Good Friends and Rare Flowers

Sometimes I marvel at how different my life would be without computers and the internet.  Importantly, I'd never have met this smiling naturalist pictured below, Ellen Rathbone, if I hadn't found her internet blog, An Adirondack Naturalist, way back in 2008.  It was her fascinating and informative blog that inspired me to start this blog of my own in January of 2009, and through our interactions following and commenting on each other's blogs, we became great friends and not-infrequent nature adventurers together while we still lived within a do-able drive of one another.  Sadly, she eventually moved too far away for further in-person adventuring, but we still kept in touch through Facebook. And it was my recent Facebook post about some very rare plants at Moreau Lake State Park that inspired her to contact me.  She was heading my way this past Thursday, and might we go look for those rare plants together at Moreau? Oh, indeed we certainly could! And that's how Ellen came to be sitting right next to one of New York State's rarest wildflowers,  Pringle's Autumn Coralroot (Corallorhiza odontorhiza var. pringlei), a native orchid long rated as Extirpated from New York State until a friend and I discovered it here in this park over five years ago.

Lucky for the two of us, I'd had an advance group of pals who came ahead and scouted out the best patch of Pringle's Autumn Coralroots, so Ellen and I could head directly there and not waste time  searching futilely.  Here are Sue and Dana and Tom and Ruth (with Ellen and camera in the background), when we later enjoyed more botanizing together to look for additional interesting plants.

Pringle's Autumn Coralroot is not exactly a showy wildflower.  There are probably a dozen or more in this photo of the site we visited this day, but their minute size and obscure coloration render them nearly invisible on the leaf-strewn forest floor. I am grateful that my friends pre-scouted them out for us!  Around 30 individual stems were counted today in this vicinity.

Here's a flash photo of a nice group of Pringle's Autumn Coralroots, with the flash helping the individual plants stand out against the background.  The common variety of the plant called Autumn Coralroot is hardly rare, so what distinguishes this variety as the super-rare one?  The most obvious clue would be that most of the florets have a curving and broad lower petal.  Our common variety rarely has any petals at all, and if it does, they are more narrowly pointed.

Here's a closer look at one of the florets of Pringle's Autumn Coralroot, displaying the open throat that clearly reveals the pollen-bearing organs (called pollinia) within. The florets of the common variety do not open at all and are closed and self pollinating. There are some structural differences in the interior reproductive organs as well, which professional botanists have determined to be present in this population of coralroots.  So these are indeed the real deal!

We next moved on to search for a second really rare plant, a wee little flatsedge called Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrush (Cyperus subsquarrosus) that grows on this sandy shore of Moreau Lake.  Although this plant is rated as Endangered in New York State, we have found thousands of them growing on nearly every shore around the entire lake. But this particular shore was the one closest to us today.

And sure enough, we found them!  They are so small, though, they'd certainly be easy to miss.  The distinguishing features, in addition to their small size, include vaguely curving stems of a slightly grayish-green color and scaly spikelets that are chubby and round.

I feel a special affection for this Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrush, since I was present and assisting state botanist Rich Ring when we first found them here back in 2018, after this species had not been reported from this location since 1961.  

Rich Ring had actually come to Moreau that day back in 2018 to assess the population of another plant, the Small-flowered Agalinis (Agalinis paupercula), rated as Rare in the state despite teeming numbers that thrived along Moreau's shores.  This pretty wildflower is still designated as Rare in New York State, although it still grows abundantly on Moreau Lake's shores. We found a number of its lovely purple short-petioled blooms today.

More beautiful purple flowers!  Could New England Aster really be blooming so early?  If these flowers had not been so deeply and intensely purple, I might have thought they belonged to a Purple-stemmed Aster instead, especially with those hairy red stems.  But my friend Ruth looked at the underside bracts and discovered glandular droplets on them, a distinguishing trait of New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae).  The bee was not picky about which aster it was, anyway.

Here was a new one to find at Moreau Lake!  In all the decades I've walked the shores of this lake, I had never before seen Water Stargrass (Heteranthera dubia) spreading its tangles of narrow green leaves and bright flowers in the shallow water near the shores.  But here it was, blooming with bright yellow star-shaped blooms, in the muddy shallows beneath a bridge.

I couldn't remember seeing Wild Celery (Vallisneria americana) here in the lake before, either (although I do find it often in the nearby Hudson River).  But sure enough, I did see the slender leaves, squiggly stems, and tiny white floating female flowers of this native aquatic plant in the flowing water near the bridge.

