Orchids Galore! Pitchers Aglow! One Glorious Paddle on Lovely Lens Lake!

Monday, July 5:  Sunny and cool! What a glorious day it was to head up to beautiful Lens Lake in the Adirondacks! My friends Sue and Ruth and I didn't even have to carry our Hornbecks far to set out across the serene, bog-mat-studded waters of this quiet lake, surrounded by mountains and forest. We could even hear loons calling!

Every other time my friends and I have visited this lake, we have headed out first to explore those floating bog mats, sphagnum-carpeted moveable islands with their fascinating collection of plants specifically suited to that habitat. But today we decided instead to ease our canoes along the shore, paddling slowly through quiet backwaters that held their own fascinating collection of plants.

The shoreline here is thick with shrubs, with Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) predominating. Although many of the boughs were now thick with developing seedpods, many of the vivid pink flower clusters remained.

It's hard to imagine a shrub with showier flowers than Sheep Laurel.  A close look at the flowers revealed that the "spring-loaded" stamens had done their job by now, so the pistils could now start to do their job of producing the seed.

The mossy banks beneath the shrubs were decorated with shed Sheep Laurel blooms, lovely even in their decline.

Sharing that shoreline with the laurel were occasional Labrador Tea shrubs (Rhododendron groenlandicum). Their clusters of white flowers had fallen by now, replaced by the pretty pink scale-covered buds that held the promise of next year's flowers. Note the fuzzy orange coating on the stems and the underside of the evergreen leaves, a distinctive trait of this aromatic bog and fen denizen.

Another, much smaller, shrub that grows along these shores is Bog Rosemary (Andromeda polifolia).  A Heath-family plant with leaves not at all fragrant like the culinary herb, it bears small pink bell-shaped flowers when blooming in spring and small pink pumpkin-shaped fruits this time of year.

Some of the ancient stumps along the shore are so huge they make me wonder how stupendous their trees would have been, back in their prime. Not only are these stumps remarkable for their size, they are also intriguing for the variety of lichens they now provide a home for.

Of course, I had to approach to peer more closely at that orange something on the side of the stump.  Here's what I found: a cluster of orange-tipped lichens called Cladonia incrassata.

Many fallen logs, too, display remarkable collections of lichens and mosses, well worth a close look to enjoy the beautiful variety of colors and textures.

There are rocky surfaces, too, that provide a home for interesting lichens.  This shoreline boulder was nearly completely covered with chocolate-brown and light-orange lichens, species I had never encountered before. Our friend Ruth Brooks supplied the name of the orange one: Porpidia flavicunda.

Every fallen log held a marvelous variety of plants, the decomposing wood providing the nutrients each species thrives on. On this small space alone, I could detect Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) with its still-curled flower stalks laden with buds; the red-stemmed, opposite-leaved plants that will later bear the pink flowers of Marsh St. Johnswort (Hypericum virginicum); and a single budding flowerhead of a Club-spur Orchid (Platanthera clavellata). Plus, of course, the ever-present varieties of mosses and lichens.

The summer lakeshore flowers were coming into their glory. Here are just two: spikes of the bright-purple Pickerelweed (Pontederia cordata) towering over a few of the pretty pink orchids called Rose Pogonia (Pogonia ophioglossoides). This represented just a few of the masses of Rose Pogonia we eventually came to observe in the course of our paddles.

When we came upon these orchids, we were truly stunned!  The color was so much more vivid, more of a fuchsia pink than the paler pink of the typical Rose Pogonia.  And the petals were so much narrower than those typical for a Rose Pogonia, too.  Could we possibly have stumbled upon Dragon's Mouth Orchid (Arethusa bulbosa) instead? The petals didn't seem quite right for that one, either. Darn, but I wish I had looked at the leaves!  Those of Arethusa are grass fine, while those of Pogonia are broader. Could these possibly be a hybrid? Informed opinions would be accepted gratefully.

Here's a closer photo of the typical Rose Pogonia bloom, for comparison:

And here is the typical flower of a Dragon's Mouth Orchid:

UPDATE: The consensus of expert opinion is that the flowers we found on the Lens Lake shore are indeed Rose Pogonia and not a hybrid with any other orchid.  But all agree that both the color and the shape of the petals are atypical and quite remarkable.

