A Few Busy Days and Their Flowers

This past week has been a busy one, and next week will be even more so. I'm having so much fun out there, it's hard to find time to post blogs.  Just for the record, then, here are some of the highlights of the past few days, before the next few days start to fill up my calendar and my photo files again.

Friday, June 3, The Hoosic River at Canal Park

Since I'm leading a nature walk here this coming Tuesday, I needed to see what was happening now at this site where the Hoosic River joins the Champlain Canal of the Hudson River. A remarkable feature of Canal Park is a low-lying alluvial area where a large number of rare and interesting plants are known to grow.  Also, the view of the Hoosic here is really nice (see photo above).

One of the most remarkable plants we find here is Green Dragon (Arisaema dracontium), an Arum Family plant related to Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Like those more familiar Jacks, this plant bears its tiny flowers on a spadix enclosed within an enveloping sheaf called a spathe, with the spadix protruding in a long slender spire that turns yellow as it matures. In this rich alluvial soil, where river silt is deposited by spring floods, the Green Dragons grow here to prodigious size, and in abundant numbers. 

Sadly, another lover of riverbanks has gained a foothold here, the horribly invasive Yellow Iris (Iris pseudacorus).  If left to its own devices, this non-native iris will drive out all the herbaceous native plants that grow here now, no doubt including even the sturdy Green Dragons mentioned above.  Well, let's just say I wasn't going to let that happen. The participants on Tuesday's nature walk will not find most of these botanical villains here anymore.

Just downstream from the low-lying alluvial area where the Green Dragons grow, shale banks rise steeply from the river's edge.  This shale is habitat for various plants that grow right out of the rock, including many interesting mosses and liverworts, which my friend Ruth is examining closely here.

No, wait!  I think that Ruth is instead examining the flower heads of these small daisy-like plants that are growing right out of the shale.  They look very much like the very common Philadelphia Fleabane, except that the flowers are somewhat smaller and they grow on shorter stalks than does that common fleabane.  These are instead the Threatened variety called Provancher's Fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus var. provancheri), and they grow here on this shale by the hundreds. Their identity has been verified by one of New York State's rare-plant investigators.

I hope the Hoosic water levels stay low enough next week, so that I can lead our nature-walkers out along this rocky shoreline, where many more interesting plants have found a happy home.

I sure hope these plants of Hairy Beardtongue (Penstemon hirsutus) will still have a few of their pretty purple flowers left on Tuesday. And also, that their location is accessible by foot.  I've been exploring this park for several years and it wasn't until just last year that I discovered how abundantly this species grows on this low rocky stretch of Hoosic shore.   This shoreline is often underwater, prohibiting on-foot exploration by wildflower seekers.

The lovely and fragrant Caroline Rose (Rosa carolina) also grows abundantly along this rocky stretch.

It would be great if the flower buds of this Canada Onion were open by Tuesday.  The small pink flowers are really pretty and such an unexpected find on an onion.  This tiny grasshopper was basking atop the clonal bulblets. This photo does not include the tiny spider I also saw lurking there, probably wondering if that grasshopper could be a likely candidate for its lunch, despite being three times its size.

Here's that little spider.  It looks as if the spider already has plenty in its pantry for its lunch:

On our return walk through a shady mixed hardwood/conifer woods, we stopped to search for the Sheep Laurel flowers (Kalmia angustifolia) hiding under its leaves.

This was just a small sampling of the many interesting Canal Park plants that I hope to show to my fellow woodswalkers this coming Tuesday, as well as to another group of friends who'll be visiting this same site just two days later. Did I mention my week would be busy?

UPDATE: When I returned to the Hoosic banks on Tuesday, I witnessed hundreds of tiny dust-colored moths (and one more-colorful visitor) feeding on the flowers of Indian Hemp:

Those moths intrigued me enough to go searching the internet, and there I learned (from a University of Wisconsin site) that these most likely belong to a group of moths called Petrophila (rock-lovers), and that they are always found near the eastern North American rivers that their larvae inhabit. The moths are found near rivers because that's where they lay their eggs, on underwater rocks in moving water. The female, clutching an air-bubble against her ventral surface to allow her to breathe, climbs down the surface of a submerged rock and deposits her eggs there. There are many different species of Petrophila moths, and it looks as if two different species have landed on this patch of Indian Hemp. UPDATE: I have since learned that the more colorful moth, while equally as tiny as the Petrophila  moths, probably is not related, although it shares the same habitat. It is called Spotted Thyris (Thyris maculata).

