A Week's Worth of Wanderings

A busy week!   But so is every week for me, during the growing season. I live within easy driving distance to many wonderful parks and nature preserves, each one offering distinctive habitats, so I'm on the go nearly every day, off to visit some of my favorite floral and fungal finds.

I'm always thrilled when the Closed Gentian (Gentiana clausa) comes into bloom. What incredible color! Is there any more appropriate word for this color but Royal Blue?  I found a big patch of these gentians in perfect bloom at Moreau Lake State Park this past week.

If Closed Gentian is a flower you'd call "showy", what would you call these tiny flowers, almost invisible against the leaf litter in the woods?  Well, I call them "really rare," since the open throat and broad lower lip of these Autumn Coralroot orchids distinguishes them as the Endangered variety called Pringle's Autumn Coralroot (Corallorhiza odontorhiza var. pringlei). This variety was long thought to be extirpated from New York State until a substantial population of them was found at Moreau Lake State Park two years ago. We always have to look hard for them, but oh happy day, we do still find them there!

In another part of Moreau Lake State Park, on the shores of Lake Bonita, I came upon an abundant patch of Ditch Stonecrop (Penthorum sedoides), a plant with remarkably-shaped chubby blooms.  Note that the anthers surround the flowers instead of protruding from the center.   Usually colored greenish-yellow, the flowers have started to turn their gorgeous autumn crimson.

It was such a sweltering, horribly hot day last Thursday,  I thought about cancelling the walk I was to lead for my Thursday Naturalist friends at Woods Hollow Nature Preserve near Ballston Spa.  But oh, the Sphinx Ladies Tresses were starting to bloom there in the wet meadow section, and I didn't want my friends to miss seeing them. This is the same native orchid that we used to call Nodding Ladies' Tresses (Spiranthes cernua), but which now has been reassigned to another species, Spiranthes  incurva.

Another favorite flower at Woods Hollow is this adorably pretty plant called Blue Curls (Trichostema dichotomum).  The hotter and drier the site and the poorer the soil, the more this aptly named flower seems to thrive. As it does in the sandy oak/pine savanna area of this nature preserve.

We were lucky to have many pairs of eyes searching for this tiny flower called Yellow Bartonia (Bartonia virginica) along a boggy section of the pond shore at Woods Hollow.  There were actually quite a few of these grass-fine plants down close to the water, but every time I averted my gaze, I had great difficulty discerning them again, the plants are so greenish and small.

I tried to keep my friends to explorations within the cooler shade of the piney woods at Woods Hollow Preserve, and this is where we found many Indian Cucumber-root plants, now bearing shiny black fruits surrounded by ruby-splashed leaves.

At last, the weather turned cooler on Saturday! This was the day my friend Sue Pierce and I were to meet a fellow naturalist who had traveled all the way from Brooklyn to explore the Saratoga Sandplain area of the Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park in Wilton. And most of our explorations took place within the native-grasslands-restoration part of the preserve, wide open to the sky. Lucky for us, the sky was thinly overcast, so we were not baked by the sun.

A number of different species of native grasses abound at this site -- Indian Grass, Turkey-foot, Little Bluestem, and others -- but I was especially taken by the frothy-looking clumps of the feathery-topped Switch Grass, which towered over my head.

I was happily surprised to find here such fresh-looking clusters of Spotted Horse-mint (Monarda punctata), since at every other place I had found them this week, they had started to wither.

Here's a closer look at the complicated structure of Spotted Horse-mint. From a distance, this plant appears to have pinkish-green flowers, but those pinkish-green parts are actually the bracts that surround the wreaths of purple-spotted yellow flowers that circle the stems.

The dominant flower in these grasslands this time of year is Tall Goldenrod (Solidago altissima),  and on warmer days and later in the day, the flowers would be all abuzz with bees and other pollinators. Sue and I were puzzled by what seemed a genuine dearth of insects visiting these showy blooms, until our friend told us that sunshine would bring out the bugs.  It was rather cool and darkish this morning.  Of course, this Nursery-web Spider (Pisaurina mira), resting atop a goldenrod bloom, might also have been disappointed by the dearth of visiting prey!  A Female Nursery-web Spiders is known to tenderly care for her egg sac,  carrying it within her fangs until she folds it within a plant's leaf, surrounds it with layers of silk, and guards it until the spiderlings hatch.  I wonder if that brown object below this spider could be her egg sac, wrapped within a now-browning leaf.

This beautiful beetle we found on the ground, an apt spot for finding a Splendid Earth-boring Scarab Beetle (Geotrupes splendidus).  This beetle was probably newly emerged from its larva, and if it's a male he will start creating a burrow in the ground, which he will provision with dead leaves and wait within for a female with which to mate and start the lifecycle all over again. I have read that this is not an uncommon beetle, but I had never seen this beautiful iridescent green beetle before.

I found some interesting fungi this week, too. What looked like puffs of popcorn tossed along a pinewoods trail were actually a pair of Elfin Saddle Mushrooms (Helvella crispa).

This golf-ball-sized puffball covered with white pyramidal spines is called, simply, White Puffball (Lycoperdon candidum).  It may be white on the outside, but when it matures, that crust will slough off in patches to reveal a dark interior, either chocolate brown or deep olive. 

The woods were dark and deep where these Cinnabar Chanterelles (Cantharellus cinnabarinus) had emerged, but their vivid orange color made them easy to spot among the moss and pine needles.

Many Turkey Tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) can be found in vivid shades of orange or yellow or even blue, but this chocolate-brown one edged with creamy white had me examining it closely to determine if it really was a Turkey Tail. Although at first it appeared to be growing on the soil, there actually was a rotting log hidden beneath all those pine needles and ruffled mushroom.

It was startling to come upon this snowy-white growth that looked like icy fingers of frost covering a rotting log -- especially since the day I found it was particularly hot. And it even melted at a touch, like frost, turning to liquid beneath my finger.  But of course, it was a slime mold, called Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa, not frost. Not a fungus, either. Slime molds belong to a category of life-form all their own, displaying almost animal-like abilities to move and feed and eliminate waste until (like fungi) they produce spore-dispersing fruit bodies.  Like this one.