We saw many, many Northern Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) in the course of our paddles, but this trio of blooms almost shouted to us from the shore, as the sunlight illumined both the towering flowerheads and the vase-shaped leaves at the base.

Here's a closer look at the glowing cluster of leaves at the base of that trio of Northern Pitcher Plants.

Several aquatic species were showing their flowers to us today. I was particularly taken by this Watershield bloom (Brasenia schreberi), because both the pistillate and staminate parts were present together at the same time.  I usually see either the stamens or the pistils in a single bloom, not both at once.

According to a U.S. Forest Service post I read,  Watershield flowers "have an interesting biology. Flower buds develop underwater and are covered with slime. Flowers bloom over a two-day period. On the first day the bud emerges above the water. Sepals and petals open and bend downward. Although stamens and pistils are present in each flower, on the first day of blooming, only the pistils emerge. Stalks of the pistils lengthen and spread outward over the petals. At night, the flower stalk bends and the flowers submerge beneath the water. On the second day, flowers emerge from the water again, but with the pistils retracted. The stamen stalks are lengthened and the anthers open. In this way flowers are cross-pollinated. After blooming, the sepals and petals fold up and submerge. Fruit develops underwater enclosed in the petals and sepals."  Hmmm . . . . So which stage of blooming is this specimen at?

Fragrant Water Lilies (Nymphaea odorata) also have an interesting biology, in that we never see one that is not perfectly fresh and beautiful.  For as soon as the flower is pollinated, its retractable stem pulls the flower underwater to "plant" its fertilized ovary down in the mud. I hope this newly emerged damselfly can manage to fly away before that happens to its Water Lily perch! (I think this is a damselfly, with those goggly bar-bell eyes. Its mature colors won't emerge for a while, so I could not venture an ID as to species at this stage of its development.) 

We eventually left our close examination of plants along the shore and headed out to explore some bog mats. Our small Hornbeck solo canoes are just the right size (10 feet) to maneuver the tight channels that wind through the sphagnum islands.

The colors of several species of sphagnum moss can be quite dazzling!

One of the first plants we found was Horned Bladderwort (Utricularia cornuta), a  "rooted" bladderwort that does not float free as many other bladderworts do but stays put with its feet in the mud.   It is much taller than other bladderworts, too, bearing its yellow flowers, with their distinctive slender "horned" spurs, high atop slender stems.

A second yellow-flowered plant grows out of the bog mat, too. But this one, called Yellow-eyed Grass (Xyris montana) is shorter than the Horned Bladderwort, with three-parted flowers that emerge from scaly involucres, and it does have leaves, although they are as fine as grass. It was just beginning to bloom, so I could not get a good photo of its flower.

Did I mention that we found masses of Rose Pogonia as we paddled around the lake? At nearly every turn we were dazzled by the sight of these pretty pink flowers, thriving atop the sphagnum or peeking out from among the reeds.

Of course, wherever there are plants, there are bound to be bugs. Here is just a small selection of those we encountered today.

This caterpillar, the larva of a Smeared Dagger Moth (Acronicta oblinata), was found among the leaves of a Leatherleaf shrub. Considering the drab coloration of the adult moth, the colors of its caterpillar are remarkably brilliant.

We came across five Bluet damselflies caught by their wings in the sticky pads of a Spatulate Sundew. Under most circumstances, I accept that sundews have to eat, too, and leave them to their meal.  But these pretty little creatures were struggling so, and they seemed to be pleading "Help!" with their big blue eyes.  So I did do what I could to disentangle them, even though that meant dismembering the plant.

Here are two of the happy survivors on my knee, resting from their ordeal before they took to the air. 

And here was a male Frosted Whiteface Dragonfly.  He seemed like a real friendly guy, posing for photo after photo I took of him. In this one, he actually looks as if he were winking at me!

