One Hot Week, Three Cool Adventures

Another week of August gone by! In other years, I might be wishing the summer were not speeding by so fast, but the muggy heat these past few weeks has made me long already for summer to be done with its misery.  I did find ways to stay cool this week that, yes, meant staying home some days in air-conditioned comfort, but also included venturing out: once to nearly 5,000 feet up an Adirondack peak, another time to paddle some waterways where leafy trees hung over the shores, and just yesterday, to a deep-shaded swamp with cool mud underfoot and plants towering over my head.

Saturday, August 7: The Alpine Plants Atop Whiteface Mountain

Lucky for me (with my arthritic knee), I did not have to climb all the way to the summit of Whiteface Mountain, which at 4,865 feet of elevation is one of the highest peaks of New York's Adirondacks. Happily, I was able to drive to within a few hundred yards of the top, to a parking area where I joined my friends on a New York Flora Association-sponsored walk to survey the alpine flora here. Led by chief botanist Steve Young, I and a small group of other plant-obsessed folks made our slow way up this iron-railed rocky walkway, documenting the alpine species we found along the way.

Sure, the day down below was hot, but up here on the windy side of the peak, we had to hold onto our hats at times as a fierce and chilly wind made me wish I had not left my polarfleece shirt in my car. I noticed that Amy, one of our group, came prepared for all temps, with shorts on her legs and a down jacket for her upper parts.  Robert, another member of our group, appeared oblivious to the weather as he focused his camera on trailside plants, which included a number of rare species found only in such harsh alpine habitats.

Here's a pretty collection of typical trailside plants: Orange-accented Labrador Tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) intermixed with a patch of the rare blue-green Northern Bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), surrounded by the prickly boughs of Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea).

A number of late-season alpine flowers were in full bloom, including abundant numbers of Alpine Goldenrod (Solidago leiocarpa), a short species with stubby clusters of yellow flowers on top.

Another typical denizen of such harsh thin-soiled habitats is Mountain Sandwort (Mononeuria groenlandica), a low-growing, fine-leaved plant with star-shaped white flowers.

Of all the rare or unusual plants we found atop Whiteface Mountain, the rarest of all was a plant called Boott's Rattlesnake-root (Nabalus boottii). We were even lucky enough to find it bearing a few white flowers.  Not the prettiest of plants, even when blooming, but this is certainly one of the world's rarest, with only 5 populations known to exist the whole world over. But it sure seems to like the summit of Whiteface Mountain!

Among the rarer plants on this Whiteface summit were the grasses and sedges, including this Northern Singlespike Sedge (Carex scorpoidea), seemingly happy here on these rocks high above Lake Placid, visible in the misty distance far below. Steve Young informed us that this sedge has been found in only 6 places in the entire state, all of them mountaintops.

Another grass-like plant that prefers the exposed thin-soiled habitat of mountaintops was this Highland Rush (Juncus trifidus), easily recognized (even by non-experts like me) by its fine-tufted tan-colored stems . 

Of course, this is just a small sampling of the many, many plants we observed on Whiteface Mountain. For a somewhat fuller account of a similar visit here, you can visit this blog I posted a few years ago.

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Friday, August 13: Up a Creek and Around the Shore of Fourth Lake

This day promised to be the hottest, swelteriest day of this hot, sweltering week, but my friends Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks and I thought we might beat the heat if we got out early and launched our canoes onto the quiet water of Fourth Lake, just north of the village of Lake Luzerne.  Certainly, the blue sky reflected in the still water offered a picture of coolness, even if it was just an illusion. At least the water felt marvelously cool for trailing our hands in whenever we rested our paddles.

The perfect never-wilting blooms of the myriad Fragrant Water Lilies (Nymphaea odorata) dotting the surface of the lake also played into that illusion  of coolness.  Water Lilies always look fresh and crisp, no matter the heat, since, as soon as they are pollinated, their stems retract and draw their fertilized blooms down into the muddy bottom of the lake, ready to make new plants. 

The morning sun was still low enough in the sky to cast sideways beams through this patch of Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata), making the large green leaves and purple flower-spikes glow like stained glass.

After working up a sweat pushing through thick mats of lily pads close to the shore, I was greatly relieved to enter the stream that flows into the north end of Fourth Lake.  Here, the paddling was easy, even moving upstream, and the trees along the forested banks leaned over the water, granting welcome shade.

Several Wild Raisin shrubs (Viburnum nudum var. cassinoides) also leaned over the banks, displaying generous clusters of their still-green berries.

