It's Violet Time for One Species!

 We had such a warm day yesterday, I bet our earliest violets are starting to open their petals. And our earliest species to bloom around Saratoga is actually an imported species called the English Violet (Viola odorata).  And oh boy, is it aptly named "odorata!" It has such an exquisitely intense fragrance, just a tiny nosegay will perfume an entire room. It's a basal-leaved species that can bear pure white flowers with no dark veining on the face but with a purple spur behind, or else with flowers of a deep rich purple throughout, and both species are equally fragrant. One of its most distinguishing features (in addition to its intense fragrance) is its curved style. I have been observing the same two patches in the woods (one white, one purple) for over 15 years, and the plants have not spread beyond their original patch. So although this species is not native to our continent, it does not seem to be invasive, either. At least, not as I have observed this species in my local woods in Saratoga Springs, NY. I am might happy I found it.

The English Violet is a remarkably early bloomer. For that reason, it's sometimes called April Violet, like the perfume called "April Violets" by Yardley, which does smell very much like this violet. I have not seen that perfume for sale for decades, though. I used to buy it in my Michigan hometown's Rexall Drugstore when I was a teenager. I'm just about 84 years old now! But this violet's fragrance brings lots of teenage memories back.

I'm about to head out to the Skidmore woods to see if these lovely violets have come into bloom. I don't have new photos of them yet, but here are photos I took on previous years:

Since this purple patch of English Violets grows wild by the side of a city road where mowers are likely to cut them down, I feel no compunction about picking a small bouquet of them.  In this photo, you can see the flower's hooked style, which is one of the distinguishing features of this species, in addition to its fragrance.  Some of our native small white violets do have some fragrance, but not nearly as intensive as these imported violets do.

Just a tiny bouquet like this will perfume an entire room.   And the flowers usually last for several days, continuing to emit their fragrance.  What a gift from the violet gods!

There's a patch of the white form of Viola odorata way over on the opposite side of the Skidmore campus, this patch along a path through the woods.  I never pick any wildflowers in the woods, so I have to get down on my knees to breathe in these violets' fragrance.  Note how purely white these flowers are, without the dark veins that decorate the faces of our native white violets. But these pure-white flowers do have a purple spur, which you can glimpse on the left-hand flower in this photo.  Another feature of this species is the way the plants spread by underground stolons.  I did long ago scratch away some soil to observe this stoloniferous trait.  I was totally puzzled as to this violet's species, until our state's then chief botanist Steve Young sought advice from our country's foremost expert on violets Harvey Ballard, who ascertained that these lovely flowers were indeed Viola odorata.

The site where both of these English Violet varieties grow, the Skidmore College campus, is located on land that once supported a collection of Victorian mansions. I could imagine that the Victorian ladies who lived in those mansions carried nosegays of these fragrant violets to mask the smells of horse manure as they rode in their open carriages along the carriage lanes that once wound through the woods at this site. I imagine their gardeners planted the patches to have such fragrant flowers available to make nosegays of. The word "nosegay" means a small fragrant bouquet that was carried or pinned to a shoulder to counteract unpleasant odors. Both patches of fragrant violets occur along what once were carriage lanes.  Souvenirs of a different era!

May Hope Follow Despair

Well, here we are in Holy Week, two months since I last posted a blog. Spring has arrived, snow and ice have retreated, and our earliest flowers have opened their blooms.  This is normally the season when all the descendants of Abraham's faith in God are celebrating seasons of spiritual hope: Ramadan for the Moslems, Passover for the Jews, and Easter for the Christians. And what has our toddler-tempered President done (in service to Israel's demands) but start a senseless war to bring agony to members of all three faith traditions, in the very land where each faith had its birth, the Middle East. Bombs are crushing innocent families in their homes and schools in both Iran and Israel, young people are being sent into battle to die and to kill one another, the very earth of the Holy Land is being poisoned for generations to come by the heavy metals of weaponry, and the treasuries of all countries involved are rapidly draining to pay for the woe and waste of war. The lid from Pandora's box has been ripped away, and nobody knows how to capture those unleashed evils and shove them back into that box.  If I was feeling depressed two months ago, I'm hardly finding few remedies for sorrow now.

Ah, but my friends are helping.  And so is our burgeoning Earth.  And I feel profoundly grateful to my friends for urging me out into nature to experience that Great Goodness that lies at the core of Creation. Especially during this season of rebirth. 

