"What are these flower petals?" I asked Deb. They were all over the trail; large petals striped with white, green, and orange. It was mid-May and we were spending a week at Pipestem Resort State Park in West Virginia. It was a hikers paradise. We spent every day on a different trail and that day we were following a trail from the lodge on the rim of Bluestone Gorge all the way down to the river. The striped flower petals were everywhere. Deb didn't know what they were. We kept a lookout for a flower Read more ➜ The American Tulip Tree (Liriodendron tulipifera)
"What are these flower petals?" I asked Deb. They were all over the trail; large petals striped with white, green, and orange. It was mid-May and we were spending a week at Pipestem Resort State Park in West Virginia. It was a hikers paradise. We spent every day on a different trail and that day we were following a trail from the lodge on the rim of Bluestone Gorge all the way down to the river. The striped flower petals were everywhere. Deb didn't know what they were. We kept a lookout for a flower Read more ➜ 
I don't know about you, but I used to think that all conifers were evergreen. Not true! The Bald Cypress is a conifer that loses its needle-like foliage every winter becoming, well, bald. But if you catch sight of one in the autumn, it's a glorious, coppery-red.
Bald Cypress in Autumn
Bald Cypress in Other Seasons
The two trees in the foreground below are Bald Cypress photographed in December.
The two trees in front of the boardwalk below are also Bald Cypress. 
We attended the 15th annual Pawpaw festival at Lake Snowden, Ohio. The pawpaw is a native Ohio fruit and was the main attraction of the festival.
We tried some cut-up raw pawpaw. The fruit is green and about the size of a potato. Inside it is either white or orangish with large brown or black seeds. The consistency is like custard, and I thought the taste (which can vary) was a mix of melon and papaya.
A variety of pawpaw derived foods were available, including pawpaw 
I'm going to refer to a pawpaw as a "tree", but it could just as well be thought of as being a really large shrub. A mature specimen typically grows to a height of 25 feet, reaching its full height in about 20 years. According to Wikipedia the trunk can grow to be as large as 12 inches in diameter, but all the trunks that I've seen have been smaller than that. Because it is a relatively short tree with a thin trunk, its wood is not suitable for timber. However its fruit is the largest produced by