ABSTRACT
Our morning walk led us to a marshy area. Close to the lake was a steppe-like terrain with grasslands at the foot of the ridges, where lingonberries, wild onion, and horsetail were growing. In the shallow bays were thickets of pondweed, with lilies and other water plants floating on the surface. I could see fields of arrowhead, knotweed, and bloodroot, and various kinds of reeds and wild rice round the shore. I also recognized several medicinal plants, including Chinese lemongrass and Siberian ginseng root. The marshes were full of birds. I saw broad-billed rollers, mandarin ducks, little green herons, chestnut bitterns, scaly-sided mergansers, hooded cranes, short-tailed bush warblers, and eastern blue magpies.
