Spring is NOT here yet! But neither is real winter.

Skunk Cabbage already in bloom?!!!  Some friends from the Albany area are posting Facebook photos of Skunk Cabbage already in full flower, about 40 miles south of Saratoga Springs.  Well, why am I not surprised?  The beautiful snowy forest I pictured in my last post is now nearly completely bereft of snow, and every day this week will be sunny with temps quite a bit above freezing. But still!  It is still way too early to expect to find this first flower of spring in actual bloom.  We haven't even had any real winter yet. But that didn't stop me from heading over to the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in nearby Wilton to check on the hundreds of Skunk Cabbage plants that grow there.

There was still a bit of patchy snow on the ground at Orra's, but the creek was running freely, with only a few persistent icicles adorning the limbs hanging over the rushing water:

Next to the creek a low swale spreads out, and it's here in this muddy wetland that I always find dozens and dozens of Skunk Cabbage plants.  They send up sharply pointed winter bracts every fall, and these tightly closed bracts remain visible all winter. What would they look like today?

 

Sure enough, the winter-persisting plants were abundant across the swale, their sharply pointed bracts easily visible above the snow.  But all remained as tightly closed as they'd been since they first shot up last fall.  They might already be creating some internal heat, however, to judge from how the snow has seemed to melt in widening circles around each plant. Skunk Cabbage is one of the very few plants I know of that can generate such heat.

Glancing around this low swale, I could see many patches of greenery, but not a one of them signaled the start of spring.  Every large rock that protruded from the mud was completely covered with evergreen mosses, or in this case, a lovely lime-green liverwort called by the delightful name of Handsome Woollywort (Trichocolea tomentella). Most winters, these rocks and their cold-impervious bryophytes would be deep under snow, but not this year.

Here's a closer look at the furry-appearing leaves that suggested the Woollywort's name.

And look how fresh and green these violet leaves appear!  But these are the leaves of Dog Violet (Viola labradorica), and they sprouted last summer when the pale-purple flowers first came into bloom.  They remain green all winter, usually resting under the snow and not affected at all by freezing temperatures. I might have expected the lack of deep snow this year to have caused the leaves to shrivel or fade, but they looked as intact and freshly green as ever.

The large leafy lichen adorning this fallen tree limb is always green, as the vernacular name for Flavoparmelia caperata -- Green Shield Lichen -- would certainly indicate. Same color, whatever the season.  But the nearly-white small shelf fungi sharing this limb do fade in color over the winter, losing the pretty purple edge that suggested its name of Violet-toothed Polypore (Trichaptum biforme). By now, it has paled so completely, it could be any of several small faintly-striped polypores that thrive in our area forests.

But a look at the fertile surfaces of the Violet-toothed Polypore reveals the distinctive cinnamon-brown color those surfaces become even after the violet edges have faded. And the tiny pores have "exploded" to become more tooth-like in appearance. Hence the epithet "tooth polypore!"

Here was a second rather plain-looking aging fungus, looking a bit like lumps of bread dough dusted with flour. But I know that this Luminescent Panellus fungus (Panellus stipticus) has a couple of other features that make it a far more interesting mushroom than its unassuming appearance might suggest.

Just turn this limb over and those lumpy pale blobs reveal a far more beautiful underside, with orangish gills radiating from an off-center short and curving stalk. A second fascinating feature of this fungus can actually be seen only in pitch dark, when it emits an eerie greenish glow.  Also, as its scientific species name of stipticus suggests, it is said that this fungus can be used to stop the flow of blood from a wound.

Now, here was a mushroom that might be just as much of a sign of spring as a Skunk Cabbage flower.  I was truly startled to find these fresh-looking bright-orange caps of Polyporus mori, for this is a mushroom that normally doesn't fruit until it is time to go hunting for Morels, which is usually in May. In fact, one of its vernacular names is Spring Polypore.  It also has quite a variety of scientific names, since mycologists can't seem to settle on one that suits everybody.  One of the more frequently mentioned (aside from Polyporus mori) is Neofavolus alveolaris.

UPDATE:  I have since heard from someone obviously more knowledgeable about this mushroom than I am, a man named Garrett Taylor: "The current story is that it is likely that we don’t have Neofavolus alveolaris in North America. Of the three species that we know we have in this group, only the rare Neofavolus americanus has a name. The other two species have temporary code names, given by the authors of N. americanus, 'sp-SAV10' & 'sp-ADD05'. There appears to be a seasonality with them with SAV10 coming earlier than ADD05 which is more of a late spring mushroom. I would be extremely surprised to see an actively growing one before say late April.  We currently separate them by the DNA barcode ITS. They all can be orange. Since the margin of this one is flared up, that is another clue that it may not be actively growing. When young the margin is usually curved (not inrolled but nearly). The new ones that we will start seeing in a couple months, those will probably be SAV10. If you find some on iNat that have been sequenced and given a 'Provisional Species Name' field you can right click on it and look for the 'Observations with this same field and value' in the drop down menu that appears. "  

As for me, I will stick to its most common vernacular name, which is Hexagonal-pored Polypore. Just turn over a cap, and it will be evident how it acquired that name.

I understand that another of our commonly found winter-persistent fungi, the tiny yellow discs called  Lemon Drops, also has a second scientific name.  I have always known it as Bisporella citrina, but now I have learned that iNaturalist is calling it Calycina citrina. Sigh!  I think I will stick to Lemon Drops, and I say the hell with Calycina. This is a very common winter-persistent fungus, and lots of it can be found at Orra Phelps Nature Preserve. As I did on my visit there this week.

Finding little more to detain me at Orra Phelps, I remembered that an old walled cemetery lay just up a rise from where I had parked my car.  And a brief easy walk through the woods took me right to it.  A lovely old cemetery it was, with some of the gravestones, barely legible, dating from the 1800s.

And oh boy, just look at all the mosses growing on the old stone wall!

I know the names of very few mosses, and although I am happy to learn some of them, I am also happy to let my friends be the experts.  So I am simply going to post some photos of them here, and maybe my bryophile friends will chime in with their names.  That doesn't mean I don't admire their beauty and variety.  I just loved how many of the rocks bore thick cushions of beautiful greenery.

I would not be surprised, though, to learn that this lovely clump was composed of Entodon seductrix, with its ropy stems and long skinny flat-topped spore capsules that were ringed with minute fringes.

And here is one moss I DO know the name of! With its leafy crowns that look like tiny posies it just HAS to have a floral name.  And it does:  Rose Moss.  Or, to be more scientific, Rhodobryum ontariense. Since I usually find this moss on calcareous rocks, I would not be surprised to learn that the rock it was growing on was either limestone or marble.

And since this moss reminded me of the curly coat of a poodle, I'm going to guess it might be Poodle Moss (Anomodon attenuatus).  Except that I usually associate that moss with the bark at the base of White Oak trees, not old stone walls. So I'm probably mistaken.  

I loved the spiky leaves on this moss, and I hope I will someday know how to call it by name.

This moss was so tiny, I would need a microscope to even describe it, aside from "tiny."

I loved the dark-red sinuous sporestalks of this one, and how they appeared to be dancing.

This stubby moss was quite colorful with its school-bus-yellow capsules.

At least I knew enough to know that this, with its overlapping leaves on upturning branches, was not a moss at all, but rather a liverwort.  And I think it might be the liverwort called Porella, although its specific name remains lost on me.