Cedar Bog, located in Ohio, is a unique natural area with several distinctive ecological conditions that set it apart from other wetlands. Despite its name, Cedar Bog is not technically a bog but a fen.
A fun game we played when identifying these unique plants was checking the flowers CofC which stands for coefficient of conservatism. This was a 1-10 scale, meaning 1 is pretty low on the conservation scale, while a 10 is really high and needs to be looked over very carefully.
Breakdown of the point spread:
0: plants with a wide range of ecological tolerances and non-native taxa
1-2: taxa that are widespread and not typical of a particular community
3-5: plants with an intermediate range of ecological tolerances, plants that persist under some disturbance
6-8: plants that typify stable or near climax conditions
9-10: reserved specially for those plants that exhibit relatively high degrees of fidelity to narrow range of habitat requirements
Some plants that had a CofC of 10 included swamp birch, shrubby sank foil, and grass-of-Parnassus. The lowest CocC we saw at Cedar Bog, which isn’t a bog, was a 7 for poison sumac and black ash.
Grass-of-Parnassus. CofC 10.
Natural history fact: Cedar Bog home to various types of golden rods.