Calm River, Grand Companions

Between last Tuesday's earthquake and this coming Sunday's projected hurricane, today was a day of extraordinary calm.  Clear blue sky with only a few puffy white clouds, no wind, pleasantly warm:  a perfect day for a paddle, especially with such friendly and knowledgeable companions as Sherrie and Nancy and Sue.

Our destination was the Hudson River at South Glens Falls, a stretch that Sue and I have paddled many times, sharing our photos of rare and unusual plants we have found there on our respective blogs.   When biologist and author Nancy Slack learned about our finds, she asked if we would take her there, and of course we were delighted to do so.  And we were even more delighted that Nancy brought her friend Sherrie along, another accomplished biologist and author.



We were especially excited to show our two biologist friends the Small Floating Bladderwort (Utricularia radiata), which grows so abundantly along this stretch of the river, it's hard to believe it could be listed by New York State as a threatened species.  There were many of the bright yellow flowers floating in the quiet backwaters near where we put in, the flowering stalks held above the surface by little radiating pontoons.

Nancy is known to be an expert at identifying liverworts and mosses, so we couldn't wait to show her the steep limestone shale cliffs upstream, which are covered with many of these plants.  Here,  she examines the cliff face, where she found an unusual liverwort, Preissia quadrata, which is known to prefer exactly this kind of habitat.  That patch of orange stuff is Trentepohlia aurea, a green alga that appears orange because it contains a chemical that masks its chlorophyll.  It, too, is a limestone lover.

These cliffs are constantly watered by seepy springs, which provide nourishment and moisture to the patches of mosses and liverworts that cling to the cliffs.

Another unusual plant that has found a happy home on these cliffs is Grass of Parnassus, with bright white flowers that stand out against the black shale and the big green Coltsfoot leaves.

And here's a little spider that has found a happy home in one of the Grass of Parnassus blooms.  I wonder if it feeds on those little yellow nectaries that surround the flower's center.  It's perhaps more likely that it feeds on the insects that come to feed on the nectaries.

Another lime-loving plant, Spikenard grows abundantly on these cliffs, its berries still green today and not yet the deep purple they will soon become.

Mountain Maple is another plant that thrives in this habitat.  Sue called my attention to the deep dimples in the seeds.  Is this a sign of something gone wrong, or is this typical of all Mountain Maple seeds?  I have no idea.

After exploring the cliffs, we paddled into a quiet backwater where many emergent flowers were beautifully in bloom.  Here, Nancy looks through her Newcomb's Wildflower Guide to determine which species of Arrowhead she has found along shore.  It was Common Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), with leaves that can vary enormously from broadly to very narrowly arrow-shaped.  The ones we found had broad leaves.

Pickerelweed also has broad arrow-shaped leaves.  Here, purple Pickerelweed and white Arrowhead commingle, making it a little difficult to tell whose leaves are whose, at first glance.

Water Marigold (Bidens beckii) has two different kinds of leaves on the same plant.  The ones you can see above water are lance-shaped and toothed, while the underwater ones are finely divided and hair thin, growing in whorls around the stalk.

We were treated to the occasional sight of an elusive Green Heron, who would not remain within camera range, but this Great Blue Heron stood his ground until we were nearly abreast.

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 Lakeside Walk and a River Paddle

Tuesday, June 7: This very busy nature day started off with Sue and me leading a wildflower walk around Moreau Lake for members of the Environmental Clearing House of Schenectady. We had hoped to walk out on the beach where ample sunlight might create a more likely habitat for blooming wildflowers this time of year. But high water in the lake had swamped the beach, keeping us to woodland paths for much of our walk, so we did not find many wildflowers in bloom back there in the deep shade. But I do hope our group was not too disappointed, since we found some other remarkable things, including a water snake lurking among throngs of tiny black toad tadpoles right up close to shore. Plus hundreds of colorful dragonflies and a number of beautiful birds, including Cedar Waxwings and Baltimore Orioles. And we did find some flowers a little out of the usual, such as this Bastard Toadflax. Not all that showy, but not all that common, either.

We were also delighted to find this unusual Green Pyrola, one of the few summer-blooming plants that actually prefers the shady woods. I was very excited to find it, since I did not know that it grew at Moreau Lake State Park.

I don't know if our group noticed these adorable baby Pitch Pine cones. The group had moved on without me, since once I noticed these pretty pink babies, I just had to stop and take a photo.

After bidding goodbye to the morning group, I decided to head a few miles further north to the Betar Byway in South Glens Falls and put my canoe in the Hudson there. Late last summer, I had discovered some very impressive shale cliffs along the river near there, and I was eager to see if any early-season flowers were blooming on these spring-dampened black rock faces.

There were lots of interesting and beautiful mosses, ferns, and liverworts, as well as the leaves of Grass-of-Parnassus, but the only flowers that were actually blooming today were those of Mountain Maple.

When I turned to paddle the other direction, downstream from the shale cliffs, I was amazed to see the monumental piles of flotsam that had piled up on shore from this spring's floods. Much more than the usual blue styrofoam chunks, bait boxes and plastic bags. There were also giant tree trunks tossed up on the banks as if they were no bigger than matchsticks.

I next moved into a quiet backwater -- or what would have been a quiet backwater if not for that distressing duckling scene I described earlier. But things calmed down, once the little creature got free of that hook, and I managed to spy this turtle sharing its basking site with a dragonfly. Hmmm. . . . That doesn't look like a Painted Turtle, does it? Of course, it slipped off the log before I could get a good look, but its shell suggests that it could be a Northern Map Turtle. A nice unusual sighting to end a day already full of delightful nature adventures.