Paddling the Betar Backwaters

What a fine morning for a paddle: just cool enough to enjoy the bright sun on our backs. And what a fine friend is Sue to paddle with: she knows some great places to paddle, and her sharp eyes help me see lots of things I would otherwise miss. This morning, we met at the Betar Byway in South Glens Falls, a site that provides public access to the Hudson River and its quiet backwaters, where turtles bask and herons wade among Water Lilies and Pickerelweeds. Here we could inch along, looking and listening, sheltered from the wind of the open river and the wakes of passing powerboats.

I wonder if this Painted Turtle was listening to all the beautiful birdsong we were hearing. He seemed entranced by something, and never slid from his log as we drifted by.

The Pickerelweed was in its glory, radiant purple dotted with little dabs of yellow if you look close.

There were lots and lots of little dabs of yellow starring the water's surface, and I wondered what kind of bladderwort they might be. I'd found the rare Small Floating Bladderwort (Utricularia radiata) in these backwaters last September, but it was much too early for that to be in bloom, wasn't it?

Well blow me down! It was that Small Floating Bladderwort, bouyed up by its little pontoons! Judging by the numbers we saw today, it's hard to believe that this plant is considered a threatened species in New York State. There were hundreds!

Sharing that quiet water with the bladderwort was another floating plant called Water Shield. I'd many times seen its jelly-covered oval leaves drifting about on ruby stems, but I'd never seen its pretty little flowers, which were blooming profusely today.

If you click on that photo above, you'll see that the flower's red-anthered stamens are prominent. But I also found flowers where the pistils protruded far above the stamens, which were still tucked down in the nest of sepals. (I think they are sepals. This flower appears to be lacking petals.)

We next headed out to the open river to paddle upstream toward the Feeder Dam and the spectacular black shale cliffs that rise just below the dam. We stayed close to shore, both to remain sheltered from wind and also to enjoy the beautiful shrubs that line the banks, such as this Arrowwood with its navy-blue berries. (I was delighted to find Arrowwoods that hadn't been skeletonized by Viburnum-leaf Beetles.)

I confess I am stumped as to the identity of this shrub. The stems of its leaves are reddish and not winged (as those of Sweet Viburnum would be), and the pedicels of its berry cluster are vivid pink. These green berries will doubtless darken and soften as they ripen, but whether they will turn blue or black or purple remains unknown. Its opposite, finely serrated leaves say viburnum to me, but which one? The shape of the leaves most closely matches those of Black Haw in Symond's Shrub Identification Book, but I didn't think that species grew around here. I sure would welcome expert opinions on this.

The shale cliffs are damp and dark, black as coal and watered by tiny springs that made a small tinkly music as we eased along under them.

The constantly damp cool surface of the cliffs provides a hospitable spot for mats of liverwort and mosses, here studded by the tiny blue flowers of Kalm's Lobelia.

Here's a closer look at that Kalm's Lobelia, a dainty flower that is known to prefer limey habitats.

This little sprig of lobelia had taken shelter in a graceful cluster of Bulblet Fern, another lime-loving plant.

Our passage along the cliffs was shaded by overhanging branches of Mountain Maple, now dangling clusters of rosy keys as lovely as any Wisteria.

Time to head home, as thunder clouds threatened, but we couldn't help dawdling along this beautiful shore.

It was there that Sue first saw this Thing, this spooky football-sized underwater blob that looked like some kind of alien creature. Ooh, what is that thing?!

Turns out that it's not an alien at all, being native to freshwater rivers and ponds, but it's still a very weird creature. Or rather, creatures. This jelly-like glob is composed of many tiny "moss animals," or bryozoa, congealed into a colony, and its (their?) name is Pectinatella magnifica.

I read up a little about it, hoping to explain it all in my blog, but it got a bit complicated for digesting at this late hour of the night. If you click on this site from the University of Massachusetts, you can read all that information for yourself. I tell you, we sure do live in an interesting world.

A Dreamy Summer Day

Today was the kind of day that summer dreams are made of: temperature no higher than 80, bright sun, cool breeze, a sky so blue you could see all the way to heaven. And lucky me, I had a date to go paddling on the Hudson with Ed.

