The Gentians Revive!

Ahh!  One of our favorite ponds in the southern Adirondacks!  It looked so serene and lovely, despite a brisk breeze, when my friends Sue and Ruth joined me there for a paddle last Friday.  I could hardly wait to feel the silken glide of my little canoe as I pushed off from the gravelly shore and drifted along close to the pine-scented banks, hoping to once again delight in lushly moss-covered boulders and colorful wildflowers. But would this pond break my heart again, as it had the past two years?

 

Two years ago, because of a clogged culvert and torrential rainfall, this pond was flooded far back into the surrounding woods.  Every single one of the pond-side floral treasures we'd come here to find was several feet under the water. This photo from 2021 shows all the steep banks flooded, with trees standing several feet deep in water.  By the following year, 2022, many of those trees were dead, as seemed all but one or two of the hundreds of Green Wood Orchids and thousands of Narrow-leaved Gentians that had lined these shores for years. Would we find any signs of revival this year? Oh, how I hoped we would!

Yes, the north-facing rocky banks showed sure signs of life returning.  Some yellowing Painted Trillium leaves indicated a flower had bloomed there just this past May. And the Bunchberry must have as well, since their low-growing wreaths of pleated leaves were centered now with clusters of bright-red berries.  No sign as yet of the carpets of white-flowered, five-petaled Dalibarda, but perhaps they would show by September (I  think I see a single small heart-shaped leaf). The glossy-green trifoliate leaves of Goldthread proved that life was still in them.   I could feel my anxieties ease.

That ease continued with each floral find.  Where hundreds of Green Wood Orchids were nowhere to be found a year ago, now we saw occasional stands of pod-filled stalks, indicating that some, anyway, had made a definite comeback.  

And there!  Like a royal-blue beacon, one glorious bloom of a Narrow-leaved Gentian announced to us that not all was lost. "Keep paddling," this beautiful flower seemed to say, "and you will find many more."

And so we did!  Not nearly as many as two years before, when we could not paddle five yards without seeing dozens upon dozens crowding the shore, but enough to revive our hopes 

Signs of that comeback continued, all around the pond.  There were even more Narrow-leaved Gentians along the south-facing shore, where much more sunlight had spurred their earlier growth, so that now, already, the plump blue flowers were streaked with signs of fading.

Now I could relax and attend to other plants that shared this pondside. Emerging from shallow water, several patches of Arrowhead held multi-flowered stems of snowy-white blooms amid their arrow-shaped leaves.

Even though many Mountain Holly shrubs had been partially toppled by previous flooding, their berry-laden branches hung low over the water, allowing us paddlers to gaze right into the foliage to delight in the super-saturated red of the fruits.

As we dawdled along, poking into every little niche in the rocky banks and pausing among the emergent bur-reeds to observe the hundreds of glittering-winged damselflies, the wind picked up to set the pondside vegetation to swaying. Tall grasses bowed to the breeze, as did the rosy-flowered spikes of Steeplebush.

The flaccid leaves of Narrow-leaved Bur-reed gleamed green and gold on the surface of the water, their colors changing as the rippling water moved in sinuous waves through the massed mats of floating leaves.

Sue called to us to come see what she'd found among the pondside vegetation: a clear jelly glob containing Caddisfly eggs.

I urged my friends to come get a gander at this enormous Striped Fishing Spider, which was clinging to an overhanging tree, watching for likely aquatic prey.  When I peered too close, the spider turned as if to flee, but perhaps it thought if it just froze still, I might go away and leave it be.  Which I did, after I shot this photo.

If that Fishing Spider was huge, this itty-bitty one (species unknown) clinging to a Sweet Gale pod was just the opposite. At first I thought it was doing a backbend, but then I realized it had simply pulled six of its eight legs forward around its head. Perhaps it was using all of those legs to tie complicated knots in its delicate web. Who knows?

When we reached the far end of this oblong pond we pushed into a vast forest of stiffly erect bur-reed leaves. Since the wind was actually chilly this day, it felt very soothing to be held unmoving within the shelter of this sunlit mass, warmed by the noontime rays.

I'm not sure of the species of bur-reed this is, but I bet if I took one of those burs apart and noted the shape of its nutlets I could key it out.  If I had the right guide to aquatic plants, that is. Which I didn't.

Pushing further into the bur-reed mat, I followed the sound of tumbling water to the edge of this beaver dam.  Just beyond the top of the dam, much deeper water was spilling over the edge.  I sure hope that the dam holds and persists, so as not to dump enormous floods of water into the main pond, and possibly flood the waterside plants once again.  What an impressive work, this dam!  It stretched the entire width of the pond across the eastern end.

As I  turned around to contemplate returning to our put-in, I paused to rejoice in the serene beauty of this pond, gleaming like satin below a kind blue sky.  I had come here so many times over the past few years, feeling so blessed by the incredible abundance of Narrow-leaved Gentians (Gentiana linearis), that their temporary loss had truly saddened me.  So now I felt just as elated as I'd felt saddened before.

My friends and I spent a bit more time on shore before heading off to a favorite nearby spot for lunch. For here was a sunlit, sandy-soiled patch of Common Milkweed blooms where we'd often found Monarch Butterflies and their caterpillars.  Would we find any today?

Nope, but we did find others just as amazing:  this crowed clutch of Milkweed Tussock Moth cats. I often find one or two on a milkweed plant, but such a pack of them massed all together was something to behold!