Where Did Winter Go?

Yes, it was lovely on Wednesday this week.  Clear sky, gentle wind, and temps approaching 70 degrees by late afternoon.   A truly beautiful day for a walk along the Hudson River, following Spier Falls Road above the dam. Blue sky, blue water.  What could be nicer?

But I was longing for SNOW and ICE!  Come ON, ye winter gods, where the heck ARE you? What little bit of snow we've had so far is all gone from south-facing slopes.  The only-recently ice-covered lakes are once again unsafe to walk on. So much for all the wintry stuff that actually makes winter fun!  Oh well.  There was still lots of decorative ice on the spring-fed mountainside rocks that line the road I walked along.

 

But I could hear the sound of melting all along the way, with melt-water trickling and splashing down the jagged roadside cliffs. 

I was pleased to see at least some of the spectacular spring-fed icefalls remained in the roadside quarries,  where back at the close of the 19th Century, rocks had been blasted from the mountainside to provide building material for the Spier Falls Dam, the largest privately-owned hydroelectric dam in the world, back when it was completed in 1903.  The dam still operates, generating 56 megawatts of power, which it provides to the surrounding communities.

(Here's one of my photos of the still-operating Spier Falls Dam, taken in very early spring some years ago.)

I love to make my careful way back into these quarries,  the forest floor still littered with huge sharp-edged chunks of blasted rock, but the constantly dampened ledges are softened by carpets of gorgeous green mosses.

But this perky clump of moss looked more red than green, what with a sunbeam illuminating the scarlet translucent spore talks.

This clump of the same moss bore leaves almost as red as the spore stalks.  Perhaps this red color is what suggested this moss's vernacular name of Marsh Cardinal Moss (Ptychostomum pseudotriquetrum).

I have no idea what organism (or mineral?) might have contributed the red splotches of color to this otherwise green-coated patch of wet quarry wall.  The patch was way out of reach for me to examine it closely, but my camera zoom showed me enough detail to suspect that both mosses and liverworts composed the green mix.

A number of lichens also joined the rock clingers, including this brown-leaved Dog Lichen species displaying its uplifted tan-colored reproductive parts. Tom Phillips, a friend who knows his lichens much better than I do, has identified this species as Peltigera polydactylon.

Here was a second foliose lichen sharing the same wet rock, this one less rubbery-looking and so dark as to be almost black.  Tom Phillips also gave me a likely name for this one, too:  Leptogium cyanescens,  a  most appropriate specific name, since any lichen this black will have cyanobacteria in its constitution, in addition to the fungus and alga that typically make up a lichen.

This wee baby fern had sprouted from a crack in the well-watered rock.  Juvenile ferns are notoriously difficult to identify, but since I could see a clump of Marginal Wood Fern (Dryopteris marginalis) immediately above it, I will guess that's what this one is, too.  

We naturalists would have so much less fun in the winter if not for the evergreen ferns and mosses and liverworts and lichens that decorate the forest floor, tree bark, and rocks in every season, adding beauty and interest to every walk in the woods. Even during a winter that doesn't seem much like winter at all.

Speaking of beauty and interest, this particular boulder I found in this quarry continues to fascinate and frustrate me.  I can find many photos of crustose lichens of various colors that cling tightly to rocks.  But none of them is this rosy pink. And my queries posted on sites that might be seen by those who would know have not elicited any responses.

It is quite lovely, is it not?  I wonder what its name is.

UPDATE:  Sue Van Hook, an expert mycologist, has indicated that she is "pretty sure the pink is a color change oxidation reaction like we see in Parmelia sulcata when the upper cortex has been eaten. I’d say it’s a senescent crustose lichen that previously was gray green."  Thanks, Sue!  That makes sense.