A Lupine Extravaganza!

The Wild Lupines are blooming at Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park!  I know from past years that this is a floral extravaganza not to be missed, so I was delighted that my dear friend Sue was free today to join me on ambling the sandy paths of the extensive oak/pine savanna that makes up the Gick Farm parcel of this Saratoga County preserve.  Sue had never seen such a massive display of this gorgeous native wildflower, and even though I come here each year to witness it again and again, I never cease to be amazed at such incredible floral splendor.

Since we were struck nearly speechless by this astonishing display, I'm simply going to present the rest of these Lupine photos without comment:

Wild Lupine (Lupinus perennis) will happily abound on its own, if given the appropriate sandy, nutrient-poor sites. This Clover-family plant is able to provide its own nutrients by absorbing nitrogen from the air, so we frequently see it blooming abundantly along dirt roads and highway medians. But this astonishingly massive array of Wild Lupines was assisted into being by careful management of the Gick Farm Parcel by park staff and state environmental professionals, all to support the federally-endangered Karner Blue Butterfly, whose larvae depend solely on the leaves of Wild Lupine, and no other plant. So of course, we saw many Karner Blue Butterflies wafting among the blue blooms, vying with the flowers for the richest blue coloration.  But when it comes time for the butterfly itself to eat, it actually prefers the nectar-rich blooms of the Dewberry flowers that abound in the same sandy soil.

The big white flowers of Dewberry served as the perfect foil for showing off the beauty of these tiny butterflies.  Here, we found both the blue male and the brown female dining together.

And look!  Another small butterfly has joined the party!  This is the American Copper, with its vivid orange and black wings.

Another small winged creature has landed on Sue's pants,  and it stayed there for the longest time, allowing each of us to take a pretty good photo of it.

I see by those fringed antennae that this is a moth, not a butterfly.  I haven't found a match for it yet on Google Images, but I'm waiting for an ID from BugGuide.net.  If I ever learn its name, I will come back and post it here.

Update:  Thanks to the folks at Bugguide.net, this moth has been narrowed down to be a member of the Eufidonia genus, possibly E. notataria.  One of the Powder Moths.  Apparently, this genus is notoriously difficult to identify as to species without dissection.  Since I would not want to have to kill it in order to identify it exactly, Powder Moth is good enough for me.


I had seen this same moth earlier, resting on some Bastard Toadflax blooms (Comandra umbellata), another flower that prefers a sandy soil.

As we started our return to our cars, we took a trail that led through a pine woods, and no sooner had we stepped onto the pine-needle cushioned path than we found dozens of beautiful Pink Lady's Slippers (Cypripedium acaule), all in perfect rosy bloom.

Here was another lovely plant that preferred the shaded woodland to the open Lupine meadows.  Although the white flowers of Starflower (Lysimachia borealis) had already dropped, the perfect glossy-green spheres of its seed pods resting in their star-shaped bracts presented another kind of beauty, quieter and more demure than that Lupine extravaganza out under the sun, but exquisite in their own right.

Two Peatlands, Two Different Flora

Today was a wonderful day!  The weather wasn't so great (it was cool and constantly threatening rain), but the company was the best, and the sites we visited couldn't be beat!  That's my friend Evelyn Greene in the photo below, standing in the first of two Adirondack peatlands she led me to today, both of them on private property I wouldn't have been allowed to visit without her guidance.

The first peatland we visited required us to hike about a quarter mile carrying our boats, for we needed them to maneuver around the floating sphagnum mats and reach the locations where floral treasure awaited.

Here's the flower that was worth every slippery rock, downed tree, shoe-sucking mudhole, and beaver dam we had to scramble over to get to:  The exquisite Dragon's Mouth Orchid (Arethusa bulbosa).

Evelyn has been coming to this pond for years, in order to monitor the population of this beautiful flower, one of New York's rare orchids, rated as Threatened in the state.  For the first hundred yards or so of our paddle among the boggy mats, we found none at all, except for a single remnant of one, and we began to worry that we weren't going to find more today.  Were we too early or too late to catch them as they flowered?  Or had some atmospheric change begun to threaten their habitat?  Ah, but we needn't have worried (at least for this year):  we soon came upon abundant numbers in perfect bloom.

