Out on the River at Last!

A new year on the Hudson starts with a paddle out to Woodcock Island

Small flies danced above the water, catching the brilliant sunlight, filling the air with what looked like confetti.  A most appropriate image, for it was HAPPY NEW YEAR ON THE RIVER!!!  Yup, today the canoe came out of cold storage and into cold river water.  Clear, sparkling, fresh, and delightful, carrying me to another world I hadn't visited since late last fall.  

Red female Alder flowers perch above the dangling male catkins

The wind was a little brisk, but I found serene paddling close to the shore.  Here Alder and Sweet Gale, just starting to bloom, leaned over the water, the Alder catkins dangling and swaying like those ornaments in a geisha's hair.  Tiny rills tumbled down mossy banks and splashed with a happy chuckle into the river.  A little brown bird hopped among rocks by the water;  colored the same as the leaves he flitted among, he kept just out of reach of my eyes.     And of my ears, as well.  When he hopped and fluttered about, he didn't snap a twig nor rustle a leaf nor riffle the air with his wings.  Was it a thrush of some kind?  I couldn't really tell.  Then I heard the heart-breakingly beautiful song of the Winter Wren, fluting and trilling and just going on and on, longer than any other birdsong I know, and so sweet you can hardly believe your good fortune to hear it.  And then I startled a pair of Wood Ducks idling along the banks.  Of course, they would not sit still for a photo (is there any duck more gorgeous?)  but took off flying across the river, crying hoo-eee, hoo-eee, hoo-eee, hoo-eee.

Lots of other good stuff, too.  On Woodcock Island I found Sweet Fern, its new catkins curving against the curling stem, and also a hole in the bank that could be an otter's home.  Black Huckleberry buds were fat and pink, and Sassafras buds swelled on twigs that were as green as lime Jello.  Hophornbeam catkins danced at the ends of branches, and slender Beech buds gleamed in the sun as if they were made of copper.  Even some of the winter's remnants were pretty: the Mountain Azalea shrubs appeared to still hold blooms, the bracts of last spring's blossoms curled and golden.

Remnants of last spring's Mountain Azalea still cling to the shrub

Wow!  What a day!  And only the first of many.  I am such a lucky lady to have such a world of treasures around me.  And I don't even have to buy a ticket.

Here's a passage by e.e. cummings that kind of sums it up:

I thank you god for most this amazing day

For the leaping greenly spirits of trees

And a blue true dream of sky and for everything

Which is natural which is infinite which is yes

YES!!!

Around the Lake at Woods Hollow

Finding Leatherwood yesterday set me to thinking that Leatherleaf might be in bloom, too.  In the Woods Hollow Nature Preserve in Ballston Spa, there's a little lake where it grows, so that's where I went today.  It's a lovely preserve, 130 acres, sandy, piney, where Pink Lady's Slippers run riot next month and masses of Sheep Laurel lean over the water in June.  I found the patch of Leatherleaf in a boggy spot at one end of the lake, but it had no flowers as yet.  It will.  Little white bells, all in a row, hanging down from a curving stem with small leathery leaves.

What Leatherleaf will look like when it blooms in early May

Just walking around the lake was quite a pleasure, sun glinting off the water, breeze sighing in the trees, the fragrance of pine like incense on the air.  Hundreds and hundreds of tadpoles sped off at my step, squirming their mud-colored bodies into the mud-colored muck as they tried to hide.  (Too bad I can't speak their language.  I could have told them I'd never have seen them if only they'd just held still.)  Then a flash of bright orange startled my eye: somebody must have emptied their goldfish bowl into the lake some years ago.  This fish was as big as a trout.  I know that goldfish are related to carp.  Can they grow as big as carp do?

Then I found a flower that's a first for me: Beaked Hazelnut.  I've found the shrub before, and waited, waited, waited for the nuts to ripen, only to have them disappear long before I could harvest them.  I think every creature on earth wants to eat hazelnuts and many (not me!) are happy to eat them while green.  So I know the bush and the fruit but I'd never seen the flower.  I mean, flowers.  The tiny little fluffy red tuft is the female flower,  the little tan caterpillars drooping down are the males.  And here's a photo of the fruit, as well.  See how it got its name?

