Andrew Gray

Joined: Sep 23, 2023 Last Active: Oct 11, 2024 iNaturalist

Hello!

I'm a plant nerd who enjoys travelling to parks across Ohio to find interesting native plants and the animals that use them. I think planting native plants is the best ways that we can work together as a community to give a helping hand to our struggling wildlife and preserve biodiversity. I know from personal experience that rebuilding habitat in your yard and watching the wildlife return is very fulfilling and exciting. My personal favorite visitors I've found in my yard are Melissodes spp, aka Longhorn Bees.

Indoors, I enjoy cultivating and researching various tropical plants, succulents, and other xerophytes (it gets me through the winter when all the native plants are asleep). Someday I hope to travel around the world to see some of these amazing plants in the wild.

I'm also very interested in the huge diversity of plants, ecosystems, and climates found in the United States, and I especially love all of our conifers. Someday I hope to travel to as many of the ecoregions of the US as I can, especially west of the Rockies and the South.

PSA! Please don't pull weeds until you've identified what they are. I almost pulled a few but let them grow to see what they were, and found Swamp Milkweed, Calico Aster, Sweet Everlasting, Goldenrod, Black Cherry, Virginia Creeper, and Serviceberry! Even though some of those would usually be considered "weeds" and are very common, they host a multitude of different bees, lepidoptera, and other insects, and in the case of Serviceberry and Black Cherry, birds too!

Profile picture is Impatiens pallida (Pale Jewelweed) observed in South Chagrin Reservation.

I can communicate in English or Spanish, but English is my first language.
Puedo comunicar en inglés o español, pero inglés es mi primer idioma.

Year in Review 2023

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