Swamp Slogging With Evelyn

After such a busy nature week as I'd had, I'd planned to maybe sleep late on Sunday and wake to the Sunday papers and a lapful of cuddly cats.  But then I got the invitation from Evelyn Greene to come explore "her" cedar swamp up in North Creek.  Well, I never can resist when adventures with Evelyn beckon.  So off I went, rubber boots on my feet and well bundled against the damp cold day.

 I just have to trust that Evelyn knows where she's going when she leads me into such trackless swamps as the one she took me to.  At first glance, I sure didn't see any way to penetrate this gnarly wet mess.

But Evelyn did, since she'd been working to lop crowding limbs and lay branches across mucky areas so that we could make our way deep into the heart of the swamp.

It's in mineral-rich swamps such as this that we're more likely to find certain orchids and other rare flowers, although we will have to come back later when the weather is warmer to look for such flowering plants.  For the present, we could satisfy our botanical cravings with a marvelous diversity of mosses and liverworts.  Let's see if I can remember the names of some of the ones we found.

This pretty, ferny-looking stuff is Hypnum imponens, which Evelyn told me is also called Brocade Moss.

Evelyn told me that this ruffly tree-loving moss is Neckera, although she wasn't sure of the species name.

Here's one that has a most appropriate common name, Shaggy Moss.  But I'd love to learn the Latin name for this one, because it's so much fun to say it: Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus.  There!  Now, you try it.

Then there were liverworts, such as this Bazzania trilobata nestled into a clump of Dicranum moss.  On one website dealing with such bryophytes, I found this species called Millipede Liverwort, which I thought was a very descriptive common name.

Another liverwort, which looked like tiny cedar boughs, was growing on the trunk of a tree.  This is one of the Porella species, I couldn't determine which one.

In the midst of all that mossy green, this vivid orange polypore (species unknown) sure stood out.

Update:  One of my blog readers, the author and wildflower expert Carol Gracie, has written to tell me that this is the aptly named Red-belted Polypore (Fomitopsis pinicola), found year-round on many species of dead trees.


We made it through the cedar swamp to higher dryer ground that was home to an amazing number of Dutchman's Breeches plants, more than I had ever seen in one place.

We also found an abundant patch of tiny pale purple violets.  We almost passed them off as nothing more interesting than Common Blue Violets, but then we noticed the remarkable bulging spur on the back of the flower.  Hmmmm,  what species could this violet be?  I knew it couldn't be Long-spurred Violet, since that's a stemmed violet with a very skinny long spur, so might this be the one called Great-spurred Violet?

A closer look inside the flower revealed no sign of hairs on any of the petals,  one of the diagnostic details for Great-spurred Violets, also called Selkirk's Violet (Viola selkirkii).

We took one of the plants back to the house where we could examine it in better light, and there we confirmed that this was indeed V. selkirkii.  Other diagnostic details include the deep notch where the stem meets the leaf, and the fine hairs on the tops of the leaves.

It's always fun to play plant detective, to parse a plant until you can determine its species, and I felt an extra pique of pleasure, since this was a new flower for my life list.  I have also since learned that there is no record of this plant growing in Warren County, where we found it.  I shall have to ask Evelyn to go back and obtain a fresh specimen to press and dry for the state herbarium.  I'd do it myself, but I'm not sure I could find my way back through that cedar swamp.  But Evelyn knows the way.

Flowers Are Coming Fast!

In all my years of wildflower hunting, I have never found spring ephemerals blooming in March.  But with several days in a row of summer-like heat, I thought I'd better start looking now, or they'd come and go without me.  So my friend Sue and I met at Moreau Lake this morning to look for some early bloomers.   A thick fog rendered the morning chilly and gray, but by the time we reached the back bay of the lake -- where we thought we might find Trailing Arbutus -- not a trace of fog remained to obscure a radiant sapphire sky.

There were ducks on the bay too far away for my camera to capture, but Sue with her excellent birding skills was able to tell me immediately what kind they were, including two pairs of Ring-necked Ducks and a pair of Wood Ducks.  Sue was also the first to spy this just-opened arbutus blossom growing on a sandy bank.  Peering close, I noticed that the petals were edged with brown.  Could it be that our snowless winter has made the flower buds vulnerable to damage?

As we walked along the sandy shore, we came upon a fallen log covered with a wonderful mix of colorful mosses and lichens and liverworts.  At least, I think that these mats of reddish stuff are a liverwort.   But it's not one I know the name of.

Looking closer, I didn't find the braided sacs I usually associate with liverworts, but I did see those shiny black spheres on stalks that I do associate with liverwort fruiting bodies.

Here's an even closer look at those fruiting bodies, very tiny, emerging from cylindrical cases.