Here's a closer look at one of the Wild Celery's female flowers, which those squiggly stems hold exactly at the surface of the water.  The male flowers ripen down underwater at the base of the plant, floating up to the surface when mature to float along with the current until they encounter a female flower, and tumble in to complete the fertilization process.  Once that is accomplished, those squiggly stems sharply recoil and plant the fertilized flower down into the underwater mud, there to produce a new generation.

I frequently see the female flowers of Wild Celery floating on the surface, but I have always assumed the male flowers were too tiny for normal eyesight to discern.  But today I discovered I was mistaken about that.

"Gosh, what are all these tiny white nubbins collected on this Wild Celery leaf?" Ellen mused.  She took their photo, submitted it to iNaturalist, and was told they were Eelgrass flowers.  (Eelgrass is another vernacular name for Wild Celery.) "Nah, can't be!" I rejoined, thinking of the female flowers I knew well.

But then I lifted a few out of the water and looked more closely at the tiny whitish nubbins. I then asked Ellen to find on her smartphone a photo of the male flowers of Vallisneria americana. And guess what those male flowers looked like.  Just like these!

Thanks for helping me learn a new flower, Ellen.  She was happy to have added a number of new flowers to her life list today.  And thanks to her, so was I!

Flowers and Fungi and a Fat Furry Fly!

Perusing my old blogposts from this August date, I learned that our native Swamp Thistle (Cirsium muticum) should be blooming now in the forested wetland along the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail, just outside Saratoga Springs. So off I went, accessing that trail via a spur that takes me across a boardwalk right into that thistle's swampy habitat.

Scanning the trailside wetland for the towering Swamp Thistle's bright-pink globes of bloom, I found the first one easily, glowing like a beacon, amid the thick forest's murky green.  

And that was the first of many I found, some spent, but others still opening buds to release big shaving-brush tufts of gorgeous bloom

A few shafts of sunlight pierced the swamp's dark shade, which greatly illuminated the cob-webby fine white hairs that cover the flowers' involucres, a trait that helps to distinguish this species from others of its genus.  The buds are quite beautiful, too.  They remind me of those intricately decorated Ukrainian Easter eggs.

Few other flowers bloomed in this swamp this day, a gorgeous exception being this Great Lobelia's tall shaft of royal-blue florets, radiant among its dark-green surroundings. Lobelia siphilitica is this native wildflower's scientific name. The species name arose from a prior medicinal use of the plant in the treatment of venereal disease. (I believe, thankfully, that more effective remedies have spared this beautiful plant's populations.)

But if flowers were scarce, the fungi sure weren't!  Recent heavy rains have saturated this summer's heat-wave dried-out forest floors, and the mushrooms sure responded.  Forgive me if my scientific names are incorrect, for I keep discovering that most of those I learned long ago are now out of date.  And many fungi have been reassigned to other common names as well.  Nevertheless, these tan pear-shaped puffballs pictured here might still be called Lycoperdon pyriforme (Pear-shaped Puffball). They're shaped like that name, anyway. 

Here's another mushroom whose vernacular name means what it says: Conifercone Cap (Baeospora myosura). These itty-bitty capped mushrooms grow right in the scales of conifer cones, in this case the cones of Eastern White Pine. I found quite a few of them in this swamp.

I'm not sure whether these brown stripey caps belong to the species called Cinnamon Fairy Stools (Coltricia cinnamomea), but they certainly are the color of cinnamon. But since many are funnel-shaped instead of flat across the top, I fear the fairies' bottoms would more likely sink into them instead of perching atop.

Okay, whether this elegant, pure-white mushroom is called Amanita verna (Death Angel) or Amanita virosa (Destroying Angel), please don't eat it. It is one of our few deadly killers among our fungi.  I learned it as A. verna many years ago, but I believe that that fungus is the European look-alike of our North American A. virosa.  Although one is chemically different from the other, they look about exactly alike and both are deadly poisonous to eat.  But not at all poisonous to look at.  Angelic, rather. I saw it along the Bog Meadow Trail, and was delighted to see it. I brushed the soil away from its basal cup, in order to see one of the identifying traits of most Amanita species.  A second distinguishing trait is the veil remnant that is usually seen surrounding the stalk, but in this young specimen, the veil is still attached to the gills.

