Sue Gets A Hornbeck!

NOW we can really go places!  My dear friend and nature companion Sue has finally taken the plunge and purchased a Hornbeck Blackjack canoe.  Because this boat weighs a mere 12 pounds, Sue can hoist it up on one shoulder and hike for long distances to hidden ponds that no car could have access to.  I've got a list of places I can't wait to take her to.  But first she wanted to baptize her Blackjack in the dear familiar waters of Moreau Lake, the lake that's our true home base and the place that we first came to know one another.  I joined her there on Wednesday morning.  I am, after all, a kind of godmother to Sue's new baby.

Here Sue sets out to test her new boat's performance and to get a feel for how far she can tip it before swamping.  After several maneuvers that involved her getting thoroughly soaked (on purpose!), she dumped the water out of her boat, dried off a bit, and set out to explore the shore of the lake.  That's my own Hornbeck Blackjack on the shore, and I quickly got in and followed her.

When we entered the first bay of the lake, I noticed quite a commotion in a tall Sassafras tree and saw flashes of red and black as this Pileated Woodpecker (Sue thought it was a juvenile) tugged at the ripening fruit.

Well, it's always exciting to see a Pileated Woodpecker, they're such flashily impressive birds, but I was even more excited to see so many fruits on this Sassafras.  Every year I hunt and hunt for them and only rarely find them, even on trees that I know had female flowers in the spring.  This has got to be one of the prettiest tree fruits, with blue-black berries resting on scarlet pedicels that hold the fruit erect like tiny goblets.  Obviously, woodpeckers love to eat them, but they're not considered to be edible for humans.

The shoreline of the lake is beginning to take on late-summer colors, with this beautiful little golden sedge (?)  growing copiously in the sand at the water's edge.   I love the pretty herringbone pattern of its flower heads.

While peering closely to admire that sedge, Sue discovered this moribund Katydid, an insect we rarely get to lay eyes on, since it normally occupies the treetops.  Such a lovely color, like the finest jade, and what delicacy of the wings! We guessed that this was a female, with that ovipositor protruding from her abdomen.  Does a Katydid expire after laying her eggs?  We felt a tender sadness toward her, and Sue laid her gently on the sand beneath the pretty sedge.

I was surprised to find Small-flowered Gerardia already in bloom, since this is a flower I normally don't start to look for along Moreau's shores until September.   The plants were not only blooming early, they also seemed to be extraordinarily large.   Is it possible another species of Gerardia has moved in on the territory?

This was quite an extraordinary clump of Nodding Smartweed.  I usually find just a few scraggly stems here and there, but here was a magnificent cluster of them all handsomely massed together in a most un-weedlike manner.

Seed-hunting for Ed

My friend Ed Miller is the creator and curator of a remarkable collection of woody plants at the famous Landis Arboretum in Esperance, New York.  Ed's goal for his collection is to have it contain every tree and shrub and woody vine that is native to New York State, and I guess he must be missing a couple, since he asked me if I would collect some seeds from the Black Tupelo and Sassafras trees that grow in the places I regularly paddle.  Of course, I was happy to oblige, both because I would love to do Ed a favor, and also because I'm glad for any excuse to revisit the lovely banks of the Hudson River at Moreau.  Especially on such a beautiful day as it was yesterday.

On foot instead of afloat, my first destination was a rocky promontory I call Bear's Bathtub, where I remembered a number of Sassafras trees in beautiful bloom last spring.  Surely, with all of those flowers then, there would now be fruits.  Right?

 
Well, there were lots of Sassafras trees out there, dressed in their splendid autumn colors, but not a single fruit could I find on any of their branches.  Had the birds consumed them all, or had they already fallen from the trees because it was so late in the season?

I went back into my photo files to retrieve this photo of a Sassafras fruit I took almost exactly a year ago on October 17.  The trees were full of these fruits last year at this time, but for some reason they did not produce fruit this year.  I've heard that Sassafras can be like that.  I'll have to keep looking elsewhere.

My next destination was a second promontory I call Rippled Rocks Point, where a number of Black Tupelos grow in a marshy area nearby.

Approaching the site through the woods, I could, from some distance away,  see the red glow of the Tupelo branches backlit by the sun, where they hung down low over the water.

These trees had been laden with fruits when Ed and I paddled under them just ten days ago, but by now the birds had nearly stripped the trees bare of them.  I did manage to find a few, however,  and I collected all I could reach for Ed.

My seeds collected, I was happy to wander around on the promontory,  where blueberry bushes had found a foothold among the rocks.  Does any shrub turn a more exquisite color of red than Highbush Blueberry?

Even the stems and the buds for next year's growth take on this vivid color.

 There is one little blueberry bush out there that, every year,  produces flowers as late as November.  I scrambled out onto the rocks at the very end of the point and, sure enough, there they were!  I wonder why a plant would do that, blooming too late to ever produce a fruit.

Heading back through the woods, I was dazzled by the sight of this fallen Red Maple leaf caught on a twig,  lit up like a magic lantern by a ray of sun that penetrated the gloom of a stand of Hemlocks.

This yellow leaf (maybe a Hornbeam?) also caught my eye, first, because it was dangling in midair from a strand of spider silk, and second, because its yellow color was so beautifully set off by the lichen-covered bark behind it, its color like that of verdigris on bronze.