  Cove forest is like a fairy land of delicate plants, coming most alive during the spring ephemeral bloom when maximum sunlight is hitting the forest floor, before the tree canopy above matures and blocks light.

Blue Cohosh is one of the plants I typically find in Rich Cove Forest.  Cohosh is a flowering plant that puts out tiny, purplish/yellow flowers that I find irresistible to pass, though due to their tiny size and the flimsy nature of the stems that carry them, getting sharp images is challenging.  Blue Cohosh is a medicinal herb that was used widely by the American Indians.  This frame was one of my better efforts, taken in a beautiful cove near Waynesville, North Carolina.

Camera:  Canon EOS 5Dr
Lens:  Canon MP-E 65mm
Tripod:  Handheld w/ flash

Date taken:  April 30, 2024
Settings:  f14, 1/250 second, iso 100