Some of the fungi I found today were as brightly colorful as any flowers!  These ruffly orange mushrooms are probably a species of Chanterelle, but I didn't examine them carefully enough to be sure. The mucky soil surrounding their patch was so wet it would have sucked off my sneakers. I zoomed my camera to take this photo.

There's no red quite like the red cap of a Red Russula, so shiny atop its pure-white stalk. What a beauty! This is another mushroom that's pretty to look at, but both its scientific name (Russula emetica) and two of its common ones (Vomiting Russula or The Sickener) should warn you away from eating it. Snails are able to eat it, though.  It's rare I find a cap as pristinely unblemished as this one.

I love the vernacular name -- Chicken-fat Suillus -- of this bright-yellow bolete, Suillus americanus. And as its vernacular name suggests, it IS edible, and some people actually like it.  As its lemon-pie appearance also might suggest, it has a tart taste that's not unpleasant. But it also cooked up slimy, which I found kind of yucky! Perhaps that yuck could have been eliminated if I had removed its spongy pore surface, which I've since learned is a recommended part of its preparation.

How do I love thee, little mushroom? Let me count the ways: Your scientific name Xeromphalina campanella, which means (sorta) "little bells topped with dry bellybuttons";  your common name Fuzzy Foot, which refers to the tufts of fuzzy mycelia at the base of your stalks; your brilliant color; your tiny size, ranging from pinhead to dime; and your habit of fruiting in carpeting masses atop rotting logs.  Or in this fascinating case, WITHIN a rotting moss-covered log!

Thunder rumbled, urging me to head home, but as I hurried past these Boneset blooms I halted to watch this enormous tachinid fly dining on the florets.  As big as a bumblebee it was, and black all over except for big brown eyes within a white face. Later, searching Google Images for "big black tachinid fly with white face" I found the closest possibility to be in the genus Leschenaultia, with species uncertain.

Although tachinid flies can look big and scary, they are actually only scary for many plant pests, whose larvae the flies seek out to lay their eggs on or within, after which the tachinids' larvae will consume the hosts' larvae.  The adult flies eat nectar and pollen and thus are important pollinators of native plants. Over 1,300 species of tachinids have been described in North America alone, and many, like this one, can be difficult to pin down as to species.  Until I know its true name for sure, I'll just call it Big Black Bristly Butt.

Where Giants Thrive!

There's a trail along the Kayaderosseras Creek near Ballston Spa where the wildflowers grow pretty big.  REALLY big! The goldenrods and sunflowers grow head-high along here, but  Eutrochium fistulosum, also called Trumpetweed or Hollow Joe-Pye Weed, is the champion! 

Maybe it's not obvious from the first photo just how enormous these flowering stalks and their gigantic floral clusters really are.  So I got in the picture (my friend Sue Pierce took the photo) to illustrate just how big. (I'm about 5'7" tall.)

One of the reasons many plants grow to prodigious size along this trail is that the banks were beveled some years ago to allow the creek's spring floodwaters to surge onto a level floodplain instead of charging with destructive road-undermining force between steep banks.  (See my post from 12/11/2012 for details about this project.) As a result, the silt-rich floodwaters enrich the soil in the resultant floodplain, which is where these floral giants now thrive.

This species of Eutrochium is considered to be a "demonstrably secure" native of this and many other parts of New York State, but I must confess that I rarely see these giants growing in the wild, although I have seen them often in cultivated gardens.  But even in rich garden soil, I have never seen them grow to this humongous size.  Here's a cluster I've seen in a garden not far from the Kayaderosseras's banks: over-my-head tall, sure, but not twice my height. 

Perhaps this population was the source of the seeds that ended up on that Kayaderosseras floodplain, where the silt-enriched environment super-charged their growth.

The Return of the Gentians!

There's a lovely little pond up in the northwestern corner of Saratoga County that my paddling friends and I love to visit  --  especially those of us who delight in the fascinating diversity of plants that thrive on its forested banks and even out into -- and under! -- its water.  My friend Ruth Brooks (pictured below) and I returned there this past week. We were eager to see how the flora was recovering this summer from the  devastating flood that drowned most of the pondside plants three years ago, caused by extra-heavy rains and a beaver-dam-clogged culvert.