Beaked Hazelnut flowers, female (red) and male (tan)

Beaked Hazelnut fruit in July

Hepatica Festival

It was Hepatica Festival today in Skidmore Woods.  And quite a conjuring act.  When I first entered the woods, all I saw were brown dead leaves.  Then, Ooh! There's one!  And then, There's another!  And then, as if Mother Nature waved her magic wand, the forest floor just seemed to burst into bloom: hepaticas everywhere!  It's funny,  how at first I couldn't see any, but once I saw one, I saw them by the hundreds.  In all their lovely variations on the color purple.  Here are just two examples.  Note how the color bleaches out just at the very edge of each petal, making the flower look like it has a halo.  Heavenly!

All other flowers seem to be on hold.  We need a good warm soaking rain to spur their growth.  The vernal pools have shrunk dramatically over the last few days.  I hope the frogs' and toads' and salamanders' eggs have time to hatch.  I did find a couple of plants with flower buds: trillium and trout lily.  But just one of each.  Seems to me I should have seen dozens.

Then I came upon the first flowering shrub of spring: Leatherwood.  The twin yellow bells of its flower had just burst their fur-covered bud. (Is it just coincidence that the earliest flowers - coltsfoot, hepatica, leatherwood, shadblow - all have fuzzy budcovers?  Like buntings meant to keep the baby buds warm.)  If you try to break off a twig of this shrub, you better have sharp scissors handy.  The bark is impossible to tear - stringy and tough as leather.  That's how the shrub got its name.  I have read that native people used strips of this bark as twine.

Something New Every Day

I checked on my river launch site today, and hooray! the ice is ALL GONE!  With a brisk wind whipping up whitecaps, though, I wasn't too tempted to go get my canoe.  Think I'll wait until a few more flowers are in bloom along the banks.  I did find some sprouting leaves today: Dutchman's Breeches, Marsh Marigold, Trillium, Goldthread, Trout Lily, Toothwort, Saxifrage (Golden and Early).  Now, it seems such a trickle, but when the floral floodgates open in oh, ten days, two weeks, I'll have a hard time keeping up with them.

In the meantime, other surprises await on the forest floor. Like this pretty little garter snake.

In other news, I got a note today from John Warren, founder of Adirondack Almanack, a great blog about all things Adirondack.  The blog is celebrating its fourth year with the addition of two new contributors, expanding its coverage of local politics and culture, history, regional development, outdoor recreation, the environment, and other issues.  I feel a special connection to this blog since it very kindly listed my blog on its roll of blogs worth reading.  Since the site attracts around 1,000 readers each day, that's great exposure.  It's a fun and fascinating site, so check it out at www.adirondackalmanack.com 

Floral Confusions

Shadblow.  Redbud.  Cherry trees.  All in glorious bloom.  Obviously, not in Saratoga County.  We went to our son Peter's for Easter, in southern New Jersey near Philadelphia, and oh what a beautiful show of flowering trees!  Spring is nearly a month advanced down there.  What a treat to contemplate what we have in store.

Lesser Celandine

Peter's neighborhood has a stream running through it, and the banks of this stream just teem with a plant whose glossy green leaves and bright yellow star-shaped flowers spread out to carpet all the yards that abut this stream.  The plant is called Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria), a member of the buttercup family.  It thrives in masses in New Jersey, and I was tickled last May to find a single plant of this species growing along a stream in the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve here in Saratoga County.  I have since learned that I shouldn't have been so pleased.  Apparently, it is considered quite an aggressive invasive species and should be eradicated wherever it is found.  Too bad. It sure is pretty. But so is Purple Loosestrife.  If I find it again this spring I'll pull it out. (Sigh!)

This plant is another example of how common names can often confuse us.  We have two other celandines around here: just plain Celandine (Chelidonium majus), a common alien weed of alleys and vacant lots,  and Celandine Poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum), an American native wildflower normally found further west than New York but escaped from gardens and naturalizing here.  Both belong to the poppy family, both have pretty, many-lobed leaves, both have four-petaled yellow flowers (the Poppy a spectacular one!), and neither one is related in any way to Lesser Celandine.

