Lake Martin Magazine

What you may not know is that there’s a bright grassy-green snake in the trees around the shorelines of Lake Martin, and finding one can be positive discovery.

There’s a switch-hitter in our woods called “Newt.” He’s red or orange; covered with spots.

This time of year the roadsides and fields around Lake Martin are decorated with bunches of cheery, golden-yellow, Black-eyed Susans.

Alabama’s state tree is staging a comeback on Lake Martin. Longleaf pine trees once covered 90 million acres across the Southeast but have suffered a 97 percent reduction since the late 1800s, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The decline has affected more than 120 species of plants and animals that rely on the longleaf ecosystem.

The European hornet, Vespa crabro, is also known as the giant hornet, the Old World hornet or the brown hornet. It’s a member of the vespid family of social wasps, which includes the bald-faced hornet and the yellow jacket, which are both native to Alabama.

Scorpions are one of those insects that “creep out” most people. It’s not hard to understand why. Scorpions look sort of like a cross between a spider and a crawfish outfitted in armor-plated S.W.A.T. gear, they pack an arsenal that includes crab-like claws and a wicked stinger on a tail that’s held high like a snake about to strike, and about 25 species of scorpions in the world have venom so toxic that a wet sting can kill a person.

Last month, the roadsides around Lake Martin burst into color – and the most eye-catching color was a bright Chinese orange. Each spring, the gawdy orange ditch lilies, which are also known as day lilies, tawny day lilies, common orange day lilies, outhouse lilies and (incorrectly) as tiger lilies greet the morning by opening their six-part flowers and facing the sun.

If you know where to look on spring and summer nights – and you’re a bit lucky – you could catch a glimpse of a large, pale green luna moth flying across the Lake Martin landscape.

For the sheer joy of bird watching, it’s hard to beat wood ducks. These amazing birds have it all: a flight call so distinctive that it just sounds like the America’s swampy oak bottoms and creeks, a spooky elusiveness that makes any close-up spotting a big event and a bodacious, over-the-top color scheme that just demands long stares when you do find them.

Ground Cedar, Southern Running Pine, Running Pine, Crowsfoot, Trailing Ground Pine, Fan Clubmoss, Diphasiastrum digitatum, Lycopodium flabelliforme, Lycopodium digitatum … this unusual, primitive plant has gone by a number of names through the years but it’s so distinctive that once you can identify it, you won’t soon forget it.