Spring Progress Report, April 13

Sorry, dear readers, I've just been too busy to blog much this week, running all over the county (and beyond) to stay abreast of all that is happening in the woods.  But I've finally sorted through all the daunting hundreds of photos I took (most of them discards), so now I can file this report on what's doing the blooming.

On Wednesday, I stopped by the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve on my way to the Hudson River at Moreau.  In a dampish area along the trail, masses of  Dog Violets were just starting to open their pale lavender blooms.  This is one of our "stemmed" violets, with flowers and leaves both sprouting from the same stem, distinguishing it from our Common Blue Violet, which has basal leaves only and a leafless flower stem.

On a higher and dryer bank further on, I found the Dutchman's Breeches dangling their little white pantaloons.  In a few days, those yellow tips will open and spread to allow the bumblebees to insert their long proboscises into the nectaries deep inside the blossoms.

A surprising find in a nature preserve renowned for its native flora, this Siberian Squill, a horticultural species, must have escaped from some neighboring flower garden.  Let's hope that it knows how to mind its company manners and not take over the woods, as introduced species are often wont to do.

 The Periwinkle is just such a species of introduced plant that has taken to our native woodlands way too happily.   There's no question that it's a beautiful plant, bearing abundant blooms of the loveliest blue.

 The problem is, that wherever Periwinkle grows, absolutely no other flower is allowed to share its ground.  In this thoroughly periwinkled patch of woods that borders the Hudson River at Moreau, not a violet nor trillium nor Jack-in-the-pulpit can be found for acres around.

On Thursday I joined the Thursday Naturalists on a trip to a nature preserve south of Albany (an adventure that will be described in a separate post), and today, Friday,  I went for a walk through the Skidmore Woods.  This particular woods, with its limey soils, is famous for its wonderful array of spring ephemerals, including many different species of violets.  The first ones I came across today were the beautiful Long-spurred Violets, snuggled into crannies of the many boulders that form the forest substrate.  These violets can be quite pale in color, almost as if all their color had run to pool in dark patches at the center.

Another violet blooming today was the Downy Yellow Violet, with an obviously downy stem.

Dwarf Ginseng was just beginning to open its clusters of tiny white flowers.  Unlike its much larger cousin that is sought after for medicinal uses and which persists into the fall, this tiny plant will completely disappear soon after its blooming period ends.

Wood Anemone held its pristine white flowers completely open to the warm sun today.  If a chill descends, or clouds cover the sky, those blooms will retreat into their pinkish bud covers.

The purplish-brown variety of Blue Cohosh bloomed last week (and continues blooming still), but this variety with greener flowers was just opening today. 

My botanist friends cannot all agree upon whether we have two species, or just some variations. Some botanical sites I've visited indicate that the earlier bloomers with consistently purple flowers are Caulophyllum giganteum, while this one, which opens a little later with flowers that are assuredly green, is C. thalictoides.   In all other respects except flower color and blooming time, the plants appear identical.


Mayapple has pushed its tightly folded umbrellas up from the earth.  The fully mature plants that have two leaves will bear a flower (and later, a fruit), the bud of which can be seen peeking out from between the still-folded leaves.
 

In a couple of weeks, stunning masses of Large-flowered White Trilliums will cover large areas of the woods.  For the present, we have to search to find the much more solitary Red Trillium, which tends to hide its pretty face by bending downward under its leaves.  I confess that I lifted this bloom up and placed it atop its leaves, the better to capture its vivid color in a photograph.

The odd weather this spring has played tricks with the normal schedule of bloom for many spring flowers, with many blooming far earlier than ever before.  The recent stretch of much colder weather has slowed that process considerably, so that many early bloomers are still with us.  The Bloodroot, for example, which usually comes and goes in a few brief days, is still coming up and opening its sweet sunny faces all over the woods.

The Trout Lilies have just exploded into bloom from when I reported finding just one or two a few days ago.  Now they carpet some areas of the woods so thickly it's impossible to walk among them.  I hope those darned Red-necked False Blister Beetles finally get their fill of lily pollen and leave some of those lovely crimson anthers alone.

Speaking of crimson, the maple trees are now unfolding their bunches of tiny red leaves.  What a sight it is, when these translucent leaves catch the sunlight and glow like stained glass.

