A Quiet Woods, At Last! And a Lovely One, Too.

Another cold rainy day today!  Yesterday, the same.  On Saturday, we had the only one warm sunny day this past week, and I knew I wouldn't be the only one wanting to head for the woods.  My hope was that maybe the Denton Preserve over in Washington County might not be mobbed, and I held on tight to that hope as I witnessed over-crowded parking areas at every park I passed.  But my hope held out.  There was only one car at the Denton trailhead, and before I could even start to feel crowded by THAT, my grumpiness turned to delight when I discovered that the car's solo occupant was my best nature buddy Sue Pierce!  Yay!  We've kept apart during this corona pandemic, but here we were, together at last, happy to explore together one of our favorite woods, masks in place and keeping a careful distance from one another.

One of the features that makes this shale-underlaid woods so special is the abundance of one of spring's prettiest wildflowers, appropriately named Spring Beauty (Claytonia caroliniana).  And I'm not exaggerating when I say "abundance."  There's a several-acred site well off in the heart of this woods that is virtually carpeted with their pink-striped white blooms.  It was hard to find a place to stoop to take a photo without trampling on them  So pretty!

Here's another plant we come to this preserve to find, a graminoid called Rough-leaved Rice Grass (Oryzopsis asperifolia).  The New York Flora Association's Plant Atlas shows this grass as present in almost every county in the state, but this woods is the only place I have ever found it.  I love the squiggly little white fuzzy flowers that protrude from each spikelet.

Lots of bright-yellow Trout Lilies were blooming throughout the woods,  dangling deep-red anthers.

I love this little tableau of the forest floor: pretty purple Round-leaved Hepatica blooms, a baby White Pine seedling, and the mottled leaves of Trout Lily plants.

We almost overlooked a big patch of Mayapple sprouts, just barely out of the ground.  See how the flower bud protrudes from the tightly wrapped baby leaves.  As the plant matures, the leaves will grow to enormous size, surmounting the single white flower, which will bloom beneath the shade of those large flat leaves.

As we maneuvered our way through a muddy swale, I noticed these small lacquer-red fern fiddleheads.  Unless someone can tell me otherwise, I'm assuming these are the unfurling fronds of Sensitive Fern, since they were surrounded by numerous spore stalks that I recognized as belong to that species.

Another fun find of the day was this greenish jelly glob of what we thought might be salamander eggs.  We fished them out of the vernal pool where we'd found them submerged, in order to see them more clearly, promptly replacing them once we'd each has a chance to photograph them.

After Sue and I said good-bye, I decided to drive over to Spier Falls Road along the Hudson River at Moreau.  The day was so warm, I wondered if I might find the Early Saxifrage blooming among the boulders that line the road.  Not quite, as I soon discovered.  But they still looked quite pretty, the tightly clustered flower buds nestled among shiny-green basal leaves that look as if they had been cut out with pinking shears. The saxifrage clumps share the ledges of these rugged spring-watered boulders with masses of Fountain Moss.

Oh look, here's one little cluster of saxifrage buds that has opened a few of its flowers!  If the weather would only turn just a bit warmer, these boulders will soon explode with blooms in a veritable rock garden of spectacular beauty.

Invasive Species Alert!

One of my good botanical friends, Sigrin Newell, sent me this reminder about an invasive plant called Summer Snowflake, which shortly will be coming into bloom, and I want to share what she had to say about it here. Here's what the flower in question looks like:

And here's what Sigrin wrote to tell me about it:

For the next several weeks, there is a pretty flower blooming in many gardens. Summer Snowflake (Lecojum aestivum) has the potential of becoming invasive. This plant is a good entry into a larger discussion of emerging invasives. These are escaped ornamental plants that have been found growing in woods and on roadsides. Eradication efforts made now can potentially stop the plant from getting out of control and becoming truly invasive.

My botanist friends and I were hiking in Anchor Diamond Preserve, near Ballston Spa, New York. There we found Summer Snowflake blooming deep in the woods, far away from any cultivated garden. 

Concerned that a garden flower had made such inroads into a nature preserve a long way from anyone's garden, one of us sent some photos to Steve Young at New York Flora Association, who immediately got back to tell us that he had encountered a whole half-acre of this plant in a nature preserve in Onondaga County. “Its invasiveness is a concern,” he said.

When I read this reply, I began to worry. I have been growing and enjoying Leucojum for several years. If we are seeing the beginning of another invasive scourge, we need to get the word out widely so that it can be stopped before the plant crowds out our native wildflowers. The Leucojum in my garden went from four bulbs to nearly two dozen plants in a couple of years. Once it grabs hold in the woods, it could spread quickly. Sources on the web say that the seeds are wind and water dispersed, and thus get deep into the woods.