Another Rainy Day, Another Nature Preserve

More rain today.  But only off and on.  During a break between downpours this afternoon, I dashed off to Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail just outside of Saratoga Springs, hoping to find a few Canada Lilies (Lilium canadense) there. In previous years, I would find dozens of these gorgeous native lilies along this forested trail.  But the Scarlet Lily Beetle larvae have been destroying more and more of them each year.  Would any have survived?

I am happy to report that yes, a few Canada Lilies have indeed survived.  Among all the green of the mid-summer woods, their brilliant colors of oranges and yellows certainly did stand out,  so it was easy to spot a few.  Sadly, the giant multi-flowered specimens I used to find here have all disappeared.  All the lilies I found today bore but a single bloom.

But this gorgeous single bloom was worth wading through wet greenery to gaze upon more closely!

Very few flowers bloom in the gloom of a mid-summer fully leafed-out woods, but Pointed-leaf Tick Trefoil (Hylodesmum glutinosum) is actually quite happy here, to judge from the many specimens I found in full flower today.

The wee-flowered woodland plant called Enchanter's Nightshade (Circaea lutetiana) also prefers a shaded woods to bloom in, and I did find a few.

Not a flower, but this Eastern Bottlebrush Grass  (Elymus hystrix) did display a showy presence, with its spiky yellowish seed-heads standing out against a background of Hog Peanut's three-parted leaves.

Considering how soggy it was and has been for several days, I was surprised to find so few fungi fruiting today at Bog Meadow.  I did find this slime mould fruiting, though, a tiny patch of Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa, maybe two inches long, on a rotting log.  I might have mistaken it for one of our furry white caterpillars sheltering there from the rain

 Slime moulds are neither flora nor fungi, but occupy their own place in the natural scheme of things.  George Barron, in his guide Mushrooms of Northeast North America, writes that "slime moulds don't fit easily into our classification system:  they move and feed like animals; they engulf all kinds of organic particles in their paths . . .; they digest what they can; and animal-like, they violently eject unwanted particles. [They] are fungus-like, however, in producing fruitbodies that contain spores, which are dispersed by wind." What I found today on this rotting log was a mass of those tiny fruitbodies.

As with fungi, we are most likely to find fruiting slime moulds after a stretch of rainy days.  Also, that's when we're likely to find lots of pesky bugs as well -- mosquitoes, of course, but also tiny gnats that were swarming in front of my face, not biting, but gagging me when I breathed them into my open mouth. This was my solution today: poke fern fronds behind my ears, held in place by the temples of my glasses, so the fronds waved around my head and face with every step I took, fanning the gnats away.

I passed a fellow who was using this trail for his daily running workout. He didn't stop to chat, of course, but he did kind of give me the side-eye.

Dodging Raindrops, Finding Flowers at Orra Phelps

Friday, July 3:  I hadn't planned to go out today, with rain predicted for off and on all day. But feeling the stress of having lost our only remaining house-shading tree, a towering Box Elder blown down on Wednesday by an errant gale, I needed a nature fix to calm my nerves.  And where better to find calm green serenity but the Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in nearby Wilton. There's even a creek that runs through it, splashing and dancing over the rocks and throwing droplets up into the air, a process that produces negative ions in the surrounding air, known to cause moods to lift and nerves to be soothed.  So off I sped, raincoat clad, to dodge raindrops while I wandered this lovely preserve.

I wondered if I might find the spectacular Rosebay Rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) blooming here already.  It seemed a bit early yet, but as I approached the bank where this gigantic shrub leans over the stream, lo! I saw giant clusters of snowy-white flowers!

Yes, some floral clusters were wide open now!  Snowy-white petals, freckled with green, and studded with pale-pink anthers. What a glorious sight!

Other clusters were equally lovely, with some blooms wide open, while still-closed pretty pink buds waited their turn.

I wandered back to a sandy area where years ago I had found one or two Spiked Lobelia plants (Lobelia spicata). And again, there they were!  Dainty blue flowers stacked thickly on slender stems.  And beautifully silhouetted against a dark shady woods.

And oh, there were many more Spiked Lobelias than I had ever seen here! Their gentle blue color and dainty florets displayed such a contrast next to the brilliant yellow and sunburst shape of the Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) that shared their clearing in the woods.