We also found other denizens of these floating sphagnum mats, including many flowering plants of Buckbean (Menyanthes trifoliata).  What fuzzy flowers they have!  I wonder if all those curly hairs help to keep the flowers warm in cold northern bogs like this.  Or should we call this site a fen?  It's not a closed system that has no other source of water beside rainfall, since it is also watered by the stream that feeds the pond these sphagnum mats float in.  And since the stream doubtless descends from surrounding mountains, the water carries more minerals to this habitat than would be found in a classic low-nutrient bog.

Well, bog or fen, the site certainly supports many of the plants we usually associate with acidic peatlands, including this white Cotton Grass emerging from the deep spongey mats of red sphagnum.

We also found the lovely Bog Laurel (Kalmia polifolia), another typical peatland denizen, holding its terminal clusters of deep-pink blooms above the surrounding shrubbery.

Growing right out of the water at the edge of the mat were several stems of Flat-leaved Bladderwort (Utricularia intermedia), their bright-yellow blooms immediately visible against the dark water.

Cranberries (Vaccinium spp.) thrive in the acidic conditions of sphagnum habitats, so we were not surprised to find their trailing stems, with flower buds just beginning to open.

Wherever fallen logs emerged from shallow water, we were likely to find clumps of Spatulate-leaved Sundew (Drosera intermedia) clinging to the rotting wood.

And emerging from the shallow water at the edge of the mats, we found several clusters of the tiny bright-orange fungus called Swamp Beacons (Mitrula paludosa).

Our explorations of one peatland completed, the day was still young enough to proceed to a second one, not too many miles away.  And this one fit the classic definition of a bog: a low-nutrient wetland watered solely by rainfall and snowmelt, and rendered acidic by accumulations of sphagnum moss.  Most of this bog is surrounded by a moat too wide for us to jump across, but we eventually found some relatively firm footing that allowed us to step out onto the mat, where we sank nearly up to our ankles in deep soggy sphagnum moss.  The edges of the bog were lined with Balsam Poplar, Mountain Holly, Highbush Blueberry, White Pines,  and Hemlocks, while the mat itself was punctuated with occasional Tamaracks.

We noticed immediately that we would find a different flora here than on the floating peat mats we had just left.  Mounds and mounds of Labrador Tea (Rhododendron [formerly Ledum] groenlandicum) were visible in all directions, the aromatic resins contained in their leaves adding a distinctive spicy scent to the air.

Here's a closer view of their beautiful flower clusters.

But the plant we had specifically come to see was present in even more astounding numbers:  The starry-flowered Three-leaved False Solomon's Seal (Maianthemum trifolium)  carpeted the sphagnum mat as thickly as grass on a lawn.  Although we had both seen this plant in fruit before, neither Evelyn nor I had ever seen this lovely flower in bloom, and we were transfixed, both by its delicate beauty as well as its incredible abundance across this bog.

And it wasn't until I lifted one of its flowering stems to my nose did we realize that these dainty Maianthemum trifolium flowers were the source of a certain sweet aroma that mingled with the spicy scent of Labrador Tea.  I shouldn't have been surprised at this fragrance, considering that one of its close relatives is Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense), another exceedingly fragrant flower, especially when blooming in multitudinous masses, as these were.

We had seen the closed buds of Northern Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) on the floating sphagnum mats we'd just left, but here in this second peatland we saw many of its tall flower stalks crowned with large deep-scarlet blooms.

Here, too, we found the deep-rose blooms of Bog Laurel, but in much greater abundance than at the other site.  How lovely they looked mixed in with the flowers of Labrador Tea!

Ah, very lovely, indeed!

Wild Chervil Gone Wild!

When the New York Flora Association sent me a list of plants that are missing from the NYFA Plant Atlas for Saratoga County, I could hardly believe that Wild Chervil (Anthriscus sylvestris) had not yet been recorded.  For this is a plant that is truly going wild!  I've been observing the explosion of this introduced Parsley-family plant along the Kayaderosseras Creek near Ballston Spa for several years now, and every year  I have seen it take over more and more of the creek bank and edges of the nearby open meadow.  I visit this site many times during the growing season, delighting in the variety of beautiful and interesting native wildflowers that grow here, but every year the Wild Chervil pushes more and more of them aside.  When I visited the site today, I was dismayed to see how extensive its invasion had become.

For the moment, these Ostrich Ferns seem to be holding their own against the swells of Wild Chervil attempting to swamp them, but I wonder how many more years they can hold out.