This Red Maple tree stands in front of my house, where the sight of its vivid red boughs against that deep blue sky just took my breath away as I arrived home today.

Now Showing in a Woods Near You

I hopped around to various woodsy sites today, checking on the progress of spring wildflowers, as well as enjoying whatever other wonders there were to see.

First stop was the Bog Meadow Nature Trail just east of Saratoga Springs.  There I found Marsh Marigold just opening a few of its brilliant yellow flowers.  In a week or so, the display should be dazzling.  Watch for these flowers in wetlands and roadside ditches.  You can't miss them.

This next flower is about as difficult to see as the Marsh Marigold is impossible to miss, since not only is it really small, it's also basically green.  Its only colorful parts are those orange anthers.  This is Golden Saxifrage, which grows in mats in wetland habitats, often sharing its territory with Marsh Marigold.
. 

Also sharing this wetland habitat today was a rather large coyote, who slipped away into a stand of Phragmites before I could get a photo.




Next stop was the Skidmore Woods, where I found a few Trout Lilies nodding their lovely blooms.   There was something not quite right about this cluster, with only one of the flowers showing the deep red anthers that are typical of this lily.  In the other flowers, the anthers were shriveled and blackened.  I found this situation to be true wherever I found a Trout Lily growing today, in widely scattered locations.

And here are the culprits that reduce those nice red anthers to shriveled black threads.  These are Red-necked False Blister Beetles (Asclera ruficollis), a pollen-eating insect species, which were swarming over nearly every Trout Lily flower I found today. I have never seen such an infestation in all my years (at least 20) of observing Trout Lilies in the Skidmore Woods.  I wonder if last winter's relative warmth and lack of snow cover could have contributed to this infestation.

I guess those beetles must be pretty picky about whose pollen they eat, since I didn't find any of them crawling over the Blue Cohosh flowers, which were obviously spilling pollen today.

I still had time for one more stop, so I hurried down to Ballston Spa to the Woods Hollow Nature Preserve, where I found the shrubby Sweet Ferns had put out their little red puffs of pistillate flowers, growing lower on the stem than the yet unripe staminate catkins clustered above.  This pistillate flower is now ready to receive airborne pollen from ripe male catkins growing on separate plants nearby, a time-delay sequence of ripening that avoids self-pollination.  I love the elegant curls of the Sweet Fern's leaves.  I confess I often pinch a few off and crush them under my nose, since this plant is deliciously fragrant in every season.

There's a boggy area at the end of one bay of the Woods Hollow Pond that supports a few acid-loving plants, including a nice thicket of Leatherleaf, which today was dangling its dainty white bells on gracefully arching stems.

Willows abound at Woods Hollow, including one species that has big beautiful yellow flowers, the catkins taking their color from the ripening pollen-filled anthers.  Although in this photo this bee appears to be feasting on that pollen,  it actually seemed to be sleeping there, perhaps rendered immobile by the afternoon chill that descended when late-day clouds covered the sun.

Is this a different species of willow from the yellow-flowered one, or are these the pistillate flowers of the same kind?  I really don't know, but I thought their pink puffiness was very pretty.

What could be more elegant than a Red Maple leaf cluster unfolding from its beautifully symmetric and richly colored stalk and bud?   I hope someday I will learn how to make my camera focus exactly on exquisite miniatures like this.  It kept focusing on the trees behind, ignoring this brilliant object right in front of the lens.  After about 50 shots, this was the best I could get.  At least you can see the shapes and colors, even though they're a bit out of focus.

Can anybody guess what this is, this log that appears to be daubed with Easter-egg colors?  If I hadn't noticed the surrounding stand of Scotch Pines, some of which had been felled and cut into logs, I doubt I would have known.  This section of trunk is from the upper part of the pine, the part that turns an orangey color way up toward the top of the tree, but which we never get to see close-up in all its variety of pinks and yellows and greens.

I know that most lumbermen hate Scotch Pine for its useless timber, and botanists disdain it for its alien status.  But oh my, isn't this lovely?  If we put a frame around this section, we could hang it in a museum and call it abstract art.

Spring Progress Report, April 3

 On a quick trip around the county on Tuesday, I noted that the spring flowers continue to progress, despite a string of freezing nights and days barely into the 40s.   My first stop in the morning was the Ballston Creek Preserve, where I found that the woods was just teeming with Spring Beauties, more than I have ever seen before, anywhere.  This photo represents about a square yard of forest floor.  Multiply this number by acres and acres.

