Return of the Gentians!

The rains had finally stopped! A kind sun emerged last Friday to dry out our soaked and battered earth and allow our swollen creeks and ponds to settle down a bit. My friend Ruth and I headed up to one of our favorite ponds in northern Saratoga County, hoping to find that the fabulous array of native wildflowers that normally beautify its banks had survived the torrential downpours.

Ruth's smile says it all about how happy we were to be in our boats again on this perfect little Adirondack pond.

The water in the pond was certainly high, flooding the edges of the shore a foot or so up the banks, but at least the drainage culverts had not clogged, which happened 5 years ago, allowing the water to rise far up into the woods.  That flood killed almost all of the shoreline conifers and wiped out most of the shoreline wildflowers for several seasons to come.  We were hoping to discover today a continued further resurgence of those pondside plants.

We were glad to see that healthy stands of Bunchberry, Clintonia, and Dalibarda had repopulated the banks, but the recent torrential rains seemed to have knocked the berries and flower petals off the plants. The plants all looked healthy and green, but we missed the colorful display of blue and red berries and snow-white flowers we would normally enjoy seeing this time in the summer.

I fear, though, that the once abundant population of Small Green Wood Orchids (Platanthera clavellata) may take many more years to recover. Where over a hundred once thrived around the pond, I found just this solitary specimen.  But at least it was in full bloom for us to enjoy!

The wildflowers we were most excited to see recovering were the Narrow-leaved Gentians (Gentiana linearis), beaming their gorgeously radiant blue flowers every few feet along the shore. Not yet the thousand or more we once counted here pre-flood, but at least several dozens,  re-establishing their domain most of the way around the pond. (The green-bud-topped small stalks below the gentian belong to some Round-leaved Sundew plants, their basal leaves now underwater.)

Multi-flowered clusters of Narrow-leaved Gentians shone forth from fern-dominated shores.

Where the flowers of shoreline gentians toppled into the water, they floated upright like cobalt-blue water lilies.

There were so many gentian flowers topping this stalk, I could hardly count them.  I am hoping such healthy-looking plants signal the return of this incredibly beautiful native wildflower to its former flood-ravaged site. I have seen this flower along other waterways, but never in such abundance as along the shores of this pond.

This gentian abundance continued almost all the way around the pond, including parts of the sun-drenched south-facing shore.  I loved the sight of the vivid-blue gentians sharing their shore with the pink-flowered stalks of Steeplebush (Spiraea tomentosa).

We encountered many other beauties as we paddled around this pond. When the sun shone through the boughs of this Mountain Holly shrub (Ilex mucronata), its vivid-red berries appeared as if lit from within.

A fluffy tuft of pale-pink Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) was displayed to perfection against the dark shade of the forested bank.

The bedrock-lined, Hemlock-crowned banks of the pond displayed a dramatic beauty of their own. Ruth, possessing a deep interest in mosses and liverworts, enjoyed exploring every crevice in the rocks to see what bryophyte treasures they might hold.

At the east end of the pond, we pushed our canoes through thick patches of burreeds and marshgrasses until any further progress was impeded by a beaver dam that stretched the entire width of the pond. (The dam is behind us in this photo.)

In a quiet cove, the dark still water reflected this patch of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) with intensified beauty.

This Great Blue Heron held its regal pose long enough to capture in a photo.

After beaching our boats, I examined some Common Milkweed plants (Asclepias syriaca) to see who might be dining on its leaves.  I am almost always certain to find a Red Milkweed Beetle or two.  This beetle must have just begun to prepare for its lunch, since it had yet to sever a leaf-vein upstream from where it will dine on the leaf edge, preventing the sticky latex from gluing its jaws shut.

Where we stopped at a local tavern to have some lunch ourselves, this stand of Joe-Pye-Weed by the parking lot was providing a meal for this gorgeous Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly. A beautiful close to our morning's adventure on that beautiful pond!

Up and Down the River on a Sunday Afternoon

There's a beautiful stretch of the Hudson River that flows below the Spier Falls Dam, where forested mountains fall directly to the water's edge, and small islands lie just offshore. I have been paddling this stretch for more than 30 years. Back in the early 1990s, I hardly ever met another paddler on the water here, even on the weekends, but that's not the case anymore.  Especially on weekends when the weather is fine, the river now beckons many paddlers and motorboats, and I usually choose to avoid swelling that crowd. Ah, but the nicest day last week was on Sunday, and with rainstorms promised nearly every day for the coming week, I doubted I'd want to paddle then.  And this was the time the Smaller Purple Fringed Orchids (Platanthera psycodes) should be blooming along these shores.  If I wanted to see them flowering this year, the time was NOW!