I checked the web and many gardening sites are recommending the plant, praising its ability to increase rapidly on clay. However, there are also reports of invasions elsewhere. In England, it has been recorded that flooding causes the stems to break and the fruits to be carried downstream and stranded in river debris on flood-plains or high on the banks during floods. All species of Leucojum contain poisonous alkaloids, indicating that they have few natural predators to keep the population in control. This adds up to a recipe for an invasion within a few years. We could have another Purple Loosestrife on our hands.

Since Summer Snowflake is a lovely flower that is still being sold in many garden centers, it is important to get the word out. People need to know of the problem. The flowers make fine indoor bouquets that last for up to a week. Merely picking the flowers and bringing them indoors will prevent the seeds from being dispersed.

Sigrin added the information that there is an organization that tracks invasive species and works to eradicate them, especially the emerging ones where there is hope of stopping their spread. The Capital-Mohawk PRISM (Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management) coordinates efforts in eleven counties.

Their website http://www.capitalmohawkprism.org/ has more information if you wish to pursue  this issue. Anyone finding Leucojum growing in the woods or along a stream should report the location to this organization.

The Horsetails Are "In Bloom!"

The weather was much nicer on Thursday, sunny and warmer, with little wind. I thought I'd enjoy a walk at Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail outside Saratoga, but wow, was it mobbed! Lots of families were out, with lots of children. It's great to see the kids in the woods, but I'm used to having the woods to myself, and I often had to step off the trail to maintain essential "social distancing." Consequently, I didn't stay long.  But I did stay long enough to find four species of Horsetail Reeds (Equisetum spp.), all in "bloom" (so to speak), being crowned with their strobili (spore-producing organs). Related to ferns and among the most ancient of plants on the planet, all of the horsetails I found today are woodland species that prefer a shaded and damp environment. 

Accessing the main trail from the Meadowbrook spur, I found the first of these horsetails, the Dwarf Horsetail (E. scirpoides), abounding in a low muddy swale that is crossed by a boardwalk. There, among the convoluted tangles of tiny wiry green stems, I found for the first time I've ever seen them, several strobili held aloft on the ends of some stems.  This horsetail species is said to prefer a calcareous habitat, a soil chemistry confirmed by the nearby presence of many Maidenhair Ferns, which are often an indicator of lime-rich soil.

The horsetail species most commonly encountered along Bog Meadow Trail (and probably everywhere else) is the Field Horsetail (Equisetum arvense). This species is at its most interesting stage of growth in spring, which is when it produces two very different looking plants, the tan-colored fertile stalks crowned with strobili and the sterile green plants that look like tiny Christmas trees. The green ones will persist by photosynthesizing throughout the growing season, growing taller and with longer branches. The fertile stalks will wither away, once the spores are dispersed.

Another species often encountered at Bog Meadow is the Wood Horsetail (Equisetum sylvaticum). This is our only horsetail with multiple branching, which gives the plant a very lacy look as it matures. This species bears its strobili atop some of its green stalks. The strobili will fall off once the spores are dispersed, while the rest of the plant will continue to grow, spreading its lacy branches throughout the summer. At Bog Meadow, Wood Horsetail occupies the same low swales as Field Horsetail and often intermingles with it. (I added a photo of the two species growing side-by-side later in the growing season.)

As its name implies, Water Horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile) grows in standing water. There are many areas along Bog Meadow Trail that meet that condition, and that's where you will find abundant populations of this very attractive species. Some of the individuals in a population will bear strobili atop their stalks, spore-bearing organs that will fall off once the spores are dispersed. I think this species has a very beautiful strobilus, as ornamental as a jeweled Easter egg.

Here's what that Water Horsetail will look like a bit later in spring, adding beautiful textural detail to the botanical mix that flourishes in the watery spots along this trail.

Quite often, when I mention my admiration for Horsetail Reeds, the response from others is "Ugh! What a nasty invasive!"  I guess they must be thinking of another native horsetail called Scouring Rush (E. hyemale), a sun-loving species that can indeed be quite an aggressive colonizer of its preferred habitat.  But the Horsetail Reeds I'm usually waxing enthusiastic about all grow in shady wooded wetlands,  where they coexist quite happily with many other native plants: Skunk Cabbage, Red and Nodding Trilliums, Golden Ragwort, Wood Anemone, Clintonia, Toothwort, Spring Beauty, Foamflower, Hooked Crowfoot, Marsh Marigold, Bog Buckbean, Dog Violets, Miterwort, Leatherwood, Spice Bush, and many other native plants too numerous to list.  After examining the mixed-plant photos I included here, I think most folks would certainly agree that "MY" horsetails are not behaving invasively or aggressively here along Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail.

B-r-r-r-r!

