Early Autumn Beauty at Lens Lake

I usually wait until the second week of October to re-visit Lens Lake in autumn.  That's when the mountains and forests and shoreline surrounding this southern Adirondack lake are most likely to reach their peak of colorful splendor. But this year, our friend Ruth Brooks will be leaving unusually early for her winter home in Florida, and she wanted to experience at least the beginnings of this splendor before she goes.  So our mutual friend Sue Pierce and I accompanied Ruth last week to paddle this quiet lake studded with acres of Sphagnum-carpeted bogmats.

The spectacle of colorful leaves was just beginning, with Red Maples offering the opening act of the extravaganza yet to reach its peak.

While Sue and Ruth hugged the edges of the bogmats searching for some unusual mosses and liverworts they remembered thriving there in the past,  I hugged the rock-bound forested shore, enjoying the bursts of vivid color the shoreline shrubs and forest-floor plants put forth.

 

Although most of the flowering plants had retired for the winter by now, this trio of bright-yellow Grass-leaved Goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia) still bloomed atop a fallen log, their pom-pom-like  flowerheads and slender stalks waving in the brisk wind.

The textures and colors along the shore were exquisite, punctuated by the vividly colorful fading fronds of Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum).

The shrubs of Labrador Tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) also looked quite colorful, with a few of their evergreen leaves turned orange, as if to match the furry orange stems of their flower stalks.

Here's a closer look at the furry orange undersides of the otherwise evergreen leaves of Labrador Tea. Not only are these leaves quite colorful, they are also quite fragrant when crushed to breathe in their scent, a fresh piney smell that I think of as the signature fragrance of bogs and fens.

Each flowering stem of the Labrador Tea was tipped with these pretty pink winter buds, which will open in spring to release clusters of small white flowers.

Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) is another shoreline shrub with evergreen leaves and twigs that  already hold the buds of next spring's flowers.  Other twigs on the same shrub held the small apple-shaped fruits produced by this year's flowers.

Here's a closer look at those small round Leatherleaf seedpods.

Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) is one of the most abundant shrubs along the lakeshore. I could detect the remains of the spent flower clusters surmounted by terminal leaves.  And I also could find a few new flower buds atop the leafy twigs.  It always amazes me that this native shrub that normally blooms in early summer, also produces occasional flowers in the fall, but this time in clusters atop the leaves, not surmounted by them.

Here's a photo of fall-blooming Sheep Laurel flowers surmounting the leaves, which I took in mid-October at Lens Lake a year ago:

Close to shore, I encountered many remains of old tree stumps, now covered with vegetation as colorful as this vivid Sphagnum Moss, offering a blast of gorgeous color in miniature.

One of the most interesting organisms I find in the shallow waters close to shore are these masses of transparent greenish jelly.  They are formed by the colonial microscopic single-celled protozoan called Ophrydium versatile.  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.  Over the years of paddling on Lens Lake, I have found masses of it as small as a golfball and as large as a bathtub. The largest blob in this group was about the size of a soccer ball.

Having explored the shore for a while, I ventured out to join my friends along the edges of the bog mats. This lake is one of the most interesting I have ever paddled because of the presence of the bog mats. They stretch for acres, many of them covered with large populations of Tawny Cottongrass (Eriophorum virginicum). On this breezy day, each individual cottongrass stalk appeared to be swaying and dancing to a music all its own.

The Sphagnum mosses that cover the bogmats are vividly colorful in hues of scarlet (above) and gold (below) and also share their space with many other colorful plants. The bristly yellow spikes emerging from this bed of Sphagnum are the spore stalks of Bog Lycopodium (Lycopodiella inundata), rising above its green leaves snaking across the Sphagnum mound.

Although the flowers of Purple Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) are fading by now, their vase-like, insect-drowning leaves remain as colorful as ever,  a vibrant scarlet lined with red-veined orange.  Note how the red and gold Sphagnums intermix, resembling the vivid colors and patterns of Persian carpets.

I missed seeing the pretty pink flowers of Marsh St. John's Wort (Hypericum virginicum) this summer, but their rosy-coral autumn leaves and deep-scarlet seedpods are just as beautiful as the flowers were.

White puffy dots of Pipewort flowers (Eriocaulon aquaticum) and the sparkly crimson leaves of Spatulate Sundew (Drosera intermedia) added beauty and interest to a muddy patch of bogmat.

