Exploring a Great Site with Grand Companions

Thursday, May 12:

What would make for a perfect day for a wildflower fanatic like me? Beautiful spring weather, a whole bunch of folks both amiable and expert, and a trip to explore one of the richest native plant sites in New York State. That's what. Too bad I can't say exactly where that site is, since some of its most interesting plants are among the most endangered, and I would not want to tempt unscrupulous collectors. I can say, though, that it was Ed Miller who led our group of Thursday Naturalists through a woods whose limestone substrate supported abundant growths of such rarities as Ginseng and Goldenseal, which were growing there like weeds. And we sure had a lot of expert eyes searching the ground to find them. Among lots of other plants. (Can you find the Columbine and the Miterwort in this photo?)

I was very interested in noting the difference between this limey woods, which lies south of Albany, and the Skidmore Woods here in Saratoga, which has a similar geology, although it lies about 50 miles to the north. One plant I found down there, but I don't in Saratoga, is Virginia Waterleaf, shown here in bud. (Its leaves have not yet developed the pale patches resembling waterspots that give the plant its name.)

Here's a closer look at that remarkably hairy bud, which will soon erupt in a cluster of pretty pale lavender flowers.

We have lots of Toothwort up north, but here the common variety was the species called Cutleaf Toothwort. The flowers were spent, but the leaves were still very pretty.

I have never found American Bladdernut in the Skidmore Woods, but that doesn't mean it's not there. There is some at Yaddo in Saratoga, but its buds were still tightly closed on Thursday, while down south of Albany, the buds had opened into dangling greenish clusters. This will be my first year of observing this interesting native shrub. I wonder how many of those flowers will develop into the inflated seed-filled bladders that give this plant its name. Stay tuned!

Here's that Goldenseal, a plant that has been nearly extirpated across its natural range, because it is so sought after by herbalists. Here in this woods, however, it appeared as common as Mayapple, with which it shared its territory. That spiky little flower is all stamens surrounding a pistillate center; it has no petals.

Well, this was an unexpected surprise! This Yellow Lady's Slipper (only one!) was blooming earlier than usual. Unlike the Pink Lady's Slipper, which prefers more acidic soil, the yellow variety loves limey woods like this.

Not all our surprises were botanical. This spectacularly colored millipede kept scurrying away faster than my camera could follow, so I grabbed it and placed it on my palm, where it promptly curled into a disk, exuding some brown goo in the process.

A strong smell like almond extract met my nostrils as the creature released minute quantities of cyanide gas, a defensive measure. This almond scent, similar to that found in peach pits, is what gives this millipede its common name, Peach Pit Millipede (Apheloria virginiensis corrugata). Thanks go to naturalist Nancy Slack for this information.

Here's our group taking a lunch break on cliffs overlooking a pond. Ed (red shirt) is searching the ground for some of the rare mosses and fern allies that grow on these boulders.

We didn't have to search to find this Creeping Shadblow, an uncommon Amelanchier species that never grows very tall. Lucky for us, it was still in flower where it clung to the limestone boulders. (Another uncommon shrub, Fragrant Sumac, was just coming into bloom nearby, but my photos did not turn out.)

Isn't it fun to say the name of Fringed Polygala? Almost as fun as the flowers are pretty. Another common name is Gaywings. Very descriptive!

Starflower. What else could it be called? It often grows intermixed with Gaywings, and I can't think of any lovelier sight.

All in all, it was a wonderful day for lovers of native plants, both common and rare. We wandered the woods for several hours, so wouldn't you think I'd had enough botanizing for one day? Well, not quite. I had to stop off at Yaddo on my way home to check the progress of MY American Bladdernut (as I mentioned above, still in bud), and while I was there I also went to search for Cream Violet where it used to grow in a Lily-of-the-Valley patch. I couldn't find it last week, but voila! It had bloomed at last. This is the only place I have ever found this species of stemmed violet.

Also at Yaddo I found this fertile stalk of Woodland Horsetail, its spore-bearing cone surmounting a stalk ringed with whorls of multi-branched leaves. Other, more common species of horsetail have fertile stalks that grow separately from the green leafy sterile stalks.

I looked at the USDA plant distribution map and discovered that this horsetail is not included in the listings for Saratoga County. But I know that it grows at Bog Meadow as well as at Yaddo.

Another Adventure with Ed

Ed Miller's a native-plant enthusiast of great renown throughout the Albany/Adirondack region, a man of exhaustive botanical knowledge to whom many professional botanists turn when they want to know what grows where. A few posts back I recounted our trip to the Landis Arboretum, where Ed has almost single-handedly created a collection of New York native woody plants. Today, Ed took me to another of his remarkable spots: Joralemon Park in Coeymans, NY, a small town south of Albany. Adjoining this community park is a nature preserve that a former state chief botanist once called the best area he knew of for its botanical riches. Thanks to Ed's generosity (he personally put up the funds for the Nature Conservancy to purchase the land), this wooded area with a limestone substrate is now protected from further development.

The place reminded me a lot of the Skidmore woods, which has a similar limestoney soil and many of the same plants, including such rarities as Green Violet, Goldenseal, and Ginseng. One plant I've never found at Skidmore, though, is Virginia Waterleaf, which was growing abundantly in the Joralemon preserve. As was true for most of the woodland flowers, the waterleaf was long past its blooming time and was now bearing fruit.

One of the very few deep-woods blossoming plants was Lopseed, a flower I have never been able to photograph clearly, because it's so tiny and grows where the shade is so dark. A little sun filtered in to light up this one, but even so, it's not as clear as I'd like. The plant gets its name from its blossoms' habit of turning down to cling to the stalk when they form their seeds.

We found a large patch of Wild Leeks, a plant I found earlier this year up north in Warren County. Its deliciously edible leaves, also called Ramps, have long withered away so that all that remains by now are the flower stalks, going to seed.

This cluster of Harebells was crowning a limestone cliff overhanging an open marsh, the water below completely covered with several shades of green duckweeds. The spindly-stemmed Harebell normally grows as isolated individuals. I have never before seen it gather together into such a large clump.

Those limestone cliffs yielded many more remarkable botanical treasures. We found Creeping Shadblow and Fragrant Sumac (two shrubs I have never seen before in the wild) and many species of mosses and ferns. I was very glad to have Ed as my guide as we scoured the rocks, for he could point out to me many plants of interest, such as this tiny asplenium fern called Wall-rue. I'm certain I would never have seen it if Ed had not pointed it out. The whole clump was maybe two to three inches across.

That Wall-rue was a sure sign that the underlying rock was calcium rich, since it requires that nutrient for its very existence. The same could be said for a number of other ferns we found, such as Bulblet Fern, Fragile Fern, Walking Fern, Maidenhair Spleenwort, and the Ebony Spleenwort pictured here, so slender and gracefully curving.

I assumed this furry, spiky stuff was a moss, but Ed most kindly corrected my misunderstanding, explaining that this Rock Spikemoss (Selaginella rupestris) was more closely related to ferns than it was to mosses.

I won't go into the complicated botanical explanation -- it has something to do with it having a true vascular system, which mosses don't have and ferns do. Ed also had me look into its greenery with my magnifier to detect minute specks of bright yellow spores, another feature of the spikemoss's structure that sets it apart from regular mosses.

When I go on adventures like this one, with wonderfully knowledgeable folks like Ed, I become so aware of how much I still have to learn about the botanical riches that surround us. But I am also struck by how kind most plant-people are to students like me, how eager they are to share what they know with folks who express an interest. Thanks so much, Ed. I had a wonderful time.