Summer-like Days in May

I've packed all my scarves and mittens and snowboots away and dug out my shorts and tee shirts and sandals.  The weather turned summer-warm this week, and I spent so much time outside enjoying it, I neglected to take the time to write my blog.  So here's a quick recap about some of the woodsy and watery places I've been enjoying the past few days.


Sunday, May 5:  Saratoga Spa State Park

The wonderful native-plant nursery, Fiddlehead Creek Farm, held a plant sale on Sunday on the lawn of the Lincoln Bathhouse, with a share of the proceeds going to support programs of the Spa Park.  I was happy to do my bit by purchasing four pots of Miterwort and another of Bluets to add to my personal woodland garden in my own backyard.  And I was also happy to head on over to the Ferndell Trail to enjoy one of the prettiest spots in the park, a shady ravine that follows a tumbling stream. 

 Park Manager Mike Greenslade had told me about a project planting native species along this trail, and I was eager to see what had been planted.  There were several species of ferns and sedges to add to the greenery and help stabilize the steep banks, but I also found a number of flowering plants that will soon be blooming along the stream.  In the patch shown here, there were Jacob's Ladder and Golden Ragwort, with buds about to burst into bloom and add their blue and gold to the shady woods.


These newly planted species join the long-established wildflowers that grow along this trail.  Red Trillium, Small-flowered Crowfoot, and Jack-in-the-pulpit were blooming on Sunday, but the showiest flowers of all were on the Hobblebush shrubs that grow on the banks and lean their branches over the trail so that I could enjoy a close-up view of their pristine white flowers.

The Ferndell Trail terminates at the road that runs by the picnic area of the park, which is also the area where most of the natural mineral springs can be found.  I stopped to take an invigorating -- and tasty! -- drink from one of the springs.  This water obviously contains much iron, to judge by the blood-red oxides that have built up over the years.

Monday, May 6:  The Hudson River at Moreau

Monday was a perfectly wonderful day for a paddle:  the water was calm and not another soul was around to roil its glassy surface.   That's not counting the Great Blue Heron that mounted up with thumping wingbeats each time I rounded a bend and disturbed this magnificent bird at its wading.

The sun was so hot, the river's still-cold water felt wonderfully refreshing when I trailed my hands over the side of my canoe.  I drifted close to the banks, where masses of tiny Bluets were scattered through the grasses and tumbled over the edge.

When I passed by a certain niche in a rock where I know to look for Lance-leaved Violets, I was surprised to find its slender white flowers already in bloom.   Because this patch of violets grows so close to the water's edge, I usually don't look to find them until June, after the river has subsided from its spring flood.  We haven't had much rain this spring, nor snow this past winter, so consequently, no spring flood.

I pulled my boat up onto a little rocky island and walked about on its mossy ground.  From inside a grove of overhanging trees already well in leaf,  I was struck by the vivid stained-glass glow of these baby Swamp Oak leaves backlit by the sun.

On my way back home along Spier Falls Road,  I stopped at the dam and got out of my car to take in the beauty of cliff-dwelling Early Saxifrage exploding into bloom out of beds of dark and bright-green moss.

A closer look revealed that one of the mosses had produced its own tiny garden of perfectly spherical fruits on hair-fine stalks.   The fruits look very much like those of Apple Moss, but the worm-shaped leaves don't resemble those of that species of moss at all.  I will have to consult some of my moss-expert friends and come back to add an update.

Update: My more knowledgeable friends Bob Duncan and Evelyn Greene came through with a name for this pretty moss.  It's Philonotis fontana, also called Fountain Moss, a name that's appropriate for a moss that grows on rocks that are damp from seeping water.  And it does belong to the same family (Bartramiaceae) as Apple Moss (Bartramia pomiformis), as the shape of its fruits suggest.  In fact, one of its common names is Spring Apple Moss.




Tuesday, May 7:  Cole's Woods in Glens Falls, NY

 My friend Sue had alerted me that the Rosybells were about to bloom in Cole's Woods, a remarkably woodsy spot right in the middle of the city of Glens Falls.   So that's where I went to meet and walk with Sue on Tuesday, and oh, what a wonderful walk it was, in a spring-green woods resounding with beautiful birdsong.  Here, Sue listens to hear the call of the Blue-headed Vireo ringing out from the treetops, while the fluting, trilling, piping lilt of a Winter Wren seemed to follow us from point to point wherever we went along our path.

