Roadside Wonders

A busy week, with many delightful botanical finds!  So many, in fact, that I'm only going to hit the highlights in this post, featuring mostly those I found close to a roadway.   I do include one exception, though, where we had to create our own "road" to the treasures we found.

Beach Road, Moreau Lake State Park

Obviously, I did not take this photo this week. It was taken last December, when I first spotted the evidence that a rare plant was growing right close to the road near the parking area for the swimming beach at Moreau Lake State Park.  The plant was Green Rock Cress  (Borodinia missouriensis), a Threatened species in New York State and also rated as Rare to Extremely Rare in New England.  It happens to thrive abundantly in several locations at Moreau Lake State Park, and it is immediately identifiable all year long, because of its long arching seed pods that persist throughout the winter. And it's easily seen from the road (if you know what you're looking for!).

Those arching seedpods were brown last December, while this week they were green.  But the distinctive pods were still quite visible from the road, even against the overall green of the background woods.

The wee little white flowers of Green Rock Cress would not be so visible from the roadway. In fact, I had to search a bit for them, standing right next to the plants.

I was also delighted to find two other native wildflowers in the same vicinity as the Green Rock Cress.  Both of these, too, had gone to seed, but their seeds are among the most interesting parts of the plants.  Note how the stalks of the chubby, three-parted seeds of Perfoliate Bellwort (Uvularia perfoliata) seem to poke right through the leaves before they rest on them.

Although this lush patch of Solomon's Seal (Polygonatum biflorum) was truly evident along the road, its seeds were actually still well-hidden within the berries dangling from the leaf axils.

If you lift up a leaf, the berries of Solomon's Seal are easy to see:

Powerline Road, Moreau, NY

Lucky for me, I arrived at this powerline roadway before the skies opened up and drenched me as well as this tiny little Virginia Dwarf Dandelion (Krigia virginica), or I never would have seen it. After the rain, the flower had closed so tightly it became invisible. Despite the "dandelion" part of its name, this denizen of dry sandy soils is one of our native wildflowers.  A really cute one, too.

I was surprised to see our native Wild Lupine (Lupinus perennis) still in beautiful  bloom along this sandy roadway.  At many other sites in Saratoga County, the flowers are now going to seed.  Although this species is rated as a Rare plant in the state, I find it occurring naturally in many sandy-soiled sunny areas of our county, and it is also massively planted in some preserves, since it provides the only larval food for the Federally Endangered Karner Blue Butterfly.  

I love how the texture of Wild Lupine's leaves allow the raindrops to bead up and sparkle like jewels.

Here was the wildflower I was quite willing to get soaking wet to see.  Thankfully, the rain barely penetrated the thick pine woods I pushed through to find a nice patch of Green-flowered Pyrola (Pyrola chlorantha). Otherwise, I would not have risked getting my camera wet to take this picture. Green-flowered Pyrola is not a rare plant in our state, but it usually takes some searching to find it, and I was delighted to find it blooming now.

An Old Logging Road, Warren County

Almost exactly one year ago, I reported finding a new-to-me species of Blue-eyed Grass that was growing along an old logging road up in northern Warren County.  Imagine my surprise when I learned that Sharp-tipped Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium mucronatum) was an Endangered species in New York State and had never been reported from Warren County. Until I reported it. (This species is also either extremely rare or no longer existent in most New England states.) 

When it was time for it to bloom again, Richard Ring, chief botanist with the New York Natural Heritage Program, asked me to escort him to where I had found this rare Blue-eyed Grass. That's Richard, above (peering through his loupe), along with his assistant Rachael Renzi, in the process of assessing the abundant population we once again encountered, and at several different locations along the road.

The most obvious evidence that this is no ordinary Blue-eyed Grass is how very fine and rather floppy its leaves are.  My Newcomb's Wildflower Guide informed me that S. mucronatum's stems were very slender and barely winged, compared to other species of Sisyrinchium. I also learned from Newcomb's that its "Stem [was] without a bract in the middle and unbranched, [its] flower cluster overtopped by a pointed bract."

And sure enough, the flower clusters were indeed "overtopped by a pointed bract."

Forging a Trackless Path to a Hidden Bog

After assessing that Sisyrinchium mucronatum population, Rich Ring hoped my companion Ruth Brooks and I might escort him and Rachel to a well-hidden bog nearby.  Of course we would! But we did add that we'd have to push our way through a moat full of masses of tangled branches and blow-down, and teeter over slippery moss-covered logs to avoid slipping knee-deep into muck.  Ruth was careful to mark a trail with pink tape, so we could be sure to find our way out.

Ah, but the effort was surely worth it!  We eventually emerged onto a broad sphagnum-carpeted bogmat surrounding a Black-Spruce-ringed kettle pond.  Aside from the shrubs of Sheep Laurel and Labrador Tea, the most obvious denizens here were the tall-stalked, red-flowered Purple Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) protruding above the sphagnum.

It took some searching, but then we came upon a good-sized population of the Dragon's Mouth Orchid (Arethusa bulbosa) trying to hide from our view among the taller vegetation.  Well, any flower this brightly colored is not likely to stay hidden for long, and Rich and Rachel and Ruth and I counted at least 40 gorgeous specimens, more than we'd found on last year's venture here.

If Arethusa bulbosa announces its presence through its vivid color and ample size, this next Threatened species,  Carex chordorrhiza, does its successful best to remain well hidden from view. (Well hidden, that is, from everyone except such an expert botanist as Rich Ring, who easily spotted it and showed it to us!)  First, its stems are slender and spikelets small, easily overlooked among all the bog grasses.  And then it buries its most distinguishing feature down deep in the sphagnum, the previous year's vegetative stem now lengthened dramatically and lying flat and nestling within the moss, with this year's new growth sprouting from its internodes. That now-brown stem could easily be mistaken for a rhizome, a feature that inspired its vernacular name, Rope-root Sedge.  Once Rich had shown it to us, we could spot it almost everywhere.  We New Yorkers are lucky to have this sedge, even as a Threatened species. It is rated as Extremely Rare in New England states.

Another sedge, called Few-flowered Sedge (Carex pauciflora), was much easier to spot, for its larger, sharply pointed yellow spikelets were quite evident against the deep red of the sphagnum. This attractive sedge is a common species in New York, although it is ranked as Extremely Rare in Massachusetts and considered Historical in Connecticut.  

As a plant enthusiast, I sure feel lucky to live in New York, especially up here in the northeastern region of the state, where some of our rarest plants can be found simply a short walk away from where I parked my car.  Although, of course, some can't.