Since Washington D.C. is the center of the world, this is naturally where we are based. As a result, the locations where the images are taken are usually in a one day out and back again driving distance of the city. Unfortunately, because it is the greatest city in the world, everyone is coming here and the plants and plant locations are duly suffering. In order to find natural landscapes, longer drives are often necessary. Despite the epidemic spread of people in the area, a few semi-pristine areas remain. One that deserves mention is the Potomac River Gorge. This is located inside, and just outside the capital of the nation. Where else is there such a wild untrammeled river so close to a great city? Unfortunately it is also being loved to death. There are other pockets too and some relatively wild areas as one gets further out. Our most frequented range is from the Allegheny Plateau in the West to the Atlantic Ocean in the East and from the James River in the South to an ambiguous border somewhere above Philadelphia in the North. When we get the opportunity, we venture further.
Whether it is Market Cross in Carlisle, Pennsylvania or Legend Brewing Company in Richmond, Virginia it always helps if there’s a good pub near where we are going for our lunch break. Some towns are in desperate need of a proper restaurant. I won’t name any towns, but we are sometimes amazed at the lack of decent dining establishments in some places. Often enough we have had to settle for something less than ideal. But as lunch sometimes does to us, I have been distracted. Whether or not there is a good pub, some areas are perennial favorites of ours. The Appalachians are great because they are relatively untrammeled, are picturesque, and have a variety of habitats. The Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay is good for wide open farm fields and some plant species at their northern limit. A nice county we like to return to is Fauquier County in Virginia. It isn’t too far, it has good variety, (there’s a decent Irish pub in Warrenton), the county name is fun to say, and there are quite a few nice rural landscapes (at least for the time being until the rest of Northern Virginia gobbles them up).
While they’re still out there, we explore landscapes wherever we can. We spend a lot of time driving around the countryside. This allows us to cover more ground, spot plants along the roadside, and hopefully find a tree in the open worthy of a photograph. We also hike quite a bit, which usually lends to us taking more photographs. In our adventures we have met disappointment (a skeleton stand of old growth hemlock) and nice surprises (old arborvitaes growing among travertine pools of water) but nevertheless we enjoy our hobby. We have provided fairly detailed locations for most of our pictures. We feel this is important for documenting where the plants grow. It is useful for us, but we hope that it can be useful for others as well.