The rains had finally stopped! A kind sun emerged last Friday to dry out our soaked and battered earth and allow our swollen creeks and ponds to settle down a bit. My friend Ruth and I headed up to one of our favorite ponds in northern Saratoga County, hoping to find that the fabulous array of native wildflowers that normally beautify its banks had survived the torrential downpours.
Ruth's smile says it all about how happy we were to be in our boats again on this perfect little Adirondack pond.
The water in the pond was certainly high, flooding the edges of the shore a foot or so up the banks, but at least the drainage culverts had not clogged, which happened 5 years ago, allowing the water to rise far up into the woods. That flood killed almost all of the shoreline conifers and wiped out most of the shoreline wildflowers for several seasons to come. We were hoping to discover today a continued further resurgence of those pondside plants.
We were glad to see that healthy stands of Bunchberry, Clintonia, and Dalibarda had repopulated the banks, but the recent torrential rains seemed to have knocked the berries and flower petals off the plants. The plants all looked healthy and green, but we missed the colorful display of blue and red berries and snow-white flowers we would normally enjoy seeing this time in the summer.
I fear, though, that the once abundant population of Small Green Wood Orchids (Platanthera clavellata) may take many more years to recover. Where over a hundred once thrived around the pond, I found just this solitary specimen. But at least it was in full bloom for us to enjoy!
The wildflowers we were most excited to see recovering were the Narrow-leaved Gentians (Gentiana linearis), beaming their gorgeously radiant blue flowers every few feet along the shore. Not yet the thousand or more we once counted here pre-flood, but at least several dozens, re-establishing their domain most of the way around the pond. (The green-bud-topped small stalks below the gentian belong to some Round-leaved Sundew plants, their basal leaves now underwater.)
Multi-flowered clusters of Narrow-leaved Gentians shone forth from fern-dominated shores.
Where the flowers of shoreline gentians toppled into the water, they floated upright like cobalt-blue water lilies.
There were so many gentian flowers topping this stalk, I could hardly count them. I am hoping such healthy-looking plants signal the return of this incredibly beautiful native wildflower to its former flood-ravaged site. I have seen this flower along other waterways, but never in such abundance as along the shores of this pond.
This gentian abundance continued almost all the way around the pond, including parts of the sun-drenched south-facing shore. I loved the sight of the vivid-blue gentians sharing their shore with the pink-flowered stalks of Steeplebush (Spiraea tomentosa).
We encountered many other beauties as we paddled around this pond. When the sun shone through the boughs of this Mountain Holly shrub (Ilex mucronata), its vivid-red berries appeared as if lit from within.
A fluffy tuft of pale-pink Meadowsweet (Spiraea alba) was displayed to perfection against the dark shade of the forested bank.
The bedrock-lined, Hemlock-crowned banks of the pond displayed a dramatic beauty of their own. Ruth, possessing a deep interest in mosses and liverworts, enjoyed exploring every crevice in the rocks to see what bryophyte treasures they might hold.
At the east end of the pond, we pushed our canoes through thick patches of burreeds and marshgrasses until any further progress was impeded by a beaver dam that stretched the entire width of the pond. (The dam is behind us in this photo.)
In a quiet cove, the dark still water reflected this patch of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) with intensified beauty.
This Great Blue Heron held its regal pose long enough to capture in a photo.
After beaching our boats, I examined some Common Milkweed plants (Asclepias syriaca) to see who might be dining on its leaves. I am almost always certain to find a Red Milkweed Beetle or two. This beetle must have just begun to prepare for its lunch, since it had yet to sever a leaf-vein upstream from where it will dine on the leaf edge, preventing the sticky latex from gluing its jaws shut.
Where we stopped at a local tavern to have some lunch ourselves, this stand of Joe-Pye-Weed by the parking lot was providing a meal for this gorgeous Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly. A beautiful close to our morning's adventure on that beautiful pond!
