A Winter Walk Around the Pond

Oh, we've had some lovely snow since I last posted here, nearly ten inches of pristine fluff, but because of a knee-pain issue I did not venture out on snowshoes to enjoy it.  But I did venture out on Saturday, the day before the most recent deep snowfall, to join my friends Sue and Dana for a walk around Mud Pond at Moreau Lake State Park. The snow on the trail was packed without being icy, so we needed neither snowshoes nor ice grippers to stride along, enjoying the views of the snow-covered frozen pond, distant mountains, and beautiful blue sky. 

Because of a large population of beavers that make Mud Pond their home, we stayed to the trail, rather than venture out on the ice.  Although we could see a lodge on the pond, I am also aware that beavers also burrow into the steep banks that ring this pond, keeping patches of open water near the entrances to their dens. We noticed the open water or water-covered ice near their lodge out on the pond.

Our pond-side striding often came to a halt, for many eye-catching organisms did catch our eyes.  This massive population of Violet-tooth Polypore (Trichaptum biforme) was especially striking, with snaking pillars of stacked striped caps emerging from every fissure in the bark of a trailside tree.

Many sapling oaks line the trail, and since oaks are among the most frequent hosts to numerous kinds of galls, we were treated to several of them.  This one looked like a frozen powder puff, and suggested to me that it might be the remains of the furry gall produced by the Wool Sower Wasp, a distinctive plant growth induced by the secretions of the grubs of this tiny wasp, Callirhytis seminator.  

Here were more galls on a second oak sapling, these clustered spheres resembling bunches of grapes.

Even dead and dying trees offered instances of beauty, such as this marvelous mix of fungi and lichens ornamenting a broken-off twig, probably of a conifer.

Thanks to Sue's way around the iNaturalist site, we now know that this group of itty-bitty fungi occupying a fallen treelimb is Porodisculus pendulus.  This fungus has no known vernacular name, but the Latin name is perfectly descriptive of a fungus that is pendulous (hanging downward) and with tiny pores on the underside of its rather wrinkly whitish discs. Sue noted that there weren't too many reports of it on iNat, nor any mention of it in her mushroom books.  That sent her to searching for it on Google, where more than one web hit described it as "The World's Smallest Polypore."   A little bit bigger than the head of a pin.  But not much.  Easily overlooked, I would bet, because of its tiny size.

This little twig had broken off a dead limb and was lying atop the snow.  I do not know the name of the shaggy green moss with its minute spore stalks, I simply found it cunning and cute enough to take its picture.

I DO know the name of the tree that bore these vibrantly red twigs.  It's Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum), and I find twigs of such vibrancy only in winter.  And not all specimens of Striped Maple produce twigs of this color, even in winter. Often, the twigs are a dark bronzy green.   According to one source on Google, the twigs "turn vivid red in winter due to the presence of anthocyanin pigments, which are produced in the bark as a response to cold temperatures, giving the twigs their striking red color, especially noticeable during the winter months when leaves are absent; this is a natural protective mechanism against harsh conditions."   Yeah, but not all Striped Maple twigs in the same forest do this.

Passing an area where I know that throngs of Mapleleaf Viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium) grow, I found that many shrubs still held clusters of the fruit that matured in autumn.  Because the berries's seeds are so large, the fruit is ignored by wildlife until all other, more palatable fruits are gone.

And as far as I know or can discover, the fruits of Maleberry (Lyonia ligustrina) don't appear to be eaten by any wild animal, but remain on the shrubs until they produce these hard and dry pods that will eventually shed the seeds within.  I think the little pods are quite pretty, with their star-shaped openings.

Much of the land surrounding Mud Pond is populated with both White Pines and Pitch Pines, and the needle-carpeted soil beneath those pines is quite sandy.  This is exactly the habitat preferred by the Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), and that beautiful native orchid abounds here in May. Even in winter, we can find evidence of their presence, with fat pods atop slender stalks protruding from the snow.

Finding this evidence that gorgeous pink orchids will be blooming here in spring, I carry that expectation with me tomorrow (February 11), when I will be receiving total knee replacement surgery. I am hoping that by the time the Pink Lady's Slippers flower in spring,  I can wander these woods without the pain that has hobbled me ever since I smashed my kneecap 10 years ago.  Since I probably won't be having new woods or waterways adventures for a few weeks to come, I probably won't be producing new posts for this blog in the meantime.  But with more than 16 years' worth of blogposts, I think I might find some posts among the more than 2,000 in blog archive that might be worth a second look and read. So, dear readers, stay tuned to see what treasures I might dig up from the comforts of my couch.