These pink-tinged blooms of Turtlehead (Chelone glabra) stood out against the dark shade of the fern-lined banks.

After paddling up the creek until our progress was interrupted by a beaver dam, we returned to the lake proper, which lay smooth enough to mirror Potash Mountain, rising abruptly beyond.

We had chosen Fourth Lake as our destination today because we remembered once finding here vast mats of Purple Bladderwort (Utricularia purpurea).  And sure enough, we found them again, the flowers tiny dots of pale purple emerging erect from the brown tangled mass of their underwater structures. These aquatic plants have no green leaves to photosynthesize nutrients, so they depend on their bladder-laden underwater parts to capture and digest tiny prey for their food.

Here's a closer look at one of those small purple blooms.

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Saturday, August 14: Swamp Flora at Bog Meadow Nature Preserve

After checking my blog from one year ago, I guessed that I might find Swamp Thistle (Cirsium muticum) blooming now at Bog Meadow Brook Nature Preserve. And I was right! It did take a bit of  searching, though, because this gorgeous native thistle likes to hide well back from the trail in the thickest, muckiest part of the wooded wetlands that line both sides of this trail that lies just outside the city of Saratoga Springs. I had almost despaired of finding it, when the vibrant rosy-purple of this solitary flowerhead shone like a beacon from out of its swampy hiding place.

Pushing through tangled ferns and shrubs and dodging shoe-sucking mucky spots, I soon drew close to the object of my search.  I started to write "drew abreast" of this flower, but really, the flower stood well above my breast height.  "Drew a-brow" would be a more accurate description of the encounter. Close enough, anyway, to marvel at the Swamp Thistle's beauty, the deep-colored rosy-purple explosion of bloom erupting out of involucres as ornate as Ukrainian Easter eggs.

Here's a clearer look at this flower's involucres, the white-striped scales interwoven with fibers as fine as spider silk. This webbing is one of the most distinguishing features for identifying this North American native thistle.

I counted at least 10 blooming plants in an area about as large as a schoolroom, with several more still in tight bud.  I was standing beneath this particular specimen, which towered well over my head as I held my camera up to photograph it from below.  If these thistles had been shorter, I never would have seen them, hiding as they would have been among the ferns and shrubs. As it were, I could simply glance around and enjoy their stunning abundance.

I tarried awhile within this thistle thicket, hoping I might again see this beautiful visitor I had photographed at this site just last year. This was a Giant Swallowtail Butterfly, a species seldom encountered up here in our northern regions, since its larvae can feed only on citrus leaves. Happily, we do have a few citrus species like Northern Prickly Ash to draw small populations of this butterfly north.  The adults, of course, can feed on any flowers that offer nectar, as this Swamp Thistle flower was doing to this butterfly one year ago.  No butterflies today, though.  Although there were plenty of visiting bees.

One other flowering plant caught my eye as I made my way out of the swamp. This is called Horse Balm (Collinsonia canadensis), a Mint-family plant that smells more lemony than minty. If you rub the flower stems between your fingers, you could carry the citronella-like scent with you until you next washed your hands. I did rub that scent around my ears, and it did seem to repel the mosquitoes that had discovered me by now. Historically, the roots of this plant have been used medicinally for many different human ailments, and the Cherokee people were known to use a concoction of it to treat colic in horses, hence the "horse balm" name.

Most of the fungi I found today were well past their prime, but this Yellow Birch was home to some newly emerging Birch Polypore fungi (Piptoporus betulinus). This, too, is an organism with interesting medicinal properties attributed to it. In addition to its historical use as a treatment for intestinal parasites, it is also said to be anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-inflammatory, and an immunity booster. 

A particularly interesting story about Birch Polypore is that it was found in the possession of the more-than-5300-year-old body of a human male, who was preserved in ice high in the Italian Alps.  It is presumed that he carried pieces of this polypore for medicinal use, since such use has been documented from that era of human history. I read about this in one of my mushroom guides, Timorthy Baroni's Mushrooms of the Northeastern United States and Eastern Canada.

I just never know what I might learn each time I venture outdoors. Even on days when I might have preferred to remain at home in air-conditioned, mosquito-free comfort.

Blue Blooms and a Bounty of Beautiful Bugs

This past Friday offered a perfect morning for a leisurely paddle on a perfectly beautiful Adirondack-region pond! The air was comfortably cool, as morning mist softened the early light, and not a breath of wind rippled the silvery surface of the pond. My friends Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks and I had arranged to meet here to explore this pond's shoreline for some of the season's most beautiful plants.  And we were not disappointed!

