Orchids Galore! Pitchers Aglow! One Glorious Paddle on Lovely Lens Lake!

Monday, July 5:  Sunny and cool! What a glorious day it was to head up to beautiful Lens Lake in the Adirondacks! My friends Sue and Ruth and I didn't even have to carry our Hornbecks far to set out across the serene, bog-mat-studded waters of this quiet lake, surrounded by mountains and forest. We could even hear loons calling!

Every other time my friends and I have visited this lake, we have headed out first to explore those floating bog mats, sphagnum-carpeted moveable islands with their fascinating collection of plants specifically suited to that habitat. But today we decided instead to ease our canoes along the shore, paddling slowly through quiet backwaters that held their own fascinating collection of plants.

The shoreline here is thick with shrubs, with Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) predominating. Although many of the boughs were now thick with developing seedpods, many of the vivid pink flower clusters remained.

It's hard to imagine a shrub with showier flowers than Sheep Laurel.  A close look at the flowers revealed that the "spring-loaded" stamens had done their job by now, so the pistils could now start to do their job of producing the seed.

The mossy banks beneath the shrubs were decorated with shed Sheep Laurel blooms, lovely even in their decline.

Sharing that shoreline with the laurel were occasional Labrador Tea shrubs (Rhododendron groenlandicum). Their clusters of white flowers had fallen by now, replaced by the pretty pink scale-covered buds that held the promise of next year's flowers. Note the fuzzy orange coating on the stems and the underside of the evergreen leaves, a distinctive trait of this aromatic bog and fen denizen.

Another, much smaller, shrub that grows along these shores is Bog Rosemary (Andromeda polifolia).  A Heath-family plant with leaves not at all fragrant like the culinary herb, it bears small pink bell-shaped flowers when blooming in spring and small pink pumpkin-shaped fruits this time of year.

Some of the ancient stumps along the shore are so huge they make me wonder how stupendous their trees would have been, back in their prime. Not only are these stumps remarkable for their size, they are also intriguing for the variety of lichens they now provide a home for.

Of course, I had to approach to peer more closely at that orange something on the side of the stump.  Here's what I found: a cluster of orange-tipped lichens called Cladonia incrassata.

Many fallen logs, too, display remarkable collections of lichens and mosses, well worth a close look to enjoy the beautiful variety of colors and textures.

There are rocky surfaces, too, that provide a home for interesting lichens.  This shoreline boulder was nearly completely covered with chocolate-brown and light-orange lichens, species I had never encountered before. Our friend Ruth Brooks supplied the name of the orange one: Porpidia flavicunda.

Every fallen log held a marvelous variety of plants, the decomposing wood providing the nutrients each species thrives on. On this small space alone, I could detect Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) with its still-curled flower stalks laden with buds; the red-stemmed, opposite-leaved plants that will later bear the pink flowers of Marsh St. Johnswort (Hypericum virginicum); and a single budding flowerhead of a Club-spur Orchid (Platanthera clavellata). Plus, of course, the ever-present varieties of mosses and lichens.

The summer lakeshore flowers were coming into their glory. Here are just two: spikes of the bright-purple Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) towering over a few of the pretty pink orchids called Rose Pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides). This represented just a few of the masses of Rose Pogonia we eventually came to observe in the course of our paddles.

When we came upon these orchids, we were truly stunned!  The color was so much more vivid, more of a fuchsia pink than the paler pink of the typical Rose Pogonia.  And the petals were so much narrower than those typical for a Rose Pogonia, too.  Could we possibly have stumbled upon Dragon's Mouth Orchid (Arethusa bulbosa) instead? The petals didn't seem quite right for that one, either. Darn, but I wish I had looked at the leaves!  Those of Arethusa are grass fine, while those of Pogonia are broader. Could these possibly be a hybrid? Informed opinions would be accepted gratefully.