My friends in our Thursday Naturalist group have led me to a woodland pond in the North Woods Nature Preserve near Ballston Lake, the pond ice-free at last, where Wood Frogs croaked out their calls to come create a new generation:

My ever-loyal pals Sue Pierce and Dana Stimpson have called me out to other Spring-awakened destinations.  Here we are walking the Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail in Saratoga, where Pussy Willow puffs shone in the sun, and Skunk Cabbage plants were fully in bloom with florets of both sexes:

Sue and Dana also led me to the Firetower Trail at the Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park, where we were astounded to find both American Hazelnut (Corylus americana) and Beaked Hazelnut (Corylus cornuta) blooming at the same time. In our past explorations, we have found that the American precedes the Beaked by more than a week.  Here's the American Hazelnut, bearing both dangling staminate catkins and one tiny red pistillate bloom. The catkins of this species are longer and more loosely attached to the twig than those of the Beaked Hazelnut:

And here are the very similar flowers of the Beaked Hazelnut, but with catkins shorter and more sessile to the twigs than those of the American Hazelnut.

We would have been disappointed if we had hoped to find other colorful spring wildflowers during our visit, but the forest was rendered brilliantly colorful instead by many beautiful fungi, mosses, liverworts, and lichens, all of which had made their homes on the dead wood of fallen limbs and tree trunks.

The glowing yellow-orange fungus on this fallen log is a Stereum species, but I could not name even the genus names of the emerald-green moss or the verdigris-colored lichen. But I certainly could enjoy their colorful display!

Again, I know the reddish liverwort is Nowellia curvifolia, but the lime-green moss is familiar to me by sight but not by name.

And here's another liverwort, but one whose name I'll never forget.  It's called Lovely Fuzzwort (Ptilidium pulcherimum), and just saying that vernacular name makes me smile. And it really IS a lovely liverwort!

And I also will never forget the very descriptive name of this gorgeously colorful fungus, the Turkey Tail (Trametes versicolor), in one of its beautiful golden and gray color combinations.

Whoa!  This Violet-toothed Polypore (Trichaptum biforme) is one of the most common bracket fungi found in our regional woods, but never have I seen a mass of them glowing so vividly as this group climbing this tree trunk. And the day was gray and gloomy, so it was not sunlight that ignited them. It thrilled me to gaze at such vibrant beauty.

From above, these same fungi were not nearly so gorgeously colorful.  (Photo below) What a lesson: angle of perception can change everything!

Inspired by the deeply encouraging rewards of these outings with friends, I also ventured alone to the Spring Run Trail in Saratoga Springs, where I hoped to find one more reason to rejoice:  the emergence of the first wildflower of Spring that actually looks like a prototypical flower, the sun-yellow, bright-blooming Coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara).  And there it was!

Finding the Coltsfoot risen so faithfully, I recalled this meditation I composed about this pretty little "weed" some years ago, and it seemed a good time to repeat it at this season:

It's almost Easter, and as Christians prepare to rejoice that the Lord is risen, we wildflower lovers also rejoice that the first REAL flower of spring -- one that actually LOOKs like a flower -- has risen as well. Alleluia! The Coltsfoot is up! The season of blooming is here! I know, I know, these are not native flowers, but these dear little sunny blooms, bursting forth in glory from out of the mud and the cold dead leaves, speak to me of resurrection far more than any pampered, florist-bred Easter Lily could. Like God's love, they are freely given, they spring forth unbidden, there's not a thing we had to do to deserve them, nor a penny we have to spend to enjoy them. Also, like the Incarnate One who dwelt among the lowly, they make their home among the poorest soils, brightening desolate roadsides where nothing else will grow. Supposedly, they even have healing powers. So bless you, dear little Coltsfoot. It gives me great joy to welcome you once more. 

To any and all of my readers who may have found their way back to this too-long neglected blog, of whatever faith tradition may grant you hope, I wish you the hopeful promise of growth and renewal this season signifies.  Happy Easter!

Some Photos, Just for the Record

Well, we got the snow and cold I was wishing for in my last post 12 days ago. Plenty of snow and definitely sub-zero temps.  As a winter-lover, I should have been out every day. But I'll be honest.  I just wasn't into celebration, whether of nature's winter beauty or anything else, my heart so heavy with anger, sorrow, and fear for my country. Murderous thugs mob our nation's streets, and our President and his lying toadies urge them on, with claims that belie what our own eyes and ears can can plainly see and hear, thanks to the brave bystanders who have practiced their Constitutional rights to document the horrible truth. Some losing their lives to do so.

