A Riverside Rocky Ramble

My friends Sue and Tom and I could not have hoped for a more beautiful day last Saturday to venture up to the Warren County hamlet of Riparius, a community of small seasonal cottages along the east bank of the Hudson River.  Most of these cottages were built as a Methodist summer camp many years ago, and many of the current residents are descendants of the original founders of the community.  Although non-Methodists are now permitted to purchase cottages here, the community still holds the ownership of the land the cottages stand on.  Lucky for us, we have a friend with access to one of those cottages, and even luckier for us, that friend, Chris Kreussling, is a Master Naturalist.  Who could ask for a better guide than a Master Naturalist to lead us in exploring such beautiful riverbanks as these?

As this photo reveals, the mighty Hudson looks more like a stony creek this far north.  And thanks to our recent hot dry summer, more expanses of the river's rocky bottom were exposed than usual this year. This pleased my friends, who were delighted by the abundance of insects creeping and crawling and fluttering about the riverside's damp rocks and puddles. This was true for Sue and Chris, especially, since insects hold a special attraction for them.

I like insects, too, but my poor eyesight renders many of them almost invisible unless they sit still and let me get close to them -- which is not very often! So I spent most of my time teetering among the boulders, looking for the late-summer flowers that call this habitat home.  Here are a few that I found:

Creeping Spearwort is a tiny buttercup that grows in damp sand or mud, and lots of its bright-yellow starry blooms were twinkling among the riverbank grasses.  It's not a rare plant, but I cannot count on finding it in the same place every year, and I think it's adorable.  It used to be called Ranunculus reptans, but its name now is  Ranunculus flammula var. reptans.  But it will always be Creeping Spearwort to me.

As its scientific name suggests, Water Smartweed (Persicaria amphibia) can grow either on damp shores or else in shallow water.  I found it ashore this day, its bright-pink flower cluster quite visible among the shoreline grasses.

The single most abundant wildflowers were these tiny white asters  -- Calico Aster [Symphyotricum lateriflorum]? -- sprouting up everywhere among the riverside boulders.

I didn't have to search among the boulders to find this Canada Burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis), since it stood tall on slender stems, its white fluffy clusters waving in the breeze.

These big bright-yellow blooms of Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) couldn't hide from me either, being among the showiest of all the riverside blooms.

Well, that Sneezeweed did have quite a rival for showiness -- although not for abundance -- in the few specimens of vividly red Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardenalis) I found growing here.  It certainly was not at all difficult to see them!

I did have to bend down close, though, to ascertain that these small blue flowers were indeed Kalm's Lobelia (Lobelia kalmii).

The shyest of all the flowers I found was this single bloom of Marsh Bellflower (Campanula aparinoides), its flower no more than a quarter-inch across and of a blue that was almost as pale as the air.

Here was a patch of lime-green ferns standing vertical among the shoreline.  Their color, stature, dark stalks and riparian habitat suggested Marsh Fern to me (Thelypteris palustris).

A close look at the fern's distinctive sori did look like photos I have seen of the sori (spore packets) of Marsh Fern.

My recovering knee eventually began to complain about teetering from boulder to boulder close to the water, so I moved back from shore to walk on the grassy lawns in front of the cottages.   That's how I happened across a cluster of folks all focused on something crawling on the ground.  Of course, I had to investigate.  And what an amazing caterpillar they had found!  They had no idea its species, nor did I, so I called to my pals still looking for bugs down close to the water.  If anyone would know this caterpillar's name, they would! And so they came to have a look.  And they didn't know, either! Not even Chris, who's quite an expert on insects. So Tom (standing) sent a photo of it off to iNaturalist and promptly got an answer: an Imperial Moth caterpillar (Eacles imperialis).

And what a big beautiful caterpillar it was!  None of us had ever seen either the moth or this larva before.