Oh my gosh, it is SO COLD!  Down into the 20s last night, and barely above 40 today, with winds gusting to over 20 miles per hour at times.  Spring sure seems to be taking a pause, just when the flowers were starting to come alive. Wondering how those flowers were bearing up, I donned my fleece coat and wool scarf and headed out to the Skidmore Woods to check on them this blustery afternoon.

Well, it seems that the wind had blown the petals off of the Bloodroot, since all that remained of the plants I could find were stems sticking up from folded leaves.  I did find plenty of Trout Lilies, but most had flowers that were barely open.  Were they still in the process of opening?  Or had they closed up again from the cold?

I bet it was the latter, since I did find this beautiful group wide open, where the sun was warming their snug niche in the shelter of the roots of a tree.

Here was a Trout Lily still in tight bud, thrusting up out of a compact mound of tightly curled moss. The moss looked so odd and unfamiliar to me, I took a closer look. Huh! It looked as if the long pointed leaves of the moss had curled up tight, as if each stem was wrapping its arms around itself as if shivering from the cold.  At closer range, the moss looked like Atrichum undulatum to me, a moss I know temporarily shrivels up when deprived of moisture.  With that cold wind gusting so hard today, it would be quite desiccating, so it did make sense to me that the moss would react this way.

I found few other flowers blooming in the woods today, with the exception of Spicebush shrubs that were sporting little puffs of bright-yellow blooms along their otherwise bare branches.  These appear to be male flowers, with anthers protruding.  Female flowers are borne on separate shrubs, but I could not find any female flowers today.

No Columbine flowers yet, but I did find their scalloped leaves, including this pretty cluster, so remarkably purple!

The Mayapple shoots, folded tight as furled umbrellas, were already pushing up through the leaf litter, the two-leaved plants bearing green flower buds, which were peeking out from between the unfolding leaves. As the plant matures, the leaves will surmount the single large white flower, which will bloom beneath the shade of the large flat leaves.

What a surprise it was, to find these fat buds of Large-flowered Bellwort, the dangling yellow flowers already pushing through their green bracts.  Considering that we're due for another sub-freezing night tonight, I wish these beautiful flowers had waited another week to emerge from the safe shelter of their buds.

Back Bay Beauty

Rainy, windy, and cold today. Brrrrr! The weather was much more pleasant on Monday, when I walked around the back bay of Moreau Lake. The Shadblow trees (Amelanchier sp.) overhanging the lake were not quite in bloom, but the dusty-pink buds were quite lovely in their own right.

 I was lucky to find a patch of Trailing Arbutus (Epigaea repens) that still had some fresh white blooms, although others in the patch were already fading. 

Probably my prettiest find of the day was a patch of a very small species of Haircap Moss (Polytrichum piliferum), its sperm cups crowded together in a colorful mass. This species has the common name of Bristly Haircap, suggested by the presence of fine white hairs at the end of each inrolled leaf.  When Haircap sperm cups mass together like this, they remind me of a carpet of tiny roses, sprinkled with the starry shapes of the leaves.

These Buds Are For You! (And a few flowers, too)

Down into the 20s last night. Snow predicted tonight.  Sigh!  Well, since Winter's decided to hang around a bit longer, I guess our flood of spring wildflowers will reduce to a trickle for awhile.  How about a little quiz to amuse us while we wait?  I found all these buds while walking the Zim Smith trail at Shenantaha Park near Ballston Lake this week.  Guess what plants these buds belong to, and I will come back in a day or two to ID them here.


No other of our native trees has buds as chrome-yellow as this.  Also if you pinch them, they smell like shoe polish (if you're of an age to remember what that smells like!).

Bitternut Hickory (Carya cordiformis)




I knew of a gardener who once cut this shrub species down because he thought its leaves were Poison Ivy.  He should have waited until he could see its distinctive inflated seed pods.

American Bladdernut (Staphylea trifolia)




I tested one of this shrub's common names by chewing on a twig.  Luckily, my mouth turned numb for only about an hour. One of only two citrus shrubs that grow this far north. Larval food for the Giant Swallowtail Butterfly.

Northern Prickly Ash (Zanthoxylum americanum)  Also called Toothache Tree.




Before this bud opened into this graceful fleur-de-lis shape, it resembled the head of a stork.

Sweet Viburnum, also called Nannyberry (Viburnum lentago)




I love the kitten-soft fur that warms the buds of one of our earliest-flowering trees.

Shadblow (Amelanchier sp.)



Some people call this a "weed tree." But the birds love to eat the seeds that hang from its boughs all winter long, and squirrels nip its bark in spring to lap up its sweet sap. These are the male flowers before they elongate to sway in the breeze and waft their pollen.  The female flowers grow on separate trees.

Box Elder (Acer negundo), the male flower buds.