I've sent these photos to some friends who are very knowledgeable about bryology, so I hope I will eventually have a name for this fascinating organism.  Update:  Evelyn Greene suggested this might be the liverwort Ptilidium pulcherrimum, which I googled and found photos that look quite similar.  This is one of the few liverworts with common names:  Naugahyde Liverwort is one name, and Lovely Fuzzwort is another.  Guess which one I'll be calling it.  Love that Lovely Fuzzwort!

Down the beach from that liverworty log was a beautiful mound of Haircap Moss, its starry green stalks crowned with rusty-colored cups that hold the ripening sperm.

Overhead, yellow-and-red puffs of male Red Maple flowers showed their colors to best advantage against that blue, blue sky.

On the same sandy bank where I found that Draba verna the other day, Sue saw these wild-haired yellow heads in the grass, the flowers of some kind of sedge, but a rather small one.  The flowers look just like those of Plaintain-leaved Sedge, but the leaves are much narrower.

As we rounded the lake and reached the road that would take us back to our cars,  we noticed that some of the roadside posts were polka-dotted with tiny bumps, like  nothing we'd ever seen before.

A closer look revealed that each of those bumps was affixed to the post with a very fine thread so that they dangled down about an inch from the attachment site.  Also, the bumps turned out not to be spherical, but rather flattened, like teensy bowls.  Very strange!  I've never seen anything like this.  Is it a fungus?  Maybe a slime mold?  I sure don't know.

Update:  Thanks to Heather and her comment regarding these little blobs, we have an answer to our mystery:  these are the rain-splashed "eggs" (reproductive sacs called peridioles) of bird's nest fungi that attach themselves by threads to surrounding structures like shrubs and fence posts, the better to disperse their spores on the air.  And sure enough, all over the ground around these posts are masses of White Bird's Nest Fungus (Crucibulum laeve), now emptied of all their "eggs," as the following photo, taken yesterday,  reveals.

Here's another photo of this fungus, taken last September when the nests were still full of eggs.  (You can see my original blog entry about them by clicking here.)

Sue had to leave to go to her job, but I was free to continue my day in the woods.  After stopping at home for lunch, I then headed out to the Skidmore woods, where I found Hepatica just opening its beautiful flowers, a good two weeks earlier than I have ever seen them.

The tightly pleated leaves of False Hellebore have thrust up from the ground like green rockets.

The fuzzy buds of Leatherwood have split open to dangle their bright-yellow trumpets, so lovely against the sky.

I didn't expect to find English Violets today, and almost didn't bother to take a detour to find them.  But the day was still young, and very warm, so I decided to make my way to the other side of Broadway on the chance that they just might be in bloom.  And so they were.  Or rather, so IT was.  Just one, but with many buds soon to open.  And oh so fragrant, as its Latin name, Viola odorata, would suggest.

I wasn't the only creature enjoying the summer-like warmth of the woods today.  A Mourning Cloak Butterfly spends the winter as an adult, sheltering under leaf litter with its blood charged with glucose to prevent it from freezing.  On warm days in early spring, it emerges to feed on plant sap and spread its dark velvet wings to absorb the energy of the sun.  This one kept teasing me by lighting too far away for a photo,  but my patience paid off as it landed at last by my feet. 

Bright Spots of Color in the Dull Winter Woods

I missed getting outdoors this bright beautiful morning, since each Tuesday morning I volunteer at a local hospice home, and by the time I was free to head to the woods the sky had clouded over.  Oh well, I thought, nothing but dull dead browns and grays out there, anyway, so I'll just go to the nearby Skidmore Woods and give myself a bit of a workout hiking the hilly trails.

The Skidmore Woods is remarkable for its limestone substrate, which provides a rich habitat for an amazing variety of rare and beautiful wildflowers.  Of course, no wildflowers are blooming now, but the rocks that leach their minerals into the soil are evident throughout the woods, their pitted surfaces covered with velvety green mosses.

Some of those rocks are a most remarkable blue.

Today I came upon a fallen log that appeared to be covered with velvet of a most remarkable red.

Closer inspection revealed that that red velvet was composed of what looked like tiny dreadlocks, the plaited leaves of a liverwort called Nowellia curvifolia.

Sharing the same log was a nice cluster of a lovely moss with a flower-like shape, possibly the moss called Mnium hornum.  Those ruddy threads arising from the center of each moss stalk are most likely the immature spore stalks.

This time of year, one does get greedy to find any traces of color in the woods, which perhaps explains how I happened to spy this tiny dot of orange at the base of a rotting tree.

With my bare eyes, I could not really see this cluster of cottony orange balls resting in tiny cups, so I tried a number of macro shots with my camera, then blew up the image to see it better.  The photo's not quite in focus, but it gave me enough information to recognize it as similar to a slime mold pictured in one of my books, Hemitrichia clavata.  These little puffs would be the fruitbodies (sporangia) of what my book calls a "common and widespread" slime mold.    Widespread and common it may be, but I had never seen it before.  And who would think to look for fruiting bodies of any kind in the very dead of winter?  Those empty cups on the lower left and the yellow dust beneath seem to indicate that some spores have already been spilled.

