Come Walk the Lakeshore With Me!

 Oh my, but I sure do feel honored!  The New York Flora Association, a state-wide organization "dedicated to field botany and furthering the understanding of plants that grow wild in New York," is holding their annual meeting on October 4 right here in my favorite stomping grounds, Moreau Lake State Park.  And I have been asked if I would lead a nature walk in the park as one of the day's events.  Well, SURE I will! And I already know where I hope to lead it.  On an easy walk along the beach,  the site where I have found a number of rare plants over the years, right out within easy view. No scrambling up mountain cliffs or slogging through swamps, just an easy walk where the sandy shore meets the surrounding forest.

If you click on this photo, looking toward the north end of Moreau Lake, you might be able to make out a wooden pedestrian bridge that separates the main body of the lake from its smaller back bay. That's where I hope to start our walk.

I sure hope some of these New England Asters will still be blooming by October 4.  They were certainly in their glory this week, masses of bright-purple blooms inviting me to continue across the bridge.

That glorious aster patch was bobbing as if the flowers were blowing in the breeze, but the only breeze was created by the wafting of wings of hundreds of pollinating insects feasting on the asters. This bumblebee was one of the very few that held still enough for the picture-taking!

Directly across the bridge I continued along an inter-lake forested trail, where I can see expanses of blue sparkling water through the trees on both sides. By the first week of October, we should start to see some autumn color in the leaves.

I am delighted that both White Pines and Pitch Pines line this wooded trail, making it easy to distinguish each species by its bark, that of the Pitch Pines rendered most immediately obvious by the reticulated fissures in the bark, reminding me of a giraffe's hide.

Pitch Pines are also interesting because of how they hold onto their cones for several years, so we can find examples of each year's cones together on the same branch.

From this wooded trail we will make our way down to this broad sandy beach, where small flatsedges form lines of greenery in the sand

Here's where we will search for our first rare plant of our walk, called Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrush (Cyperus subsquarrosus). It might take some sharp eyes to find it, since it is very, very small, and it might be starting to fade by October 4. If our state's head botanist, Rich Ring, is with us on this walk, perhaps he might relate our experience of first finding this Endangered species along these shores. (I did record that experience on a blog I posted back in 2018.)

Among the other flatsedges along this sandy shore is this attractive Toothed Flatsedge (Cyperus dentatus), with its golden spikelets.

As we stand on this sandy shore and look up to the forested border, we will note thick hedges of Black Huckleberry shrubs (Gaylussacia baccata).  If we're lucky, these shrubs will have acquired something of their vivid red foliage by the first week of October. Some years, that foliate is a brilliant red, other years a more subtle burgundy red.  But always beautiful.

As we turn to proceed along the eastern shore of the lake, the aster experts among us might be able to identify the different species of small white aster flowers that grow in masses there.

I can usually identify the Heath Asters (Symphyotrichum ericoides) myself, so compact are its flower clusters and short and sharp are its leaves.

When I first spied the loose cluster of these pale-purple flowers in a wooded clearing, I thought it might be the Heart-leaved Aster.  But then I noticed its leaves were neither heart-shaped nor sharply toothed nor slender stalked. So I took a closer look.

The larger stem leaves of this aster were not toothed at all and their stalks enlarged at the base and clasped the plant's stem.  These leaves sure suggested to me that this was a Wavy-leaved Aster (Symphyotrichum undulatum).

At least I did not have to puzzle over these bright-yellow blooms.  Except I was surprised to find such a fresh-looking bunch of flowers this late in summer on an Evening Primrose (Oenothera biennis). Most of the other Evening Primrose plants along this shore now bore clusters of seedpods instead of flowers.

A number of small trees hung their branches over the shore, and the hop-like seedpods of this tree made it immediately evident that this was Hop Hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana).

The leaves of Mapleleaf Viburnum (Viburnum acerifolia) had yet to acquire their beautiful autumn pinky-purple color, but I was glad to see the shrub had produced a cluster of berries.

As I neared the shoreline where I would turn into a deep cove, my eyes swept the forested high banks where in other years dozens and dozens of Green Rock Cress plants (Borodinia missouriensis) were immediately made visible by their cascading slender siliques.  Aha!  I did spy one specimen, anyway.  The populations of this state-ranked Threatened species seem to vary from year to year, but at least I was encouraged to see this one bearing seed.  When state botanist Rich Ring and I scoured this bank a few years ago, we found abundant numbers of these plants thriving here. (I recorded that visit on my blog as well.)

I've now reached the deep cove where we will head toward the final destination of our nature walk on October 4.  I sure hope we can make it this far, because one of the rarest plants in the park, the Endangered Whorled Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum verticillatum var. verticillatum), grows along this cove.

Masses of Gray Dogwood (Cornus racemosa) and Buttonbush shrubs (Cephalanthus occidentalis)  flourish at the edge of the wide sandy shore along this cove.

The red seedpods of the Buttonbush are just as attractive as the spheres of tiny white flowers had been.

I sure hope the birds will not have devoured ALL the Sassafras berries before we have a chance to delight in them on our nature walk.  (Sassafras albidum)

Masses of late-summer wildflowers fill the edges of this cove.

This bee was feasting on the nectar (or pollen?) of flowers of White Snakeroot (Ageratina altissima), a plant that is known to poison most other animals that would dare to eat it.

This lovely little Pearl Crescent butterfly was feeding on one of the small white asters that thrive on this shore.

There were at least two species of Smartweed (Persicaria sp.) growing on this sandy shore, one with pale-pink nodding flowers and the other with deeper-pink more-erect flowers. I did not examine the plants closely enough to determine the species of each, so this could be a task for any of the more-knowledgeable botanists who might be taking this walk.

This was a very small plant of Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata), but you could not miss noticing such bright-blue flowers.

I hope we reach these plants of Blue Curls (Trichostema dichotomum) before they drop their tiny flowers with the distinctive curving anthers (early afternoon). If not, we could probably find the intact flowers littering the sand.  And their seed pods are just as cute as the flowers.

I do hope we might find a plant of two of Small-flowered Agalinis (Agalinis paupercula) still blooming.  The shores of Moreau Lake are the only place I have ever found this pretty late-summer flower, once rated as a Rare species in New York.  They certainly are not rare along certain damper stretches of this lake's shoreline.

We should find more of that Endangered species, Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrush (Cyperus subsquarrosus), along this sandy shore, too. If they haven't shriveled beyond recognition by this October date. They do disappear after frost.

But this final plant of our seeking today, the Whorled Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum verticillatum var. verticillatum), is usually quite visible well after frost, the sturdy bracts of its tiny florets now bearing seeds.  We once counted over 270 specimens of this Endangered species along this cove, but varying water levels in the lake affect how many plants will emerge each year. At least they continue to persist, in varying numbers each year.  I found them in good shape this year, so I'm excited to think that our friends in the New York Flora Association will be able to see them for sure.

I don't know what's turning some of the Whorled Mountain Mint seed clusters black, but I sure hope whatever might be causing this does not imperil the future of this population along the shores of Moreau Lake.

A few more pretty things awaited me on my return walk along the lakeshore.  A bright-red Autumn Meadow Hawk dragonfly, and a bright-yellow Amanita mushroom standing beside a multi-colored Big Tooth Aspen leaf.