Surprises at Lake Luzerne

 Hudson River above Rockwell Falls, July 19, 2012

Today I went up to the Hudson River at Lake Luzerne.  My task was to take the GPS coordinates of where I found the Slender Milfoil in bloom on mudflats above Rockwell Falls on July 7.  A couple of botanists have asked me to send them pressed specimens of the flowers of this aquatic plant, since it only blooms -- and rarely so -- when exposed to air with falling water levels.  And those botanists do like to have GPS coordinates, in order to map the locations of plants in their collections.  But boy, did I get a surprise!  Those extensive mudflats that I found on July 7 (see photo below) were rapidly disappearing (see photo above), due to a couple of heavy rains over the past few days that have caused the river to rise.  I'm very glad I had already collected the specimens, and luckily, the water was still shallow enough to allow me to wade to where I had done the collecting.

 Hudson River above Rockwell Falls, July 7, 2012, showing extensive mats of Slender Milfoil in bloom.

There were still some patches of Slender Milfoil above the water, but much of it was now submerged.

Those plants that yet remained above water appeared to be still in bloom.

I had to smile when I saw extensive patches of Creeping Spearwort still merrily blooming away, although now completely submerged.

Regular readers of this blog may remember me eagerly leaping from my canoe a month or so ago,  surprised and excited to find a single flower of Creeping Spearwort.  How was I to know that this would be a banner year for this wee little buttercup, and that I would ultimately see them this year by the hundreds?

Golden Pert is another one of these riverside plants that will vegetate under water for years, and then, when they do get their hour in the sun, will burst into radiant bloom.

I almost stepped on this rather large Green Frog before it surprised me with a giant leap.  But then it held stone still for me to take its picture.  Thank you, dear froggie.  You look quite comely next to that little trumpet of Golden Pert.

My GPS task completed,  I headed over to a stream that runs from the lake  to the river.  (Yes, there is a lake at Lake Luzerne.)  There's an island in the middle of this stream where, years ago,  I found abundant Smaller Purple Fringed Orchids growing as thick as dandelions.  Then somebody mowed the island, including the orchids while they were blooming,  and I rarely find any orchids there anymore.  Maybe one or two, on lucky years.  I had already searched through the grass a couple of weeks ago and found no sign of them.  But I like to walk along this pretty stream, and of course I glanced in the island's direction.  Just in case.  And WHOA!  What are those purple flowers out there?  They're not the right color for Purple Loosestrife or Heal-all.  Could they really, REALLY be the orchids?  Look how MANY there are!

So I waded across the shallow stream to see.  Yep.  Orchids, indeed.  Fourteen of them, just in this bunch alone.

I searched around in the knee-high grass, and there on the opposite bank, I found another. 

And another and another and another and another and another.  Twenty orchids in all, including this beauty at a perfect stage of bloom.

I even found one that was all pure white, a very unusual occurrence.  Like a cloud of tiny angels ascending into heaven.  Or a flock of tiny peace doves descending to bring a blessing.  Oh happy day!

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.