A Snowy Day in 'Toga Town!

Oh man, this is why I love living here in northern New York State:  Snow!  Beautiful snow!  Here's my inner-city Saratoga Springs backyard today:

When we first moved to Saratoga in 1970, snow was a given.  And lots of it, too.  That first winter we lived here, we had record snowfall, 120 inches total for the season.  When our then five-year-old daughter walked the four blocks to kindergarten, she disappeared between snowbanks as soon as she turned from our front sidewalk.  "Oh boy," I thought, "this is REAL winter!" 

We haven't had that kind of snow for more than 50 years now. Just yesterday, I could still see the grassy ground everywhere, showing between meager patches of crusty old snow.  But it started snowing in earnest last night, and by this morning the trees and shrubs were heaped with the fluffy stuff that was glittering in the sunlight.  These Winterberry shrubs grow by my front steps.

Ah, but with rain and temps rising into the 40s two days from now, this may be the last time we'll enjoy snow's beauty again this winter.  A quick trip to nearby Saratoga Spa State Park allowed me to fully experience it before it gets washed away.

On this long allee, the snow-covered branches of tall White Pines formed a canopy over the trail.

At the edge of the lawn near the Ferndell Pavilion, the beauty of these snow-crusted trees took my breath away.

That fairyland beauty persisted as I made my way down the Ferndell Ravine, a woodsy trail that passes between steep forested banks, a tiny creek rippling alongside it.

After walking through the park's picnic area, the scene along Geyser Creek was exquisite, as the rushing creek rollicked along past the Island Spouter.

The name "Geyser Creek" was no doubt inspired by the mineral-water spring that spouts from the center of this island, an enormous limey accretion called a "tufa." But this is not, in fact, a geyser, since geysers obtain their energy from geothermal heat. Better referred to as a "spouter," this skyward-shooting spring obtains its energy from a subterranean buildup of carbon dioxide gasses. The water is quite cold.

While the water that emerges from the spouter and spreads across the tufa is itself crystal clear, the dissolved iron in the water reacts with the oxygen in the air to turn the surface it floods across a rusty red.

But the icicles ornamenting the tufa's edge confirm that the mineralized water remains uncolored.

This snowy trail along the creek tempted me to follow it, but my aching knee began to tell me it was time to go home.

I am scheduled to have a total knee replacement surgery on February 11, so I am afraid it will be some time after that before I can venture out to the woods for extensive walks. But I do hope the healing will be complete by the time the waterways will be warm enough to tempt me to manage getting in and out of my canoe.  I'm so happy I got out today to experience this beautiful snowfall.  As climate change continues unabated, this may be my last opportunity to witness such beauty this winter.

A Good Word For Winter's Cold

The sun was shining and temps were climbing, and lots of folks I greeted at church yesterday smiled and enthused, "Isn't it wonderful that it's not so cold now?"  And I smiled and nodded and muttered,  "Mmm . . ., NO!"  I appreciate that not everyone loves winter's cold and ice the way I do. I do love the drama of below-zero days, and I don't mean frozen pipes and skidding into ditches. I mean the drama of frazil ice heaping up on the Hudson River banks north of Warrensburg, which can put on quite a show.  We had a couple of below-zero nights and sub-freezing days last week, which sent me and some other ice-loving pals up to Warren County to stand on The Glen bridge over the Hudson, to watch the frazil forming right before our eyes in the upstream rapids.

What's frazil ice, you may ask? It's a special kind of aerated ice that forms in rapidly flowing rivers in very cold weather, when the water is super-cooled and the air is well below freezing.  We could see the rapids just upstream, splashing droplets into the very cold air, where the immediately froze, and dropping back into the flowing water, they cohered with other frozen droplets to form mats of slushy ice, called "frazil."

We could see these rafts of newly formed frazil flowing under the bridge we were standing on.

Crossing to the other side of the bridge, we could see that the frazil rafts remained loose and flowing rapidly downstream.

Following the flow of the frazil, we drove downstream to a site on the Hudson that's known as the Ice Meadows.  In this stretch of the river, frazil ice gets deposited on broad meadow-like flats, sometimes to such a depth that the frazil heaps mount right up to the riverside forest, even pushing over trees in the process. On this day, we found that the slushy pans of frazil had congealed to the point where the river's flow was dammed, and rising water deposited the now-whitened chunks of frazil to a location well up on the shore, but not yet to the forest edge.