Before that 2021 flood, these shores were home to the most abundant population of Narrow-leaved Gentians (Gentiana linearis) any of us had ever experienced.  Nearly every foot of the pond's north-facing shore looked like this photo (below) I took in late summer of 2019.  (Here's a LINK to the blog I posted about such abundance that year.)

But the 2021 flooding drowned nearly all of the flowering plants that once had so beautifully adorned the pond's rocky banks.  Even many shoreline trees succumbed.  The water beneath the leaning trunks in this photo was at least four feet deep.

Although most of the deciduous trees have recovered, almost all of the shoreline conifers died, as their bare brown branches now attest. But thankfully, most of the wetland shrubs that line the shore, like Sweet Gale, Mountain Holly, and Leatherwood, do not appear to have suffered permanently, to judge from how they are still flourishing.

In 2022,  I could find hardly any evidence of the multitudinous gentians that had lined the shore, only two stems of them that a fallen tree had raised above the flood waters with its toppled root mass.  Last year, 2023,  I was encouraged to count 5 or 6 clusters of multiple plants around my circuit of the entire pond.   But THIS YEAR, Hallelujah!  At several widespread locations along the shore, we saw many clusters of multiple plants, all in beautiful, radiant bloom. It sure seems that the Narrow-leaved Gentians are making a comeback.

The flowering plants that actually grow right IN the water seemed hardly affected at all.  Populations of Arrowhead returned to their normal numbers the following summer and continue to flourish along the shore.

The Yellow Pond Lilies also took the flooding in stride. After all, water is their element.

I remember seeing the normally floating oval leaves of Watershield several feet below the water's surface during the flood, but that did not seem to have affected their numbers over time.  Nor were the slender leaves of Narrow-leaved Bur Reed adversely affected.  This species of bur reed (Sparganium angustifolium) has flaccid leaves that normally lie flat on the water.

Vast tracts of another species of bur reed fill shallow coves with their stiffly erect leaves, and these leaves offered perches for hundreds of fluttering damselflies, amorous or otherwise, their diaphanous faceted wings glittering in the light. 

Here's another look at two of the spreadwings, better displaying the blue eyes, iridescent green thorax, and white band at the end of the abdomen, features that indicate that they could be Swamp Spreadwings (Lestes vigilax), especially since shoreline vegetation is their typical habitat.

As we passed close to patches of Sweet Gale leaning over the water, I noticed that the twigs held bunches of seedpods.  I could not resist reaching out to pinch a pod or two, releasing the beautiful fragrance that would cling to my fingertips for hours.

And what did I find crawling among the Sweet Gale twigs but this absolutely gorgeous Cecropia Moth caterpillar!

Whenever I encounter wild creatures as gratuitously colorful as this,  I cannot help but believe that at the core of creation lies a force that delights in beauty. Even the adult Cecropia moth is spectacularly beautiful, and yet does not attract her mate by how she looks but by her unseen scent, detectable by her mate from over a mile away. What a gift to us!

From gorgeous creature to one that is . . .  well, maybe a little creepy. But even more, fascinating! This large gelatinous underwater mass is found in many of our freshwater rivers and ponds, but it's still a very unusual creature. Or rather, creatures. This jelly-like glob is composed of many tiny "moss animals," or bryozoa, congealed into a colony of individual filter feeders that produce this solid mass called  Pectinatella magnifica. These masses usually form around underwater tree limbs or other wooden structures. We saw many more of them today than we have ever found before at this particular pond, ranging in size from a golf ball to a big tom turkey.

And if that wasn't surprising enough, I also saw some Pectinatella magnifica formed on an underwater rock! I have seen many of these masses over the years, but never forming on any substance other than wood.  Amazing!

And here was another anomaly: a freshwater sponge (or so I believe) that looked quite different from the ropy stuff I usually encounter, which looks more like green yarn waving around underwater, instead of this tight green stuff coating a fallen limb.  Maybe it's something entirely different than a sponge? It did have the rather gritty feeling I associate with other freshwater sponges I have found in other clean ponds and lakes. Informed opinions are certainly welcome!

For sure, this pond offers much of both floral and faunal stuff to ponder.  But it's also just plumb beautiful!  And serene! How peaceful and pleasant to float slowly and quietly along beneath overhanging conifers, enjoying both the coolness of their shade and their green piney fragrance, as well as their rippling reflections in the dark still water.

And even out of cracks in the rocks, clusters of floral beauty emerge. Like this pretty clump of deep-purple Marsh Skullcap blooms.