Sure enough, the parking lot at the boat-launch site was full to overflowing, but when I got on the water, I saw hardly any other boats in sight.  Those I did see were out in the middle of the river, and the middle is not where I paddle. I had the shoreline completely to myself as I headed upstream.

I like to creep along as close to the shore as I can move without scraping the bottom of my canoe on underwater rocks. For I'm not here to see how fast and far I can paddle, but rather to see what's blooming among the bedrock and tree roots that line the shore. I was hoping those Purple Fringed Orchids would be among the flowers I'd find today.  The tiny little Azure Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) were a sweet surprise.

Well, I didn't find those purple orchids where I'd found them along this shore in other years.  I did find lots of other flowers, though.  And at first, most of them were yellow.  Quite a few plants of Spotted St. John's Wort (Hypericum punctatum) were leaning over the banks. I could even get close enough to their speckled petals to see how this native wildflower might have acquired the descriptive name "spotted." (Or is it the leaves that have spots?)

A second species of St. John's Wort also grew close to the water's edge, the Pale St. John's Wort (Hypericum ellipticum).  Which is anything but pale! This wildflower has bright yellow flowers, vibrant orange buds, and seed pods of a brilliant scarlet.

There were other yellow flowers close to the water's edge, including this Yellow Loosestrife (Lysimachia terrestris), which also bears the vernacular name "Swamp Candles."

This next yellow-flowered plant is called Fringed Loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata). To see how this plant acquired the descriptive "fringed" part of its name, you have to look closely at its leaves, not the flowers.

Here's a close-up photo of those fringes (cilia) on the leaf petioles:

So far, I'd found no purple flowers to excite me to take a closer look, but there were a few white ones. The low-growing Wintergreen plants (Gaultheria procumbens) dangled small white bells from the middle of its waxy green leaves.

A thriving patch of Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) bore clusters of small white flowers atop its dusty-green leafy stalks.

Lovely tufts of pink-tinged white flowers of Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) leaned out toward the sunlight from shaded banks.

A flower-bedecked vine of Virgin's Bower (Clematis virginiana) sprawled its way among other riverside greenery.

What almost resembled a green-petaled flower atop a stalk of glossy green leaves was actually the beginning of what later will be a cluster of gorgeously blue Closed Gentian flowers (Gentiana clausa).

And these funny little spiky growths are the developing seed pods of what were the yellow flowers of American Bush Honeysuckle (Diervilla lonicera), a native shrub quite abundant along these shores.

Several species of ferns decorate the shady banks of the river, and I found this thick cluster of graceful Long Beech Fern fronds (Phegopteris connectilis) nestled in among rocks particularly beautiful.

Sadly, I was not happy at all to find THIS: a fish hook and bobber dangling on fishing line from an overhanging tree limb. I once managed to free a tiny Wood Duck duckling from just such a dangling hook piercing its soft beak, while its mother desperately tried to lure me away from her darling. So I have witnessed the agony such carelessness can cause for innocent wildlife.

When I reached this steep section of bedrock bank, I believed that any further search for those sought-after orchids along this shore was futile. Any I had found on this side of the river in past years were growing on shore before I reached this site.  

Ah, but I once found some Purple Fringed Orchids blooming on the opposite shore from here.

So I turned my canoe around and headed downstream and toward the other bank.

As I approached the opposite shore, my hopes were roused as I spied a pinky-purple spike of bloom tucked in among the Marsh Ferns close to the water. Ignoring the tall Blue Vervains blooming further back among the bulrushes, I moved in for a closer view.

Nope!  It was a pretty spike of Steeplebush (Spiraea tomentosa), but not a Purple Fringed Orchid.

But I was glad my desire to investigate that purple spike of bloom had lured me close enough to the shore to discover these tiny Marsh Bellflowers (Campanula aparinoides) nearly hidden among the shoreline greenery. These miniature native wildflowers flowers have such fine stems that they sprawl among the neighboring plants that often hide them from view. I think they are adorable!

It was time to head for home, and as I passed the largest island that lay between me and the parking area, I noticed a patch of Narrow-leaved Mountain Mint (Picnanthemum tenuifolium) growing close to the water.  I always have to pinch a few leaves of this exceeding minty-smelling plant to breathe in that fragrance.

Many leafy green stems protruded from the very shallow water that surrounds this island.  Several years ago, while observing these plants with noted botanist Nancy Slack, she suspected that these were the species of St. John's Wort called Northern St. John's Wort (Hypericum boreale), but that was never ascertained.  Eventually, they will bear 5-petaled flowers typical of that genus, but I was never sure they weren't simply Pale St. John's Worts that had made their way out from shore when the water was low. Someday, I hope to settle this case!

While paddling over this very shallow water, I was delighted to see hundreds of the spiky basal leaves of Northern Pipewort (Eriocaulon aquaticum) decorating the underwater mud.