Ed Miller's a really remarkable guy. Well into his 80s, he's still game to go adventuring, especially if it involves hunting plants, which, of course, is what we were up to today. We set off together in Ed's tandem canoe, a lightweight fiberglass boat of Ed's own design, and headed upstream toward the Spier Falls Dam. I rarely go this direction, since the shoreline that holds the most interest for me is downstream, but Ed recalled that Wild Senna grew upstream, and that's what we meant to find. And find it we did, after a bit of puzzlement. The leaves of Wild Senna look very much like those of Black Locust, and many baby locust trees were populating the bank where the senna grew. But a quick comparison of the stems was all it took to distinguish the two. The locust stems were reddish and sticky and prickly, while the senna stems were smooth and green. And then we found some with fat yellow flower buds. ID confirmed!

I'll have to get back here next week to get a photo of those flowers in bloom. Wild Senna is a new flower for me, and although it's not listed as a rare plant in New York, it's considered a threatened species in almost every state that surrounds us.

We were able to paddle all the way to the foot of the dam, a feat I have never accomplished before because of the usual strength of the current there, but today we were able to sail right up to it, no effort at all. The only water we could see coming through was over a small chute the dam constructors made to allow fish to pass without being ground to bits in the turbines.

On our way back to the boat launch, we stopped for a swim on "my" pretty little island, where we could jump right off the banks into deep cool water, then haul out and bake in the sun on clean bare rocks. While there, we noticed the current increase and the water level rise, a sign that the dam was letting more water through. I'm glad we were well downstream by then. We explored the flora of that little island, and I'm happy to say I was able to show Ed some flowers he hadn't seen before -- Clammy Hedge Hyssop was one, and Marsh Speedwell was another. Let me tell you, there aren't many plants that Ed hasn't seen, so I felt a little prickle of pride that I was able to introduce these flowers to him. We also found Canada St. Johnswort, with flowers almost as small as those of Dwarf St. Johnswort but with the red buds and distinctively narrow leaves that set this species apart.

As I said before, Ed's quite a remarkable guy. Not only does he have stamina that would put younger guys to shame and an encyclopedic knowledge of plants that professional botanists could envy, he also can see stuff that most other folks would miss. For example, he spied a floating clump of that very bladderwort I was puzzling over yesterday.

Luckily, I carry little zip-lock bags, so we plopped the specimen in there and studied it carefully with magnifiers after we reached Ed's car and the manual of water plants he had stashed in there. So! Is the mystery solved? Uh . . . sorry, we just couldn't parse it out. But at least today's specimen seems to have leaves, so maybe that will help some water-plant expert put a name to it. The jury is still out. (Or maybe this is an entirely different species!)

Update: Yes, it is an entirely different species -- it's Common Bladderwort. And the one I found a few days ago was probably Humped Bladderwort. Thanks to our state's chief botanist Steve Young and his colleagues with help on these IDs.

Oh Blessed Relief!

O blessed relief! After a cloudy morning and a brief sprinkle midday, the sky cleared and a fresh breeze brought cooler and dryer air. We may even need to sleep under a blanket tonight, for the first time since late May. And what a glorious moon is up there in the sky tonight!

I went back to the Hudson this morning, even though it was then threatening rain. While paddling here with a friend just a year ago, my friend had reached into the water and drawn out a thready tangle studded with tiny bladders and declared that it looked like a rare kind of bladderwort, Utricularia minor. But she wasn't sure. So that's what I set out to find today. And yes, I did indeed find it. Quite a few plants, in fact. I have sent this photo, as well as a couple more, to our state's chief botanist, so maybe he will be able to identify it. Stay tuned.

Update: State botanists have suggested that this is Utricularia gibba (Humped Bladderwort), not the U. minor we thought it might be. Since I found some Humped Bladderwort flowers in bloom up north just a few days ago, I will reinvestigate where I found these, to see if I can find some flowers to confirm the identification.

At any rate, the river was lovely today, both sprinkled with raindrops (just a few!) and sparkling under the sun. After finding that bladderwort, I had no particular destination and inched along close to shore, following the contours of the banks into every little cove.

I moved so slowly and quietly, this family of Common Mergansers never heard me coming. Startled, the mama dashed rapidly away, followed by her half-grown brood. (My camera tried to follow but couldn't quite keep up.)

The banks were ablaze with Cardinal Flowers and rosy with handsome Joe-Pye Weed. New this week were the Tall Coneflowers, holding their bright yellow blooms above all the rest.

Also newly in bloom today was this solitary specimen of Turtlehead, its creamy flowers pale against the shadowed bank.

Marsh St. Johnswort has been blooming for a couple of weeks, but it's rare to find its pretty pink flowers fully open. I love how this little plant has nestled in among the blades of this clump of sedge.

The reflected blue of that radiant sky added the perfect touch to the composition.