One Hot Week, Three Cool Adventures

Another week of August gone by! In other years, I might be wishing the summer were not speeding by so fast, but the muggy heat these past few weeks has made me long already for summer to be done with its misery.  I did find ways to stay cool this week that, yes, meant staying home some days in air-conditioned comfort, but also included venturing out: once to nearly 5,000 feet up an Adirondack peak, another time to paddle some waterways where leafy trees hung over the shores, and just yesterday, to a deep-shaded swamp with cool mud underfoot and plants towering over my head.

Saturday, August 7: The Alpine Plants Atop Whiteface Mountain

Lucky for me (with my arthritic knee), I did not have to climb all the way to the summit of Whiteface Mountain, which at 4,865 feet of elevation is one of the highest peaks of New York's Adirondacks. Happily, I was able to drive to within a few hundred yards of the top, to a parking area where I joined my friends on a New York Flora Association-sponsored walk to survey the alpine flora here. Led by chief botanist Steve Young, I and a small group of other plant-obsessed folks made our slow way up this iron-railed rocky walkway, documenting the alpine species we found along the way.

Sure, the day down below was hot, but up here on the windy side of the peak, we had to hold onto our hats at times as a fierce and chilly wind made me wish I had not left my polarfleece shirt in my car. I noticed that Amy, one of our group, came prepared for all temps, with shorts on her legs and a down jacket for her upper parts.  Robert, another member of our group, appeared oblivious to the weather as he focused his camera on trailside plants, which included a number of rare species found only in such harsh alpine habitats.

Here's a pretty collection of typical trailside plants: Orange-accented Labrador Tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) intermixed with a patch of the rare blue-green Northern Bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), surrounded by the prickly boughs of Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea).

A number of late-season alpine flowers were in full bloom, including abundant numbers of Alpine Goldenrod (Solidago leiocarpa), a short species with stubby clusters of yellow flowers on top.

Another typical denizen of such harsh thin-soiled habitats is Mountain Sandwort (Mononeuria groenlandica), a low-growing, fine-leaved plant with star-shaped white flowers.

Of all the rare or unusual plants we found atop Whiteface Mountain, the rarest of all was a plant called Boott's Rattlesnake-root (Nabalus boottii). We were even lucky enough to find it bearing a few white flowers.  Not the prettiest of plants, even when blooming, but this is certainly one of the world's rarest, with only 5 populations known to exist the whole world over. But it sure seems to like the summit of Whiteface Mountain!

Among the rarer plants on this Whiteface summit were the grasses and sedges, including this Northern Singlespike Sedge (Carex scorpoidea), seemingly happy here on these rocks high above Lake Placid, visible in the misty distance far below. Steve Young informed us that this sedge has been found in only 6 places in the entire state, all of them mountaintops.

Another grass-like plant that prefers the exposed thin-soiled habitat of mountaintops was this Highland Rush (Juncus trifidus), easily recognized (even by non-experts like me) by its fine-tufted tan-colored stems . 

Of course, this is just a small sampling of the many, many plants we observed on Whiteface Mountain. For a somewhat fuller account of a similar visit here, you can visit this blog I posted a few years ago.

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Friday, August 13: Up a Creek and Around the Shore of Fourth Lake

This day promised to be the hottest, swelteriest day of this hot, sweltering week, but my friends Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks and I thought we might beat the heat if we got out early and launched our canoes onto the quiet water of Fourth Lake, just north of the village of Lake Luzerne.  Certainly, the blue sky reflected in the still water offered a picture of coolness, even if it was just an illusion. At least the water felt marvelously cool for trailing our hands in whenever we rested our paddles.

The perfect never-wilting blooms of the myriad Fragrant Water Lilies (Nymphaea odorata) dotting the surface of the lake also played into that illusion  of coolness.  Water Lilies always look fresh and crisp, no matter the heat, since, as soon as they are pollinated, their stems retract and draw their fertilized blooms down into the muddy bottom of the lake, ready to make new plants. 

The morning sun was still low enough in the sky to cast sideways beams through this patch of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata), making the large green leaves and purple flower-spikes glow like stained glass.

After working up a sweat pushing through thick mats of lily pads close to the shore, I was greatly relieved to enter the stream that flows into the north end of Fourth Lake.  Here, the paddling was easy, even moving upstream, and the trees along the forested banks leaned over the water, granting welcome shade.

