Silene vulgaris

This evening the students presented their research projects into the late hours of the night. Three or four hours of student presentations after dinner on topics of all sorts. Their big push and end of semester presentations.

The topics included such fascinating things as! Beaver foraging preferences and forest succession, zebra mussels and snail fitness, acid deposition and hardwood tree growth, caterpillar herbivory and plant chemical induction, bog pitcher plants and nitrogen uptake and so forth. Usually it is a long long night of listening, but they were so well done the time flew by. Many good questions, pats on the back, and the relief of the big project done. There were even a few ridiculous songs and poems.

It is late spring-early summer here still and the wildflowers are poking up everywhere. Lilies and astors, primroses and lupine. Before ducking in to presentations this evening I snapped this shot of some bladder campion (Silene vulgaris). Though they are not-native here I love how their flowers garland the trails like little tinker bells bowed down in dew each morning.