Just to compare how dramatic these deposits of frazil can be, here are two photos I took of this same location a few years ago,  when the ice completely filled the river basin and pushed well into the woods (see below) . . .

. . . and mounted so high on the shore that this six-foot fellow could not reach the top of the heaps!

This week, the ice heaps were not nearly as deep, but still were impressive, covering the entire ice-dam-swollen river's surface with chunky white deposits, except for a few narrow channels where water still flowed.

And lucky for us botanizers, some of the spring-watered streams that emerge along this stretch of the shore had washed the snowcover from portions of the riverside meadow.  What may look like nothing but dead dry grass to most folks held lots of fascinating treasures for plant nerds like us.  This is Dana (pink hat), and Sue (black parka), and Skye (plaid jacket).

We were especially fortunate to have Skye with us, since he is a genuine botanist, and he could reliably help us discern the most interesting of the plant remains here.  And there were quite a few of them. Due to these very ice deposits,  this particular stretch of the Hudson shore is famous for offering habitat for a remarkable variety of native plants, including some of our region's rarest.

Cranberry (Vaccinium sp.) is hardly considered a rare plant, and masses of their tiny-leaved vines spread across these rocky flats.  Where the snowcover was washed away, we could find many examples of the persistent leaves.

I know that my friends found remnants of quite a few other plants, including a couple of orchids.  But this is the only orchid remnant I managed to photograph (my camera's battery did not like the cold). The pods of this Small Green Wood Orchid (Platanthera clavellata) could have belonged to some other orchid species, but the remains of a single mid-stem leaf helped us distinguish this species.  I know that several remains of some Ladies' Tresses (Spiranthes sp.) were also found at this site.

Well, even winter-lovers like us do get cold if we stay out long enough in frigid temps and biting winds,  and our grumbling stomachs were telling us it was time to drive back to Warrensburg and find a warm spot to have lunch.  Lucky for us, we could easily speed south along the river road.  That was not the case in 2013, when frazil heaps completely blocked the road. That was quite a dramatic year for frazil ice!

 

My Pals, and Lake Bonita, Call Me Outdoors

I'm still alive. But I've been in such a funk over so many horrors happening in the world -- the disastrous climate-caused floods and wildfires, and the slaughter of innocents on both sides in Israel, and the prospect of incompetents, felons, sex offenders, science-deniers, and drunkards about to take over my beloved country --  that I've figuratively pulled the covers over my head and numbed my distress by watching  kitten videos instead of posting any blogs, afraid to start venting the rancor built up in me over the past few months.  But finally there's snow on the ground and ice on the lakes and the wind has calmed down and my friends have been urging me out, and I've finally decided to snap out of this malaise and turn my attention to what's wonderful in the world.

And what could be more wonderful than an ice-covered, island-dotted Lake Bonita under a partly blue sky?

And even better, to have such great pals as Dana and Sue with whom to go exploring this fascinating lake?

For sure, this pretty mountain-top lake surrounded by miles of Moreau Lake State Park forest is worth visiting in every season,  but it's only after deep winter's cold has made the ice thick enough, that we can venture out to explore the tiny islands that dot its surface.  To protect the pristine waters of Lake Bonita,  the park does not allow paddling here, so until we can walk out to the islands on ice, we would not be able to know what interesting plants thrive on these Sphagnum-paved habitats.  As of yet this winter, we could even see this green-colored Sphagnum peeking out of the slight snow-cover. 

It's actually the Sphagnum moss that creates an acidic habitat on each of the islets here, and several different colors and textures of Sphagnum indicate that a number of different species have found a home here. Here was one clump that displayed several colors at once:

All of these islets support species of plants that are typical of low-pH habitats like bogs or poor fens.  The most populous of the shrubs that cover the rocky surfaces is the one pictured here, called Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata). That vernacular name is quite appropriate, since the shrub's leathery leaves are tough enough to remain on the twigs all winter.  (And a close look at these twigs would also reveal the flower buds already formed to be ready to produce some of the earliest flowers to bloom in the spring.)

Some of the Leatherleaf shrubs still retain the remnants of the pods that dropped their seeds last fall.  These open pods now resemble small brown-and-tan flowers themselves!

The leaves of the second-most-populous shrub out here, called Sweet Gale (Myrica gale), dropped off long ago, but the twigs now hold the leaf and flower buds that will open in early spring. I love the mahogany-red, ivory-edged scales of the shiny buds that resemble tiny cones. Male and female flowers will occupy separate shrubs, but I cannot tell at this stage which sex these buds will produce.

