Springtime Warmth, At Last!

Today was the kind of day we wait for all year, when the light and the warmth and the birdsong and burgeoning flora convince us that winter is over at last.  We were not going to waste it, either, Sue and I, so we went for a walk together in Skidmore Woods, choosing trails that took us along a limestone ridge, the dappled sunlight making it all the way down to us through the still leafless canopy.

At first sight, we didn't see much that was blooming, but soon our eyes began to detect the numerous clumps of Hepatica just opening their pretty blooms to the warmth of the morning sun.   Sue and I both agreed that this was one of the biggest clumps of Hepaticas we had ever seen.

I didn't expect to find Leatherwood today, since deer had decimated the shrubs over the winter.  But lo!  We found out that the deer had missed quite a few.  I was so delighted to once again find their yellow-anthered trumpets dangling down from their just-opened furry buds.

The staminate culms of Plantain-leaved Sedge have not yet sprouted their wild-haired yellow anthers, but the feathery white pistillate flowers along the stems are already open, just waiting to receive that pollen.

I made sure to show Sue the patch of English Violets now blooming profusely along one of the carriage lanes that run through the woods, probably planted there by Victorian ladies, who might have enjoyed little nosegays of these delightfully fragrant flowers. 

 I puzzled over these violets for years, noting their pristine white petals with no dark veining at all, as well as the spur that was always colored deep purple.  Thanks to help from some botanist friends, I finally learned the name of this introduced species, Viola odorata, an intensely fragrant species that is usually deep purple.  Although this patch is the white (alba) variety, sometimes I see quite a bit of purple tingeing to the petals, as in this little clump.  There is a patch of the purple variety on the other side of the Skidmore campus, and those are equally fragrant.



If we have a few more of these warm sunny days, the forest floor will soon be exploding with bloom.  Already, we found some tiny babies, just waiting to open their buds.  The acorn cap lying next to it reveals how very small this baby Bloodroot is.

It won't be long before Early Meadow Rue will be opening those tightly packed buds.  This species bears staminate and pistillate flowers on separate plants, but I could not yet tell if this was a boy or a girl. When in full bloom, the difference is obvious.

No flower buds yet on these crinkly baby Wood Betony sprouts, each one of which could sit on a dime, they are so small.  What they lack in size, though, they make up for with color and texture.

After Sue had to leave to get ready for work, I decided the day was much too lovely to move indoors, and I drove a couple of miles away to the Bog Meadow Nature Trail just east of Saratoga.  I was hoping to find the Spring Beauty that flourishes there, but I saw no sign of it yet.   The Speckled Alders, however, were in full bloom, or at least some of their catkins were.  This cluster shows two ripened staminate catkins dangling down beside a not-yet-ripened one.  The fuzzy red puffs on the branch above are the female, pistillate flowers.

One section of the Bog Meadow trail is a virtual forest of Field Horsetail, and I saw today that its fertile stems had started to emerge.  After ripening, these stems will spill their spores from that cone-like structure on top (called a strobilus) and the entire structure will disappear.  The leafy green sterile stems, which grow separately from underground roots, can photosynthesize their own food and will persist through the summer and fall.

I had never before seen a fertile stem just emerging from the ground.  A little bug was already finding its strobilus irresistible.

Two Days in Spring

 The rain started this afternoon as soon as I stepped from my car at Moreau Lake State Park.  Oh well, it wasn't cold or windy, so I zipped up my raincoat and pulled up the hood and set out for a walk around the lake, which is lovely in almost any weather.

I had come here to see if Trailing Arbutus was yet in bloom (which it wasn't) and also to check on a log that I knew was covered with the liverwort Ptilidium pulcherrimum.  The wonderful thing about liverworts is that you can usually find them right where you found them last year.  And so it was.  Looking especially ruddy and fluffy, too.

Very few liverworts have common names, but this particular one does, and it's more or less a literal translation of its scientific one.  Ptilidium comes from a Greek word meaning "small feather,"  which aptly describes the fluffy, feathery leaves, very different from most other liverworts.  Pulcherrimum means, roughly, "beautiful," and some might think of this shaggy carpet of muddy red stuff as beautiful, I suppose.  At any rate,  the common name for it is "Lovely Fuzzwort," and with a name like that, who could resist adoring it?  Especially when it's adorned with shiny dark balls on lime-jello stalks, which it was today.  These are the fruiting bodies of the liverwort, so tiny I couldn't see them with my naked eye, but the macro on my camera showed me a good view of them.

I wouldn't know all this cool stuff about liverworts and mosses and such if I didn't have extremely knowledgeable friends like Evelyn Greene and Bob Duncan,  who are very much interested in what grows on logs and rocks and are kind enough to try to teach me about it.  I joined Bob and Evelyn for a walk yesterday (a much sunnier day) to explore the Hudson riverbank downstream from the Thurman bridge near Warrensburg. We had hardly stepped from our car, however, before we encountered mossy boulders that needed to be examined.

In the photo above, Evelyn is standing on the golf course of the Thousand Acre Ranch near Stony Creek, and the rosy-tipped trees in the distance are Silver Maples lining the banks of the Hudson River.  The fat red flower buds of these maples were just coming into bloom.

