Soggy Pursuits at Bog Meadow

To tempt my friends Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks to join me at Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail this week, I promised them we'd probably find the gorgeous Swamp Thistle (Cirsium muticum) blooming there now. When both asked if they would need to wear rubber boots,  I assured them they wouldn't.  Oh no, I told them, there's no standing water, just kind of damp soil in the thickly forested swamp we'd be pushing through. (I always find the Swamp Thistle quite a ways off the trail.)   Well, I was wrong. We've had a tremendous amount of rain this summer.

It was a good thing my friends did wear their boots.  There was actually quite a bit of standing water in the swamp, deep enough to hide the root that tripped me and sent me sprawling, right on my backside, into black mud.

Ah well, that muddy butt was well worth it! For there they were, hidden well back in the mucky woods: quite a number of tall Swamp Thistles, most still in bud but a few displaying their gorgeous pinky-purple blooms.

Even when not in bloom, the Swamp Thistle buds are both beautiful and fascinating, with red-tipped, white-striped green involucre bracts (called "phyllaries" in botanical-speak) interlaced with hair-fine webbing that looks as if a spider has been very busy among the bracts. This webbing is a distinctive trait of this particular thistle species. But in this particular bud cluster, there may indeed have been a spider casting webs around this group of blooms: I had never seen so much webbing outside of the phyllaries!

There were other beauties hiding back here in the muck, including many tall blooming stalks of Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). The gorgeous blue flowers have an interesting pollination structure, with the stamen protruding outside a slit in the upper petal. When an insect lands on the lower petal, its weight  causes the stamen to spring downward through the slit and bop the insect's back with a load of  pollen. Clever!

This swamp is one of the few places I know of where Wood Horsetail (Equisetum sylvaticum) thrives, its slender forking branches looking very lacy this time of the summer.

At least four other species of Equisetum also grow in Bog Meadow's forested wetlands: E. arvense (Field Horsetail), E. fluviatile (Water Horsetail), E. hyemale (Scouring Rush), and this wee little squiggly mass of curling stems called E. scirpoides (Dwarf Horsetail). The Dwarf Horsetail is an evergreen species, and we found lots and lots of it in this muddy area. 

The leaves of the masses of Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus) that earlier in the summer filled this swamp have mostly withered,  but we did find a few of the wood-hard fruits, which resemble intricately carved oval ornaments.

Aah!  Solid ground beneath our feet at last! We emerged from our mucky wetland onto the main trail of this beautiful preserve. The Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail lies just on the eastern edge of Saratoga Springs and runs for about two miles through several types of wooded wetland, including open marsh and dense forest,  such as the green and shady trail pictured here.

We had barely stepped onto this main trail before we spotted a tiny floral treasure that Sue and Ruth are closely examining here.

My friends are examining Yellow Bartonia (Bartonia virginica), a native wildflower often overlooked, because it is so small.  Also, its greenish-yellow coloring and apparently leafless stems allow it to hide among other low green plants. But luckily, it didn't escape our searching eyes on this day. Usually found in sunlit sphagnum bogs and fens, it was kind of surprising to find a nice patch of it growing along this wooded trail.

This Green-headed Coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata) would have been much easier to espy among the trailside woods if it hadn't been curving down low to the ground, possibly toppled by some of the torrential rains that have battered our region of late. But its big yellow flowers announced its presence quite clearly.  Normally a very tall plant, this native wildflower is also known as Cutleaf Coneflower, a name suggested by its deeply cut leaves.

This abundant cluster of Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) was mature enough to have turned its previously downturned flowers skyward, the better to reveal its obviously floral internal structures. Sometimes this pale wildflower is mistaken for a white fungus,  and the plant does depend on fungi to  survive. Lacking any green color at all, it does not photosynthesize,  but instead obtains nutrients by parasitizing fungi that associate with plant roots. These mycorrhizal fungi help the plants take up water and nutrients that might otherwise be inaccessible to the plants.

These pale-pink flowers also appeared to have no leaves, on first observation.  But a closer examination would reveal that the flower stalk was attached underground to the group of green leaves next to it on the forest floor.  For this reason, this Pea-family plant is called Naked-flowered Tick Trefoil (Hylodesmum nudiflorum), a wildflower I find much less frequently than the similar Pointed-leaf Tick Trefoil it resembles. We found a number of these dainty-flowered plants today, more than I've ever found in one place before.

And oh yes, we did find ORCHIDS!  And surprisingly, we found these Downy Rattlesnake Plantains (Goodyera pubescens) right where I'd found them before.  Some years, there's not a sign of the flower stalks, although the beautifully patterned basal leaves might be found.  But this was our lucky year!

A second orchid we found today, this Spotted Coralroot (Corallorhiza maculata), was completely unexpected! None of us had ever seen this species of orchid at Bog Meadow Trail before.  And where I usually look for them at another location, not a single one has emerged this year.  Fickle flowers, orchids.

We also found some fascinating fungi.  At first, I thought that this velvety, dark-brown, pale-rimmed disc was a piece of bark, but when I pinched it I found it thick and spongey and actually quite wet, not crispy and thin and dry like a piece of bark.  I could actually squeeze water out of it, as if it were a soaked sponge. Then, when I looked underneath at its fertile surface, I could see it was a toothed fungus. My friend Sue consulted iNaturalist, which suggested Velvet Tooth (Hydnellum spongiosopes), and I believe it was correct.

A peek beneath revealed the "teethy" part of this fungus's vernacular name.

This cute custard-colored cluster of mushrooms has the equally cute common name of Yellow Jelly Baby (Leotia lubrica). Other vernacular names include Lizard Tuft (??) and Gumdrop Fungus.

I do not know the names of either the golden slug or the tiny gilled mushrooms ornamenting this mossy downed log. I just thought they were cute.

But I do know that this white-rimmed colorfully striped fungus goes by the name of Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor).  Very aptly named, indeed, since "versicolor" means "various colors" and the caps are certainly colored with various different hues.  Also, this same species of fungus can fruit in a wide variety of colors, from tawny earth tones like those of this group, to dark chocolate edged with white, or royal blue alternating with schoolbus yellow, and other combinations.