According to information about this moth that I found on Google, it's no wonder we have not seen this caterpillar before, since "Eacles imperialis is not officially listed or protected by New York State, but it is considered rare or vulnerable within the state, with populations restricted to Long Island and the Albany Pine Bush. The species has experienced population declines in the northeastern United States due to habitat loss from logging, pesticide use, and the introduction of a parasitic fly, Compsilura concinnata. While the Long Island populations are thought to have expanded after wildfires in the 1990s, the Albany Pine Bush population is in decline and may be extirpated."  What a lucky find for us! And so far north of Albany!  And if I had not sought comfort for my aching knee, we'd never have come across it.

The Imperial Moth is quite large and beautiful.  Here's a photo I found of it on Google Images:

We had seen another caterpillar on our walk along the river: the larva of a Hickory Tussock Moth (Lophocampa caryae).  Not nearly as rare at that Imperial Moth larva, but it, too, was quite a looker!

Skidmore Woods, Slim Pickings

I had just an hour or so recently to indulge in some nature therapy, so I headed out to my go-to nearby nature site, the North Woods at Skidmore College.  I wondered if any of the fruits on the Orange-fruited Horse Gentian (Triosteum aurantiacum) would be turning orange already. Here's what they should look like in early September:

But sad to report, I won't find them at ANY stage this year!  Here's the site, under a powerline, where a small patch of them always grew.  Looks like the power company was afraid the herbaceous plants that filled the open spaces under the powerlines might grow tall enough to interfere with the wires. (Pah!) So herbicide was sprayed to kill every native plant that once grew there:  Pale Sunflowers, Tall Goldenrod,  Mayapple, Large-bracted Tick Trefoil, and others including my sought-after Orange-fruited Horse Gentian. Sigh!

Guess what got spared from the poison, though?  This patch of the non-native weed called Far-eastern Smartweed (Persicaria extremiorientalis) growing in an adjacent parking area but under the same powerline. Native to Asia, this species was first collected in North America in New York City in 1961 and has since been documented from Maine to South Carolina and west to Ohio and is probably more widespread than that.  I first found it at this location five years ago, and I have yet to find it anywhere else I explore in Saratoga County. Only here, on the Skidmore College Campus, under a powerline. So far.

My thought when I first found these gigantic smartweeds at the edge of this thoroughly-disturbed-soil vacant lot was "Whoa! Who fed some Ladies' Thumb steroids?!"  They stood on stems up to my eyeballs and with slender pink flower clusters a good eight or ten inches long, and they DID look almost exactly like the much more diminutive smartweed called Ladies' Thumb.  They even had the darkish "thumbprint" on many of the huge leaves. Except the plants were humongous.   The New York Flora Association's Plant Atlas shows this species as documented for only five counties in the state, so far, all of them much farther south than Saratoga County. Uh oh! Looks like this plant is heading north.

 

Leaving the scene of such disappointment, I entered this woods that's renowned for its many interesting native plants, many of them quite rare. One of the rarest of those plants is Eastern Green Violet (Cubelium concolor), and when you see the acres of them that carpet the forest floor here, it's hard to believe that this species could be rated as rare.  It definitely is known to thrive in deep nutrient-rich soils often associated with calcareous bedrock, and that certainly describes the soil in the Skidmore woods.

As I walked among the thousands of Green Violets, I pondered how this plant could be so prolific here, considering that I found very few plants producing seed pods.  And those pods were solitary, growing at the top of the plant, not in the leaf axils along the  stalks, where the small greenish flowers earlier bloomed.

Each seedpod appeared to contain just a few small round seeds that looked like tiny peas in a pod.

Another wildflower that thrives in this calcareous soil is American Lopseed (Phryma leptostachya).  Its small pink flowers had long since produced the yellowish pointed seedpods that pressed downward against the slender stems, demonstrating how the vernacular name for this plant originated.

I could find few other flowering plants still in bloom, but Bottlebrush Grass (Elymus hystrix) was abundant in the shady woods, its yellowish spiky seedheads quite evident.

Taking a shortcut through the woods back to my car, I never would have seen this tiny spider, a female Spined Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis), if a ray of sunlight had not penetrated the shade of the woods to illuminate her little spiky shape astride an amazingly long strand of web strung between two trees.  The remarkable shape of her abdomen has suggested another of her vernacular names, Castleback Orbweaver.

