Late Summer Beauty on a Beaver Pond

The day was perfect for a paddle: calm wind, sunny but cool, a fine friend to paddle with, and a marvelous group of waterways to choose from.  When my friend Ruth suggested we visit West Vly, a marshy-shored beaver pond in the southern Adirondacks, I at first hesitated.  Would the water be deep enough to navigate (the beaver dam is sometimes breached)?  Would we find enough in the way of plants to delight us, since the shallow-watered shoreline presents quite a monoculture of sedges?  And it was true, when I first launched my canoe and observed the scene before me, it did look less interesting than the boulder-shored, wildflower-abundant, forested ponds and streams we usually paddle.

 But that perception soon changed!

It didn't take more than a few pulls of my paddle to bring me close to a watery wonderland along the shore, where the shining, gracefully arching leaves of Slender Sedge (Carex lasiocarpa) were gently waving in the breeze, perfect flowers of Fragrant Water Lily (Nymphaea odorata) were serenely floating on the mirror-still water, and numerous ancient tree stumps were home to beautiful mixes of colorful lichens, emerald-green mosses, sparkling sundews, and numerous flowers that were just as beautiful in seed as they had been in bloom.

The shoreline, too, offered masses of color, such as this abundant patch of Marsh St. Johnswort (Hypericum virginicum) crowned with vividly scarlet seed pods.

There were mounds of Dwarf St. Johnswort (Hypericum mutilum), too, bearing equally red but much tinier seed pods, as well as a few miniature bright-yellow blooms.

Even the sedges and rushes were colorful now, many of them bearing spikelets that rivaled wildflowers for beauty. (I confess I have difficulty remembering their names, but I still can admire their beauty.)

This tall tuft of grass towered over the extensive expanse of Slender Sedge,  where it danced and waved with the slightest breeze.

We were pleased to note that the beavers were still quite active here, their lodges clear evidence that legions of workers were ready to stanch any breaches that might occur in the dam that held all the water back to form this pond. This lodge was decorated with the bright blooms of Nodding Bur Marigold (Bidens cernua).

Here's a closer look at the Nodding Bur Marigold.  The flowers remain erect in bloom, but the center disk flowers will indeed nod when they drop their petals and go to seed. 

When I spied this nearby plant of Yellow Loosestrife (Lysimachia terrestris), it occurred to me that I can't recall ever seeing the terminal clusters of this plant's flowers in seed. I do frequently find the little red bulbils that sprout in the leaf axils, however. These bulbils will drop off to create clonal offspring where they fall.

As we approached the extensive beaver dam at one end of the pond, we noticed a significant change in the shoreline.  Instead of wide marshy areas of aquatic sedges standing in shallow water, the steeper, rockier banks here were forested with tall conifers, with many of the trees growing right at the water's edge.  Ruth has here climbed from her canoe, the better to observe the vegetation growing along the top of the dam.  When I paddled close to the edge of the dam and peered over the edge, I was startled to note a drop of at least eight feet. Those beavers are certainly skilled engineers!

This bright-yellow Amanita mushroom was so brilliantly colored it shone as if lit from within from out of the deep shadows of the forest.

A glimpse of something blue along the shore had me beaching my own canoe and climbing out to explore the the forest where it met the water's edge.  And look what I saw! Dozens of royal-blue Narrow-leaved Gentians (Gentiana linearis), some a bit past prime but others looking as radiant as ever.

And here was another surprise: new bright-pink blooms on the shoreline Sheep Laurel shrubs (Kalmia angustifolia).  This shrub normally blooms in early June, but will occasionally sprout new flowers in the fall.

We continued around the edge of the pond, next entering a region of very shallow water and extensive mud flats, the shallowness impeding us from paddling any closer than this. These mud flats were  decorated with hundreds of Spatulate Sundew plants (Drosera intermedia), the bright-scarlet leaves of which glistened with sparkling but sticky fluid drops that entice this carnivorous plant's insect prey to visit and be trapped and consumed.

As I pushed my canoe through the shallows to take a closer look at the sundew-carpeted mud, I noticed myriad tiny yellow flowers poking up from amid the sundews.

Very tiny yellow flowers, held above the shallow water on slender leafless stalks.

I did manage to push my boat in close enough to lift one of the tiny flowers and get a good look at its yellow petals that were faintly striped with thread-fine red lines.   The tininess of the flower, the equal size of the top and bottom petals, the noticeable hump beneath the top petal, and the way the plants were affixed in the watery mud instead of floating free convinced me that these were indeed the aquatic flower called Humped Bladderwort (Utricularia gibba). This is another carnivorous plant that obtains its nutrients, not by photosynthesizing with green leaves (note the absence of leaves), but by digesting tiny organisms it sucks into its underwater bladders.

We eventually reached the far side of the pond, where a sphagnum-carpeted bog mat, holding dancing tufts of cottongrass atop long slender stems, extended for many acres before meeting the forest beyond. We could not find any place where we could pull our boats up and get out to examine the mat,  so we called it a day and paddled back to where we had put in.

Before leaving West Vly, I let my boat just drift while I gazed about at the beautiful forest that surrounded us, some of the Red Maples already taking on their gorgeous autumn color. I was also struck by the absolute silence of this isolated place, with the only sounds those of a cricket's high-pitched faint  call and the occasional drip from the blade of  my resting paddle.  And to think that I had wondered if we would find enough here to delight us!

One final delight awaited us as we climbed the trail back to our cars, our lightweight canoes on our  shoulders.  I was glancing around the woods that surrounded the trail, grateful that the shotgun shells and beer cans that used to litter this beautiful place had disappeared, when I noticed many small Ladies' Tresses orchids growing right by the path.  What gracefully curving petals, and so snowy white!  We once called these Nodding Ladies' Tresses, but now they go by the name Sphinx Ladies' Tresses (Spiranthes incurva).  Ah well, who cares what taxonomists call them now?  I call them gorgeous, and that's good enough for me.