As I wandered the now-soggy paths, I spied a few more open flowers, including the gracefully arching stems of  Common Agrimony (Agrimonia gryposepala), with bright-yellow flowers marching along the stems.

I was surprised to find only a single budding flower cluster of Wild Leek (Allium tricoccum), in the very spot I had seen a large patch of leek leaves back in May.  I sure hope this doesn't mean that the rest of its colony had been poached when Ramps (a popular name for this wild onion coveted by wild-food foragers) were in leaf last spring. The leaves have all died back by now.

Indian Cucumber Root (Medeola virginiana) grows abundantly near the stream that runs through the Orra Phelps Preserve. The spidery flowers that earlier dangled beneath the top tier of leaves have moved up to surmount the leaves by now, producing shiny green fruits that will in the fall become shiny blue-black, just as the top leaves are splashed with vibrant red patches. A beautiful plant, even though its flowers are hardly what one would call "showy."

The green plants, too, looked lovely today, freshly washed by the rain and glowing in the dim light of this cloudy day.  This Fan Clubmoss (Diphasiastrum digitatum) looked especially vivid, sprouting new bright-green growth.

Masses of various ferns grow in the damp soil near the stream, and today the handsome green fronds were spangled with sparkling raindrops.

Oh my, was THIS a surprise!  This trio of golden Canada Lilies (Lilium canadense) glowed like hanging lamps against the green that surrounded them.  There was ZERO chance I would not have spotted them! And if they had grown here before, I doubt I would have missed seeing them over all the years I have visited this preserve. Could Orra Phelps Nature Preserve possibly be a new site for them to grow?  I sure hope so, since other sites where I've found them before have been rendered inhospitable to Canada Lilies, due to infestations of the Scarlet Lily Beetle and its lily-devouring larvae.

Here's another photo of the Canada Lily, showing the pollen-laden anthers, sheltered from the rain by the freckled "tepals" (petals and look-alike sepals) that act like an umbrella.

Continuing my walk, I found one more Canada Lily, this one a deeper orange, vivid against the green of a patch of ferns.

Here was more vivid color, this time from the myriad Fuzzy Foot Fungi (Xeromphalina campanella) that had sprouted all over this rotting conifer stump. The word Xeromphalina means, roughly, "dry belly-button," referring to the little depression atop each mushroom cap.  The finely hairy mycelium that surrounds the base of each mushroom is what inspired the common name "Fuzzy Foot." It is always a treat to find these bright-colored mushrooms, massed by the hundreds on rotting logs, fruiting in sizes ranging from that of a dime to that of the head of a pin.

Here's a closer look at these amazing little mushrooms.

I put my finger here to reveal how truly tiny some of these Fuzzy Foot Fungi can be!

(To see my photos of the "fuzzy feet" of this fungus,  here's a link to another blog I posted about them.)

More mushrooms!  And wow, what a brilliant orange! The small size and rounded caps indicate these could be Orange Wax Caps (Hygrocybe cantharellus).  The Delicate Fern Moss (Thuidium delicatulum) beneath them provided a lovely green foil for the mushrooms' vivid beauty.

Yet another orangish fungus, set off once again by the vivid green of that Delicate Fern Moss. This one is smaller yet, barely an inch above ground, and (sort of) shaped to suggest its name, the Orange Earth Tongue (Microglossum rufum).  One of the sac fungi, it has no external fertile surface like gills or pores.  Its  flattened head is a spore sac that has a pore at the tip through which the mature spores are forcibly ejected into the air.

And what the heck is THIS! Could this be another fungus, perhaps the one called Dead Man's Fingers, just emerging from the soil?  But no, these buds were crisp and kind of juicy, more like plant tissue than fungal.  And look at the dark stringy root mass that surrounds the white nubbins.  No fungal mycelium looks like this, at least none that I know of.  I had a hunch, so when I got home I googled images of "Indian Pipe buds."  And there they were, chubby white nubbins, dark stringy root mass and all.  So that's what these are: the buds of the flower  Monotropa uniflora.  Some folks believe using the word "Indian" somehow offends our native peoples and would prefer the name Ghost Pipe. So OK, these are the buds of the plant called Ghost Pipe.  Definitely a flower, not a fungus.