The umbellate flowers of Wild Chervil resemble those of many other Parsley-family plants, like Queen Anne's Lace or Poison Hemlock, but they have a delicate anise-like fragrance all their own.  I can understand why this species was introduced to America's gardens from Eurasia, but I sure wish it hadn't been.

Wild Chervil leaves are really quite pretty, deeply cut and quite fern-like in appearance.  But they spread across the muddy soil of the creek bank so densely that no other plants can get a foothold.

Well, here was one plant that managed to squeeze in among the Wild Chervil.  This is another introduced garden escapee, this one called Dame's Rocket (Hesperis matronalis), and it, too, has a tendency to become invasive.  It's interesting to see what happens when two bullies like this jostle for position.  Certainly, Wild Chervil outnumbers Dame's Rocket at this location, but there were many of these pretty purple and white flowers to be seen pushing up among the white umbels.  This too, is a species not yet recorded for Saratoga County, so I was able to collect in this one trip specimens of both of these plants, which I will press and dry and send off to NYFA to become officially documented.

I think of this Kayaderosseras Creek bank as a place where plant bullies battle constantly for position. Some of our most vigorous native plants, like Jewelweed, Giant Ragweed, Wild Bergamot, Pokeweed, and Stinging Nettles have somehow managed to thrive against the onslaught of Japanese Knotweed and other invasives, including the Wild Chervil.  At least, to date they have.  And I bet this meadow-full of Canada Anemone (Anemone canadense), opening now, will push back strongly against the tide of Wild Chervil.  At least, I hope so.

Some people consider Canada Anemone a kind of invasive species, too, but it is a wildflower native to this part of the country, so I would say it has the right to grow abundantly.  Besides, it is awfully pretty!

My Beautiful Home Shores

 Oh, the heavenly fragrance of Early Azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum)! I could smell its perfume from way across the road.  These beautiful pink blooms tumbling over the boulders along Spier Falls Road signaled that I was about to have a lovely paddle on the Hudson River yesterday.  It was not the most beautiful day for a paddle, with overcast skies and a looming threat of rain, but I had yet to put my canoe on the river this year to explore my beautiful home shores, and I was not to be dissuaded.

And I'm glad I was not.  How I love these boulder-lined, forested shores of the Hudson between the Spier Falls and Sherman Island Dams!  Here, there are little islands with mossy banks studded with wildflowers (like the Bluets pictured below), and quiet bays where the water lies still enough to mirror the sylvan beauty of the woods that crowd the shore.

For weeks before this, the river had been dangerously rowdy from all the rains and the run-off pouring down from the surrounding mountains, and the water level had been so high, most of the shoreline flowers had been underwater.  But on this day, all was serene, and the shoreline boulders now bore the little Lance-leaved Violets (Viola lanceolata)  I had been longing to see.  In fact, I found many more sites where they have appeared this year, a testament to the power of those high waters to distribute their seed.  A few years back, I found only one patch, but yesterday I found them on almost every rocky bank, right down by the water line.

Another violet hugging the shore was the Marsh Blue Violet (Viola cucullata) , bearing its large purple flowers on long slender stalks well above its heart-shaped leaves.

This is one of the violets missing from the record for Saratoga County, so I was happy to see so many plants. There were more than enough to spare a single specimen to be vouchered by the New York Flora Association and documented in the New York Flora Atlas.  Before I collected a plant, however, I examined the hairs on the flower's lateral petals, noting the blunt hairs that distinguish Viola cucullata from other blue ones.

As I paddled slowly along in the almost undetectable current, I delighted in the way the water mirrored this Nannyberry shrub (Viburnum lentago) with its big clusters of tiny white flowers.

If you click on this photo, you might be able to detect that each tiny floret has five petals, a factor that helps distinguish these blooms from those of the several dogwood species (Red Osier, Silky, and Round-leaved)  that will bloom along these shore in the weeks ahead.  The florets of the dogwoods have only four petals.

Here were more lovely shrubs:  The low-growing Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) clinging to the thin soils atop the shoreline boulders.

Here's a closer look at those snowy-white blooms punctuated by their red anthers.

And talk about RED!  These beautiful crimson Columbine flowers (Aquilegia canadensis) were like the cherry on the top of this wonderful river paddle.