Seasonal Highlights

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Rock Creek Park

Spring Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

  • Carpet of wildflowers! Among the earliest to arrive and to disappear: Virginia springbeauty, yellow trout-lily, Virginia bluebells, Dutchman’s breeches
  • Yellow blooms of yellow trout-lily, northern spicebush, tuliptree (and the profuse, non-native invasive lesser celandine! Ecobit: Lesser Celandine in Rock Creek Park)
  • White blooms of Dutchman’s breeches, mayapple, Solomon’s plume, blackhaw, southern arrow-wood
  • Greenish-white blooms of American bladdernut, Jack-in-the-pulpit
  • Blue blooms of Virginia bluebells
  • Pink or lavender to whitish blooms of Virginia springbeauty, violets
  • Maroon blooms of pawpaw
  • Greenish to purple hoods of Jack-in-the-pulpit
  • Migratory and resident birds drinking or bathing in slow parts of creek along sandbars in the heat of day
  • Belted kingfishers and wood ducks, seldom seen anywhere but near the creek
  • Some salamanders now laying eggs in seasonal wetlands, or attached to the bottom of rocks, or under rotting wood, or in pockets in damp moss
  • Ants, flies, or beetles pollinating the maroon pawpaw flower

Summer Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

  • Lush growth on the forest floor
  • Multiple kinds of ferns fully unfurled
  • Some lingering wildflowers
  • White blooms of Canadian honewort, white avens, broadleaf enchanter’s-nightshade
  • Greenish-white blooms of Canadian wood-nettle (don’t touch!), Canadian clearweed
  • Pink to whitish blooms of swamp smartweed
  • Yellow blooms of richweed
  • Orange blooms of jewelweed
  • Lime green fruit of mayapple, pawpaw
  • Pale green, inflated, papery seed capsules of American bladdernut
  • Red berries of Solomon’s plume
  • Mammals, birds, and amphibians making use of the cool water
  • Louisiana waterthrush bobbing its tail or pulling submerged leaves out of clear-running streams, looking for aquatic insects and other prey
  • Eastern box turtle (a small land turtle), foraging for plants or prey
  • Lungless salamanders active under damp leaves on rainy or humid, cloudy days
  • Dragonflies hunting insects

Autumn Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

  • Ferns persist until frost
  • White blooms of white snakeroot
  • Greenish-white blooms of Canadian clearweed
  • Orange blooms of jewelweed
  • Yellow blooms of wingstem
  • Red berries of Jack-in-the-pulpit, Solomon’s plume, northern spicebush, American strawberry-bush, (and the non-native invasive shrub Linden arrow-wood).
  • Dark berries of southern arrow-wood, blackhaw
  • Green or brown fruit of pawpaw
  • Yellow leaves of tuliptree, northern spicebush, American hornbeam, and American beech
  • Migratory birds refueling on wild grapes and other food and water as they fly south through D.C.
  • Raccoon tracks streamside, similar to tiny human handprints—evidence of nighttime activity
  • Beaver-gnawed trees and saplings

Winter Highlights

Plants & Landscape

Animals

  • Good time to notice structure and colors of tree trunks
  • Majestic straight trunks of tuliptree
  • Smooth green, brown, and white loose "plates" of American sycamore bark, getting whiter towards treetop
  • Rusty brown, peeling, papery bark of river birch
  • Smooth, gray, “rippled muscles” bark of American hornbeam
  • Natural rattles of the American bladdernut’s brown seed capsules
  • Look for clues to the height of recent floods
  • Belted kingfisher perched above the creek, occasionally diving for minnows
  • Great blue heron, standing motionless in the water, or spearing fish
  • Other winter forest birds coming for a drink