Rainy Hike up a Mossy Trail

Rain, rain, rain!  Hey, c'mon, it's JUNE, already!  As in "then, if ever, come perfect days."  Ah well, I guess a rainy day is a perfect kind of day to go looking for mosses, as it was last Wednesday when I met noted moss expert Nancy Slack for a hike up the Baker Trail in Moreau Lake State Park.

 The sun came out for a few minutes on this otherwise rainy day in Moreau Lake State Park.

Our primary destination for our hike up into the Palmertown Mountains was to find a pool that's nearly chock-full of Wild Calla, and we were successful in finding it, although the Calla flowers were well past their prime.  Almost all flowers are blooming earlier than expected this spring.

Here's a closer look at one of those Calla flowers well on its way to becoming fruit.

Although the Wild Calla almost completely filled the pond, there were a few other plants that shared the site, including a nice variety of grasses and sedges and large clumps of Blue Flag.

The hike to this pool is not a particularly long one, but it took us a couple of hours to reach it, with so many intriguing distractions for a bryologist along the way.  I usually associate Sphagnum Moss with low-lying acidic bogs, but Nancy informed me that some Sphagnums (such as the one she's examining here) prefer upland sites that are less acidic.

There appeared to be a variety of soil chemistries along our trail.  In one location below some rocky outcroppings, the plants, such as these Maidenhair Ferns and Rattlesnake Ferns, were those that usually indicate a rich, limey soil.

This Ebony Spleenwort is also a fern that prefers a limey substrate.

But then we also found rocks that Nancy identified as definitely acidic, such as this one adorned with at least three different kinds of moss, all of which prefer an acidic environment.  (Nancy told me the names of all the mosses we found, as well as the name of this rock, but I had left my notebook in my car, not wanting to get it wet, and I promptly forgot what she told me.  I'll try to come back and identify these later.)

I didn't recognize this Rock Tripe immediately, because I usually see it when it is dry and brown.  But Nancy told me that it will turn green after being drenched with rain.  As we all have been these last few weeks.

Hiding in among that Rock Tripe was another foliose lichen, smaller and curlier, its upturned edges rimmed with powdery white.  Again, Nancy told me its name, but I didn't write it down.

This velvety green moss always grows on tree trunks, Nancy told me.  She also told me its name but, well, same song, second verse.

At least I DID know the name of these odd little whitish fungi.  They're called Dead Man's Fingers, and they will turn black as they mature.  The tallest of these was perhaps an inch long.

From small and pale to huge and vivid!  It was quite a surprise to see this beautiful Chicken of the Woods, a fungus I usually don't look for until fall.  These many days of rain seem to be bringing out the fungi earlier than ususal.

Certainly, the rain brings out the little Red Efts, which were everywhere in the woods on Wednesday.  We constantly had to watch our step, lest we squash them on the trail.

Neither one of us could figure out what happened to this old Beech tree to create those odd rings in the trunk.

Another tree that got our attention was this old Black Tupelo, with deeply furrowed bark on one side, smoother bark on the other.  That was our first clue as to the species of this tree, plus we found some of last year's oval leaves on the ground beneath.  We could not see the top of the tree at all, nor any of its branches, hidden as they were above the leafy tree limbs of encroaching oaks and maples.  Certainly, the swampy habitat up here near the Wild Calla pool was appropriate for tupelos.

Nature Adventures Nearer Home

I've been traveling pretty far afield of late to see some amazing things, but today I reminded myself I don't have to go far from home for wonder-filled nature adventures. My own Moreau Lake State Park offers a rich variety of options: mountain trails, lakeside beaches, river islands, forests, streams, marshes, ponds, waterfalls, open meadows . . . the list goes on and on. The only problem is deciding which terrain to choose. This morning, my choice was a steep rocky trail through dark green woods along a babbling stream to a sun-filled clearing and a mountain pool. All in under three hours! We could have stayed all day, my friend Sue and I, exploring that pool and its flora and fauna, but Sue did have to show up for work this afternoon, so here she is heading back down that trail, which slopes off sharply into a deep ravine.

