The second bog we visited last Monday was called Jam Pond and was located in Chenango County. Here's a panoramic view of it:

Like the first bog it contained many rare and unique plants. It is bordered by a swampy band of Picea mariana or Black Spruce and Larix laricina or Tamarack. Both are conifers but whereas the spruce has the more traditional evergreen habit seen here,

the Tamarack, or American Larch,(the lighter green trees in the foreground)loose their needles every fall just like broadleaf tres and have the distinction of being the only deciduous conifer native to New York State.

Growing out of some of the twigs of the spruce was this cool parasitic plant Arceuthobium pusillum, the Dwarf Mistletoe. Mistletoes actually grow into the xylem and phloem of their hose plants and steal nutrients from them!They're little little plant vamprires.

At both bogs we saw a variety of sphagnum mosses. Bogs tend to preserve rather than decay and thick layers of semi-decayed sphagnum make up what we call peat moss. Unforunatly it is impossible to harvest peat mos without essentially destroying bogs, therefore it makes for a rather unsustainable practice. Sphagnums make up a large amount of the surface of many bogs, but unlike the other plants found there it is found anywhere that is relatively wet and acidic. Mostly they are green but can come in a variety of colors from purple to chartreuse as can be seen here.

I also discovered one of the non-plant denizens of the bog a Pseudacris crucifer or Spring Peeper froglet.This little fellow must have just made the switch from water to land as you can still see its nub of a vestigial tail.

The highlight of the trip for me came in the form of four rare orchid species, these plants grow exclusively in bogs and are generally extremely beautiful, all except one of them. First is Pogonia ophioglossioides the Rose Pogonia:

Next we see Platanhrea blephariglottis, the White-Fringed Orchid:

Now Calopogon tuberosus the Grass Pink:

And finally Listera australis the Bog Twayblade. Whereas the more showy first three were quite common on site we had to search long and hard for this plain little number, but search we did and man what an anticlimactic orchid this was:

Here are a few last images just to give you an overall feel of the bog.It was a great day!