Seeking Bog Meadow's Shade

I confess I've been neglecting this blog. I am feeling every one of my 83 years this summer, especially when the temps approach the high 90s, with humidity to match.  And my knee, while better, still hurts.  And my couch often calls to me for an afternoon nap more persuasively than the Great Outdoors does for an afternoon walk.  At last, the days are cooler now.  But I still seek the shade.  And what better shade than the cool dark swamp along Bog Meadowbrook Nature Trail? There's even a lovely boardwalk there that allows me to walk where the shade is deepest (as is the mud, should I step off the boards). So that's where I went this past week.

I did have a goal: to see if the stately Swamp Thistles (Cirsium muticum) were blooming now.  And they sure were!  Many plants have sprung up this summer, but not right next to the boardwalk, so I had to get my shoes muddy heading into the wooded wetland where they grew.  Are these our tallest native thistle?  They do tower way over my head, so I have to bend the stalk to look more closely at the flowers. (Ouch!  The stems have no thorns, but the leaves are very prickly!)

Swamp Thistle flowers are well worth a prickle or two to look at closely!  Not just for the colorful blooms, but also to see the involucres as ornamental as Ukrainian Easter eggs.  A close look also reveals the fine webby hairs on those involucres.

Here's a closer look at those white-striped green bracts and the cottony webbing among them.  This webbing is the most distinctive feature of this species of thistle, offering a positive clue to its identification.

Could this be a Long-horned Thistle Bee (Melissoides desponsus), which is known to feed on the thistles that bloom in late summer? Its "horns" were buried so deeply into the flowerhead I could not see if they were longer than usual. But when I looked on Google for descriptions of that particular bee, it was described as having a hairless abdomen. So this must be another species of big bee that also likes to feed on Swamp Thistle.  I'll call it a "Fuzzy-butt Thistle Bee."

This swampy area is also home to three different species of Equisetum: E. arvense (Field Horsetail), E. sylvaticum (Wood Horsetail), and E. scirpoides (Dwarf Horsetail).  But the only one I could find this day without crawling in the mud was the Wood Horsetail, a particularly attractive one, with its lacy appearance. That laciness is thanks to the compound branching of its slender lateral branches.

A particularly gorgeous denizen of this swamp is the Great Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) with its tall spikes of royal-blue flowers. 

A close look at Great Lobelia's florets reveals this native wildflower's distinctive pollination strategy.  Note how the curving stamen arches up through the split upper lip of the flower, with the pollen-laden anther poised for action.  When an insect lands on the lower lip, its weight forces the stamen to spring down and deposit pollen on the nectar-sipping visitor, which it will carry off to spread to neighboring blooms. Sometimes I am simply astounded by the strategies of organisms that are said to be without intelligence!

When I saw this Common Boneset plant (Eupatorium perfoliatum), I was less drawn to its flowers than I was to the small pale-blue butterfly that was so busy among the florets it actually stayed still for the picture-taking. I wish it had opened its wings, for that might have helped me discern its species. The closest I can come to an ID is the Summer Spring Azure (Celastrina neglecta), which has similar wing markings and wings that are pale underneath.  

OK, what else was blooming in this swamp?  Here was a handsome plant of Northern Horsebalm (Collinsonia canadensis) with some of its small yellow flowers blooming. Although this plant is in the Mint Family, it smells more lemony than minty.  In fact, it smells so much like the insect repellent Citronella, I sometimes crush some of the flower stems and rub them on my ears and neck when the mosquitoes are biting. It does help.

Here's a closer look at the Horsebalm's odd little flowers:

The damp soil in this part of the Bog Meadowbrook Nature Trail has helped to keep some of our native ferns looking fresh and green despite our hot dry summer.  A large patch of Maidenhair Fern was a clue that the soil it grew in was at least somewhat calcareous.

The most common of our native ferns along this trail is Cinnamon Fern (Osmunda cinnamomea), sharing its woodland habitat with lots of Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis).