As we paddled past what seemed to be an abandoned beaver lodge, I noticed many small plants had made this woody mound their home.

I have never seen the stems and leaves of the plant called Swamp Candles (Lysimachia terrestris) massed in a heap like this, but I know of no other plant that bears such red chili-pepper-shaped bulbils in the leaf axils. These bulbils will eventually fall off and sprout in the underlying mud to produce clones of the original plants. The massed leaves and bulbils looked quite beautiful atop this old beaver lodge.

Another once-flowering plant spread across the surface of the old beaver lodge, and I recognized the small size, red seedpods, and opposite oval leaves of Dwarf St. John's Wort (Hypericum mutilum). When in bloom, each of those tiny red pods was a tiny bright-yellow flower.  Considering how abundant this plant was growing here, that must have been lovely to see. But not any lovelier than the sight of its autumn-colored abundance now.

I do want to post a photo of the full crazy-quilt splendor of autumn color at Lens Lake, just in case I don't return to this special lake again this year.  (This photo was taken in mid-October a few years ago.) Pretty spectacular, I would say! But I hope our earlier paddle here gave Ruth plenty of memories of its already-vivid beauty to please her as she heads south.

Plants Persist on the Low-water Shores of Moreau Lake

While most folks I know are delighting in the long string of warm sunny days this month, I'm actually feeling quite grumpy about it.  Darn it all, we need RAIN!!!  Rain that falls all day long and all night long and soaks slowly into the ground and fills our lakes and ponds and pools and even our rivers, some of which are now so low we could walk across them and not even get our feet wet.  Ah well.  At least I could now walk around Moreau Lake on dry sand and visit the wildflowers I once found growing there when the lake was this low seven years ago.   Would those wildflowers still be there? A few days ago I went to find out.  I started first where a broad sandy beach invited me to walk around Moreau's back bay.

The Calico Asters were certainly there, and every bit as abundant as ever.

Here's a closer view of Calico Aster's flowers, displaying the multicolored centers that suggested their colorful common name.  Symphyotrichum lateriflorum is this aster's scientific name, suggested by the way the flowers grow on one side of the branching stems.

The colorful shoreline array of wildflowers indicated their years-long inundation had not destroyed them forever.

I was especially delighted to find so many beautiful purple blooms of Small-flowered Agalinis (Agalinis paupercula), a rarer wildflower than the similar-looking Slender Agalinis (A. tenuifolia) that also grows along this shore, although much less abundantly here. This closer photo shows that the flowers of A. paupercula have very short pedicels, as compared to the long slender pedicels that hold the flowers of A. tenuifolia far out from the stalk.

Not having any petals to speak of while in bloom, these Devil's Beggar Ticks (Bidens frondosa) look quite innocent now, but once they go to seed with their barbed stick-tights just waiting to adhere to your pant legs, you will understand how they got such a devilish vernacular name.

The greenish chubby flowers of Ditch Stonecrop (Penthorum sedoides) are easy to overlook earlier in the summer, but now their brilliant deep-rose maturing fruits announce their presence vibrantly. As the "ditch" part of their name suggests, this plant does prefer damp sites (such as this shore), and although their puffy little flowers do somewhat resemble those of some stonecrops, their leaves are not succulent like the leaves of genuine stonecrops.

Despite American Wild Mint's reputation for aggressive spreading being similar to that of the non-native culinary herb, I rarely find this native species (Mentha arvensis) growing in massive numbers on the lakeshores I usually explore.  That was certainly the case for this individual specimen, which was one of only five plants growing at this location.  A close look at the pale-purple flowers wreathing the stems reveals how pretty the florets are, and the nose also earns a delightfully minty reward for approaching the leaves this closely.

No fragrance rewards a closer look at these teeny-tiny flowers, but their adorable cuteness does. These are the diminutive blooms of our native Smaller Forget-me-nots (Myosotis laxa), so small they are easily overlooked.

I put my fingers in this this photo to demonstrate how tiny these Smaller Forget-me-nots are.

I could not put my fingers close to this tiny Pickerel Frog, for then it would have hopped away before I could focus my zoom lens on it. It might have been just a bit over an inch long.  Very cute!