Celandine

Celandine Poppy

Makes you wonder who comes up with these confusions.  Loosestrife is another example.  Most of us know by now that Purple Loosestrife is an aggressive alien.  But then we have all these native plants called Loosestrife, too:  Yellow, Fringed, Whorled, Tufted are four that come to mind.  Nice plants.  Non-aggressive.  And not a one belongs to the loosestrife family.  They're primroses, every one.  Go figure.  I guess that's why real wildflower nuts only use Latin names.

Brave Beauties of Early Spring

Cold.  Blustery.  Even a little snow.  For days now it seemed like winter was back, so I didn't expect to see much blooming when I walked in Skidmore woods today.  But there they were: Hepatica!  Oh small brave beauties, you grace us when all other blooms still hide from the cold. Not even a trace of bloodroot or trout lily.  But hepatica has shrugged off her furry coat and lifts her lovely face to the sun.  And the show has just begun.  The forest abounds with buds just about to open, and in all the lovely colors hepatica comes in.  Including sparkling white. (Click on this photo to see how the petals sparkle.)

Wait a minute.  There's another flower that blooms this soon: Red Maple.  It's just that it blooms way up in the trees where it's hard for us to see it.  Except when it falls to the ground and lands on the spring-green quilted leaves of unfolding false hellebore.  The false hellebore has splendid leaves, large and curvaceous, of the loveliest color. Its opening leaves are far more impressive than its greenish-yellow flower, which blooms in mid-June, when the plant becomes kind of gangly.

And here's another spring beauty:  the Mourning Cloak butterfly.  An amazing thing about this creature is that it spent the winter, not snug as a larva in a cocoon, but as a fully formed adult butterfly.  Late last fall, it crept in behind the bark of a tree or under the leaves on the ground, folded those lovely wings about its body, and bore the wintry blasts without turning to ice.  It does this by increasing the sugar alcohols in its blood, effectively filling itself with antifreeze.  Spring comes, it's up and about before any other butterflies, feeding on sap from woodpecker holes, and flitting about the forest on sunny days.  I couldn't believe my luck that this one sat still for the picture-taking.  I believe it was soaking up the warmth of the sun with its velvety dark wings, a perfect solar collector.

Eater Birds

Last post was The Eater Bunny, this one is The Eater Bird.  And see! He's all decked out in his Easter-egg yellow plumage. (Just a few patches of winter dun remain.)  The point is, he's regained a place at the feeder at last.  We had such a passel of siskins this winter, they chased the goldfinches away.  I've read that this winter brought unprecedented numbers of siskins to the whole Northeast, not just to my birdfeeders.  And now they seem to be gone.  Or going.  We still get one or two now and then.  But what a treat to see that gorgeous bright yellow goldfinch again!  I'm sure they'll be taking off for the countryside soon (we don't see that many in the city in the summer), so I'll enjoy their sunny presence while I can.  I was about to rake up all the dead aster stems at the edge of my yard, but I noticed the finches and chickadees flitting about in that mess, so there must be seeds left on the stems. I'll leave them alone for now.

Another "eater" bird is back, and this one not so pretty.  At least, up close.  Riding the air high over the river, they look pretty glorious soaring up there, huge wings held out in a vee, two, three, four or more, sailing in circles.  Their arrival's a sure sign of spring.  But as with that other spring omen skunk cabbage, no sweet songs or poems are composed for turkey vultures. But I'm glad to see them again.  At least, from a distance.

The Eater Bunny

So there he is -- the EATER BUNNY!  I'll bet you thought I made a typo and meant to say Easter Bunny.  But I meant what I wrote.  That damned rabbit has eaten the shrubs I planted last summer to provide food for wildlife.  That's not what I meant by food, you dumb bunny! You were supposed to wait until they had flowers and fruit.  I guess I'm the dumb one, not to have protected those tender little twigs.  At least the Flowering Dogwood survived, as did two Highbush Cranberries, their twigs too high for even a standing rabbit to reach.  And the Trumpet Honeysuckle, while snipped to a foot from the ground, shows faint signs of resurrection.  But two Red Chokeberry shrubs and one Sweet Pepperbush appear to be gone for good.

