Here comes December, and here came some SNOW! Some pretty snow, too, soft and sparkly and about 6 inches, and I hope it's the first of many lovely snowfalls to come. But before I get distracted by all the glittering charms of winter, I do want to post some photos of the most recent walk I and my friends in our Thursday Naturalist group enjoyed during the waning days of November.
We visited Anchor Diamond Park, which contains 246 acres of conserved woodlands and trails, located at the historic site of the former Hawkwood Estate a few miles south of Ballston Spa, New York. Now permanently protected through a conservation easement by Saratoga PLAN (Preserving Land And Nature), this preserve is owned by the Town of Ballston and open to the public year-round. The park honors the wishes of the late Frank Schidzick Jr., whose Trust purchased the property and generously gifted it to the Town in 2015. Today, Anchor Diamond Park is a place for visitors to connect with nature and enjoy the beautiful landscape.
Our Thursday group has visited Anchor Diamond Park more than a few times over recent years, but this time we opted to follow a longer route than in past visits, one that took us along the main Hawkwood Trail until we reached the Hemlock Loop, the trail colored yellow on the map pictured below. This took us into a part of this preserve several of us had not visited before.
Before we reached the Hemlock Loop, we enjoyed exploring some of the evidence of human occupancy of this estate many years ago, not just the visible remains of the original Hawkwood Mansion, but also the crumbling foundations of other buildings that lined the wide Hawkwood Trail. We had not yet experienced a killing frost in Saratoga County, so many green plants and occasional late-blooming wildflowers were still evident in such sheltered havens.
As we followed the Hawkwood Trail into the heart of the preserve, we walked beneath towering trees that soared over our heads like the arched ceiling of a cathedral.
Some of the trees were very old, especially many huge Black Locusts, now dead and disintegrating but still quite monumental, even in their considerable decline.
We paused to ponder what had occurred to cause these sturdy twin trunks to curve in this way.
As we walked along, we were often accompanied by the sounds of the rippling Delavan Creek that runs throughout the preserve.
Shortly after entering the Hemlock Loop, we encountered this old stone fireplace, standing alone on the forest floor, with no evidence of any building having ever surrounded it.
Apparently, we were not the first people to ponder the origin of this fireplace, according to a sign that was posted at the site:
As we moved further along the Hemlock Trail, we were dismayed to find evidence of the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid infesting the trees. We could only hope that biological controls, such as the release of other insects that prey on the adelgid larvae, would help to save some of the hemlock trees that were concentrated in this part of the preserve.
Avoiding physical contact with the needles of infested hemlocks, we concentrated our explorations on the remains of fallen trees scattered about the forest floor. Here, Tom and Sue have found a stump populated by quite an assortment of interesting fungi.
The fungi came in quite a colorful assortment on this particular stump. I see bright-yellow Lemon Drop Fungus, a copper-colored sac fungus, some blue-green Blue Stain Fungus, some lumps of hard dark-brown fungus riddled with tiny holes, some flat brown caps I can't identify, some orange Eyelash Fungus, and a whitish stuff that might be a lichen or slime mold. I hardly bother to try using the scientific names of fungi, so many names have changed since my old mushroom guides were published.
I used to know that Eyelash Fungus as
Scutellinia scutellata, but I have since learned there might be many different species that all look a lot like this. Can you see the tiny dark "eyelashes"?
A knothole on another stump held a nice group of the tiny fruiting bodies of Blue Stain Fungus surrounded by bright green moss.
Is this compact clump of bright-orange stuff the fungus called Orange Jelly? Or is it Witches' Butter? One grows on hardwood, the other on conifers. I can't remember which wood this was. It was quite an impressive clump of fungus, whichever one it is!
I am glad I remember the name of this small gilled fungus with an "innie" bellybutton on top, which often grows in bright-orange masses on rotting conifer wood. Its scientific name is
Xeromphalina campanella, which means something like "small bells with dry bellybuttons."
One of the vernacular names for Xeromphalina campanella is Fuzzy Foot. It's often difficult to detect any fuzziness of its feet, but this particular population yielded a perfect example of how it got that name:
We found many pretty mosses and low-growing plants throughout Anchor Diamond Park, but this red-berried, green-leaved groundcover called Partridgeberry seemed the most appropriate for anticipating the upcoming Christmas season. Wishing a happy holiday season for all of my readers!