You can find out more fascinating information about these scuba-diving Petrophila moths and how their larvae cope underwater by visiting this site:

https://uwm.edu/field-station/two-lined-petrophila-moth-rerun/

Saturday, June 4, The North Woods at Skidmore College

When a fellow wildflower nerd reported seeing the diminutive Four-leaved Milkweed (Asclepias quadrifolia) blooming now in the woods adjoining Skidmore College, I dropped all other stuff I was doing at home and scurried out there to see it. This is one of our only milkweeds that prefers the shade of the woods, as well as a lime-rich habitat such as that found in the Skidmore woods. Some years I have to search and search to find just a few of its dainty, pink-tinged flower clusters.  But this is a banner year for it, so I barely had to step onto the trail before spying it in many places. What a perfectly lovely little plant! I always make sure to kneel down to breathe in its exquisite fragrance, too.

While there, I took a short detour to the mucky edge of a mid-forest pond, expecting to find uncountable numbers of Tufted Loosestrife (Lysimachia thyrsiflora) blooming now.  And I definitely was not disappointed!

Heading back to my car through an open sunny area under a powerline,  I could see at a glance the tiny red trumpet-shaped flowers wreathing the stems of Orange-fruited Horse Gentian (Triosteum aurantiacum).

I also noticed I wasn't the only one stopping to visit the flowers.  Although this Silver-spotted Skipper had other reasons to stop there.

Back home again, I happened to visit my own back yard, and there I discovered that these adorable little native wildflowers, called Venus's Looking Glass (Triodanis perfoliata), had popped up between the bricks in our patio. 

There were hundreds of them, just starting to bloom with vividly purple flowers, starting at the top but eventually flowering from each leaf axil along the stiffly erect stem.  How the heck did they get here?  Are Triodanis seeds included in birdseed?  That's how we get volunteer sunflowers, amaranth, and sorghum, anyway. At any rate, I am happy to have them add their charms to our other delightful backyard volunteers like Lady's Thumb, Purple Morning Glory, Motherwort, Clearweed, Black Nightshade, Three-seeded Mercury, and Creeping Buttercup. I don't know where any of those others came from, either. But I'm happy to welcome them. If only they'd crowd out the Goutweed!

Sunday, June 5, The Village of Lake Luzerne, NY

Sunday was a spectacular summer day in Saratoga, the kind of day it would have been perfect to drive up to Lake Luzerne (20 miles north) to have lunch at Upriver Cafe, on a porch overlooking the Hudson River roaring over Rockwell Falls. Sadly, that charming cafe has closed, but my husband and I did the next best thing.  We bought subs at a great Italian deli in Saratoga and took them up to Lake Luzerne, to picnic in this lovely little park on a bench overlooking the river, just above where the Hudson plunges over the falls.

After lunch on the shore of the Hudson, we next walked up a steep pine-lined trail to Mill Park, where the Stewart Creek rushes down the mountainside, dancing and splashing and tumbling over rocks.

Stewart Creek runs from Lake Luzerne to the Hudson River, falling steeply over boulders in its precipitous course to the river. We sat on a nearby bench and zoned out to the sounds of splashing water and musical  birdsong, breathing the sweet clean pine-scented air. We felt so grateful to live in a part of our country so green and lush and with so many clean and beautiful waterways.

I have read that the splashing water of waterfalls or crashing surf releases negative ions into the air, a condition that is known to have beneficial effects on our physical and emotional well-being. I highly recommend the experience!  My husband and I had quarreled a bit during the ride from Saratoga to Lake Luzerne. But we leaned lovingly against one another while sharing that bench by the creek. And walked to our car holding hands.