Several Wild Raisin shrubs (Viburnum nudum var. cassinoides) also leaned over the banks, displaying generous clusters of their still-green berries.

These pink-tinged blooms of Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) stood out against the dark shade of the fern-lined banks.

After paddling up the creek until our progress was interrupted by a beaver dam, we returned to the lake proper, which lay smooth enough to mirror Potash Mountain, rising abruptly beyond.

We had chosen Fourth Lake as our destination today because we remembered once finding here vast mats of Purple Bladderwort (Utricularia purpurea).  And sure enough, we found them again, the flowers tiny dots of pale purple emerging erect from the brown tangled mass of their underwater structures. These aquatic plants have no green leaves to photosynthesize nutrients, so they depend on their bladder-laden underwater parts to capture and digest tiny prey for their food.

Here's a closer look at one of those small purple blooms.

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Saturday, August 14: Swamp Flora at Bog Meadow Nature Preserve

After checking my blog from one year ago, I guessed that I might find Swamp Thistle (Cirsium muticum) blooming now at Bog Meadow Brook Nature Preserve. And I was right! It did take a bit of  searching, though, because this gorgeous native thistle likes to hide well back from the trail in the thickest, muckiest part of the wooded wetlands that line both sides of this trail that lies just outside the city of Saratoga Springs. I had almost despaired of finding it, when the vibrant rosy-purple of this solitary flowerhead shone like a beacon from out of its swampy hiding place.

Pushing through tangled ferns and shrubs and dodging shoe-sucking mucky spots, I soon drew close to the object of my search.  I started to write "drew abreast" of this flower, but really, the flower stood well above my breast height.  "Drew a-brow" would be a more accurate description of the encounter. Close enough, anyway, to marvel at the Swamp Thistle's beauty, the deep-colored rosy-purple explosion of bloom erupting out of involucres as ornate as Ukrainian Easter eggs.

Here's a clearer look at this flower's involucres, the white-striped scales interwoven with fibers as fine as spider silk. This webbing is one of the most distinguishing features for identifying this North American native thistle.

I counted at least 10 blooming plants in an area about as large as a schoolroom, with several more still in tight bud.  I was standing beneath this particular specimen, which towered well over my head as I held my camera up to photograph it from below.  If these thistles had been shorter, I never would have seen them, hiding as they would have been among the ferns and shrubs. As it were, I could simply glance around and enjoy their stunning abundance.

I tarried awhile within this thistle thicket, hoping I might again see this beautiful visitor I had photographed at this site just last year. This was a Giant Swallowtail Butterfly, a species seldom encountered up here in our northern regions, since its larvae can feed only on citrus leaves. Happily, we do have a few citrus species like Northern Prickly Ash to draw small populations of this butterfly north.  The adults, of course, can feed on any flowers that offer nectar, as this Swamp Thistle flower was doing to this butterfly one year ago.  No butterflies today, though.  Although there were plenty of visiting bees.

One other flowering plant caught my eye as I made my way out of the swamp. This is called Horse Balm (Collinsonia canadensis), a Mint-family plant that smells more lemony than minty. If you rub the flower stems between your fingers, you could carry the citronella-like scent with you until you next washed your hands. I did rub that scent around my ears, and it did seem to repel the mosquitoes that had discovered me by now. Historically, the roots of this plant have been used medicinally for many different human ailments, and the Cherokee people were known to use a concoction of it to treat colic in horses, hence the "horse balm" name.

Most of the fungi I found today were well past their prime, but this Yellow Birch was home to some newly emerging Birch Polypore fungi (Piptoporus betulinus). This, too, is an organism with interesting medicinal properties attributed to it. In addition to its historical use as a treatment for intestinal parasites, it is also said to be anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, and an immunity booster. 

A particularly interesting story about Birch Polypore is that it was found in the possession of the more-than-5300-year-old body of a human male, who was preserved in ice high in the Italian Alps.  It is presumed that he carried pieces of this polypore for medicinal use, since such use has been documented from that era of human history. I read about this in one of my mushroom guides, Timorthy Baroni's Mushrooms of the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada.

I just never know what I might learn each time I venture outdoors. Even on days when I might have preferred to remain at home in air-conditioned, mosquito-free comfort.