OK, Not Yet. But Soon.

I kinda jumped the gun, last post.  A couple of sunny warm days got my hopes up that we were going to sail right into spring from now on out.  Hah!  Dream on!  The thermometer plummeted again.  Gray skies turned stubbornly permanent.  Snow on the forest floor refused to melt.  Even on partly sunny days, a bitter wind discouraged me from venturing out.  I fought against my resistance, however, and did go in search of some earliest signs of spring.  And I did find a couple.

The Skunk Cabbage growing in a trailside creek at Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail had opened a few red spathes to reveal some tiny pollen-shedding florets on the spadices within.  So here it is, folks: the first real flower of spring! Some of our earliest pollinators will be even more excited about this than I am!

I also took a turn on the Spring Run Trail here in downtown Saratoga Springs, and I could hear the rasping calls of Red-winged Blackbirds sounding across a trailside marsh crowded with Phragmites.  I even got a picture of one. At least the males have arrived, to establish nesting sites for when their mates venture north in the weeks to come. So, great!  Another sure sign that spring is on the way.

Those finds set me thinking that maybe I could discover our second flower of spring -- the tiny red sprouts of American Hazelnut's pistillate flowers -- among the many shrubs that line the powerline just north of Mud Pond at Moreau Lake State Park. It sure didn't look very promising when I arrived.  The pond itself was still covered with ice from shore to shore, and I had difficulty accessing the site through icy snowbanks two feet deep.

The powerline trail itself was still covered with packed snow that was difficult to walk on now, potholed as it was from melting and refreezing.  A real ankle twister! But that's where American Hazelnuts crowd the trail on either side.  I was eager to search among the bare twigs for those tiny bright-red flowers.

I could easily detect the male hazelnut flowers, the catkins that had dangled from the twigs all winter.  They were still tightly closed, not shedding pollen yet.  And a diligent search of dozens of shrubs' tangled twigs revealed not a single sprout of a female flower.  Not yet. Sigh!

But at least I did find this fascinating fungus on a very few of the hazelnut shrubs.   See how this smaller twig is stuck to the larger one?  The reddish stuff that has stuck it there is called Glue Crust Fungus (Hymenochaete corrugata), and believe it or not, that fungus has a good reason to do just that. Its strategy is to hoard dead hazelnut twigs for itself, gluing the dead twigs to living ones high in the shrubs, so they won't fall to the ground, where other, rival fungi could compete to consume them. Who could have guessed that a fungus could strategize like this? Sometimes, Nature absolutely astounds me!

Here's another example of that Glue Crust Fungus doing its thing. I should tie a bright ribbon to mark these occurrences, so I could observe how long the fungus persists at each site and if I could observe any change in the dead twig being consumed. But first I'd have to determine which of the twigs was the living one and which one was dead. Not that easy to tell from these photos!

Finding that fungus was enough fun for the day, I decided. The ankle-twisting pot-holed trail around the pond did not look the least bit inviting. And the gray sky was darkening, even though it was early afternoon.  And that darned snow still lay thick over anything of interest on the forest floor.  A warming trend is forecast for later this week.  Let's see what changes that warming trend will bring.  Later!