Disappointment and Discovery at Lake Luzerne

Nope.   Not a sign of them.  I drove up to Lake Luzerne today, just to look for some Purple Fringed Orchids I always find on a little island there.  But not this year.  Not even a bud.  That's the way it goes, with orchids.  Let's hope they're just resting up this year for some burgeoning bloom in the future.  In the meantime, though, it's hard to stay disappointed long in such a beautiful place as Lake Luzerne.  It's here that the Hudson River, having ambled its way down from the Adirondacks, with plenty of room to spread out as it makes its way through the Ice Meadows north of Warrensburg, is suddenly crowded by high rocky banks and forced to plummet through a gorge at Rockwell Falls.

Today, because of a summer unusually hot and dry, the river is low enough to allow me to walk right up to the edge of the falls and not only hear but feel the roaring power of all that plunging water.

You may hear it, too, it you like.

While climbing around on those rocks, I was pleased to greet many of my old flower friends that I always expect to find here.  One of the daintiest is the pretty blue Kalm's Lobelia.

Another inhabitant is Narrow-leaved Mountain Mint, which today had opened all of its puffy clusters of bloom.

This is a flower that looks completely white from a distance, but a closer look reveals a sprinkling of purple polka-dots.

  
Whats this?!  Goldenrod already?!  Yes, I know, this is called Early Goldenrod for a reason, but early July?!  Looking back through the last 10 years of my flower journals, I see that this is really really early for this flower.

The same can be said for Purple-stemmed Aster, the earliest of our large purple asters to bloom.  But in past years, early meant late July.  But there it was, blooming away on the banks of the Hudson today.

The same snowless winter and extra-hot, low-rainfall summer  that has brought many flowers to blooming at least two weeks early this year, has also dropped water levels in the Hudson.  As I looked upstream from Rockwell Falls, I could see dry land below the banks, where in other years there would only be rushing water.  Hmm, I thought, let's see what might have popped into bloom along here.

Hah!  Here by the hundreds were the little rascals that elude me for years at a time, or grant me maybe one tiny yellow blossom after weeks of searching.  I'll bet these myriad Creeping Spearworts have been waiting for years under all that water, and now is their day in the sun.

As I made my way upstream along the muddy banks, I came to large mats of the most amazing green.  Oh my, I thought, that particular color of green sure looks like Golden Pert.  I wonder if I will find any blooming here.  I have never found it upstream from Moreau, but then, I've never found mudflats here above Rockwell Falls, either.

Yup, Golden Pert is indeed what it was!  Its little yellow trumpets were just starting to open, but the bright yellow-green of its leaves was already spreading a golden glow along the river bottom.

A little ways upstream, and that green-gold glow was amended by tawnier carpets of another plant that was taking this advantage of low water-levels to grow abundantly.

A closer look at those tawny carpets revealed a plant with many reddish buds and fuzzy white puffs along the leafless stems that just might be flowers.

An even closer look reveals what look like oblong anthers dangling on fine filaments, and perhaps that's a pistillate structure in the middle of them.  Are those fluffy little clusters then the fruits?  I really have no idea what this plant is, because I have never seen it before and I can't find anything like it in any of my wildflower guides.

Update:  Thanks go out to wildflower expert Carol Gracie for recognizing this mystery plant as some kind of milfoil, then to Ohio botanist Andrew Gibson for pouring through the manuals to determine that this is Slender Milfoil (Myriophyllum tenellum).  Following up on their suggestions, Garrett Crow,  co-author of the two-volume Aquatic and Wetland Plants of Northeastern North America, has clinched the ID, explaining that this species ONLY flowers when the water level drops enough to expose the plants.  Professor Crow added this is always a difficult plant to find, because it is usually submerged, and that he has NEVER seen this plant in bloom.  So it was quite a find, after all.

One plant I was NOT happy to find here was Purple Loosestrife.  At least there were only a few, and those few were spread out as individual plants, rather than in the mass invasions we sometimes see in roadside ditches and open marshes.   I was about to yank out this solitary plant when a Monarch arrived, so I went on my way and left the butterfly to enjoy its meal.

Then a second butterfly came and graced me with its presence.  Is there any creature more lovely than a Tiger Swallowtail?  Just one more compensation today for not finding that Purple Fringed Orchid.

An Island of Relief From the Heat

When it's too hot for a sweat-soaked, bug-ridden hike through the woods, that's when I head to the Hudson. There's a little island there that offers a perfect place for a swim, and it's just off the boat launch on Spier Falls Road, so I don't even have a long carry or hard paddle to reach my destination of cool watery relief. Five minutes from when I park my car, I'm up to my neck in the river. Bliss!

The island has certainly recovered from the ravaging spring floods. I was afraid that the flowers that normally adorn it would have been washed away, but now the blooms are bursting forth as beautifully as ever. Here's Steeplebush, firmly rooted along the island's rocky shore.

Big spikes of bright-purple Pickerelweed emerge from the warm sandy shallows at one end of the island.

All these low areas are now carpeted with Golden Pert, making the riverbank look as if it were lit from within.

Masses of Pale St. Johnswort add to the golden glow.

The showiest of all showy wildflowers, Cardinal Flower is just beginning to open its blooms, of such a super-saturated hue, no camera can adequately capture its vivid red.

This minute little bedstraw, named (appropriately) Small Bedstraw, occupies the opposite end of the spectrum of showiness. Unlike most other bedstraws, this one has three-lobed flowers instead of the usual four lobes. It was so small I had to blow up my photo to make sure it had three-lobed blooms.