Oh well.  Just a little test of my zen detachment.  For years I didn't give a hoot what grew in my yard.  I was off to the woods or the river to enjoy all the beauties that grew without my having to lift a finger to make them that way.  My goal (if I had one) was to let the weeds take over at home.  And what wonderful weeds there were!  Violets, white and purple.  Speedwells of several kinds.  Ground Ivy.  Shiny bright Buttercups.  Cinquefoil, Rough and Rough-fruited.  Ladies' Thumb, Jumpseed, Thimbleweed, Strawberry, Creeping Bellflower, Pale Sunflower.  Daisies, Asters, Goldenrod.  Black Nightshade, with tiny super-sweet black tomatoes.  Trumpet Creeper that couldn't be stopped.  And giant stalks of Wild Lettuce that towered up to the second-story windows.  I'd mow just enough to call it a lawn, and that was that.

Then I had to go mess it up.  I went to a nursery and bought stuff.  Even though I chose all native species, I should have left well enough alone.  Just because I spent money on those shrubs the rabbit ate, I resent him (her?) eating them.  If she'd eaten the Trumpet Creeper shoots or sampled the Black Nightshade, I would have said "Help yourself, dear bunny, there's plenty more where that came from."  But now I'm mad at the rabbit: a shadow falls across my Eden.  So no more purchasing plants for me.  What grows, grows.  What doesn't, bye-bye.  And maybe this rabbit will compensate me by bringing me baby bunnies.  Darling wee creatures, lippity, lippity, lippity, over the lawn. Much prettier than Sweet Pepperbush, anyway.

On the Trail to Trailing Arbutus

Today, the snow is ALL gone, even in the deepest woods. And the ice is all gone too.  Or so it appeared.  Mud Pond is clear, as is Lake Moreau (remember that ice-gripped shore just five days ago?), and the Hudson River is flowing fast and full and free of floes.  Maybe it's time to get back out on the water in my canoe.  So I went to check my favorite launching site: a sheltered bay of the river with high rocky banks and ready access to quiet marshy streams, out of the roiling current and buffeting winds.  Ah well. Looks like I'll have to wait a little longer: some of the ice chunks here are still a foot thick.

At least the woods are all clear for walking now.  I headed through woods to Rippled Rocks Point on the river, where I know some trailing arbutus grows.  I had to keep taking detours from my usual route to the point, because many hollows are filled now with vernal pools.  Of course I  had to poke around in them, searching for frogs and salamanders.  No luck.  But I did find arbutus in flower.  Just barely.  Lots of buds and just this one little cluster of blooms.

For years I looked and looked and looked for this flower and never found it.  About five years ago I found it for the first time.  Turns out, I went looking too late all those years.  This is one of our earliest bloomers.  But for all the sturdy bravery of the flowers, which come through frosty nights just fine,  the plant itself is quite fragile.  Disturb the root while picking the flower and the whole colony up and dies.  So DO NOT PICK THESE FLOWERS! (In fact, I think there might be a fine for doing so.) But do get down on your hands and knees to smell them: Divine!

A Bunch of Buds

A  splendid warm day after cleansing rain yesterday.  How clean and sweet the world seemed this morning!  How appropriate, then, to find this little violet -- pure white and fragrant -- just about to bloom in the Skidmore woods.  I have yet to figure out what species it is.  The closest to it I find in my guides are the Northern White and the Sweet White, both of them tiny, both of them early blooming,  and both of them fragrant, but both also have purple veining on the lower lip. My violet is white all over, as the next photo (taken last year) shows clearly.  Can anybody help me on this?

I next went looking for hepatica, which carpets the Skidmore woods most gloriously in April.  From years of exploring this special place, I knew where to look and I found last fall's leaves protruding above the leaf litter, but I had to dig down to find this baby bud, all snug in its fuzzy fur bunting and not yet ready to bloom.  My friend Sue Pierce sent me photos today of hepatica much further along in Moreau Lake State Park.  So it won't be long before we enjoy all those beautiful blooms in shades from snow white through pink and lavender to deep purple.