I did go out and I did take some photos, but my mind was otherwise distracted and could not concentrate on blogging.  But just for the record, I'm posting those photos here.  At some point later, I might just want to look back at these dates and places to learn what nature was doing while my troubled thoughts were elsewhere.

Zen Brook at Moreau Lake State Park, January 14

My friend Sue Pierce and I refer to the brook that tumbles down a mountainside here as "Zen Brook," acknowledging the peaceful and meditative mood we enter as we listen to its babbling stream. On previous visits this winter, the watercourse had been dry, but recent rains and warming temps had managed to restore its soothing music.

Even in the deepest cold of winter, we find much of botanical interest in the beautiful green mosses and liverworts that thrive unimpaired on the splash-dampened creekside boulders. Here, Sue is taking some macro photos of one of the liverworts.

According to Sue, the iNaturalist botanists she consulted suggest that this is the liverwort called Porella platyphylla (also known as Wall Scalewort).  It does like a dampish habitat and grows on both wood and rocks.

Some fungi persist through the winter, too, and this rotting tree stump was home to several of them.

These bright-yellow tiny cups are the fungus called Lemon Drops or Fairy Cups (Bisporella citrina), a very common species we find all year around on rotting wood.

On this same stump, I noticed these patches of a deep-pink fungus that looked as if someone had daubed pink paint on the rotting wood.  Sue posted photos of it on iNaturalist, where she learned its name is most likely Tulasnella violea, a fungus in the Order Cantharellales.  I had never seen this one before, although we once did find another Tulasnella species (T. aurantiaca) not far from this site, although that species was bright red and gummy, not flat and pink like this one.

I do know the name of this fungus, the pale-tan caps of which were crowding the length of a nearby  rotting log: Luminescent Panellus (Panellus stipticus). This wood-dwelling fungus earned its descriptive vernacular name by actually glowing in the dark.  I have never witnessed this trait myself, but every one of my mushroom guidebooks mentions it.  This mushroom's specific name, stipticus, was probably suggested by its reputed ability to staunch bloodflow from wounds.

The frosted tan caps of this fungus is not all that distinctive, but the way its gills radiate from an off-center, very short curving stalk certainly is.

Big Bend Trail at Moreau Lake State Park, January 20

The brisk wind of this bitterly cold day might have kept me snug indoors, if my friend Sue had not urged me to join her on the easily walkable trail at this recently opened preserve. It is an attractive trail, with views of mountains rising beyond the Hudson, and several wooded swamps and ponds along the way. How could I resist?

We sure had to bundle up to enjoy it, though! I think Sue's glasses have frosted over here.

Only a few little cottony clouds impeded the sun's warming rays.  Kind of.

This photo shows how the wind was whipping the stalks of Phragmites and the fluffy split pods of the Cattails.

We headed out onto the solidly frozen snow-covered ice of one of the ponds that line this trail. Would we encounter the determined creature (a fox?) who loped straight across the pond?

We never did see any more sign of a fox, but the distinctive curving trails of several foot-dragging White-tail Deer encouraged us to follow where they were heading.

All deer trails led to the interior of a Phragmites thicket, which must have offered some cozy shelter to the deer.

The trail of this mouse was quite distinctive, indicating the little creature's hopping gait as it dragged along its long tail. 

We always enjoy trying to ID the winter remnants of plants that persist throughout the winter. The star-topped stone-hard pods of Maleberry fruits (Lyonia ligustrina) are among the easiest to recognize. These winter pods suggest how this shrub acquired the alternate vernacular name, Hard Huckleberry.

 

In the sandy meadows, we found many dried remains of Round-headed Bush Clover (Lespedeza capitata). I discovered that if I boosted the exposure of my photos, I could eliminate the distracting shadows of the snowy background, while still preserving the structure of the plant remnants.

That exposure-boosting technique also worked well for capturing just the beauty of a Goldenrod plume.

We didn't need to see the blue flowers to recognize the candleabra shape of these Blue Vervain (Verbena hastata) flower heads.

Ice Would Be Nice!