Ferns are not always easy for amateurs like me to identify, but Cinnamon Fern has these ID clinchers I call "cinnamon buns": tiny fuzzy balls that grow where the pinnae meet the stalk. Earlier in the summer, these fuzzy balls are whiter, but by this time of year, they actually are tinted the color of cinnamon!

The single most prolific plant this time of year along this trail is Hog Peanut (Amphicarpa bracteata).  Masses and masses of it line the main woodland trail.  This plant actually does have edible one-seeded  pods that are produced by petal-less flowers that grow on or near the ground at the base of the plants.  I have tasted them, and they'd probably taste better roasted and salted, but you could survive on them if you had to.

Hog Peanuts has other flowers, too, pretty little purple and white ones that dangle from the vines.  These flowers also produce seeds, but in long, bean-like pods that contain several seeds.  These seeds are also edible, but not nearly as palatable as the ones that grow at the base of the plant.

I was ready to turn back and head home to that comfy couch, but I remembered a patch of orchids called Downy Rattlesnake Plantain (Goodyera pubescens) that once grew another quarter-mile or so along the trail.  Knowing how fickle these orchids can be about showing up in the same spot each year, I had to talk myself into going to look for them.  And LO!  I found ONE!  One in bloom, anyway.  Near where in other years I'd found 10 or more. But hey, an orchid's an orchid! And I could see the distinctively patterned basal leaves of several more plants that hadn't flowered this year.  Maybe next year?

Here's a closer look at the small white florets that crown the Downy Rattlesnake Plantain's flower stalk. Most looked a bit past their prime. The bases of the florets did look kind of fuzzy.  Is that why this orchid got the "downy" (pubescent) part of its name? 

And now I could head for home.

Clear Skies, Calm Wind, Clean Water

Last time I posted this blog, I was yearning to paddle my favorite stretch of the Hudson River.  And so I did.  For about 10 minutes. I'd no sooner dipped my paddle a few times when thunder started rumbling and dark clouds rolled across the sky, pushed in my direction by rising winds. By the time I returned to the take-out spot, torrents were sheeting down, filling my canoe and drenching me from top to bottom, bottom to top.  Oh well. Summer's hideous heat and lack of bank-lapping water for six weeks had really fried all the riverbank wildflowers, so there wasn't much to see, anyway.  But that was not the case at all, when my friend Sue Pierce and I returned this past week to one of our favorite ponds,  Archer Vly, in northern Saratoga County.

There were no threatening clouds in sight, although there was a brisk wind riffling the pond when we first arrived. But by the time we'd reached the mid-point of the pond, it was all calm water, its reflective sheen decorated by acres of Water Shield leaves.

One reason we were eager to visit this pond was to see how the flora was recovering from the  devastating flood that drowned most of the shoreline plants four years ago, caused by extra-heavy rains that year and a beaver-dam-clogged culvert.  Although all of the waterside conifers have died (you can see the needle-free remains of them beyond where Sue is paddling, below), most of the herbaceous wildflowers and swamp-dwelling shrubs are returning to health. Not all of them in the numbers that thrived pre-flood, but definitely reclaiming their habitat.

For us wildflower fanatics, the most devastating loss was the entire disappearance of Narrow-leaved Gentians (Gentiana linearis) that once lined the shore of this pond in numbers too high to count. The first year past-flood, I found just one!  But I'm happy to report that every year since then, the numbers have multiplied.  They have not yet reached the abundance they once achieved, but we were encouraged to see plenty of them gracing the shore with their radiant blue blooms.

Many other shoreline wildflowers, especially those that prefer to grow with their roots in the water, were doing just fine as well. A little bee was exploring the bright-white blooms of Common Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia).

A generous clump of tiny-flowered Northern Bugleweed (Lycopus uniflorus) was nestled within some pondside boulders, sharing its damp spot with some small Sensitive Ferns (Onoclea sensibilis).

This handsome patch of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) cares not a whit that its roots are underwater.