And yes, the Rosybells were blooming indeed!  Only a single bell or two as yet, but oh, what a pretty little pink-speckled thing it was.  You really have to search to find this flower (also known as Rose Twisted Stalk), because it dangles -- on a fine twisted stalk -- out of sight beneath the cover of its leaves.

Dwarf Ginseng was also beginning to bloom, and I've never found any other place, in all of my woodland wanderings, where this flower blooms so abundantly as in Cole's Woods.  In only a week or two or three,  it will disappear completely, gone without a trace of seeds or leaves, until it pops up again next spring.

Wintergreen, on the other hand, is one of the most persistent plants we have, with both leaves and fruits looking fresh and plump all winter long, well into the following summer.

The berries we found today -- and they were last year's berries -- were the plumpest and reddest we had ever seen on any Wintergreen plant.  I think they must like it here in Cole's Woods.  Sue and I certainly do.

What a Few Warm Days Will Do

 Wow!  The floral floodgates have opened!  Just over a week ago, my friends and I were shivering through the Skidmore Woods, wearing hats and scarves and gloves, wondering when we would see any flowers besides Hepatica, a flower that, thanks to its furriness, can brave the coldest springs.  Well, a warmer spring has now sprung, for sure! A string of bright sunny days in the upper 70s has summoned the spring ephemerals to not just waken, but to jump right out of bed.  A walk through the Skidmore Woods today found scads of flowers hurrying up with their blooming business, making up for lost time before the tree canopy closes in.

Hundreds of Large-flowered White Trilliums carpeted an acre or more of the forest floor (above),  and not far away, even more numbers of snowy-white Wood Anemones filled a hollow that just a few days ago showed no signs of either their leaves or their buds.

Large-flowered Bellworts were tightly furled shoots just a few days ago, but today I found their bright yellow flowers dangling wherever I looked.

The yellow-flowered species of Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) was blooming today, giving me a chance to examine its wide-open flowers, to see if I could detect any differences between this and the purple-flowered species (C. giganteum) that came into bloom a week or so earlier.

Luckily, a few plants of C. giganteum were still in flower right nearby, so I could easily look from one to the other.   I determined that the yellow flowers were slightly smaller than the purple ones, but otherwise they looked very much the same.  Size, color, bloom time, and the fact that the yellow flowers don't open until after their leaves have unfurled (the purple flowers appear simultaneously with their opening leaves) are factors that botanists now have considered significant enough to assign these two Cohoshes to different species.  Not every wildflower guide acknowledges this.

 At the same time that botanists have agreed to separate those species of Cohosh, they are now uniting what used to be different species of violets into one.  The name Viola soraria used to designate only this violet pictured here, the Wooly Blue Violet, distinguished by its wooly stems and the hairy undersurfaces of its leaves, as well as by its hairless lower lip. 

 But now that species name is used as well for the Common Blue Violet (which used to be V.  papilionacea) and also for the Broad-leaved Wood Violet (which used to be V. latiuscula).  I'm sure they have their reasons, these botanists, but I still think that this Wooly Blue Violet looks different enough from the Common Blue that I will continue to call them by different names.



Speaking of violets, these beautiful flowers were out in full force today, in most of their many varieties.  There were Downy Yellows and Smooth Yellows (two stemmed violets now considered a single species) as well as lots and lots of Long-spurred Violets and even a few Common Blues.  I was glad to find the two violets pictured here so close together, for both are considered indicator species for a limey substrate. 

That's Canada Violet (Viola canadensis) on the left, with purple buds but with blooms that are pure white on the front with traces of purple remaining on the backs of the petals.  Many people would never recognize the tall plant on the right as a violet, but that is indeed the family into which botanists have placed it, although they have assigned it to a different genus.  This is Green Violet (Hybanthus concolor), and its flowers don't look much like violets, either.  They aren't blooming yet, but when they do, they'll be little green hump-backed nubbins dangling from the leaf axils.



