My favorite random back parking lot came through in spades today. I sometimes feel weird that I’m a repeat visitor to a particular parking lot, but it has a surprising diversity of plant life. (And we usually run into at least one car load of people checking out the nearby osprey nest that you can also see right from I95 – it’s on the power lines right next to the highway.)
I don’t come here for the natives, but I’m always pleasantly surprised by how many of them I find. Today’s cool find was a native Lythrum – the non-native purple loosestrife also litters this site (it is a marginal wetland), but I didn’t realize we had some natives in that same genus. This guy is native to coastal New England, and tops out in Sagadahoc County, ME, right up the road from me. I guess the salt in the parking lot margins is a good substitute for its regular salt marsh habitat (which is not far away – the outlet mall area is bisected by the tidal Spruce Creek).