Before I could complete a circuit of Moreau's back bay, some complicated blowdown stalled my progress, so I turned around, deciding instead to walk round the eastern shore of the main lake.  From the bridge that spanned the division between the main lake and the back bay, I could see a broad sandy north shore.

As I crossed the bridge, I lingered to take in the glorious beauty of masses of New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) blooming profusely along both sides of the bridge. What an amazing display of their super-saturated-purple flowers!

I wonder if bees take delight in the aster's color as they partake of their pollen and nectar.  They were certainly abundant visitors to these flowers.

The Goldenrods along the bridge were equally showy and gorgeous, and they, too, were hosting a banquet for many insects, in this case, many wasps.  And one small solitary bee.

When I reached the north shore's sandy beach, I stooped to admire the many plants of Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrush (Cyperus subsquarrosus) that have persisted there during both high water and low.  It was seven years ago a state botanist and I first found these tiny Endangered flatsedges on the shore of Moreau Lake, with thousands growing where low water levels in the lake had revealed once-inundated lake bottom.  Even after the lake water rose higher again, this small population of this species continues to flourish higher up on the shore.  By this late in the summer, the small plants have produced their tiny, brown, cone-like spikelets.

Curious to see if that Cyperus subsquarrosus had again revived on recently emerged lake bottom, I hurried along the eastern shore to a deep cove where I'd found many hundreds of them seven years ago. Until this hot dry summer's drought, the lake's water in this cove had risen up to the shrub line, but now a sandy shore stretched for quite a few yards between the shrub line and the water's edge.

And there they were!  Perhaps you will have to click on this photo to enlarge it in order to see the tiny plants with their dusty-green curving stems lying very flat to the sand.  The hundred of plants create what looks like a wrack-line along the sandy shore.  (I'm just noticing now some other interesting plants, the spiky green ones, which might be some interesting quillworts I will have to return to examine!)

Yep!  The Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrushes are back!  The recently revealed plants in this cove appeared much smaller than those in the persistent population on the north shore, but there is no mistaking those tiny cone-shaped spikelets.

Elated by this find, I strolled further along the shore of the cove, delighted by the beauty of the diverse plants that grow here. Masses of Calico Aster bloomed profusely beneath the towering Buttonbush shrubs (Cephalanthus occidentalis), while golden-fruited Toothed Flatsedge (Cyperus dentata) flourished in the sand before them.

Here's a closer look at those rosy-red Buttonbush developing seedpods.

Glancing down the cove's shore, when I spied the rather skeletal-looking remains of a dead Cottonwood tree, I hurried there to seek another rare plant I hoped I would find persisting beneath it.

And so I did! Although the tiny purple-dotted florets of the flower heads had fallen by now, the distinctive seedheads and relatively broad leaves of the plants were sufficient evidence that the truly rare Whorled Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum verticillatum var. verticillatum) still persisted here.  The strong minty fragrance of both leaves and flowerheads was another distinguishing feature of this plant that is rated as Endangered in New York State.  

When Rich Ring, then a rare-plant monitor for the New York Natural Heritage Program, first visited this site to officially assess this Whorled Mountain Mint's large population back in 2014, we counted 273 individual thriving plants. A very healthy population indeed, possibly the largest and healthiest in the state!  Sad to report, I counted fewer than 20 specimens persisting now, due to water-level vicissitudes in the habitat along this cove's shore.  But at least those remaining specimens appear to be secure beneath that old Cottonwood trunk that stands a safe distance back from Moreau Lake's changing shoreline.

Retracing my route around Moreau's shore, I noticed some pretty pale-purple asters growing off in a wooded area.  At first I wondered if they might be the Heart-leaved Aster I'd found nearby a few years ago, and I approached them to see if the plant bore that species' heart-shaped leaves.

To my surprise, the leaves were NOT so much heart-shaped as they were oddly shaped, with the stalks of the larger stem leaves enlarged at the base and clasping the stem.  The margins of the leaves looked slightly wavy, and that clinched the species' name for me: Wavy-leaved Aster (Symphyotrichum undulatum). This was an even better find than the Heart-leaved Aster for me, since I find the Wavy-leaved Aster much less frequently.

