All Clear For a Pleasant Paddle

At last! Smoke from Canadian wildfires no longer dimmed the radiant blue skies. Sweltering heat no longer discouraged me from venturing out under the sun.  And a perfect summer day last Friday beckoned me up to Fourth Lake just north of the Warren County village of Lake Luzerne to enjoy a paddle on quiet waters surrounded by forest and enhanced by a beautiful view of Potash Mountain rising on the horizon. 

And best of all, I was in the company of my two favorite paddling pals, Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks, all three of us in our small solo canoes, closely slipping along the forested shore of the lake to see what floral and other finds awaited us there.

Hurrah!  Our search for a Smaller Purple Fringed Orchid (Platanthera psycodes) was rewarded at last! Disappointed by this lovely orchid's absence from where we used to find it, we were surprised and delighted to find its perfect loveliness, sharing its spot along this fern-lined shore with a rosy-flowered stalk of Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata).

 

We passed several patches of blooming Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), the white flowers brilliant against the dark shallow water the plants emerged from.

I am always amused to see the chubby flowers of Ditch Stonecrop (Penthorum sedoides), another inhabitant of wetlands.

The radiant blue blooms of Monkeyflower (Mimulus ringens) stood out against the dark shade of the the shore.

No need to stay clear of this waterside plant!  Even though the multi-flowered white umbels closely resemble those of the very poisonous Water Hemlock, the very slender lance-shaped leaflets reveal that this is instead the non-poisonous Water Parsnip (Sium suave).

It's always interesting to find various shapes and colors of Crown Rust Fungus on plant stems, but this spongy-looking blob on a Water Willow stem was rendered especially intriguing because it bore what appears to be the cast-off sub-imago skin of a Mayfly, an insect that emerges from underwater nymphs to live as a flying adult for just long enough to mate and lay eggs, from 30 minutes to two days.  

Here's another underwater life form that stays underwater: a gelatinous colony of filter-feeding animals called Pectinatella magnifica that forms each year on underwater tree limbs.  We often find many of these colonies in the shallow water along the shore of this and other Adirondack lakes. This warm-water colony will die and disintegrate as the water grows cold in late fall.  As temperatures drop, the colonies build specialized hard-shelled "statoblasts" that survive freezing and/or desiccation over the winter, until warming water in spring stimulates these statoblasts to create new colonies.  I am constantly amazed to learn of these and other such  life forms and their strategies to survive and thrive.

As we approached the north end of Fourth Lake, where a flowing creek emerges into the lake, we passed through massive patches of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata), crowned with spikes of gorgeous purple flowers.

We love exploring the shady banks of this forest-lined stream.

In previous years, our explorations of this creek ended when we reached a beaver dam that impeded our further progress upstream.

But this year, we discovered that the dam had been breached and we could easily paddle around one end of it. Apparently, the beavers who once maintained this dam have moved on to another site.

And here was a whole other wetland that invited our explorations.  The passage, though, was made difficult because of shallow water and remnants of the former dam.  And there were other shores of Fourth Lake we wanted to explore today, so we turned around to return to the lake.

I always delight in passing through patches of Swaying Bulrush (Schoenoplectus subterminalis), its grass-fine leaves swaying with the current's flow.  Even though I now know the official names (scientific as well as vernacular) of this aquatic plant, I still call it by the name its appearance and behavior suggested to me, which is Mermaid Hair.

Swaying Bulrush has quite charming inflorescences, with slender white curling tendrils grasping its stalk.

This abundant patch of Marsh Skullcap (Scutellaria galericulata) thrived along a sunlit section of the creek.

Here's a closer look at those pretty blue Marsh Skullcap flowers.

Back on the lake proper, we noticed a few stalks of Common Bladderwort (Utricularia vulgaris) raising its pretty yellow flowers above the floating Pond Lily and Water Lily pads.

The surprise of the day was finding a very few small flowers of Purple Bladderwort (Utricularia purpurea) already rising from its spreading mats of underwater sac-bearing feeding structures.  By late August, we will hardly be able to push our canoes through masses of these purple blooms.

One more floral delight awaited us as we approached the sandy shore where we landed our canoes.  The marvelous fragrance of the Swamp Rose flowers (Rosa palustris) wafted over the water, a final gift of this wonderful day of paddling on Fourth Lake.