All arrowheads have three-lobed flowers, including this one, which is Grass-leaved Arrowhead.

Buttonbush balls look like they have literally "burst" into bloom, but that explosive appearance certainly hasn't frightened away the bees, whose eager numbers set the whole bush to buzzing and bobbing.

I don't know of any monkeys with faces that look like this, although that's supposedly how Monkeyflower got its common name.

This wee little Marsh Speedwell was hiding under the leaves of other plants, and it took a diligent search to find it where I remembered it growing a year ago.

The plants of Marsh St. Johnswort are easy to spot, with their clumps of burgundy buds and with leaves outlined in wine. But to catch them in bloom is another story. I think they may open their pretty pink flowers for maybe fifteen minutes a day. This was my lucky day.

Taking the scenic route home, I spied another pretty pink flower along an old stone wall. This is Queen-of-the-Prairie, and as its name suggests, it is native to grasslands further west than New York State. Brought east as a garden plant, it has since escaped from cultivation to make its way to meadows nearer my home.

Watery Relief from the Heat

Another scorcher, another good day to get wet. Yesterday I put my canoe in the river down near the Sherman Island Dam, and today I moved a mile or so upstream to put in closer to the Spier Falls Dam. There's a pretty little island just upstream from the boat launch there, which offers a perfect place for a swim: deep water right off the rocks, so you don't have to sink into muck to reach a swimmable depth. And the current runs swiftly through a channel between the main island and a tiny islet, creating a kind of lap pool where you can just swim in place. Or take a ride on the current. Fun. But most of all, cool. Aaah, that sweet cool water! Does this not look inviting?

This little island is home to an amazing variety of wildflowers, so the rest of the afternoon was spent poking about in the underbrush and wading along the sandy edges, looking for all my old friends. The water level's been down for some time, so flowers are sprouting like crazy on mud that was deep underwater a few weeks ago. I think I've mentioned before how Golden Pert carpets the muddy flats, and that's exactly what it was doing today. Radiant!

Tucked in among all that Golden Pert was this sweet little veronica called Marsh Speedwell. Its flower is only a quarter inch across, but it still stood out amid that sea of gold. I was so happy to find this lovely little plant. It was one of the first flowers I learned when I first began exploring these banks, and I hadn't found it in many years.

St. Johnsworts of just about every kind find a home on this sandy half-acre, and today, as the Pale St. Johnsworts were fading, the Dwarf St. Johnswort was opening its miniscule blooms. To show just how tiny these flowers are, I've placed a bloom from a Common St. Johnswort next to one of the wee ones.

Another species that grows abundantly here is the Marsh St. Johnswort, the only pink one and not quite ready to bloom. I just love the colors of every part of this plant -- leaves, stalks, flowers, buds, seeds -- and was struck by the vivid fuschia of its buds today.

Pretty blue Monkeyflower was everywhere in full bloom. Whoever named this flower apparently thought its blossom looked like a monkey's face. Um . . . . Which monkey might that be? None that I've ever seen.

Steeplebush, on the other hand, does resemble (a little) what it was named for. Their beautiful deep rose flowers were just starting to bloom today on graceful stems that waved in the breeze.

Uh oh! Here's a beautiful flower that has no business growing here. Left to its own devices, this Purple Loosestrife would supplant all other flowers on the island in time. So of course I could not leave it to its own devices, and I ripped it out.

Wouldn't it be a shame to never see gorgeous Sneezeweed here on these banks, if that Purple Loosestrife took over its habitat? I was startled to find one in bloom so early. But then, all flowers seem to be blooming ahead of schedule this year. My friend Ed Miller has told me he hates the common name of this flower and would rather we called it Helen's Flower, which is what its Latin genus name means: Helenium. Well sure, why not? I'm sure it got named for sneezes because it usually blooms when Ragweed does, too, and got blamed for maladies it has nothing to do with. No flower this showy has pollen that wafts on the wind, since its very showiness indicates its need to attract pollinators.

Well now, here's a new one I've never found on this island: Horned Bladderwort. Unlike most other bladderworts that float about unrooted in the water, trapping tiny organisms in the bladders affixed to their stems, this species grows on dry land. Well, damp land, with its leaves buried down in the sand. It's a mystery to me how its bladders expand to trap foodstuffs down there, but it's certainly no mystery where the "horned" part of its name came from. Note those sharp spurs pointing downward.

Paddling back to shore, I took a little detour to visit an American Chestnut tree that hangs over the river. I missed its blooming this year, so I wanted to see how it was doing. So far, the blight that has destroyed all mature chestnuts has not yet destroyed this youthful tree. But it will, in time. In many ways, it's remarkable to see a chestnut grow old enough to bear fruit, as this one is doing now. It's highly unlikely the nuts will be fertile, however, since that would require cross-pollination, and no other flowering chestnut is growing nearby.

Heading home, I drive over Mount McGregor, and on steep rocky banks along the road I always find Smooth False Foxglove. Again, this flower is blooming a bit early this year.

Smooth False Foxglove seems to me quite showy for a wildflower, but it's not a garden escapee. One of our native flowers, it's parasitic on the roots of oak trees, according to Newcomb's Wildflower Guide. So that means I probably couldn't grow it in my garden, although I sure would love to. Supposedly, it's not a rare plant, but I've never found it blooming anywhere but along this mountain road.