Called the Baker Trail, and only recently mapped and marked with light green markers, this wooded and mountainous trail offers many delights. Birdsongs from many species accompanied us on our climb, which took much longer than it might have, since we constantly stopped to note what mosses and ferns were growing out of the lime-rich boulders lining the trail.

There was no way we could miss seeing these bright orange mushrooms, tiny though they were, since their brilliant color called to us from out of the dull brown leaf litter.

Our destination was this sunlit mountain pool, shored up at one end by a beaver dam, home to what sounded like a thousand Green Frogs all twanging their banjos, and nearly filled in completely with Water Arum, also called Wild Calla.

The Calla was just beginning to bloom, its snowy-white spathes standing out against the blue-sky-reflecting water.

Sue was the one who spotted this empty American Chestnut bur lying on the muddy ground at the water's edge. This is an exceedingly rare object to find, since very few chestnuts grow to nut-producing maturity before thy succumb to the blight that has removed them from our forests. Using her binoculars to search the canopy for chestnut leaves, Sue found a number of chestnut trees around the pond that were of sufficient height to have possibly produced this bur.

Aside from the Calla and a few clumps of Blue Flag sprouting up from hummocks in the middle of that pool, we saw very few flowers in the woods today. Most flowering plants need more sunlight than the filled-in tree canopy lets in, an exception being this newly emerging cluster of Indian Pipe. Containing no chlorophyll and thus not able to use sunlight to produce its own nutrients, this ghostly little flower is parasitic on intermediary fungi in the soil to obtain its nourishment.

The same is true for Pinesap, a relative of the Indian Pipe whose flowers are borne in clusters, rather than singly, and whose color is more yellowish than the ghostly white of Indian Pipe. As its name suggests, this plant is often found under pines.

Both Indian Pipe and Pinesap used to be called "saprophytes," meaning plants that draw their nutrients directly from decaying matter in the soil. But recent scientific research has revealed that both these plants depend on using intermediary soil fungi to obtain nutrients, in a parasitic relationship that provides no benefit to the fungi. Because of these research findings, both plants have been reclassified, and are now included in the Heath Family (Ericaceae). I grant that it is hard to see how these pale little plants could possible be related to such other heaths as cranberries and blueberries, but it seems they all depend on soil fungi to get what they need.

Well, I learned something new today. I thought I'd better review my knowledge regarding Indian Pipe and discovered that my knowledge was obsolete. That's one of the great rewards of keeping a blog. I figure I'd better make sure what I say is true before I publish it, and so I get re-educated every day. Another great reward of blogging is that it gets me out nearly every day. Even if I only stay close to home.

A Mountain Pool Covered with Calla

With storms predicted for this afternoon, I abandoned my plans for a river paddle and chose instead to hike to a mountain pool. The pool lies high up in the Palmertown Mountains of Moreau Lake State Park, and my friend Laurie had showed me how to get there this spring. I remembered large mats of Sphagnum Moss surrounded by outcroppings of quartzite -- conditions, I thought, that might be right for orchids.

The trail led up, up, up through dark woods, much higher up than my weary legs remembered climbing before. I guess summer's heat and humidity and bugs make every hill feel steeper. Eventually, I saw a brightening up ahead, then at last a clearing, and there was the pool. But what had been open water last spring was now a solid mat of shiny green heart-leaved plants, ones that I didn't recognize.

Looking about, I found some of those plants in bloom with flowers that looked like Calla Lilies. Could this be Wild Calla, I wondered, thumbing my Newcomb's Wildflower Guide to the page that said, yes, that's indeed what they are. Calla palustris, to be exact. Also called Water Arum. A new flower for me.

Newcomb calls this a bog plant, so I searched around for other bog dwellers, but that Wild Calla had crowded out all other plants but itself. No orchids, alas. At the sunlit edge of the pool, however, I did find an interesting sedge that looked like none I had seen before.

Then the rain began, so I hurried back down the trail to my car, regretting I'd not brought a plastic bag to keep my camera dry.

But I did have to stop to photograph this Indian Pipe, with a much rufflier bloom than is usual.