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!
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