It won't be long before those pinkish buds open to reveal the white four-parted flowers so typical of many plants of the Mustard Family.

Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata)




The purple-tinged buds of this berry bush are even prettier than the rather scraggly, off-white flower clusters that will bloom later in the spring.

Red-berried Elder (Sambucus racemosa)


While walking that Zim Smith bike trail, I could look down into a deep ravine where the Ballston Creek rushed along between steep shale cliffs.  I recalled that many spring wildflowers came into bloom down there well before any other place I knew, so I clambered down this very steep bank to see what I could see.

LOTS of spring wildflowers is what I saw!  These Bloodroots (Sanguinaria canadensis) had wrapped their leaves about their shoulders against the chilly wind.

In uncountable numbers, Dutchman's Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) decorated the creek's floodplain with clumps of lacy leaves and inflated-pantaloon blossoms.

I found one single Long-spurred Violet (Viola rostrata) here along the creek, and none others anywhere else I walked today.

I swear this ravine is the Enchanted Valley of the Early Bloomers.  Everywhere else I have looked this week, Red Trilliums (Trillium erectum) are barely out of the ground, let along sporting such remarkably red flowers.

Two days before, I had searched for just the slightest trace of Early Blue Cohosh (Caulophyllum giganteum) at another site, and here they were, already in full pollen-offering bloom and unfurling leaves.

I HAD found a few Trout Lilies (Erythronium americanum) earlier this week at other sites, but only solitary outliers, struggling to open a single blossom.  But here was a group of four, in full vigorous flower.

 And there were other flowers, too -- Wild Ginger, Toothwort, American Fly Honeysuckle, Early Meadow Rue, more -- that were just on the cusp of blooming. What IS it about this valley that the spring flowers seem to just love?  Is the soil enriched by minerals leeching from the shale? Is a cold-tempering mini-climate produced by a canyon-like depth to the ravine?  Do spring floods along the creek wash the snow away extra early?  Whatever it is that makes this valley so remarkable, I am enormously grateful that I and some other wildflower-enthusiast friends have come to know about it.

UPDATE:  Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!   One of this blog's readers, Sara Rall, has named all these buds correctly.  Click on the "Comments" to read her answers. 

Good Buds at Mud Pond

I went looking for spring flowers today at Mud Pond.  Would Shadblow be blooming, in drifts of white that look like clouds have settled on the mountainsides?  Or maybe Trailing Arbutus, exuding a heavenly fragrance worth falling on your knees to enjoy? Or those tiny white violets that grow near the edge of the pond, also fragrant, but only at certain times of day?  But nope.  No flowers today  (unless you count the rosy floral puffs on the Red Maple trees).  But I did find some buds just as pretty as flowers.  And other buds of interest, as well.

First, the buds I long to see every spring, the elegantly symmetrical, finely flocked, ample leaf buds of the Striped Maple tree.

I just can't get over how gorgeous these leaf buds are, pale jade touched with rose and covered with a fine down. The terminal buds are held aloft like a scepter, and all are borne as erect as candle flames on braceleted twigs that can range from a deep mahogany red to a dark forest green to a deep gray. In the dim light beneath a towering overstory, the velvety buds cast a pearly glow as if they were lit from within.

Here were some other buds that caught my attention, not for their beauty but because I had never seen such a thing before.  Oh, I have seen the clusters of buds at the terminal tips of oak saplings before.  But never with twisting golden threads streaming from them like this.  I just cannot guess what might have caused these unusual growths.  Maybe one of this blog's readers will solve this mystery for me.

UPDATE:  My friend Bonnie Vicki believes she has solved the riddle of these mysterious thread-like remnants.  She had seen similar threads on oaks that still held some dried leaves.  The stems of some of the leaves were disintegrating, revealing a similar threadiness to the interior of the stems.  Recent strong winds had ripped many leaves from the twigs, leaving behind the remnants of the leaf stems.  Great detective work, Bonnie!


These tobacco-brown, scimitar-shaped buds hold the leaves of a Witch Hazel shrub.  I know of no other tree or shrub that bears leaf-buds of this distinctive curving shape, so that makes Witch Hazel easy to identify, even before its leaves unfurl.

There were hundreds of Toothwort plants sprouting up near a stream that was pouring into the pond today.  And it won't be long before we see clusters of white, four-petaled flowers emerging from those closed buds.

I already mentioned the rosy floral puffs of the Red Maple trees that surround Mud Pond. But most of those flowers were too high up in the trees for me to get a good photo.  So I was delighted to find a branch hanging low over the water.

And there in the water, another sign of spring: a congregation of Whirligig Beetles.  They were mostly clustered tightly together, as if to keep each other warm on this chilly day.  But now and then, one or another would be overcome with an urge to "do his thing," and away he would swirl, around and around, setting circles to dance on the surface of the water.