Away to Vermont, Home Again to Wilton

Yesterday was a lovely day for a drive through the verdant mountains of Vermont to Brattleboro, where we met family members for lunch at a restaurant called Marina, overlooking the confluence of the West and Connecticut Rivers. After lunch, we walked along the river where many boats were docked, and I stopped to marvel at this magnificent patch of Cup Plant (Silphium perfoliatum) growing along the shore.

Named for the way its lower leaves grow together to form a cup, this big, bright-yellow flower is one I will probably never see in the wild in Saratoga County. A native of the more central states, Cup Plant has now been introduced to eastern states, but it still hasn't made its way to any places close to my home.

Tall Ironweed has, though. As I mentioned in last Thursday's post, one specimen of this native of more southern and central states has found a foothold at Wilton Wildlife Preserve, where, towering above all surrounding plants, it waves its vivid magenta blooms to all passersby on the nearby road. This is a section of the Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park that is called the Old Gick Farm, with a parking area directly off Rte 50.

I returned to the site today to collect a specimen that will document its occurrence in Saratoga County, and I was interested to note the presence of dry dead stalks surrounding the plant. This would indicate that the plant has been here at least since the previous year. It sure would be fun to know how it got here, since the nearest documented present population is hundreds of miles west of Wilton in Cattaraugus County, New York.

While wading through the tall weeds to reach the ironweed, I almost stepped on this little aster hiding in the grass. The flower itself was of a good size, but the whole plant stood only about a foot high.

This isn't one of the asters I immediately recognize, and neither could I find one just like it in my Newcomb's Wildflower Guide. I'm posting photos of some of the aster's features, hoping that maybe one of my readers may recognize it and tell me its name. So here are the bracts, dark-tipped and curling away from the involucre.

Both the broad tapered leaves and the single stalk are rough, the leaves covered with hairs and clasping the stalk so completely that they appear at first sight to be pierced by the stalk.

If anyone knows this aster, I hope you will share its name with us.

Update: Readers of the comments to this post will learn that Steve Young, chief botanist for the New York Natural Heritage Program, has suggested that this is Late Purple Aster (Symphyotrichum patens). After searching the web for photos and descriptions, I tend to agree with him, even though it's hardly late in the aster season, is it? I also discovered that there's no record of this aster growing in Saratoga County. I wonder if it sneaked into the county along with that ironweed?

Aside from that ironweed and aster (and perhaps a zillion goldenrods), the most abundant flowers to be found at the Wilton site today were Round-headed Bushclover (Lespedeza capitata), a native Pea-family plant. On the whole, this is rather a homely, coarse plant, but the pink-touched individual florets are quite pretty when observed up close.

This Gick Farm site consists largely of Pine-Oak Savannah, an open, sandy habitat that New York's Department of Environmental Conservation is maintaining with controlled burning and the planting of native grasses, certain grassland flowering plants, and such appropriate trees as Pitch Pine and various species of oak. I love oaks for all kinds of reasons, and one of those is how hospitable oaks seem to be to galls of all kinds and colors. I've seen lots of different galls on oaks before, but never this pink furry one. At first I thought it was a curled-up caterpillar.

On the same little oak, I found this other tiny gall, a perfect sphere with a red pimply surface.

Wow! Look at these! Yet another kind of oak gall, this one a lovely marbled red.

Aha! There's yet another gall, I thought, before I looked closely enough to see that that small red oval was instead a Ladybug.

I don't know the names of any of these galls, but I sure would like to learn them. Anybody know of a gall guide you could recommend?