I next came upon quite a puzzling scene.  While prowling some vernal pools in search of spotted salamanders, I noticed the forest floor was littered with all these snipped off twigs of red maple.  The litter covered an area maybe a hundred feet across.  No, the wind didn't bring them down.  We haven't had any wind storms lately.  And look at the angled cut where the twig was cropped.  Somebody bit that off.

Could the culprit be a red squirrel?  I've heard that they like to create their personal highways through the trees, snipping off any twigs that get in their way.  If you look real close, you'll notice that none of the buds are eaten.  Is somebody coming back to enjoy a feast on the ground? Or has some bushy-tailed little brush hog been chomping its way through the canopy?  And why just red maple?  Or maybe red maple's brilliant red color makes it easy to see,  and other twigs are littered about too, it's just that I didn't see them?  Hmmmm.  As I've said before, you never know what you might find on a walk in the woods.

Some Things New Under the Sun

What a difference the sun makes!  Here's a photo of the sunny side of Mud Pond three days ago:  all warm and dry, the ice receded far from shore (today it was all gone, except for a little bay at the shaded south end).  Nice!

And here's a photo of the shady side of Moreau Lake today:  shin-deep in snow, with ice still gripping the shore.  Brrrrr!  So where do you think I decided to walk today?  That's right, I headed right back to Mud Pond.

What a change in the shoreline from three days ago!  Instead of clear water that let me take photos of suspended newts and bottom-basking tadpoles, the surface near shore was coated with foamy brown scum and awash with heaps of dead plant matter.  The wriggling newts set the whole mess a-roil as I passed, although I couldn't really see them through the murk.  A massive turnover must have occurred, the sun-warmed top layer of water mixing with the icy-cold layers below, bringing up all the gunk that had lain on the bottom all winter.  I wonder how long it will take to clear up again?

All kinds of seasonal stuff is going on right now.  Walking a sunny, sandy path, I was startled by clouds of bees at my feet.  Yikes! I thought, am I about to get stung?  But the bees paid me no attention.  Looking more closely, I noticed that many were busy digging holes in the soft sand. Ah yes, these must be the ground bees Curt Stager wrote about in his book Field Notes from the Northern Forest. These are solitary, rather than hive-dwelling social bees.  There's no queen to defend, so no soldier bees try to sting you in her defense.  Each female digs her own nest, which she coats with a substance that looks like brown cellophane (it's actually polyester!).  She spends the summer packing this pouch with pollen, lays her own egg in there, then seals it all up in a little packet.  At some point the egg hatches, the larva eats the pollen, then pupates, and when spring arrives, the adult digs its way to the surface.  The bees buzzing around my feet must have been the newly emerging generation. (Sorry.  They wouldn't sit still for a picture.)

Who says there's nothing new under the sun?  I'd never seen these bees before.  Nor noticed a pond turn over.  I've often been asked why I visit the same places day after day.  Don't I ever get bored?  No, I don't. Because they're never the same.

This Berry Has Two Mothers

Rained all day today, temp close to 50, washing away the winter's grime, softening what's left of the snow.  It's amazing how much remains in the woods, even after several days of summery weather.  I walked the entire way around Mud Pond yesterday, and found myself knee-deep in snow in a shaded gully.  And of course, I was wearing sneakers, not boots. Brrr!

In a sunnier spot, I found this patch of partridge berry, the berries a bit shriveled from a winter under the snow, but the leaves as fresh and green as they were last fall.  Take a close look at that berry's little red owl face: see what looks like two eyes?  This here is one berry with two blossom ends -- you might say it had two mothers.

And here they are, in bloom last June.  Tiny white waxy twin trumpets with furry tops.  These are females (pistil packin' mamas) just waiting for pollen from stamen-equipped male blossoms nearby.  The girls' gotta have it, and when they get it, both twins put all they've got into one ovary -- the two flowers work together to make one berry.  One berry with two blossom ends.  Are there any other fruits that form this way?  Not that I know of. 

To complete the family portrait, here's a photo of the Daddy, the staminate blooms.

Actually, each flower contains both sexes: stamens and pistils.  In one form the pistils protrude, in another form, the stamens do.  This prevents self-fertilization.  In each case, both flowers of the twin trumpet arrangement must be fertilized to produce the berry.  Complications, complications!  But what a cute little baby!