 I just can't resist another close-up photo of these exquisite little flowers with their dainty purple stripes.

I found some Hepaticas there as well, although in a much more confined area, just a small patch near the marsh where the herons have their nests.

I almost missed seeing these Ramps, camouflaged as they were by surrounding patches of Trout Lily leaves.  I wish I knew where to find some that are not on nature preserve land, where harvesting is strictly prohibited.

These winter-dried fungi had me fooled for a minute, as I reached for the branch that I thought was blooming with some kind of flower I'd never seen before.

After lunch I walked out through the Skidmore woods, exploring areas where I knew certain flowers would bloom.  It won't be long before these Trout Lily buds open their bright-yellow "tepals"  --  three petals, three sepals of almost identical color and shape, so it's hard to tell which is which.

Nearby, little plants of Wood Anemone had just pushed up through the dead leaf litter, with buds fully formed and ready to open with the next stretch of warm weather.

The Blue Cohosh buds have already opened to reveal their very odd-shaped flowers, the most obvious part of which are the bright yellow anthers clustered in the center around a green pistil.  Those little green worms that circle these reproductive parts are the actual petals of this flower, the outermost purple fringe being the sepals.

Unfortunately, not all aspects of spring are that delightful.  The Deer Ticks are out in full force already, which I discover after almost every walk in the woods.  These are two of the four I found on me yesterday, already embedded in my skin.  I found one more in the dryer's lint screen, after I threw my hiking clothes in there to blast them with tick-killing heat.  Damn!  I wonder why they can't develop Frontline for us humans.

Spring Marches On

I'm happy to report that the frigid temperatures this past week have done little to stop the unrelenting progress of spring.  Sure,  the cold weather slowed it a bit, after the rapid push of summer-like heat a week ago, but in my wanderings around local woods the last few days, I found little damage from freezing nights, as well as new buds just waiting for warmth to call them into bloom.

In the wetlands that line the  Bog Meadow Nature Trail, new green sprouts are crowning the gnomish humps of Tussock Sedge .

The Marsh Marigold buds are already showing a hint of the yellow that soon will fill every roadside wetland with masses of gold.

Sharing that Bog Meadow wetland, Toothwort is raising its clusters of buds to the light, ready for just a little more warmth to coax those buds into dainty white flowers.

Most of the Spring Beauty plants have tucked their blooms back under cover, but a few little brave ones have poked their heads above the  forest floor.

A sure sign of spring, no matter what the weather:  little Stoneflies are now emerging from clear running streams.

Returning to the Skidmore woods, I hurried to check on the Bloodroots I'd found there last week and was happy to see that their pristine white blooms showed not a trace of damage from the cold, thanks to the enveloping protection of their wraparound leaves.

Blue Cohosh plants had shot up almost overnight, their leaves and flower buds sharing the same purplish color.

Red-berried Elder shrubs held tight clusters of purple-tinged flower buds that are prettier than their rather homely greenish flower clusters will be, but not nearly as spectacular as the brilliant red berries that will adorn the bushes in late June.

Littering the path were these fat red caterpillar-shaped things, the male flower clusters of Cottonwood.  I don't know if they were knocked out of the trees by wind, or if Red Squirrels are nipping them off as they clear their treetop highways of obstructing growths.

The Hepaticas showed no sings of having suffered from the cold, but then, they are well-equipped with furry bracts to enclose their colorful sepals should the need for retreat arise.

I was really startled to find a couple of Long-spurred Violets already in bloom.  Their flowers were quite contorted, however, with the long spur twisted opposite from the way it usually grows.  Maybe it was trying to tell the rest of the flower to head back into bud until the weather warms up for good.

A Three-Orchid Afternoon

With a house-full of company coming this weekend, I really should have stayed home today to clean my house. But the Ice Meadow orchids were calling to me. If I didn't go visit them now, I might not see them again for another year. So off I went to this remarkable stretch of the Hudson River north of Warrensburg, where deep ice build-up each winter creates a distinctive habitat that certain orchids just love. Lots of other rare plants do, too.

I started my quest on the east bank of the river, at a place where marble outcroppings create a dramatic shoreline. This brilliantly colored Butterfly Milkweed added its own touch of drama to the scene on this rather dark day.

