The Swamp Pink is one of the endangered and rare plants that attendees will be able to see at the Sept. 10 event.
The Haddonfield Garden Club will host a free presentation on Camden County’s rare wild flowers and plants by Michael Hogan – a professional photographer of fine arts and the environment – on Tuesday, Sept. 10.
Hogan is project director for the South Jersey Land and Water Trust. He will discuss a variety of plants, including orchids, insectivorous plants and other rare growth in the South Jersey area, among them Swamp Pink, an endangered plant that flowers early in the spring and is often eaten by deer. One of Hogan’s projects involved installing cages and fences to protect it.
“I live in the Pinelands, and every year, I find something I didn’t expect that I report to the state,” Hogan explained of this work. He noted that some people may have encountered rare plants but haven’t identified or reported them before.
“I’ve found quite a few rare populations,” he said. “Over the past 10 years, we found three Swamp Pink populations that weren’t documented.”
Hogan described the Swamp Pink flower as characteristic of growth for the wetlands, similar to a canary in a coal mine.
“Once you start doing stuff around it and change the hydrology,” he observed, “it’s one of the first plants to disappear.”
In other words, the Swamp Pink is a good indicator of when an environment has been impacted.
Throughout the year, Hogan leads a number of environmental projects, including cleanups – of which there were 36 with volunteers last year – water surveys and creation of school rain gardens. He led an invasive species walk in Washington Lake Park in June, and a flower walk on Aug. 17 at Cooper River Park in Cherry Hill.
The Haddonfield Garden Club was founded by Mary Gill Hopkins in 1906 and regularly meets the second Tuesday of each month, with the exception of October and February night meetings.
Hogan will speak at 12:30 p.m. at the Lutheran Church on Wayne Avenue, and his presentation will be followed by a club business meeting. All are welcome and the club requests a food item for donation. Hogan will bring along a Swamp Pink flower that has yet to bloom.
To learn more about the Haddonfield Garden Club, visit https://www.haddonfieldgardenclub.com/.
To stay up to date with current projects by the South Jersey Land and Water Trust, visit https://www.sjlandwater.org/.