And guess what?  Look what I found at last! A Smaller Purple Fringed Orchid, in full beautiful bloom!  It was growing almost exactly where I had found it in previous years, but it only revealed itself where it hid among surrounding plants, now that I approached it from the opposite direction.  Who could guess that such a large showy flower could hide so well?  I can only hope it may continue to hide from others who may not appreciate our state laws that attempt to protect native orchids.

All Clear For a Pleasant Paddle

At last! Smoke from Canadian wildfires no longer dimmed the radiant blue skies. Sweltering heat no longer discouraged me from venturing out under the sun.  And a perfect summer day last Friday beckoned me up to Fourth Lake just north of the Warren County village of Lake Luzerne to enjoy a paddle on quiet waters surrounded by forest and enhanced by a beautiful view of Potash Mountain rising on the horizon. 

And best of all, I was in the company of my two favorite paddling pals, Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks, all three of us in our small solo canoes, closely slipping along the forested shore of the lake to see what floral and other finds awaited us there.

Hurrah!  Our search for a Smaller Purple Fringed Orchid (Platanthera psycodes) was rewarded at last! Disappointed by this lovely orchid's absence from where we used to find it, we were surprised and delighted to find its perfect loveliness, sharing its spot along this fern-lined shore with a rosy-flowered stalk of Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata).

 

We passed several patches of blooming Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), the white flowers brilliant against the dark shallow water the plants emerged from.

I am always amused to see the chubby flowers of Ditch Stonecrop (Penthorum sedoides), another inhabitant of wetlands.

The radiant blue blooms of Monkeyflower (Mimulus ringens) stood out against the dark shade of the the shore.

No need to stay clear of this waterside plant!  Even though the multi-flowered white umbels closely resemble those of the very poisonous Water Hemlock, the very slender lance-shaped leaflets reveal that this is instead the non-poisonous Water Parsnip (Sium suave).

It's always interesting to find various shapes and colors of Crown Rust Fungus on plant stems, but this spongy-looking blob on a Water Willow stem was rendered especially intriguing because it bore what appears to be the cast-off sub-imago skin of a Mayfly, an insect that emerges from underwater nymphs to live as a flying adult for just long enough to mate and lay eggs, from 30 minutes to two days.  

Here's another underwater life form that stays underwater: a gelatinous colony of filter-feeding animals called Pectinatella magnifica that forms each year on underwater tree limbs.  We often find many of these colonies in the shallow water along the shore of this and other Adirondack lakes. This warm-water colony will die and disintegrate as the water grows cold in late fall.  As temperatures drop, the colonies build specialized hard-shelled "statoblasts" that survive freezing and/or desiccation over the winter, until warming water in spring stimulates these statoblasts to create new colonies.  I am constantly amazed to learn of these and other such  life forms and their strategies to survive and thrive.

As we approached the north end of Fourth Lake, where a flowing creek emerges into the lake, we passed through massive patches of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata), crowned with spikes of gorgeous purple flowers.

We love exploring the shady banks of this forest-lined stream.

In previous years, our explorations of this creek ended when we reached a beaver dam that impeded our further progress upstream.

But this year, we discovered that the dam had been breached and we could easily paddle around one end of it. Apparently, the beavers who once maintained this dam have moved on to another site.

And here was a whole other wetland that invited our explorations.  The passage, though, was made difficult because of shallow water and remnants of the former dam.  And there were other shores of Fourth Lake we wanted to explore today, so we turned around to return to the lake.

I always delight in passing through patches of Swaying Bulrush (Schoenoplectus subterminalis), its grass-fine leaves swaying with the current's flow.  Even though I now know the official names (scientific as well as vernacular) of this aquatic plant, I still call it by the name its appearance and behavior suggested to me, which is Mermaid Hair.

Swaying Bulrush has quite charming inflorescences, with slender white curling tendrils grasping its stalk.

This abundant patch of Marsh Skullcap (Scutellaria galericulata) thrived along a sunlit section of the creek.

Here's a closer look at those pretty blue Marsh Skullcap flowers.

Back on the lake proper, we noticed a few stalks of Common Bladderwort (Utricularia vulgaris) raising its pretty yellow flowers above the floating Pond Lily and Water Lily pads.

The surprise of the day was finding a very few small flowers of Purple Bladderwort (Utricularia purpurea) already rising from its spreading mats of underwater sac-bearing feeding structures.  By late August, we will hardly be able to push our canoes through masses of these purple blooms.

One more floral delight awaited us as we approached the sandy shore where we landed our canoes.  The marvelous fragrance of the Swamp Rose flowers (Rosa palustris) wafted over the water, a final gift of this wonderful day of paddling on Fourth Lake.