Our favorite part of this pond is the north-facing rocky shore, where shade-loving forest-floor plants and rock-loving mosses and liverworts offer abundant points of interest to such obsessive botanizers as Sue and Ruth and myself. Here, Ruth closely examines a moss specimen, while Sue takes a macro photo of it, the better to see the tiny details that distinguish one moss from another.

I was amused by the sprightly beauty of this row of Haircap Moss (Polytrichum sp.) sprouting out of a crack in a pond-side boulder. A very dark species of a glossy liverwort clings to the surface of the rock, just below the moss.

This late in the summer, few wildflowers bloom in the deep shade of the woods, but this patch of  Wintergreen plants (Gaultheria procumbens) found enough light at the edge of the bank to continue putting forth these pink-tinged white bell-shaped flowers.

We can usually count on finding the pure-white blooms of Dalibarda (Rubus repens) well into September, and sure enough, many flowers still starred the dark-green heart-shaped leaves that carpeted the north-facing banks.

I was really happy to find we had arrived at just the right time of the summer when the Mountain Holly shrubs (Ilex mucronata) were full of their gorgeous red fruits, berries of a super-saturated color rarely seen among other fruits.

Ah, but here was the coveted prize we had come to this pond at this particular time to find! What a beacon of beautiful blue! Is there any other native wildflower more radiantly blue than the Narrow-leaved Gentian (Gentian linearis)? There is not.  And is there any other place than this particular pond where we might hope to find them so abundantly?  I truly believe there is not.  Here was the first of the hundreds and hundreds of equally gorgeous specimens we were soon to encounter.

On some banks, the gentians grew among carpets of Sphagnum Moss, accompanied by the brilliant-red fruits of Bunchberry.

On other banks, the gentians surrounded some low-hanging branches of a Viburnum shrub called Wild Raisin or Witherod (Viburnum nudum var. cassinoides).

All of the gentians grew close to the water's edge, and some leaned well over the edge, their beauty perfectly doubled by their reflections in the dark still water.

We could not paddle two feet along the shore without encountering another perfect specimen of Narrow-leaved Gentian, some flower clusters holding as many as five fat royal-blue blooms.

Each encounter seemed to reveal a specimen even more beautiful than the one I had seen just before. I find it hard to describe the joy that seeing these flowers brought me.  If some of my images seem a bit blurred, it may be because I was brought to tears at times by the absolute beauty before me.

What a bounty of beauty!  And all freely given, to those who have eyes to see!

Of course, there were many other plants along the pond's edge, including those that grow right out in the water.  The white flowers in this photo are those of Common Arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia) and the tall narrow leaves are those of a species of Bur Reed (Sparganium sp.)

I find it difficult to tell one species of Bur Reed from another without examining their mature fruits and consulting the manuals, so I did not examine the blooming stems that carefully.  But by peering among  the long slender leaves, I did find some interesting insects and other creatures.  This amorous pair of beetles was especially beautiful, the sunlight glinting off their shiny wing covers as bright as hammered copper. I have been told that they are a pair of leaf beetles in the Chrysomelidae family,  of a genus, Donacia, that is difficult to pin down as to species.  Whatever their species, they were frequent among the Sparganium leaves. This pair was doing their bit to assure there would be many more of them.

This large black beetle was also perched at the tip of a Bur Reed leaf.  Known as the Rough Hermit Beetle (Osmoderma scabra), it is not really an aquatic species, since its larvae live on and in rotting wood. But I know there is always plenty of rotting wood on the forested shores of ponds, so this beetle was not far from its preferred habitat.  Perhaps it just sought this sunny perch to warm up on this rather cool morning. Its dark color would be ideal for soaking up those warming photons!

I don't know what this Flower Crab Spider (possibly Misumena vatia) hopes to prey on out here on this Bur Reed leaf, especially since its pure-white color will not allow it to hide from prey, as is its custom in plants of other colors. I have never seen a Crab Spider turn this shade of green, though.

As far as critters go, though, the thousands and thousands of Spreadwing damselflies were the stars of the morning,  flitting and fluttering among the Bur Reed leaves, the sunlight glittering off their transparent wings, which they held half-open even while they perched. I am not sure of the species, since their constant motion made it hard to get a clear close-up photo, but the blue eyes, iridescent green thorax, and white band at the end of the abdomen of this pair suggest these may be Swamp Spreadwings (Lestes vigilax).  Also, shoreline vegetation is known to be where they mate and lay eggs.

