Photography and Topography

Honeysuckle and oaks

I am going to adopt a new photo format which should make the pages here load a little faster, and also should please anyone who wishes for a larger photo. Henceforth, the photos on this page will be a smaller thumbnail size, but if you click them, they will open a larger photo.

I had been posting small photos because I misunderstood how Blogger creates thumbnails -- but I won't go into all that.

This grove of mostly oak trees grows near the intersection of Vaughn's Grove-Little River Road and Highway 68, east of Hopkinsville, KY.

At the right side of the photo, you can see the crown of a tree at ground level. It is growing in a sinkhole. This part of Kentucky has karst topography. Locally, we have sinkholes where water has trickled through the crevices in the underlying rock for countless years and washed away so much limestone that the ground caves in. A hundred miles east of here, the same geological forces have created Mammoth Cave.

The vine on the fence (at right) is honeysuckle, an invasive species that quickly chokes out natives when there's competition. It is nearly evergreen here, and it has yellow and white blossoms in the spring and sporadically through the summer. The blossoms have a delicious fragrance, and children of all ages pick them to suck out a bit of sweet nectar -- hence the name, honeysuckle.