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!