As these Spreadwings dashed about, the was air filled with sparkles from sunlight glancing off their glittering wings. But now and then they would perch for just a few seconds on emergent vegetation (giving me a brief moment to attempt a photograph).

I think there might have been teams of Spreadwing Damselflies challenging each other to see how many would fit on a single leaf.  These creatures were in such constant motion, I can't believe I got this many holding still all at once!  Quite a sight to end our perfect paddle on this perfectly beautiful pond!

Up a Shady River

Today was delightful:  warm but not hot, breezy but no gales, sunny but with a few clouds to make the sky more interesting.  And I had time to go for a paddle before my normal Thursday-afternoon grocery run. The Hudson River beckoned me, and this time to head upstream above the Spier Falls Dam, a remarkably different shoreline than where I usually put in below the dam.

Here, the Hudson runs about due south, and I chose the west bank to paddle close to, enjoying the cool afternoon shade and the beautiful fern-lined shore, with a hemlock-dark forest rising steeply above the bouldered  banks.

The presence of Maidenhair Fern indicated there might be marble among the rocks that crowded the shore.

Giant boulders had tumbled down from the heights above, and the quiet water near the shore reflected the rocky, woodsy, ferny, mossy beauty of the banks.

The water itself offered much to observe, including large patches of this gracefully curvaceous, bright-green, translucent-leaved aquatic plant called Clasping-leaved Pondweed (Potamogeton perfoliatus).

There were stretches of water where it looked as if someone had tossed popcorn puffs across it, where the tiny white flowers of Wild Celery (Vallisneria americana) were held exactly at the surface by curlicue stems that  retract or expand as the water falls or rises.  The slender leaves of this aquatic wildflower swayed gracefully in the current. For these flowers, the river's current itself is the "pollinator," for the super-tiny male flowers rise to the water's surface from where they grow at the base of the plants, then float along on the current until they fall right into the waiting female flowers. After fertilization, the curly stems sharply retract and "plant" the female flowers in the muddy river bottom.

Here's a closer look at one of the tiny floating female flowers of Wild Celery:

Here was an unexpected surprise, the budding flowers of Small Floating Bladderwort (Utricularia radiata) held aloft on its raft of inflated stems, trailing its underwater structures holding hundreds of tiny sacs that this plant uses to trap tiny organisms to feed on. Over the years, I have found many of these interesting plants some miles downstream, but this is the furthest upstream I have ever seen them. This particular bladderwort is rated as a Threatened species in New York, but it certainly seems to thrive in uncountable numbers in the Hudson River.

As I paddled close to the shore, I passed beneath overhanging trees, including these seed-pod-heavy boughs of American Hornbeam (Carpinus caroliniana).  I find these dangling seedpods quite beautiful, like stacks of angel wings.

 The boughs of American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) were also hanging over the water, in this case heavy with bristly-husked beech nuts. 

When I paddle the Hudson below the Spier Falls Dam, I am always struck by the number and variety of beautiful summer wildflowers that grow there.  I was beginning to wonder why I was seeing so few summer flowers along these banks when this showy patch of Pearly Everlasting (Anaphalis margaritacea) caught my eye. Aha!  Some flowers at last!

And then I spied the queen of all showy wildflowers, this spectacularly red Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardenalis) glowing from out of its dark-green surroundings of ferns and sedges. 

Very soon, this lovely scene came into view, a large patch of radiantly blue Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata), its beauty mirrored in the dark still water.

That patch of Pickerelweed alerted me that I would soon come upon a small cove of shallow water, where a trio of some of our most typical wetland species had found a  happy  home. The tallest of those plants, called Soft-stemmed Rush (Schoenoplectus tabernaemontani), held clusters of light-brown inflorescences atop gracefully arching green stems.

There were two patches of wetland plants here with stiff spiky green leaves, and from a distance the leaves looked identical. But as I drew near, I discerned the white puffs of Bur Reed flowers (Sparganium sp.) hiding among the sword-like leaves of this patch.

The second patch of green spiky growths held inflorescences that looked entirely different. In fact, the flowers were long spent from the green sausage-shaped spadices that were now bearing fruit.  This unusual wetland plant is called Sweet Flag (Acorus calamus). This plant originated in Asia and was introduced to North America long ago. Although now determined to be toxic, Sweet Flag has a long historical record of use as both food and medicine, and its fragrant oils have been valued by the perfume industry.

Even though Sweet Flag is not a native plant in North America, I find it a very interesting one.  And I don't find it very often, either.  This is only the second place I have come across it, both times while paddling the Hudson River in the stretch that flows between Corinth and Glens Falls.