Snow Hidden

Remember the blooming Skunk Cabbage I found earlier this week (see last post)?  Well if this "First Flower of Spring" was already blooming in downtown Saratoga Springs,  maybe I'd find many more in bloom at Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in Wilton.  That preserve is where I've found some of the biggest specimens of this wetland plant I've ever seen in my life.  Even though we've had some more snow this week, I bet those huge red spathes would protrude well above it.  Here's my photo of what they looked like about this same time last year: Enormous!

So off I drove to Orra Phelps. But wow, the snow out here sure looked really deep! Maybe down in the swale where the Skunk Cabbage grows, the constant wetness would have melted some of it.

Nope.  The snow lay way too deep in the swale for even the heat-generating powers of Skunk Cabbage to make a dent in it, or for even the most gigantic spathes to peek out above it.

Ah well, the snow looked really pretty along the glittering creek.

All that whiteness made a fine foil for revealing the beaded spore stalks of Sensitive Fern.

With all the fallen logs deeply covered and all the usual denizens of mosses and liverworts and fungi buried beneath, the only colorful fungus I could find were these tiny Lemon Drops studding the cut end of one log.

Here was one more jolt of color in an otherwise black-and-white woods:  the big chrome-yellow buds of a Bitternut Hickory tree.  I know of no other tree buds that display this distinctive color.  The smell of these buds is also distinctive: like old-fashioned Kiwi shoe polish. (I'm sure that reference dates me as really old!)

Here was another tree bud that caught my attention: big, kind of pink, and sprouting from the end of a twig that was uniquely patterned with dots and rings and overlapping scales.  Hmmm. . . ? What could this tree be?

My query found a possible answer when I noticed these spiky burs still dangling from several twigs.  I bet this husk once surrounded the big, smooth, shiny, deep-brown seed of a Horse Chestnut Tree.

Before I headed home, I stopped to take a photo of this big snow-covered boulder that lies near the edge of the road.  I often refer to this same boulder to demonstrate how quickly -- or not! -- the snow disappears from the woods at Orra Phelps Preserve.