It didn't take long to find my first orchid. This healthy patch of multiple stalks of Tubercled Orchis was right where I found it last year. Only, last year I found but one stalk. I wonder if this spring's flooding inspired the plant to increase its footprint. Some orchids respond to stress by abundant growth.

I know, I know, it's not a very showy orchid. But if you look close at individual flowers, you'll see that distinctive orchid resemblance.

Here's the second orchid, Wide-leaved Ladies' Tresses, and it's some kind of miracle that I actually saw it. Last year I found many plants of this early bloomer with the yellow lower lip, but this year I found just this one, and a runt, at that. Perhaps its response to this spring's flooding was to pack it in for the year. Some orchids respond to stress by sulking, instead of burgeoning. Orchids are like that, kind of temperamental.

When I first saw this giant Zinnia sticking out of a rock, I thought some jokester was having a laugh on all us plant people who haunt the Ice Meadows by planting a fake flower to fool us. But no, it really was real! How the heck did that flower get there?

Here's a plant that's as unshowy as that Dahlia was spectacular, and yet it's one of those rarities that keep botanists coming back to this site. This is Whip Nutrush (Scleria triglomerata), a species listed as "threatened" in New York and many surrounding states, but which abounds among these marble rocks. When they ripen, those tiny green balls will be as white as pearls. One of them is, already.

Harebells are certainly not rare plants, but they sure are beautiful -- and generous with their blooming. Everywhere my eyes happened to rest, I detected their radiant blue.

Same thing with the roses. Gorgeous and abundant! And when I look at this photo, I can almost smell the way they perfumed the air.

Still seeking the third orchid I expected to be in bloom, I decided to venture across the river to the west bank, where I knew they would likely be growing abundantly. On my way back to the parking lot, I took a short cut through the pine woods and was delighted to come upon this patch of One-flowered Pyrola hiding out well away from the path.

Looked at from above, they're pretty enough, like little stars scattered across the forest floor. But to really appreciate the intricate structure of their flowers, you have to get down -- way down -- and look up.

To get to the west bank of the river, I continued north to The Glen and crossed a bridge to follow the river road down the other side. At a site marked as a nature preserve, I walked through the woods and down to the river, climbing out on rocks near an area flooded by springs.

My third orchid, Rose Pogonia, certainly did not disappoint! Just look at them all! Such a vivid pink and growing as profusely as Dandelions.

Now this is an orchid that really LOOKS like an orchid!

As beautiful as they are, Rose Pogonias are not considered rare, although they are protected by state law, as all orchids are. You could understand how folks might be tempted to dig them up to plant in their gardens. Not many folks, though, would be tempted to poach Sticky Tofieldia (Triantha glutinosa), a really rare plant that grows quite happily on the Ice Meadows. For one thing, they're easy to overlook, being very small and not at all what one would call showy. Looked at with my macro lens, though, I can see that they are kind of pretty. I can also make out the sticky glandular stem hairs that give this plant its common name.

Here's another tiny flower, Creeping Spearwort, a little buttercup that usually spangles the sand along the river here. But today, despite a diligent search, I found just this one single bloom. How I happened to find it, I'll never know. Maybe it knew how much I love it and called out "Here I am!"

This Swamp Milkweed doesn't have to send out subliminal signals to be seen, that's for sure!

I could have used a little guidance, though, to locate Buxbaum's Sedge, another one of those really rare plants that botanists crave to find. But I couldn't find it today. I know it grows here, I've found it before, and I have this photo to prove it. This photo was taken in late May a year ago. It's a nice big sedge, with a lovely lime-green head. It should have been easy to see. Darn!

This sedge sure stood out. But I don't know its name. Some day, after I've learned to identify all the wildflowers and ferns and mosses and lichens and liverworts and trees, I am going to learn some more sedges. One thing I do know, is that these Ice Meadows are a sedge nerd's idea of heaven. Lots and lots of different ones, and some of them are rare.

Update: A very knowledgeable reader, A.L Gibson, has suggested that this is Yellow Sedge (Carex flava), rare in his home state of Ohio but abundant in New York. Thanks, A.L.

Well, well, look what else I found out here! I've had Wood Lilies on my mind for days, and it was really sweet to see this one growing in such a splendid setting.