Close, But No Showies! Near Misses in a Cedar Swamp

Cedar swamps are not for the faint-hearted wildflower hunters. Sharp branches claw your face and tear at your clothes as you push through the thickets, teetering along on fallen logs to avoid slipping off into shin-deep muck.  And yet, cedar swamps call to those of us who seek the flowers that grow in only this habitat, where calciphiles draw what they need from the deep-down substrate, while more acid-loving plants like orchids thrive on the sphagnum-covered surface. Lured by the chance that we might find Showy Lady's Slippers here (as well as the rare Pink Pyrola), I joined my friends Sue Pierce and Ruth Brooks to explore this particular Warren-county cedar swamp on a hot muggy day last week.

 Our first clue that we were definitely in the right place was this solid carpet of Naked Miterwort leaves. The only place I have ever seen this tiny, nearly invisible flower (Mitella nuda) was in a cedar swamp. Would I find these delicate greenish-yellow flowers here today?

Nope.  No Naked Miterwort flowers.  We were late for their bloom time, for sure.  But we did find just this one single flower stalk, now gone to seed, among all those tens of thousands of small, green, heart-shaped, scallop-edged leaves.  Turns out, the cute little seeds, clusters of tiny shiny-black orbs resting on shiny green disks, are just as intriguing as their feathery-bracted flowers would have been.

We did find a few other flowers in bloom. These dangling bells of One-sided Pyrola (Orthilia secunda) were evident among a patch of their shiny green basal leaves and a miniature forest of Dwarf Horsetail tangles (Equisetum scirpoides).

Right out in the water of a mossy-banked stream,  the dainty blue flowers of American Brooklime (Veronica americana) were illumined by a stray ray of sunlight piercing the cedar-branched gloom.

And look, our very first orchid of the day, one with the very romantic name of North Wind Green Orchid (Platanthera aquilonis)! And this was the first of many we found of these aptly named green orchids.

The flowers of the North Wind Green Orchid are just as green as their name suggests, so at first glance I thought they might still be in bud.  But no, a few of the florets were indeed in bloom.

We knew that Showy Lady's Slippers preferred a sunny spot, so when we spotted the glow of a clearing well off in the otherwise dimly lit thickets, we made as much of a beeline there as the branchy, mucky, stream-crossed terrain would allow.  And oh, were we rewarded for our efforts!

Well.  Sorta.  We found the LEAVES of nearly a dozen Showy Lady's Slippers all right (Cypripedium reginae).  And they even looked quite healthy. But not a single one held the gorgeous pink-and-white blooms that have earned them the right to be called "showy."  Or lived up to the reginae (queen-like) part of their scientific name. One or two showed evidence of deer browsing, but others perhaps were just not going to bloom at all this year.  Orchids can be like that. And we did see signs that someone had cleared some branches back to allow for more sun on this site.  So, perhaps next year!

And here was one more reward for our branch-scratched faces, bug-bitten brows, and mud-streaked shins:  a single specimen of Pink Pyrola (Pyrola asarifolia), still lovely even as its pink-tinged florets began to decline. We could see quite of few of its broadly oval leaves at this site, but only this single plant was in bloom.  Rated as a Threatened species (S2) in New York State, it's possible that it may not be as rare as reported, according to the New York Flora Association.  Considering the discomforts we suffered to find just this one, it could be that most folks just aren't willing to seek them out in their preferred, quite  difficult-to-access terrain. 

We found evidence yet, of one more orchid, and quite a few of them. Although it was still only in bud, the single, long, narrow leaf near the base of the stem and the much smaller leaves on the stem strongly suggested that this was a Little Club Spur Orchid (Platanthera clavellata).

Luckily, we know of several sites where Platanthera clavellata grows, sites that require much less discomfort to access, so we will go looking for them soon at those sites and will not have to return to this cedar swamp to witness them in bloom.  But I am still glad we entered this swamp today. At least we now know where some Showies grow, and perhaps we will yet encounter them blooming, when we return next year.