High Meadow Finds

It has really been hard to enjoy a day without rain of late. But I had to get up to this high meadow under a mountain-traversing powerline!  The gorgeous Pasture Thistles should be blooming now, and this somewhat challenging climb above the Hudson River at Moreau would lead me to the only place I have ever found them. So, despite a forecast of possible storms, up and up and up I went.   I could glimpse the Hudson River far below, its waters held back by the Spier Falls Dam, the largest hydroelectric dam in the world when it was completed in 1903 and still producing the many kilowatts of power carried by the lines I was walking beneath.  Just the view from up here was worth the sweat and my wobbly knees.

And so was the prospect of laying eyes on one of our most beautiful native wildflowers, the Pasture Thistle (Cirsium pumilum), with its brilliantly colored blooms nearly as big as my fist, and as fragrant as they are gorgeous. This photo, taken on a previous summer, exemplifies the flowers I expected to find.

But alas, the thistles were quite a disappointment!  Some were still only in bud, while others had already gone to seed, and all looked rather bedraggled, many with brown-edged and withered leaves. I wonder if this summer's excessive heat and torrential rains had just been too hard on these flowers. This partially opened bud was the best looking bloom I could find.

This Goldfinch didn't care what the Pasture Thistles looked like and was happy to find some already gone to seed. The bird was so busy rifling the remains, I was able to get quite close without frightening it away.

Not nearly as showy as Pasture Thistle usually is, but adorable nonetheless: this is Bicknell's Cranesbill (Geranium bicknellii), another floral denizen of this mountainside meadow. This native wildflower is a not-uncommon inhabitant of rocky summits and roadsides in New York State, but it is often overlooked because of its small size and sprawling habitat.

The seedpods of Bicknell's Cranesbill provide a clue as to how this little geranium acquired the vernacular name "cranesbill":

Several species of Tick Trefoils (Desmodium spp.) thrive in the thin rocky soils of this mountainside meadow. Showy, Large-bracted, Panicled, and Round-leaved were all in bloom this day, but the only species that wasn't waving about wildly in the growing-ever-stronger wind was this Round-leaved Tick Trefoil (D. rotundifolium), with big round leaves that lie nearly flat as they sprawl across the ground.

There yet remained many wildflowers I'd hoped to find and photograph, but the rumble of thunder and a rising wind warned me I'd better descend from this wide-open high terrain as quickly as I could.  But I did have to halt to admire the spectacular size and sunburst colors of this gorgeous fungus occupying a fallen log. It goes by the common name Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sulphureus), but I have yet to see a chicken as dramatically colored as this.