After some pondering, we decided to name a resident of the HNES Native Plant Garden. Jordan the Groundhog is a controversial character… it’s also hard to determine whether Jordan is a male or female (hence the androgynous name) but everyone seems to think of him as a boy groundhog. All summer we’ve been seeing this little guy popping in and out of his tunnel and today we finally managed to get some good photos of him. His burrow is a very prominent part of the western woodland section of the garden as you can tell from all the kicked up earth and gravel near the entrance.
Even when we don’t see him though, we know he is around… he has a real taste for many of our beautiful new plants, especially Echinacaea species and Asters. Today we saw him munching on some goldenrod (Solidago sp.) so he must like that too. We sure wish he liked the invasive species better (imagine, our own mini-grass remover!), but I suppose it makes sense that he prefers good native species. Thankfully he doesn’t seem too interested in the River Oats (Chasmanthium latifolium) because the more native grasses we have, the better chance we have of eventually being rid of the invasive quackgrass. Still… his charms are hard to resist, aren’t they?
-JLA
just peeking out of his burrow...
... getting adventurous ...
totally unfazed by his celebrity status
Posted by Raincheques and Groundhogs « HNES Native Plant Garden at York University on June 4, 2011 at 10:23 am
[...] other news, Jonathan has been doing some research — it would seem that Jordan the groundhog is female! And when Jonathan and I were weeding the other day, a tiny robin fledgling joined us on [...]