Blue Blooms and a Bounty of Beautiful Bugs

This past Friday offered a perfect morning for a leisurely paddle on a perfectly beautiful Adirondack-region pond! The air was comfortably cool, as morning mist softened the early light, and not a breath of wind rippled the silvery surface of the pond. My friends Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks and I had arranged to meet here to explore this pond's shoreline for some of the season's most beautiful plants.  And we were not disappointed!

Our favorite part of this pond is the north-facing rocky shore, where shade-loving forest-floor plants and rock-loving mosses and liverworts offer abundant points of interest to such obsessive botanizers as Sue and Ruth and myself. Here, Ruth closely examines a moss specimen, while Sue takes a macro photo of it, the better to see the tiny details that distinguish one moss from another.

I was amused by the sprightly beauty of this row of Haircap Moss (Polytrichum sp.) sprouting out of a crack in a pond-side boulder. A very dark species of a glossy liverwort clings to the surface of the rock, just below the moss.

This late in the summer, few wildflowers bloom in the deep shade of the woods, but this patch of  Wintergreen plants (Gaultheria procumbens) found enough light at the edge of the bank to continue putting forth these pink-tinged white bell-shaped flowers.

We can usually count on finding the pure-white blooms of Dalibarda (Rubus repens) well into September, and sure enough, many flowers still starred the dark-green heart-shaped leaves that carpeted the north-facing banks.

I was really happy to find we had arrived at just the right time of the summer when the Mountain Holly shrubs (Ilex mucronata) were full of their gorgeous red fruits, berries of a super-saturated color rarely seen among other fruits.

Ah, but here was the coveted prize we had come to this pond at this particular time to find! What a beacon of beautiful blue! Is there any other native wildflower more radiantly blue than the Narrow-leaved Gentian (Gentian linearis)? There is not.  And is there any other place than this particular pond where we might hope to find them so abundantly?  I truly believe there is not.  Here was the first of the hundreds and hundreds of equally gorgeous specimens we were soon to encounter.

On some banks, the gentians grew among carpets of Sphagnum Moss, accompanied by the brilliant-red fruits of Bunchberry.

On other banks, the gentians surrounded some low-hanging branches of a Viburnum shrub called Wild Raisin or Witherod (Viburnum nudum var. cassinoides).

All of the gentians grew close to the water's edge, and some leaned well over the edge, their beauty perfectly doubled by their reflections in the dark still water.

We could not paddle two feet along the shore without encountering another perfect specimen of Narrow-leaved Gentian, some flower clusters holding as many as five fat royal-blue blooms.

Each encounter seemed to reveal a specimen even more beautiful than the one I had seen just before. I find it hard to describe the joy that seeing these flowers brought me.  If some of my images seem a bit blurred, it may be because I was brought to tears at times by the absolute beauty before me.

What a bounty of beauty!  And all freely given, to those who have eyes to see!

Of course, there were many other plants along the pond's edge, including those that grow right out in the water.  The white flowers in this photo are those of Common Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) and the tall narrow leaves are those of a species of Bur Reed (Sparganium sp.)

I find it difficult to tell one species of Bur Reed from another without examining their mature fruits and consulting the manuals, so I did not examine the blooming stems that carefully.  But by peering among  the long slender leaves, I did find some interesting insects and other creatures.  This amorous pair of beetles was especially beautiful, the sunlight glinting off their shiny wing covers as bright as hammered copper. I have been told that they are a pair of leaf beetles in the Chrysomelidae family,  of a genus, Donacia, that is difficult to pin down as to species.  Whatever their species, they were frequent among the Sparganium leaves. This pair was doing their bit to assure there would be many more of them.

This large black beetle was also perched at the tip of a Bur Reed leaf.  Known as the Rough Hermit Beetle (Osmoderma scabra), it is not really an aquatic species, since its larvae live on and in rotting wood. But I know there is always plenty of rotting wood on the forested shores of ponds, so this beetle was not far from its preferred habitat.  Perhaps it just sought this sunny perch to warm up on this rather cool morning. Its dark color would be ideal for soaking up those warming photons!

I don't know what this Flower Crab Spider (possibly Misumena vatia) hopes to prey on out here on this Bur Reed leaf, especially since its pure-white color will not allow it to hide from prey, as is its custom in plants of other colors. I have never seen a Crab Spider turn this shade of green, though.

As far as critters go, though, the thousands and thousands of Spreadwing damselflies were the stars of the morning,  flitting and fluttering among the Bur Reed leaves, the sunlight glittering off their transparent wings, which they held half-open even while they perched. I am not sure of the species, since their constant motion made it hard to get a clear close-up photo, but the blue eyes, iridescent green thorax, and white band at the end of the abdomen of this pair suggest these may be Swamp Spreadwings (Lestes vigilax).  Also, shoreline vegetation is known to be where they mate and lay eggs.

As these Spreadwings dashed about, the was air filled with sparkles from sunlight glancing off their glittering wings. But now and then they would perch for just a few seconds on emergent vegetation (giving me a brief moment to attempt a photograph).

I think there might have been teams of Spreadwing Damselflies challenging each other to see how many would fit on a single leaf.  These creatures were in such constant motion, I can't believe I got this many holding still all at once!  Quite a sight to end our perfect paddle on this perfectly beautiful pond!