 Not only were there lots and lots of new flowers to find today (I counted 18 newly blooming species), there were also many tree buds unfurling their tender new leaves.  These baby Red Oak leaves, so furry and crimson, stood out from all the surrounding greenery.

Who would guess that these flame-shaped leaves belong to the Round-leaved Dogwood?  I sure wouldn't, if I hadn't already known the red-stemmed shrub they were newly emerging from.  There's even a flower bud fully formed, just waiting to open into a cluster of small white four-petaled blooms.  The leaves will grow rounder as they mature.

Is there any leaf bud more dramatic than that of the Shagbark Hickory?  First, it is absolutely huge as tree buds go, and then its cluster of compound leaves fairly explodes  from its scales of apricot and lime-green satin.

I wasn't the only one to admire the Shagbark Hickory sprouts.  This beautiful Mourning Cloak butterfly stopped on one to take a rest and stayed for a good long time, allowing me to creep in close to take a pretty good portrait.

A Wildflower Walk in the Mountains

Several days of really warm weather have nudged the long-delayed wildflowers into bloom, even up in the Adirondack Mountains.  This photo shows the profile of Crane Mountain through a woods where I walked today with my friends Evelyn and Bob, who introduced me to their friend Amy.  It was Amy's woods we walked in, and a remarkable woods it was, home to many lime-loving plants, including numerous Leatherwood shrubs like the one in the foreground here.

To reach the rise that was covered with Leatherwood shrubs, we followed an old logging road that was starrred with the bright lemon-yellow flowers of Round-leaved Violet.  This is a violet that truly loves the northern climes and can often be found where roads and wide trails have opened the tree canopy to let some sunlight reach the forest floor.

Amy led us through pathless woods to a ridge of rock that burgeoned with the dainty snow-white flowers of Early Saxifrage, growing from every crack in the boulders.

As we kicked through the dry leaf litter in the woods, we tried to be careful not to step on the abundance of flowers that had sprung up this week, including Blue Cohosh, Dutchman's Breeches, Spring Beauty, and these marvelously purple Round-leaved Hepaticas.

It sure was a beautiful day for a picnic, and what a gorgeous spot we had to eat our lunches outdoors.  Amy (middle) led us around this sparkling pond to a bench that was perched right at the edge of the water.  As we sat to eat, we had a perfect view of aquatic life going about its business.  There were Boatmen beetles rowing away upside-down underwater, Whirligig Beetles scurrying around on the pond's smooth surface, and wonder of wonders, we watched as a Leech came wriggling along, only to be attacked by a Spotted Newt, who soon chased it out of sight as watched in gape-jawed amazement.

On my way home from Crane Mountain, I stopped just north of Warrensburg to walk out on the section of riverbank that is called the Ice Meadows.  Longtime readers of this blog will recall the huge heaps of white frazil ice that covered this stretch of riverbank to a depth of well over 10 feet.  Well, the hot sun of the past few days has done a pretty good job of whittling away at those heaps, although a few mounds of frazil remain, looking like very large polar bears stretched out to take a sunbath.  A couple of bikini-clad girls joined the sunbathers today.  By the way, that's snowy-white marble the girls are lying on, not patches of ice.

A May Day Floral Bouquet

Following a couple of lovely warm days, Mother Nature celebrated May Day by exploding into bloom.  Everywhere I looked today, from the cracks in the sidewalk to Yaddo's formal gardens to the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve, new flowers were burgeoning.

As I walked near my house this morning, I spied this patch of radiantly blue Corn Speedwell growing in a patch of dirt next to the sidewalk.   Although each flower is hardly bigger than the head of a pin, this little weed makes up for what it lacks in size by the intensity of its color.

Nearby was this cluster of Thyme-leaved Sandwort spreading across the gravel, with flowers only a little bit bigger than those of the little speedwell.

The artists' retreat called Yaddo is famous for its formal rose gardens, but I go there to enjoy the marvelous profusion of weeds in the lawn, including this abundant carpet of Common Blue Violets.

There's also a shade garden at Yaddo, planted with many native wildflowers.  This is the only place I believe I will ever be granted the privilege of witnessing  the rare Twinleaf in bloom -- and then only if I happen upon it during the very, very brief period it comes into flower.  Today was my lucky day.