Here's a closer photo of the typical Rose Pogonia bloom, for comparison:

And here is the typical flower of a Dragon's Mouth Orchid:

UPDATE: The consensus of expert opinion is that the flowers we found on the Lens Lake shore are indeed Rose Pogonia and not a hybrid with any other orchid.  But all agree that both the color and the shape of the petals are atypical and quite remarkable.

We saw many, many Northern Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) in the course of our paddles, but this trio of blooms almost shouted to us from the shore, as the sunlight illumined both the towering flowerheads and the vase-shaped leaves at the base.

Here's a closer look at the glowing cluster of leaves at the base of that trio of Northern Pitcher Plants.

Several aquatic species were showing their flowers to us today. I was particularly taken by this Watershield bloom (Brasenia schreberi), because both the pistillate and staminate parts were present together at the same time.  I usually see either the stamens or the pistils in a single bloom, not both at once.

According to a U.S. Forest Service post I read,  Watershield flowers "have an interesting biology. Flower buds develop underwater and are covered with slime. Flowers bloom over a two-day period. On the first day the bud emerges above the water. Sepals and petals open and bend downward. Although stamens and pistils are present in each flower, on the first day of blooming, only the pistils emerge. Stalks of the pistils lengthen and spread outward over the petals. At night, the flower stalk bends and the flowers submerge beneath the water. On the second day, flowers emerge from the water again, but with the pistils retracted. The stamen stalks are lengthened and the anthers open. In this way flowers are cross-pollinated. After blooming, the sepals and petals fold up and submerge. Fruit develops underwater enclosed in the petals and sepals."  Hmmm . . . . So which stage of blooming is this specimen at?

Fragrant Water Lilies (Nymphaea odorata) also have an interesting biology, in that we never see one that is not perfectly fresh and beautiful.  For as soon as the flower is pollinated, its retractable stem pulls the flower underwater to "plant" its fertilized ovary down in the mud. I hope this newly emerged damselfly can manage to fly away before that happens to its Water Lily perch! (I think this is a damselfly, with those goggly bar-bell eyes. Its mature colors won't emerge for a while, so I could not venture an ID as to species at this stage of its development.) 

We eventually left our close examination of plants along the shore and headed out to explore some bog mats. Our small Hornbeck solo canoes are just the right size (10 feet) to maneuver the tight channels that wind through the sphagnum islands.

The colors of several species of sphagnum moss can be quite dazzling!

One of the first plants we found was Horned Bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta), a  "rooted" bladderwort that does not float free as many other bladderworts do but stays put with its feet in the mud.   It is much taller than other bladderworts, too, bearing its yellow flowers, with their distinctive slender "horned" spurs, high atop slender stems.

A second yellow-flowered plant grows out of the bog mat, too. But this one, called Yellow-eyed Grass (Xyris montana) is shorter than the Horned Bladderwort, with three-parted flowers that emerge from scaly involucres, and it does have leaves, although they are as fine as grass. It was just beginning to bloom, so I could not get a good photo of its flower.

Did I mention that we found masses of Rose Pogonia as we paddled around the lake? At nearly every turn we were dazzled by the sight of these pretty pink flowers, thriving atop the sphagnum or peeking out from among the reeds.

Of course, wherever there are plants, there are bound to be bugs. Here is just a small selection of those we encountered today.

This caterpillar, the larva of a Smeared Dagger Moth (Acronicta oblinata), was found among the leaves of a Leatherleaf shrub. Considering the drab coloration of the adult moth, the colors of its caterpillar are remarkably brilliant.

We came across five Bluet damselflies caught by their wings in the sticky pads of a Spatulate Sundew. Under most circumstances, I accept that sundews have to eat, too, and leave them to their meal.  But these pretty little creatures were struggling so, and they seemed to be pleading "Help!" with their big blue eyes.  So I did do what I could to disentangle them, even though that meant dismembering the plant.

Here are two of the happy survivors on my knee, resting from their ordeal before they took to the air. 

And here was a male Frosted Whiteface Dragonfly.  He seemed like a real friendly guy, posing for photo after photo I took of him. In this one, he actually looks as if he were winking at me!