It was obvious from our first paddle strokes that this pond itself was once forested land, before the beavers dammed its outlet stream at its northeastern end. Dotting the shallows are numerous stumps of long-drowned and toppled trees, the woody remains now populated by marvelous mixes of mosses, lichens, fungi, and flowering plants.
The most colorful of those flowering plants right now are masses of Marsh St. John's Wort (Hypericum virginicum), with pink-tinged lime-green leaves, scarlet stems, and glossy ruby-red seedpods.
Ruth is an avid student of mosses, so she found much to engage her interest in the mosses that carpeted the stumps.
I was grateful to have Ruth's tutelage, for although I admired this velvety green moss with its spiky reddish sporestalks, I did not know what name to call it by until Ruth told me it was Dicranum flagellare, also known as Fragile Broom Moss.
Ruth was also able to put a name to this fluffy-looking lime-green moss that carpeted another stump: Aulacomnium palustre, or Ribbed Bog Moss.
At least I did recognize this spiky denizen of many stumps, the carnivorous insect-eating pads of the wetland-dwelling wildflower called Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia). Those spiky "hairs" are tipped with a sticky fluid that is attractive to insects, who land on the pads expecting a snack, only to become the plant's meal when the pad folds over the now-trapped insect and digests it for its own nutrients.
Along this shore, wide swaths of Carex lasiocarpa (also known as Slender Sedge) fill the shallows between the forest and the open water. That vernacular name is so descriptive of this lovely grass-like sedge, with its gracefully curving slender tips. It is soft and fine, not stiff like many other sedges, so it is almost constantly swaying either slowly or briskly, according to how gentle or strong is the wind that sets it to dancing.
The Slender Sedge's tawny monoculture is livened by occasional patches of Marsh St. John's Wort, with its leaves of an almost incandescent hot-pink.
Not a ridged-stem sedge but rather a round-stemmed rush, Canada Rush (Juncus canadensis) was bearing dark-maroon spikelets that stood out against the background of pale Slender Sedge.
Wetland shrubs like Leatherleaf and Sweet Gale punctuate this sedge meadow, and we were astounded to find this Hornworm clinging to a Sweet Gale twig, its body covered with the pale larval cocoons of a parasitic wasp, most likely the wasp Cotesia congregata. Sometime earlier, the wasp used her ovipositor to lay her eggs inside the Hornworm, where the larvae hatched and fed on the insides of the caterpillar. Eventually, the larvae emerge onto the caterpillar's skin, where they attach and spin cocoons from which the next generation of wasps will emerge. Of course, this eventually kills the Hornworm, but it still looked very much alive on this Sweet Gale leaf. Poor thing! Very interesting, of course. But still . . . .!
Behind the sedge meadow, thousands of acres of state forest spread for miles. I photographed this short stretch of the forest because I was intrigued by how so many of the typical conifers of the Adirondacks were clustered here along the shore. The two small trees are Balsam Fir (left) and White Pine (right), while a tall skinny Tamarack (yellowish needles) rises left of center. I am pretty sure the darker conifers include both Northern Hemlock and Black Spruce, but I could not get close enough to examine their needles for positive ID.
Forested Rocky Banks
We soon turned into a quiet bay that offered quite a different, steeply rocky forested shoreline that directly met the water's edge with no intermediate strip of shoreline sedges. At the far end of this bay stretched a long beaver dam, an impressive construction of logs and branches and rocks and mud that held back all but a trickle of the pond's entire water. A few years ago, we could not paddle this pond because this dam had been breached, and the water in the pond was too low to paddle on. But beavers didn't earn their epithet "busy" for nothing, and that dam was soon repaired.
We could paddle right up to the edge of the dam, the top of which stood at least eight feet above the wet meadow that lay below.
The beaver dam allowed enough of the pond's water through to feed the small creek that flowed away toward the woods.
As we paddled very close along the rocky banks of this bay, we were startled to see abundant patches of Narrow-leaved Gentians, fading now but still vividly blue. This species of closed-flowered gentian (Gentiana linearis) started blooming at least a month ago, and the now-browning flowers attested to the aging of these plants.
It amazed us, though, to see the quantity and brilliance of blue the flowers retained.
Just as amazing was the presence of newly blooming flowers on the shrubs of Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) that grew right at the water's edge. This species of laurel first blooms in late June/early July, but it does occasionally bloom again in the fall.
And the presence of these tightly folded Sheep Laurel buds were an indication that this shrub still had some blooming to do!
Muddy Shallows, Sphagnum Bog
Proceeding around the pond, we came to an area so shallow that each paddle-pull lifted mud and released the gagging swamp-smell of methane gas. I sometimes had to push my canoe instead of paddling it, to creep a little closer to these mats of ruby-red glistening Spatulate-leaved Sundew (Drosera intermedia) that were studded with the bright-yellow tiny flowers of Humped Bladderwort (Utricularia gibba). I have seen these species of sundew and bladderwort individually on other sites, but it is only on this pond that I have ever seen this truly delightful combination. Worth the struggle, for me!
Here's a closer look at the tiny blossom of Humped Bladderwort, revealing how it might have acquired its vernacular name. This is a bladderwort species I have always found firmly embedded in mud, even when protruding from the water, not freely floating as some other Utricularia species do.
We were right on the edge of a vast Sphagnum bogmat, where masses of Cottongrass waved their white terminal tufts in the now-stiff breeze. The Cottongrass was waving so wildly, none of my photos of it were in focus. I did manage to spy another typical denizen of bogs right at the edge of the mat, sheltered enough from the wind that it sat quietly for the picture-taking. A Pitcher Plant (Sarracenia purpurea), its now-aging flower still held aloft above its vase-shaped carnivorous leaves. These leaves hold water, along with digestive enzymes, so that any insect that happens to fall in will be drowned and digested.
Heading Home
Growing a bit tired from pushing against both mud and a stiffening wind, Ruth and I headed back toward where we'd launched our canoes. I felt a moment's panic as I surveyed the far shore and could not detect our put-in place. But then I recalled that we had lingered there to admire some berry-laden shrubs, the likes of which we had not seen anywhere else on our circuit around the pond. So all we had to do was look for the raspberry-red fruits of Wild Raisin (Viburnum cassinoides).
Near that Wild Raisin was an Arrowwood shrub (Viburnum dentatum) that bore blue-black fruits.
And a lower-growing shrub called American Bush Honeysuckle (Diervilla lonicera) bore leaves that had already turned wine-red, and each twig held clusters of brighter-red seedpods of a most amusing shape, like something that Dr. Seuss might have invented.
Those three colorful shrubs served as very reliable guideposts, and we easily found our trail to where we had parked our cars. Nature saved one last treat to top off our already wonder-filled time on this pond. As we lifted our canoes to dry land, right there in the shoreline grasses was a gorgeous Ladies' Tresses Orchid (Spiranthes sp.), shining so white, like a beacon.
How could we have missed this beautiful flower when we first launched? I think we were focused on what wonders awaited us on the water, and we overlooked a marvel like this that was growing on land. This orchid was like a perfect dessert that crowned a delicious meal!
All those familiar, unique wetland plants! Just haven't figured out how to paddle in a wheelchair.
ReplyDeleteI don't remember ever seeing a round-leaved sundew with pure green leaves, down here they're always tinged with red. That looks like a wonderful pond to explore any time of the year.
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