I next ventured out to the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in Wilton, and there I found the banks of the stream teeming with Sessile-leaved Bellwort dangling its pale-yellow flowers.

A bit behind schedule because of our colder-than-normal spring, the ephemeral flowers will all be rushing to come into bloom now before the forest canopy closes in and shades them out.  Already, the leaves of understory trees are unfurling from their shiny buds.  And what adorable leaves they are, so tender and soft and often covered with silken down. 

The leaves on this Hornbeam sapling were so furry I almost wanted to pet them.  Their very hairiness caused me to believe they are the leaves of Hop Hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) rather than American Hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana), although the bark was still smooth, it being a very young tree.  The bark on a mature Hop Hornbeam is very shaggy.

Here's another photo showing the extra-furry underside of the leaf, which would support my guess that this is Hop Hornbeam.  Dendrologists, please chime in.

Sunday in the Park With Sue

What a day it was on Sunday:  shirtsleeve warm, cloudless sky, a wonderful park full of mountains and woods and waterways, and a grand companion to explore its wonders with.  Sue and I met in the morning at Moreau Lake State Park and spent many hours wandering lakeshore and pondside and forest and streambed and finding many delights along the way.

One of the sites that delighted us was the shore of Mud Pond, where we found all kinds of fascinations that deserved a closer look. In this photo, Sue is trying to capture of photo of one of the myriad little black spiders scurrying about on the mud.  I didn't even try, they were running so fast.

I was focused instead on these clouds of green stuff floating in the water close to shore.  From where I stood, the stuff didn't look quite right to be duckweed.

Venturing out onto the shoe-sucking mud, I leaned out and gathered a handful, so that I could take a closer look.   I was right!  It sure wasn't duckweed, but rather the aquatic liverwort called Purple-fringed Riccia (Ricciocarpa natans).  I have found this chubby little paw-shaped liverwort at this site before, but never quite this small.  These babies will have some growing to do, once they float free.  But for them to do that, we will need some drenching rains to raise the level of Mud Pond.  Our spring has been not only cold, but also very dry, with little rain.  The pond is much lower than it usually is this time of year, which is why these masses of Riccia got stranded on the mud.

The little pink buds sharing the Riccia's mud pie are baby plants of Dwarf St. Johnswort.

After a sun-warmed picnic on the shore of Moreau Lake, Sue and I took to the forest trails, choosing one called the Turkey Trail, which traces a ridge above a stream that babbled along in the valley below.

Sunlight pouring down through the still-bare tall trees got caught by the just-opened leaves of young Red Maples.  These saplings looked as if they were strung with glowing Japanese lanterns.

The bright-copper buds of American Beech glistened in the sun, forming graceful arcs as they lengthened and swelled, their tightly packed leaves just about to break free of their confines.

Here and there in the woods we would come across patches strewn with many pretty Hepaticas, all of them fully open on this comfortably warm sunny day.

Most of the Hepaticas we saw were uniformly purple, but we did find a plant or two with flowers of a deep and lovely magenta.

After a nice leg-stretching course along the top of the ridge, the Turkey Trail descends to the valley and crosses a bridge that spans this pretty creek.   Rather than follow the trail to where it begins to climb into the mountains, we decided to follow the creek as it tumbled along on its way to Mud Pond, where we would pick up another trail to take us home.

I'm sure that this creek has an official recorded name,  but we decided to call it Dutchman's Creek, in honor of the hundreds and hundreds of Dutchman's Breeches that proliferate in the woods along its course.

But we also could have named the creek for the myriad plants of Plantain-leaved Sedge that cling to its banks.  Most were fully in bloom with both male (yellow puffs) and female (white threads) flowers.

This was such a delightful little creek, crystal-clear water burbling and tumbling over rocks and charming us with its music.  But all of a sudden it stopped.  Just stopped.  Within a stretch of about 50 feet, it petered out from splashing and dancing to lying quietly in diminishing still pools.

And then there was none.  From where I took the photo above, I turned around on the same spot and saw that the creekbed from here on down to the pond was completely dry.  Not even damp.

Where did the water go?   Did it move underground to some hidden stream that we can't see?  It sure is a puzzle.  I wonder who would know the answer to it.