Flowers Along the Powerline, Revisited

Okay, I realize I posted about visiting this particular powerline less than two weeks ago.  But the floral landscape changes quickly this time of year, as summer's late-bloomers rush to flower before the first frost arrives.  So my friends Sue and Tom and Dana and I returned to this northern Saratoga County site, eager to observe the changes just these past few late-summer days might have wrought.

We sure had a lovely day to amble slowly beneath a clear-blue sky, with day-time temps now cool enough that we could enjoy that sunshine on our shoulders.  The goldenrods were now in their full glory, and the Little Bluestem Grass along the trail's verge had acquired its rosy late-season hue.

 

This time, we entered the powerline from the opposite end than we'd used last visit, passing by a thicket of Smooth Sumac (Rhus glabra) now adorned with its bright-red clusters of berries.  Even before this native shrub acquires its brilliant scarlet foliage later in autumn, it looks very colorful now, with its rosy-pink leaf stalks and still-green leaves.

It is definitely aster season now, and several species of white-flowered asters were in abundant bloom. I have difficulty telling the small-flowered white asters apart, but the occasional purple disk-flowers among the yellow ones on this plant strongly suggested that this was the Calico Aster (Symphyotrichum lateriflorum).

The crowded blooms, short narrow leaves, and the spreading tips of the floral bracts indicate that these are the small white flowers of Heath Aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides).

The stems of the Purple-stemmed Aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum)  aren't always as purple as were the stems on this plant, but the large size and pale-purple color of the flowers were also good clues to its identity. They were also growing where the soil was damp.  Another name for this native wildflower is Swamp Aster.

We don't have any other wild aster around here with large flowers as deeply and vividly purple as those of this New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae).

But then, the New England Aster can also bear flowers of a deep vivid pink! I do expect to find this color along this very powerline. And I was not disappointed.

On our previous visit here on August 25, we found dozens of the native orchid called Sphinx Ladies' Tresses (Spirantes incurva) in full bloom.  Most of those plants had gone to seed now, but today we found a few younger plants still bearing fresher florets.

The bright-purple flowers of Slender Agalinis (Agalinis tenuifolia) were still amazingly abundant along the trail . . .

. . . but look what Sue discovered among its purple-flowered neighbors:  A Slender Agalinis plant with pure white flowers!

Wow!

And another WOW! Vast numbers of Fringed Gentians (Gentianopsis crinita) glowing like cobalt-blue beacons amid the tall grass of a trail-side meadow!

Many of the Fringed Gentian plants held several stems of radiant blue blooms.

An amazingly beautiful wildflower! Is there any other native wildflower as vividly BLUE as this?

We also found some interesting critters along the trail. I have no idea what this brown, furry, soft-bodied thing was, munching away on the faded florets of a Short-toothed Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum). I'm hoping one of my friends can maybe get an ID from iNat, unless somebody already knows and can tell me in a comment.

Woolly Alder Aphids (Prociphilus tessellatus) are always a fun find.  They do look really cute, with all that curly waxy stuff on their tiny bodies, and it's truly amazing to know that every one of these insects is a wingless female clone of her winged mother, each of which also produces clones of herself, and those clones produce more clones, so all of these are both mothers and identical sisters of each other. Later in fall, they will produce winged clones (and even some males!) that will fly off to find mates, breed, and winter over on the bark of Silver Maples. Far out! And since they don't really harm their alder hosts, we can feel free to find them nothing but truly fascinating and delightful. Especially in their final winged stage when they waft around as tiny "Fairy Flies," still bearing some of that fluff on their wee little butts. The original wingless population will then die and drop off the alder twig that fed them for their season.

Here's one of my file photos of the winged "Fairy Fly" stage of a Woolly Alder Aphid:

Some more cute little critters. Tiny green cutworms cutting their leaf and eating it. If I'd paid more attention to the leaf species they were feeding on, I might know which species of cutworm they were. But I only focused on the wee worms and not their food.

Another fascinating find!  The eggs of a Green Lacewing, each one carefully deposited on a filament spaced well apart so that the eggs do not touch each other.  I have read that Green Lacewing larvae are such voracious carnivores, the newly hatched ones would devour each other if they came into contact with each other. It is this trait that makes Green Lacewings such welcome visitors to a garden, since they make short work of any garden-pest insects. I believe gardeners can purchase these eggs (or the larvae) to place among their prized plantings.

I would miss so much if I didn't walk with my friends with better eyesight than I have.  My friend Sue Pierce is famous among us for her sharp eyes,  and I never would have noticed this tiny "fern ally" called Creeping Spikemoss (Selaginella apoda) sprawling across some trailside mud if Sue had not pointed it out to me. Spike-mosses are inconspicuous, spore-bearing, vascular plants related to the club-mosses (Lycopodiaceae). They resemble mosses and may be frequently overlooked. But not by Sue!

