Its drab colors are replaced with a brilliant red, and the teenager newt leaves the water to spend several years living on the land and hibernating under rocks and logs. Be sure to wash your hands after handling red efts because their bright color advertises their mild skin toxin. At some unknown signal, the bright colors fade, the eft grows a little larger, its tail lengthens and flattens, and the newt returns to the water to become an adult. Depending on conditions this transformation can take from several years up to 5 years. Plentiful, clean water not only supports many aquatic animals and plants, but encourages life on the land near the water.
Many aquatic plants thrive in and near the water.
This succulent plants contains a salve in its juice. Mosquito bites and poison ivy can be soothed with the juice of jewelweed plants. The odd-shaped orange flowers are pollinated by bees and turn into seed pods about an inch long. When ripe, the passing of an animal or even a slight wind is enough to cause the seed pod to explode and hurl the seeds up to 5 feet away. Adjacent to Holman Lake are many old farm fields that are slowly changing from fields to forest, a process called succession.