Here are some of the brightest spots of color I found in the woods today, two girls and a boy, the 8-yer-old triplet children of their mother pictured here, too. They were coming along the trail while I was crawling around in the woods and,  curious as to what I was doing, they gathered close while I showed them my photos of what I had found.  I just love how excited kids can be when they experience cool stuff in the woods.  As they scampered off to see if they could find that orange slime mold for themselves, I sent my blessings with them.

Beautiful Barks Along Bog Meadow

 Well, so much for our soft white snow.  Yesterday's all-day rain and today's high temperatures have destroyed all the snow and turned all the trails to wet mud by this afternoon.  Luckily, I did get out for a walk yesterday, despite a constant drizzle, choosing the Bog Meadow Nature Trail just outside Saratoga.  As this photo shows, Bog Meadow Trail is long and straight, and if one wants to walk quickly for exercise, this is a good place to do it -- especially when the trail's underlying railroad ties are thickly padded with a blanket of snow.  Even soggy wet snow.  I wore my waterproof boots.

I expected I would swing briskly along, work up a little healthy sweat, since there's not much to see in the woods this time of year, right?   Ah well, best laid plans and all that.  As it happened, the steady drizzle had dampened the tree trunks and darkened the bark, so that all the marvelous colors and patterns of lichenous growths on those trunks were more evident than usual.  Of course, I had to stop and admire the many variations. 


Some growths were a soft velvety green, with patches outlined in baby blue.

Others were speckled like the sides of a trout, with varying shades of pale green.

Or shades of blue.

Or bright emerald green traced with squiggles of rich brown.

This pale-blue patch was adorned with tiny black wormy shapes.

The base of one tree was speckled with large blue flakes.

This branch was covered with circles of both blue and green.

 During my walk, I focused my attention on only the flat crustose lichens, for the moment ignoring the frilly foliose lichens, as well as the many mosses that decorated the trees.  This abundant fluffy growth at the base of a tree did cause me to pause, however, and take a closer look.  Is this a moss, I wondered, or could it be a liverwort?

My eyesight is too compromised to distinguish moss from liverwort with my naked eyes, but a macro shot with my camera revealed the overlapping leaves of one of the liverworts in the genus Porella.

Stopping and starting along the trail as I did, I did not work up much of a sweat.  But I was out there long enough to get drenched by the constant drizzle that, after a while, set all the twigs to dripping.  Not wanting to risk wetting my camera, I packed it away and headed home, wondering how many exquisite variations on a theme of lichens I had missed.

Where is Winter?

According to my calendar, today is the second day of winter.  But it sure didn't look or feel very wintry when I walked along the banks of the Hudson River today.  Intermittent sun warmed the already balmy air, and puffy white clouds sailed above the top of West Mountain over on the Warren County side of the river.

With all the rain and warm weather of late, the woods have taken on the look of a mossy green rainforest.

Except for the thin ice that films the back bays of the river,  these rocky promontories look about the same as they would in mid-autumn.

Mountain streams that would normally be dry by now are running as full as in springtime.  This waterfall can be seen from the road that runs over Mount MacGregor.

This tumbling torrent was bounding down a mountainside along Spier Falls Road.

Many different mosses are thriving in the damp woods, where they share the leaf litter with such lichens as this many-tentacled one, a variety I haven't seen before.  I'm sure I've been told the scientific names of these two mosses, one furry, one ferny, but I confess that I have forgotten them.

I do remember the name of this liverwort, though:  Bazzania trilobata.  My photo doesn't show it, but each leaf of this leafy liverwort has three lobes, as its Latin name describes.

There were even some fresh-looking mushrooms in the woods today.  I don't know the name of these little tree fungi, but I thought their winter-white color looked very pretty against the red bark of their fallen limb, backed by the green moss that adorned the log lying behind -- Christmas colors!

I wonder if this sturdy toothed tree fungus will keep its vivid orange throughout the winter.  It certainly stood out as a flash of bright color in the dim woods.

What a pretty clump of Poverty Oat Grass (Danthonia spicata), with blades as curly and colorful as the ribbons on a Christmas package.

As shiny red and green as any holly, Partridgeberry carpets the forest floor with Christmas colors.

I found this cocoon lashed to a Black Tupelo twig and wondered what kind of caterpillar created it.  It was nearly four inches long, so perhaps this is the cocoon of a Cecropia moth, a very big and beautiful moth that, if all goes well, will emerge in the spring.  I'll be keeping my eye on it as the winter progresses.