Late Summer, Lovely Shores

How can it be that I hadn't paddled my favorite shores of the Hudson River until summer was almost over? Well, weather was a factor, with storms forecast for several days almost every week this past month.  Old age and its aches also played a role, since access to my favorite shores lay either a steep descent through the woods while carrying my canoe, or a long tiring paddle from the easier boat-launch site upstream.  But the lure of those lovely waters, where the river runs behind a large island to meander calmly among quiet coves and into a Tussock Sedge-studded marsh, won out at last. And my best paddling pals Ruth and Sue said yes to my plea for them to join me.

Best of all, we were blessed with one of the closest-to-perfect days of the summer for paddling the river. Not a breath of wind was rippling the water, and only the friendliest of fluffy clouds were floating in a blue sky. Here was the beckoning view from the Sherman Island Boat Launch Site:

And what could make me happier than to have my dear friends along?  Here's Sue, with her camera ever-ready to record the glories of a late-summer floral bonanza along the banks. (Or of any visiting insects. Sue is remarkably adept at getting great shots of bugs.)

And here's our mutual best-buddy Ruth, a passionate "bryo-phile" examining the various mosses and liverworts bedecking the riverside rocks.

I'd wager that most folks with a distant destination would set off at a faster pace than we did.  But how could we hurry past such beautiful banks as these, studded with rosy puffs of Spotted Joe Pye-weed (Eutrochium maculatum)?

Whoa! Who wouldn't tarry to take in the fabulously colorful blooms of bright-yellow Sneezeweed and flaming-red Cardinal Flower? (Helenium autumnale and Lobelia cardenalis)

The elegant pink-tinged white blossoms of White Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) also deserved a lingering look.

Granted, the small glossy flaps of this rock-bound liverwort called Streamside Stippleback (Dermatocarpon lurida) would not call to every paddler to move in close to this bouldered shore.  But we don't get to see this liverwort very often, and when it's dry it turns a nearly invisible gray-brown color against the gray-brown boulders it lives on. Lucky for us, wavelets had recently wetted it, rendering it glossy green and very visible to us.

Ah, we were close to our destination now! A rocky Potter Point projected into the river just ahead, marking where we would turn to enter my sought-after quiet backwater and coves.  But first we moseyed into this small quiet marsh, where large tufts of rosy-tipped Tussock Sedge (Carex stricta) were beautifully reflected in the shallow water.

On almost every spiky dead tree stump that poked up in this marsh, spiders had created their webs.  Even as noon approached, droplets of morning mist still clung to the webs and glittered in the sun.

Here, we have entered this quiet backwater behind a large island, where a series of rocky promontories project into water less affected by the stronger currents of the open Hudson.  I call this particular promontory "Bear's Bathtub," due to a large basin in the rock, almost always filled with enough water that a bear could immerse itself in.

As we approached Bear's Bathtub, we passed beneath steep rocky banks that held extensive carpets of mosses, some bright green and others vividly pink.

I love how this heap of bedrock is topped by masses of greenery, some herbaceous (Wild Sarsaparilla), some woody (Basswood saplings), some ferny (Rock Polypody?), and lots of mossy, including one of my favorite mosses, Common Apple Moss. 

Here's a closer view of the spherical spore capsules that suggested the "apple" name of Apple Moss (Bartramia pomiformis).  The capsules are green when young, but now as they grow ready to release their spores, they turn brown.

Here's a closer (although not perfectly focused) view of those Bartramia pomiformis spore capsules:

Growing weary of paddling by now and growing aware of the long paddle back against the river's current, I ventured into only one of the three small coves that line the shore of this backwater. That was  where this beautiful patch of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) offered me a delightful reward for my efforts to reach these "favorite shores" of the Hudson River. I'm so glad I made the trip.

Fabulous Habitat Close to Home

Twice in the last 11 years, I had to abandon plans to join expert botanists in exploring fabulous botanical habitats far from home. In 2015, a smashed kneecap shattered my plans to witness wild orchid abundance on Lake Huron's Bruce Peninsula in Canada.  And two years later, wildfires closed all access to Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp two days before I was to join a paddling party of botanists there.  So yeah, I truly missed out on a couple of remarkable outings. But ample compensation sure does surround me here in Saratoga County, New York. We are blessed with a marvelous abundance of lakes, ponds, rivers, swamps, forests, fens, and even mountains, all home to a wonderful variety of native plants. And we also have what might seem unlikely habitats for fascinating (even rare) plants: the low-nutrient, sandy-soiled, sunbaked (and sometimes herbicided) lanes that lie beneath powerlines. My friends and I went to explore a favorite one in the northern part of the county this past week.  Here are photos of some of what delighted us there. (Friends Sue and Tom precede my friend Dana and me along the lane.)

Our entrance to the powerline lane was guarded by a tall thicket of American Pokeweed plants (Phytolacca americana), the reddish stems dangling long fruit clusters of green to deep-purple berries on vivid hot-pink pedicels. While home gardeners might not wish to welcome these giant native plants to their tidy home gardens, I am always impressed by their magnificence of stature and color.  And many birds do feast on the fruits, even though they are not palatable for humans.