It is obvious, though, that the pods pictured below were produced by the female flowers, after fertilization with pollen produced by the male flowers, since these pods carry the seeds. Just a touch of the pods releases the seeds to drop on the snow.  That touch also releases the exquisite piney fragrance that no doubt suggested the "sweet" part of this wetland plant's vernacular name. The scent is quite similar to that produced by Bayberry and Sweet Fern shrubs.  And that fragrance perfumes my mitten for hours to come!

The evergreen leaves of the islands' third most populous shrub, Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia), persist intact throughout the winter, each terminal leaf cluster riding high above the remnants of the flower clusters. This is the showiest of the islands' shrubs, with flowers of a vivid pink, many flowers in each cluster. Lucky for us spring landlubbers, this shrub also grows on the shore of the lake, where we can more easily see and enjoy its beauty in late May.

And here was the flower-stalk remnant of one more flowering shrub, very few of which occupy these islets. This one is called Water Willow or Swamp Loosestrife (Decodon verticillatus), and it, too, bears abundant clusters of pretty deep-pink flowers that circle the stems.

In addition to the above-mentioned woody flowering shrubs, a number of interesting herbaceous wildflowers also thrive on these little islands, and some bear persistent parts we can find even when snow lies deep over their locations. This time of year, we can't usually find the remnants of such low-growing plants as cranberry or sundews or ephemeral orchids like Rose Pogonias.   But we often can see the flower stalks of Purple Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea), their bulbous floral parts now dried but still evident, standing tall on sturdy stems.

We even were able to find a few intact "pitchers" of the Pitcher Plants, the vase-shaped basal leaves that hold insect-drowning-and-digesting fluid, the main strategy by which these fascinating plants obtain their nutrients.

One of my favorite plants to find flowering at Lake Bonita is Marsh St. John's Wort (Hypericum virginicum), and lucky for us, this plant with its pretty pink-satin blooms grows along the shore as well as out here on the islands. It amazes me that such delicate-looking flowers produce these tulip-shaped  seedpods that persist throughout the winter.

After cataloging all the plants we could identify from their winter remnants on the Lake Bonita islets, we headed to the north-facing shore to walk close along the Hemlock-shaded banks.  Those Hemlock boughs formed a lovely deep-green foil against which the bud-studded, surprisingly scarlet twigs of Highbush Blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum) displayed their remarkable color to full advantage.

The Buttonbush shrubs (Cephalanthus occidentalis), with their dark-colored seedpods now disintegrating, put on a much more modest appearance, compared to those Highbush Blueberries.

Bonita being a mountain lake, its shoreline presents occasional dramatic heights of steep bedrock, which Sue is approaching to see what fascinating mosses and lichens and liverworts might be spreading across the rocky surface or hiding within its cracks and crevices.

I loved the textures and colors of this snow-dappled moss-covered boulder. 

This boulder was festooned with winter-curled fronds of Appalachian Polypody (Polypodium appalachianum), dangling down like Shirley Temple's tightly coiled sausage curls. (Wow, will THAT date me!)

According to the New York Flora Association's Plant Atlas,  P. appalachianum is a relatively recently described species that refined the description of Polypodium virginianum, the name we used to call this rock-dwelling fern.

Although quite a few different species of mosses, lichens, and liverworts covered the surface of this vertical rockface,  our friend Sue was particularly happy to find this gray-green squiggly-shaped lichen. Called Dragon Horn (Cladonia squamosa), it's not especially rare, Sue said, but she added that few sightings of it have been reported for eastern New York.

We found a couple of species of mushrooms while walking the shore, growing from fallen tree trunks and limbs.  This tan-colored zonal shelf mushroom might have been mistaken for Turkey Tail, but its fertile surface was definitely gilled, not finely pored as that of a Turkey Tail fungus would be.  Sue turned one over to display the obvious gills.  That feature persuaded us that we had found a Turkey-Tail relative called Birchmaze Gill or Gilled Polypore (Trametes betulina).

The vivid color, hard texture, and glossy surface of these fungi suggested to me that they might be a species of Ganoderma. But I didn't take the time to examine them carefully, since my friends were hurrying to find the trail off the lake and up to our cars, aware of both cold feet and hunger for lunch.  My feet were OK, but yes, a hot lunch was calling me, too. A couple of hours in fresh snowy cold will do that to a person.

I did stop my scurrying up the forested banks to admire the vivid green stuff decorating this mid-stream rock.  The green stuff looked like both a moss and a liverwort, but as for which ones, I will just "let the mystery be." I was too hurried to get a clear-enough photo.