Continuing on through the woods, I was delighted to walk through this patch of forest floor carpeted with Virginia Creeper vines (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), their leaves turned the most attractive color of rosy pink.  Just as pretty as any of the flowers I'd found today!

Ice Meadows, Late Summer

My visits to the Hudson River Ice Meadows have been limited this summer, due to cautious care for my recovering knee.  Because of that, I missed the full splendor of this site's abundance of rare and beautiful summer flowers. But feeling stronger now, I finally ventured up to this remarkable riverside site north of Warrensburg in early September, hoping to find at least some remnants of what had been blooming there this summer.  My friends Sue and Ruth came with me, as well as did our mutual friend  Alex, an incredibly passionate insect expert (he's the fellow with the bug net in the photo below, no doubt with his eyes on some prize).  Imagine this scene in the winter, with heaps of ice all the way up to the forest's edge, even pushing over some trees, and you'll know how this grassy stretch acquired the name "Ice Meadows."

Few summer flowers were still in bloom, but the Purple-stemmed Asters (Symphyotrichum puniceum) were in their glory, offering many insects their final tastes of nectar and pollen before such sources closed down with first frost.

Most other flowering plants at this site  -- like this Virginia Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) -- were well on their way to setting seed.

One of the rarest plants at this site is Sticky False Asphodel (Triantha glutinosa), an Endangered species in New York State.  Dozens and dozens of them grow near the water's edge, and they were immediately recognizable even in seed.

A few of these tall stalks of Canada Burnet (Sanguisorba canadensis) still bore a few thread-like white petals, and the jade-green bracts that had held those petals were rather beautiful in their own right.

And here were some actual flowers in bloom, little blue ones called Kalm's Lobelia (Lobelia kalmii) almost hidden down in the grass.

One of the interesting features of this site is the presence of several spring-fed pools, which help to create damp habitat at this otherwise sun-baked riverbank.  Sad to report, most of the pools were dry, thanks to semi-drought conditions caused by our hot dry summer.  This was the only pool we found that contained any actual water.

The springs must also have moistened the soil around the pool, for we found quite a few of our native  orchids called Sphinx Ladies' Tresses (Spiranthes incurva) blooming nearby. This is a species that does prefer a damp habitat.

Large Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) also prefers damp soil, and the ones we found were already producing nearly ripe fruit.

I don't believe Eyebright (Euphrasia stricta) is particularly fussy about preferred soils, since I usually find these tiny flowers in such low-nutrient habitats as the edges of parking lots, especially at northern latitudes like the Adirondacks. It seemed quite happy here, anyway.   Not a native wildflower, but certainly a pretty one.

Our friend Ruth is a bryophyte fancier, and she must have found some tiny moss or liverwort hiding down in a crack in these rocks. I knew that my knee would not enable me to rise from such a position, so I failed to ask Ruth to let me take a look through her loupe. But I was happy enough to see Ruth so happily engaged.

On our way back toward Warrensburg, we stopped at another interesting site, where huge marble outcroppings jut into the Hudson

Every crack in these marble outcroppings holds growing plants that feast on the lime such calcareous  rocks provide.  The most remarkable plant that grows here is the New England Violet (Viola novae-angliae), and even this late in the year, we could find this super-rare violet's distinctively tapering leaves.

Our native clematis called Virgin's Bower (Clematis virginiana) sprawled across the rocks, its vines now holding its silky spiraling seedpods that suggested this plant's alternate vernacular name, Old Man's Beard.  I noted the small white puffs below the clematis vines, but I could not put a name to them. I don't believe they belong to the vines they lay beneath.

Here's a closer look at those small white furry puffs. It appears they also might grow on a vine.  Suggestions as to their identity are most welcome!

A sweet fragrance like that of maple syrup alerted me to the nearby presence of Sweet Everlasting (Pseudognaphalium obtusifolium), abundant with small papery blooms

Some of the plants of Sweet Everlasting held the pretty flowers, and other plants held the cute puffy tufts those flowers become when they go to seed.

Here were some much smaller "cute puffy tufts," only these were bright orange and clinging to the rocks.  This photo also shows the lime-rich marble crystals this organism prefers.  Called Trentepohlia aurantia, the tufts are composed of terrestrial filamentous green alga. The carotenoids pigments that conceal the green chlorophylla are responsible for the conspicuous yellow-orange color.