Common Pipewort (Eriocaulon aquaticum) is so happy to be wet, it even continues blooming if the water should rise to inundate even the flowerheads. This day, though, masses of them were raising their tiny white button-shaped blooms well above the water's surface.

We were once again delighted by hordes of Swamp Spreadwing Damselflies (Lestes vigilax) flitting and fluttering among the emergent Bur Reed leaves, the sunlight glittering off their transparent faceted wings, which they held half-open even while they perched. Shoreline vegetation like this is this damselfly's typical habitat, where they mate and lay their eggs. 

This Swamp Spreadwing Damselfly stopped its constant fluttering to rest on my paddle, allowing me to observe the blue eyes, iridescent green thorax, and pale-blue band at the end of the bronzy-green abdomen that are distinctive for this species.

Here's another beautiful critter we found, this Monarch Butterfly caterpillar (Danaus plexippus) apparently preparing to pupate, as it assumed the typical curled-up posture prior to forming its chrysalis.

Of course, we were delighted to observe the flora and fauna mentioned above, but what really astounded us on this paddle were the incredible size and abundance of the colonial "moss animal" (Bryozoan) formations -- Pectinatella magnifica --  we observed in shallow water, in numbers we had never observed here before. Both Sue and I had noticed how warm the pondwater was now, much warmer than in other summers.  I wonder if the warmer water contributed to the size and abundance of this organism's colonies.

Most of the Pectinatella colonies were too big and heavy to hoist out of the water, but this little one wasn't.  I could bring it close enough to be able to discern each individual filter-feeding creature. 

A beam of sunlight happened to ignite this colony, making it appear as if it were glowing from within!

Due to their key filter feeding abilities and removal of specific organisms within the water they form in, Bryozoans are seen as a beneficial aspect of a pond’s ecosystem. Their ability to filter out bacteria, algae, and protozoa can help prevent eutrophic blooms of these organisms. 

And here was another fascinating organism we saw,  a green-tinted, transparent gelatinous mass suspended underwater. I have found these masses of transparent greenish jelly in another lake I paddle, but I cannot recall ever finding them here on Archer Vly. They are formed by the colonial microscopic single-celled protozoa called Ophrydium versatile. Inhabitants of fresh water lakes and ponds all over the world, the individual cells line up side-by-side in the "blob"and attach themselves to a jelly-like substance they secrete.  They are symbiotic with microscopic Chlorella algae that live inside the Ophrydium cells and give the blob its green color.  While the algae contribute significantly to the colony's energy needs through photosynthesis, Ophrydium also filter feeds on bacteria and other small organisms for additional nutrients. Again, I am wondering if the warmer water temperature this year has contributed to the growth and abundance of this colonial organism.

And here was one more fascinating underwater find.   Looks like some kind of water plant, doesn't it?  But it's really an animal! Or, to be more exact, a colony of animals called Freshwater Sponge (Spongilla lacustris). Despite its green color and seaweed-like appearance, a lake sponge is composed of simple filter-feeding animals, possessing many cells but lacking a mouth or a brain or muscles or heart or any ability to move, once it becomes attached to a submerged rock or fallen limb. It somewhat resembles a green plant because (again!) of the green algae that inhabit it in a symbiotic relationship.  The algae help the sponge utilize nutrients via photosynthesis, while the sponge supplies the algae with a place to live. But the sponge also acquires nutrients by filter feeding. Inside the sponge, specialized cells filter out small floating organic particles, such as bacterioplankton and other microbes from the water, thus contributing to the health of the water body it inhabits.

I do detect a consistent theme that unites all three of these filter-feeding colonial organisms: they all contribute to the health and cleanliness of the lakes and ponds they reside in.  Archer Vly is fortunate that all three thrive within its waters. I wonder if the increase in water temperature this hot summer has contributed to an increase in harmful organisms like certain algae or bacteria?  And this increase in harmful organisms has contributed to the increase in these filter feeders' size and abundance as they gobble up the bad organisms?  It doesn't seem all that unlikely, does it?