Kiser Lake Wetlands is a 51 acre state nature preserve in Champaign County. It is located in a corner of Kiser Lake State Park. We visited this preserve in mid-May. The preserve has a 0.6 mile boardwalk / trail system that interconnects with the 0.7 mile Red Oak trail in the park making a 1.3 mile loop.
The trailhead is near the southeast end of the lake on Kiser Lake Rd (CR-19), not far from the main campground. A kiosk marks the trailhead. Nearby is a sign for the park's Red Read more ➜ Kiser Lake Wetlands State Nature Preserve
Kiser Lake Wetlands is a 51 acre state nature preserve in Champaign County. It is located in a corner of Kiser Lake State Park. We visited this preserve in mid-May. The preserve has a 0.6 mile boardwalk / trail system that interconnects with the 0.7 mile Red Oak trail in the park making a 1.3 mile loop.
The trailhead is near the southeast end of the lake on Kiser Lake Rd (CR-19), not far from the main campground. A kiosk marks the trailhead. Nearby is a sign for the park's Red Read more ➜ 
Fen habitats are America's most diverse habitat for vegetation, and many rare plants are found in fens. A fen is a type of wetland formed when water bubbles up from an underlying aquifer via an Artesian well or seep. In the case of Gallagher Fen, the water emerges from a hillside seep because two aquifers intersect nearby increasing the underground water pressure. Since the water is emerging from deep within the earth through limestone gravel dumped by glaciers during the last Ice Age, the water 
I decided to write this after visiting Jackson Bog State Nature Preserve and reading all the informative signs there... except they weren't all that informative for me because I didn't know my swamps from my bogs. So when I came home I decided to learn a few wetland basics.
Let's start with the easy stuff. In North America a wetland that has trees growing in it is called a swamp. That's why Dawes Arboretum referred to the following grove of trees as "Cypress Swamp".
A marsh