Woods Hollow Habitat: Good for Goodyera

We had a few sunny hours today, so I hurried over to Woods Hollow Nature Preserve in Ballston Spa to see if I could find that Checkered Rattlesnake Plantain (Goodyera tesselata) I didn't manage to photograph on Wednesday, due to pouring rain. Woods Hollow has just the kind of habitat this rather uncommon species of Goodyera loves: an open pine woods with sandy soil thickly cushioned with pine needles. Pink Lady's Slippers love this pine woods, too, blooming by the hundreds here every spring.

I quickly located the area where I find the Goodyera each year, and was able to find several dozen of the rosettes of basal leaves, marked with the pale green "tesselation" that gives this plant its scientific name. These markings are much paler on this species than are those on the related Downy Rattlesnake Plantain (Goodyera pubescens) I found at Bog Meadow yesterday.

Goodyera with flowering stalks, however, were much harder to find. I don't know if more will come later, or if the plants are sitting out the year. The individual flowers are not very showy, but a full spike of them is quite noticeable.

A closer look at the tiny blooms reveals their orchid likeness, for these are, indeed, one of our native orchid species.

My orchid assignment completed, I continued my visit to Woods Hollow by walking around the pond, a former reservoir that lies at the heart of the preserve. The water lay mirror-still on this windless day.

In thickets around the water's edge, Beaked Hazelnuts were filling out their odd furry pods.

In one of the little coves of the pond, Dalibarda spread across the bank like a carpet, its snowy white blossoms presenting quite a contrast to its very-dark-green, heart-shaped leaves.

I was struck by the lovely pale pink of this pair of Indian Pipes.

Another Indian Pipe was lifting its head, allowing a view of this flower's "private parts." When fully mature, the heads will all face straight up.

Glossy-green Wintergreen was dangling its waxy white bells on ruby-red stems.

This pretty insect was adding its note of color to the foliage. In just a matter of seconds (less than a minute from when I submitted its photo), BugGuide.net had informed me that this was Calopteron reticulatum, a Banded Net-winged Beetle. A BEETLE!? Don't beetles have those hard bulbous forewings called elytra? Yes, but not Calopterons. Their elytra are soft and flattened, appearing rather like the wings of a moth.

There were lots of mushrooms growing in the damp woods, but most had been half-eaten by some woodland creatures and so were not very photogenic. This Amanita muscaria was an exception, glowing as if it were lit from within. I wonder if insects and turtles and other creatures leave it alone because it would make them as sick as it would any human who consumed it.

Oops! I misidentified this mushroom, according to Cornell mushroom expert Kathie Hodge, who tells me this is more likely Amanita flavoconia. Click on the comments to see what she had to say about it. Thanks, Kathie.

Midsummer Along Bog Meadow Trail

Continuing my plan to revisit all my hometown nature haunts, I headed to Bog Meadow Nature Trail today. This two-mile trail through forested wetlands and open marsh (but no real bogs) lies just east of Saratoga Springs and offers a nice shady place to walk on a sultry day, with birdsongs of many species accompanying every step. If you gaze at this photo long enough, I bet you will hear the sweet spiraling sibilance of a Veery, interspersed with the lilting trills of a Winter Wren.

I did have a destination, and that was a patch of Downy Rattlesnake Plantain I've been trying to shield from the mowers for several years. Two years ago, the trail steward and I pounded wooden stakes around the patch to protect it, and ever since, these little white orchids have certainly thrived. Today, I counted 13 flower stalks (still in tight bud), where two years ago there were only two. I'll return to photograph them when they're in full bloom, but really, their vividly patterned foliage is much more impressive than their rather insignificant flowers.

The deep-woods scene this time of year is basically green and more green, with few colorful flowers to catch the eye, although mushrooms do their best to brighten the path. This is a button of Painted Bolete, its textured red cap nicely set off by the moss behind it.

And these little blobs were as colorful as they were tiny. The largest was maybe a quarter-inch across, and yet they were easy to spot from some distance away. I believe they might be a slime mold called Red Raspberry Slime.

Holy Mackerel! Look at that snake! I always see lots of snakes along this trail, but usually just the tails of garter and water snakes as they slither away at my approaching footfall. But this guy stood his ground, just staring at me. A really big guy, too. What kind could it be?

Ah, then I noticed its body swell and its head flatten out like a cobra's. Must be an Eastern Hognose, I thought, as I leaned in with my camera, and that's when it started to hiss and release a terrible smell as well. I backed off a bit, but I wasn't really afraid, since hognose snakes are known to never attack. Unless you're a frog or a toad. Their fangs are way in the back of their throats, so they couldn't strike and bite a creature as big as I am.

Yup. That's a hognose, all right. But rather than flip over and play dead, as is their habit when threatened, the snake just turned and slithered away, until nothing remained but the nasty smell it left behind.