The trailside plants grew tall and varied,  a mix of colorful native wildflowers and introduced plants that seem to have found a place among the native species without supplanting them.

Our native Common Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) certainly held its place amid the crowds of purple-flowered spikes of invasive Purple Loosestrife.

Our native Slender Agalinis (Agalinis tenuifolia) was abundant all along the lane, competing with that loosestrife for being the prettiest purple flowers in bloom.

Tall plants of the appropriately named Tall Goldenrod were displaying their yellow blooms some distance back from the edge of the trail, while this Grass-leaved Goldenrod (Euthania graminifolia) was much easier to photograph, blooming right next to the trail's edge.  I could enjoy this close-up view of it without wading through hip-high grasses where ticks could be lying in wait.

Pale-leaved Sunflowers (Helianthus strumosus) carried their large yellow flowers atop purplish stems that were covered with a whitish bloom.  Their thick rough leaves help to distinguish this species from many other similar-looking native wild sunflowers.

The red-speckled yellow flowers of Spotted Horsemint (Monarda punctata) are borne between tiers of large pink bracts, which vie with the flowers for showiness. Dry sandy soil (typical beneath many Saratoga County powerlines) seems to be this native mint's favorite habitat.

This Tall Canada Lettuce (Lactuca canadensis) was already producing its fluffy seed puffs, although it was still bearing small orange florets and unopened buds. A native biennial plant in the Aster Family, Tall Canada Lettuce can grow up to 10 feet tall, although this plant was barely chest-high on me.

Ever since discovering large patches of this Short-toothed Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) at several places along this trail, I have returned each year to check on the so-far abundant population of this rare plant, naturally occurring populations rated as Threatened species in New York State. The bracts that surround each flower cluster have a distinctive silvery appearance, and the stem leaves are broader than the leaves found on other species of mountain mint we also found along the lane. I am happy to report that P. muticum continues to thrive in abundant numbers under this powerline.

We found a few plants of a second species of mountain mint, called Virginia Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum), also along the trail.  These flower clusters do not bear the broad silvery bracts surrounding the flower clusters that distinguish P. muticum, and its stalkless stem leaves are narrower than those of P. muticum.

We also found along this trail a THIRD species of Mountain Mint.  This one, called Narrow-leaved Mountain Mint (P. tenuifolium), is the most commonly occurring mountain mint in our state.  From the look of these very narrow leaves, I believe it is obvious how it acquired its name.

I was not surprised to find the large pale-purple flowers of Purple-stemmed Aster (Symphyotrichum puniceum) blooming now, since this native aster is probably our earliest to bloom.

I WAS surprised, though, to find New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) already in flower.  I associate this vivid-purple aster so closely with autumn, perhaps I was just not ready to think that summer is shortly coming to a close.

One of the reasons my friends and I love to visit this powerline is because we find there a small wetland, permanently wetted (by groundwater, I believe) to provide habitat for native plants that thrive in just these conditions.

From previous visits this time of year, we always expect to find Sphinx Ladies' Tresses (Spiranthes incurva) here in this dampish soil.  But we WERE surprised to find SO MANY this year!  There were several patches containing even more specimens than this patch does.

I am calling the Spiranthes species that grows here the S. incurva species, but that's only because an expert botanist has identified them as this in the past. Ever since the former species called Nodding Ladies' Tresses was split up into three newly named ones, I have lost all confidence in being able to ID them, no matter how carefully I study the taxonomical differences among those newly described. Here's a closer look at the flowers of those we find here on this site.  If I am mistaken about this being S. incurva, I am hoping someone will inform me.

If these wee little flowers of Dwarf St. John's Wort (Hypericum mutilum) were not so brightly colored, I would probably never notice them. But I am not surprised to find them here, since sunlit damp soil is their favorite place to grow.

That same sunlit damp soil is also exactly the habitat preferred by Alleghany Monkeyflower (Mimulus ringens), although we found only a couple blooming here this year.

The elliptical basal leaves of this next wetland plant, Northern Water Plantain (Alisma  triviale), were so shriveled as to be unrecognizable.  And the many-branching inflorescence bore seedpods instead of florets by now. But it must have been a Water Plantain, the combination of its structure and habitat being so distinctive.

And behold!  I DID find a single little three-parted white flower that certainly clinched the ID:  "Flower over 1/4" inch wide, petals much longer than the sepals,"  according to Newcomb's Wildflower Guide.

We did see a number of different colorful butterflies among the vast array of wildflowers thriving along this powerline, but none would sit still for its portrait.  I am grateful that this White-banded Crab Spider refused to budge from its perch on the floret of a Joe-Pye Weed plant.  Perhaps it was occupied with the effort of changing its vivid yellow coloration to the paler white that would help to camouflage it while it lurked to seize its insect prey.

Before we left this powerline today, we knew we would be back within a couple of weeks. To judge from the numbers of multiple-bud-bearing plants of Fringed Gentian (Gentianopsis crinita) we found, we are in for a spectacular display of this beautiful native wildflower this year.