Escape to the Shade

Whew!  We just endured a stretch of days so hot, even a nature-nut like me did not want to leave the air-conditioned comfort of my home.  But then a Facebook Memory post showed me how gorgeous the flowers were LAST year this week on a Rosebay Rhododendron shrub at Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in nearby Wilton.  Ooh!  Could I manage to push through the muggy heat just to see if it's blooming now? OK, I told myself, let's go see.

At least the green and shady woods at Orra Phelps Nature Preserve LOOKED cool. (Even though it wasn't.)

And the Little Snook Kill that runs through this preserve helped to add to the image of coolness.

And look! A streamside Purple Flowering Raspberry vine (Rubus odoratus) was beautifully in bloom.

Its big beautiful flowers give evidence that this fruit-bearing vine belongs to the Rose Family.

And sure enough, the Rosebay Rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) was blooming right on time!

This is one of our most spectacular native rhododendrons, and well worth a few mosquito bites and my glasses swimming off my nose to feast my eyes on its gorgeous blooms. Although this shrub is native to New York and well distributed across much of the state, I have found it nowhere else in the woods I regularly wander in northeastern Saratoga County.  So I am grateful to the former owner of this preserve, the late noted naturalist Orra Phelps herself, for making sure that this specimen had a home on her property.

I found a few other wildflowers blooming here today,  including shoulder-high plants of Tall Meadow Rue (Thalictrum pubescens) lifting tufts of thread-fine white blossoms.

I was delighted to find the formerly dangling flowers of Indian Cucumber Root (Medeola virginiana) migrating to the top of the plant's terminal tier of leaves, where some of the flowers had already produced the crowning cluster of berries.  The berries are green now, but later will turn a dark blue. 

In a sandier, sunnier part of the preserve I found many tall spears of Spiked Lobelia (Lobelia spicata) bearing their pretty blue florets.

Where damp soil prevailed in a part of the woods, I stopped to admire this spreading patch of delicate scalloped green leaves. . . 

. . . and I bent to peer beneath the leaves and admire the tiny, nearly translucent flowers of Water Pennywort (Hydrocotyle americana) blooming in the leaf axils. Such hidden treasure!

One more treat awaited me as I hurried toward the air-conditioned comfort of my car: this spectacular cluster of tiny bright-orange mushrooms massed on a rotting moss-covered log. Its scientific name is almost as long as its caps can be minute: Xeromphalina campanella, which, roughly translated, means something like "small bells with dry bellybuttons." OK, I guess I can see that.

One of the common names of Xeromphalina campanella is "Fuzzy Foot," referring to the furry-looking cluster of mycelium that forms at the base of the stalks.  When I broke away a sliver of the rotting wood this cluster was growing on, I could see exactly how this fascinating fungus acquired that delightful name.

One more reward for venturing out on this sweltering day.