With that reek remaining in my nostrils, I was happy to find a nice stand of Swamp Roses not 20 yards down the trail, filling the air with their fragrance and delighting the eye with their beauty.

As the trail moved into an area of open marsh and brighter sunlight, the grasses and shrubs grew bigger and bushier and almost obliterated the unmowed trail. As I walked along, I could hear the quick slithering of many unseen escaping snakes and the plunks of frogs as they dived into the nearby water.

This part of the trail is lined with far too many alien honeysuckles. Most of them have red berries, but a few had orange ones, which I grudgingly admired as they glowed like Christmas lights in the slanting sun.

I preferred the radiant royal blue of Clintonia berries, abundant along the trail.

You can see those red honeysuckle berries back there, creating a pretty foil for this nice stand of Fringed Loosestrife.

I saw lots of beautiful butterflies, all flaunting their lovely colors but never deigning to land within my camera's focal length. Except for this one, with its rather dull coloration. This could be either an Eyed Brown or an Appalachian Brown. I studied and studied the internet photos, but still I couldn't tell which. Can you?

This scene was my reward for coming so far. I had meant to turn back some time before, but the possibility of further surprises kept me trudging on, regretting I'd not put a sticky deerfly patch on the back of my hat. Ah, but this was worth it! There'd been lilies all along the trail, but none so lovely as these.

Steamy Day, a Few Rewards

Usually, a day-long rain like the one we had yesterday signals a change in the weather. But not this time -- unless what is meant by "change" is even muggier than ever before. Ugh! A truly horrible day it was to trudge through the woods, the very earth seeming to belch up heaves of sweltering heat with every step, clouds of biting insects circling my head, sticking to my sweaty face and gagging me as I snorted them in with each breath. As I said: ugh! So I guess I have truly descended into the very depths of nature nuttitude, since I just HAD to go to Bog Meadow today to check on those Downy Rattlesnake Plantains.

Longtime readers of this blog will remember my outrage at finding these orchids mowed down last year, just as a single stalk was about to bloom. Well, I'm happy to report that this particular patch of plants has rebounded with stunning vigor. I counted ten blooming stalks today where a year ago there was only one. Orchids are like that. Sometimes they seem to thrive on a bit of crisis.

Anyway, I was very, very happy to see them. Just look at this cute little blossom.

I know, I know, they're pretty small and not at all showy, so some folks might wonder what all my fuss was about. Sometimes I wonder, too. Especially as I sit here tonight scratching all my bug bites.

There were a few other rewards along the trail, such as this bright pink Swamp Milkweed bloom. My eyes were drawn to its beautiful color, and it looks like a bunch of flies were drawn to it, too. They'd better be careful, because sometimes flies get their legs trapped in milkweed flowers and they can't get free. (You can see a photo of just such a trapped fly if you check out my post for June 26, 2009.)

Those flies had better look out for the dragonflies, too, who love to eat other insects and who were darting all over the open water along the trail. A couple of them perched long enough for me to take their photos. I don't know their names, but maybe some of my readers do and will tell us. One was a rich velvety brown with yellow specks behind its violet eyes.

The other was a rich velvety red, with lacy black wings and coffee-colored eyes.

I was kind of surprised to see Flat Top Aster already in bloom. Hey, it's only July! There's a whole week left before August. But everything's blooming early this year.

The Virgin's Bower was also in bloom, but it seems to be right on schedule, according to my flower journals from previous years.

I had hoped that yesterday's rain would have brought us lots of mushrooms today, but this yellow jelly fungus was all I could find. I confess I didn't look very hard, since the heat and bugs were chasing me back to my air-conditioned car.

Once I got in my car and cooled off a bit, I worked up the stamina to go in search of another treasure, a big patch of Great Lobelia that for several years I'd found growing in a wet ditch along a nearby road. But when I arrived at where I remembered them growing, this is the sight that met my eyes: muddy ruts and heaps of dead grass instead of masses of radiant blue.

Dismayed, but not that surprised (there seems to be some horrid compulsion toward tidiness among most folks), I pulled over anyway. Maybe some plants had escaped the mower's blade and were hiding further back in the woods. And so they were! Oh joy!

Here's a closer look at one of those lovely blue flowers. See how the stamen arcs up through a slit in the upper petal and positions itself in readiness to plunge down on the back of the pollinator that lands on the lip below?

Such cleverness! Such beauty! How on earth could that mower bring himself to cut it down? I'll bet he never even saw it. Or thought it was just some common weed that might creep into his monoculture of a lawn. How I wish it would creep into mine! I actually planted some I obtained from a wildflower nursery, but my ground is too dry to suit the needs of this plant. I had always hoped to be able to find it safe along this roadside. Guess I'd better find the person who mows this spot and put in a plea for Great Lobelia's life.