First Frost!

Brrrr!  Down into the 20s last night.  We canceled our plans for a paddle, Sue and Nancy and I, and decided to hike a mountain trail in Moreau Lake State Park instead.  But first we stopped off at the powerline clearcut above Mud Pond, thinking we might find a few Frostweed curls on this frozen morning.   The frost-adorned sumacs and blueberries and mosses that first met our eyes encouraged us to believe that we just might find some Frostweed exhibiting the very process that gives this plant its common name.  (Scientific name: Helianthemum canadense)

And so we did!  Almost every single Frostweed plant in this open sandy area had produced these curls of frozen vapor at the base of their stems. This phenomenon will be repeated each calm frosty morning until the plant has depleted all of its moisture, so we can expect to find these fragile frothy extrusions on other mornings yet this fall.  IF we get there before the sun does, that is, since the curls promptly disappear with the sun's warming touch

There were other interesting finds on the clearcut this morning, and we were lucky to have bryologist Nancy Slack along to identify many of the lichens and mosses that carpet this open area.  Although she couldn't remember offhand the name of this very tiny orange lichen, she could at least assure us that it was indeed a lichen.  I was amazed that we even found it, it was so tiny.  Sue is the one whose amazing eyesight can espy such miniatures as this, hardly bigger than the heads of pins.

Sue and I found it hard to believe that a Sphagnum moss would be growing out here in this dry sandy spot, but Nancy assured us that this puffy pink stuff was indeed a Sphagnum, S. capillifolium.  She also told us that its presence indicated there must be a source of moisture nearby.

We were having so much fun finding such a variety of mosses, we decided to bypass our mountain trail and instead show Nancy the wonderful rockgardens of mosses that rise from the road across from the Spier Falls Dam.  These rocky cliffs are watered by tiny springs that dampen the surface in every season, creating a perfect habitat for mosses and other plants, including white clouds of Early Saxifrage that adorn these rocks each spring.

Just a bit beyond the mossgarden cliffs, we could hear a little waterfall splashing down the mountain side,  and its moss-covered watercourse tempted us to explore it further.

We followed the course of the stream quite a ways up the mountain,  delighting in the beauty of the woods and the mossy banks.

Each water-splashed streamside rock was covered with a marvelous mix of mosses, liverworts, and lichens.  There's Hedwigia here and Dicranum, too (both mosses), and that patch of verdigris-colored frilly stuff is a foliose lichen called Flavoparmelia.

A patch of large bright-green Sphagnum girgensonii  provided a sharp contrast in color and texture to the small dark Scapania liverwort clinging to the same damp rock.

I don't recall ever finding American Yew (Taxus canadensis) in the Moreau woods before, but here it was growing along this little stream that tumbled down the mountain.

What a day of delights!  What a world of wonders waits just off the shoulder of the road!  Sure, I love to travel to new places and have new adventures in lands unfamiliar to me, but oh, how lucky I am to have such a wealth of woods and waterways close to my home -- and such dear companions to share my delight with me.  Every day brings new joy.

A Perfect Frostweed Morning

I'd been waiting for a morning just like this: clear and still and cold enough for a good hard frost.  We had a dusting of snow in Saratoga Springs, but when I arrived at Mud Pond in Moreau, I was pleased to see that no snow had fallen to obscure the frothy curls of frozen sap exuded from the stems of the Frostweed (Helianthemum canadense) that grows prolifically there along a sandy path.

In June, and once again in August, Frostweed bears yellow flowers that are pretty enough but easily overlooked or undiscovered, since they're small and bloom for only a day or so.  What really sets this native plant apart are the icy curls that form at the base of its wiry stems during the first few days of freezing temperatures in late fall.  These curls are formed when the stems split lengthwise as they freeze, allowing the plant's sap to ooze out, freezing hard in the frigid air.  This phenomenon occurs for only a few days, until the plant's sap is spent and the roots freeze.  I missed this event last year, so I was really happy to find the process in full swing this morning.  I was able to take lots of photos.

I was sure to arrive at this site before the sun rose high enough to warm the plants and melt the frothy ice.  Ten minutes after I took this photo, the Frostweed curls had disappeared.

A Frosty Hunt for Frostweed

Brrrrrr! It was COLD today. Frost covered everything. And that was a very good thing, because my friends Sue and Jackie and I had arranged to go in search of Frostweed at Mud Pond in Moreau Lake State Park. On these first freezing days of autumn, this unprepossessing little plant does a most amazing thing: it exudes through its splitting stems a vapor that immediately freezes into curls and clouds of evanescent gauzy ice. Very, very pretty. But you have to get up early to see it. As soon as the sun touches it, it's gone. But we got there in time, and here are a couple of photos to prove it. (For more information about Frostweed, see Sue's blog Water-lily, where she also includes Thoreau's journal entry about this plant, including his sketches of it.)

See how the frozen vapor forms curls around the stem.

Here you can see the frothy texture, like angel hair or cotton candy, of some of the frozen vapor.

Another interesting ice form was one that crunched underfoot: needles of ice that pushed up through the sandy soil of the path.

Everywhere we looked was something enchanting, with every stem and leaf and blade aglitter.

Some of the frost had formed in tiny spikes and needles that gave the leaves a prickly appearance.

Our Frostweed goal accomplished, we continued our walk around Mud Pond, stopping every few feet, it seemed, to examine some other nature find.

I don't know the official name of this little fungus, so I'll call it Dixie Cup.

It took me a while to figure out these berries were the fruit of Canada Mayflower.

Tiny Pixie-cup lichens share a steep bank with the club moss called Running Pine.

We also just sat and gazed out at the beauty of the pond on this clear frosty morning, listening to a cluster of Hooded Mergansers making their distinctive growls as they swam about in a hidden bay. (Sue's blog presents a recording of this remarkable sound.)

We soon heard the honking of geese far up in the sky, and watched as the flock soared over the pond, then continued on to land on some other water beyond our sight.

We kept hearing another gobbling and clacking sound that made us think that turkeys must be somewhere near, but we never saw them. Sue went off into the woods to investigate the source, and soon called to us to come along. We found her with her ear pressed to the trunk of a tall Pitch Pine. Somewhere up in the crown of the tree, branches were rubbing together, creating sounds that were amazingly animal-like. I almost expected to see a hornbill perched up in the canopy. Here, Jackie listens while Sue tries to photograph the source of the sound.

Nearly as frozen as that Frostweed vapor, we made our way to the park headquarters to warm up a bit, then walked around one bay of Moreau Lake before heading off to the Peppermill in South Glens Falls for lunch. I can't imagine a happier, more satisfying way to spend a day: enjoying this amazing park in the company of fine friends, sharing knowledge and enthusiasm and poems and stories and laughs and a meal, and above all, a sense of wonder about our ever-changing, always astounding, natural world.