There's a lovely stream that tumbles down the mountain that rises along the west side of Moreau Lake. Because of recent rains, there's water in that creek this week, and soon, the temperature will be falling well below freezing. Such were the same conditions eight years ago when I captured in photographs some of the dramatic results of water splashing into subfreezing air. Incredible crystalline beauty!  It sure would be great to see such beautiful ice formations again.  Maybe we will.

Meanwhile, here are some of the photos I took of that gorgeous ice eight years ago.  

When flowing water meets bitter cold, fantastically beautiful ice formations can occur.  Some of these formations are glassy and globular:

Others are opaque and frosty white:

The splashing drops from the tumbling stream create curtains of icicles hanging from limbs that have
fallen across the streambed.

I have yet to understand how these particular "isobar" ice formations occur.  They form a plate suspended above the now mostly depleted stream, and these plates are so thin and fragile I could almost  imagine that they were formed from freezing vapor instead of liquid water. 

Here's one more fantastical ice formation that just amazed me:  clusters of frozen bubbles encased in clear crystalline ice. There must have been a thin layer of transparent ice that formed when the stream was fuller, but as the water level fell and became more rollicking, foaming bubbles splashed up from the rushing water below and then were held intact by that thin ice layer above. I nearly wept from the beauty this icy activity created. 

Here's one more photo of ice gorgeousness I witnessed more recently at another location, this one a creek that flows through the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in nearby Wilton:  dangling trumpets of ice that formed when water splashed up on the twigs of a branch that fell over the rushing water. I was dazzled by how the light danced around the trumpets as the water played around them.

This time, I laughed out loud for joy, overcome with delight that I could witness such winter beauty.

Photo by Dana Stimpson

Here's hoping our current winter offers us similar reasons to feel such delight!

Have a Happier New Year

Sorry, dear friends, I'm at least 10 days late to wish you all a Happy New Year.  But I sure do hope it will be a happier year than this past year was for me. Pain and muscular weakness from knee replacement surgery last February has limited my aerobic activity up until now, causing loss of fitness that continues to curtail all but the easiest outdoor adventuring. Then recently, Death swung his mortal scythe through multiple beloved family members and dear friends, which cast a pall over holiday happiness. A stomach virus descended upon me, too, and the headache, nausea, and fatigue hung around for weeks after I'd supposedly healed.  And of course, our nation's political crises have added rage and anxiety to this noxious mix. 

Our weather hasn't helped, either. No sooner did we get the kind of sparkling snow and crystalline ice we winter-lovers crave, than freezing rain arrived to ruin it all. And sheet-ice on my front steps sent me crashing down in a backside-bruising bumpy slide before I had managed to sprinkle on the Ice Melt. Deprived of the beautiful ice formations along tumbling creeks, I've had to find delight in the lacy crystals that grew from the salt I finally spread on my steps.  They were really pretty though:

And then, the very best remedy for deep funk arrived this past Thursday:  A gorgeous, blue-sky, sun-warmed afternoon with the very best of nature-loving pals.  My dear friends Sue Pierce (red coat) and Dana Stimpson joined me to stroll around on the finally frozen-over Moreau Lake.

It was easy walking across the snow-covered 8-inch thick ice, with puffy low clouds drifting lazily across the sky. We could see there were quite a few ice fishermen out on the lake, and I suggested we go visit them to find out if any fish were biting today.

Well, whatever residual grumpiness still lurked in my spirit this day, it was certainly dispelled by this young man's ample cheerfulness.  His name is Dylan, and he simply glowed with pleasure, sitting here surrounded by his seven flagged holes, even though not a single one had yet required his hurrying to check what fish had snagged the bait.  Despite his apparent youth, he was a very accomplished hunter and fisherman, having successfully tested both of those skills in several different regions of our continent, although he lived close by, on one of the bays of the Hudson River.  We three delighted in hearing of his adventures, and he seemed quite pleased that we were eager to do so.  I was struck by how at ease he seemed in his solitude, too, content in his own mind and memories, perhaps, while also happy to converse with us. He also appeared to be enjoying the remarkable warmth of this windless day that allowed him to bask bare-armed in the bright sunlight.

Here is another cheerful fellow we met on our way back to our cars. I'm sorry I neglected to ask his name, but I did ask him to hold up that gorgeous Rainbow Trout he had caught today.  Wow!  No wonder he looked so happy!

Such jolts of joy, this sun-warmed, blue-sky, friendship-lifted adventure provided me! Everything about it helped me move out from under my personal clouds and look forward to more joys to come.