We had come to this particular spot on the river because Evelyn was curious to see if frazil ice still remained along the shore here, where it has been known to accumulate in winters past.  We saw a trace of frazil here and there on the banks, looking like bright white deposits of snow, but for the most part the banks were bare.

The scene upstream was a different matter entirely!  We drove north from the Thurman bridge until we reached the section of the Hudson River called the Ice Meadows, where heaps and heaps of frazil ice still mounted the banks right up to the road.   I would say it's pretty obvious how this section of riverbank came to be called by this name.

Can't Stop It Now!

Several days of rain and cold have certainly slowed the progress of spring, but yesterday a break in the storm clouds allowed for a walk in the Skidmore Woods, where I saw many signs that nothing can stop it now.

The same cluster of pink Hepatica that had opened its blooms last week was now hunching its shoulders against the cold and cowering under its furry bracts.  But let just one ray of warming sun reach this sheltered spot by a rock, and those pretty blooms will once again lift their faces to the light.

The English Violets were yet too chilled to release their sweet fragrance on the air,  but when I knelt close and lifted a bloom to my nose, I detected that heavenly scent, safely sequestered within its folded flowers. This species of violet (Viola odorata var. alba) is not native to northern New York, but it certainly thrives in the Skidmore Woods, where it is one of the very first flowers to bloom.

Last week there was not a sign of Trout Lily leaves, but on Saturday I found many hundreds adding their speckled greenery to the forest floor.

Red-berried Elder is one of the very first shrubs to burst its buds and shoot forth fingers of compound leaves, centered by clusters of tightly packed flowers-to-be.  The yellowish flowers will not, when they bloom, be much to remark upon, but oh, just wait until June, when bunches of scarlet fruits hang from the branches, adding a dazzling display to the by-then-shady woods.

False Hellebore has rocketed up in a swampy spot where I found not a trace of these shoots three days ago.   It appears that they shot up so fast, they split their seams as they rose and swelled.  Now I await the voluptuous curves of their broad pleated leaves, so much more beautiful than the scraggly stalks of flower spikes that will follow in June.

The perfect tiny spheres of Spicebush buds have opened a crack, so I can glimpse the swelling anthers within.  With the coming warmth expected this week, I await the sight of their bright yellow puffs floating on the forest air.

Aha!   It appears that Red Squirrels are starting to do spring cleaning.  For years, I puzzled over finding such sheared-off twigs (this one's Red Maple) littering the forest floor in spring.  The sharp cuts at the ends indicate that the twigs were bitten off (rather than torn off by wind), but then left to rot on the ground, not gathered again for food.  Then wildlife expert Vince Walsh described to me the housekeeping habits of these bushy-tailed little brush hogs, who like to clear pathways for speedily traveling through the trees, shearing such obstacles as budding twigs like this.

Tiny First Flowers

Draba verna, a tiny little Mustard-Family plant that's among the first flowers to bloom

Within a few weeks now Draba, the smallest flower that blows, will sprinkle every sandy place with small blooms. He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.

Draba asks, and gets but scant allowance of warmth and comfort; it subsists on the leavings of unwanted time and space. Botany books give it two or three lines, but never a plate or portrait. Sand too poor and sun too weak for bigger better blooms are good enough for Draba. After all, it is no spring flower, but only a postscript to a hope.

Draba plucks no heartstrings. Its perfume, if there is any, is lost in the gusty winds. Its color is plain white. Its leaves wear a sensible woolly coat. Nothing eats it; it is too small. No poets sing of it. Some botanist once gave it a Latin name, and then forgot it. Altogether it is of no importance -- just a small creature that does a small job quickly and well.

         -- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949

Like a favorite carol we love to sing at Christmas, Leopold's musings about Draba verna (also known as Whitlow Grass) bear equally enthusiastic repeating -- yea, even caroling --  as we rejoice in the return of one of the very first flowers of spring.  Such a wee bit of a thing, if it did not grow in such profuse numbers as to frost a sandy bank at Moreau Lake with a fine white haze, I would never see it.  But now I know to go looking for it on the first truly warm days of spring, as it was today.  And there it was!  Only a few days ago when I went to look, there was nothing but bare dirt, not even a sign of its wooly little rosettes.


There's another tiny, very early bloomer I went to look for today -- and found! --  at Orra Phelps Nature Preserve in Wilton, and even though this flower is many, many times larger than Draba, it is indeed very small, as trilliums go.  This is the dainty diminutive Snow Trillium, a brave little beauty that sometimes, true to its name, will come into bloom even while snow still lingers in the woods.  Even hard frost does not mar its pristine white flowers.

It's odd that this particular trillium should be so cold hardy, considering that its native territory is far to the south of upstate New York.  All my botanist friends believe that it must have been planted years ago by Orra Phelps herself, as she was wont to do with species that she loved.  By whatever route these lovely Snow Trilliums came to reside in Wilton, they certainly seem to have adapted well, for I found seven blooming today, surrounded by several other plants that may yet bear flowers.  If Orra did indeed plant these trilliums, I do thank her for it, for otherwise I would never have the privilege of laying my eyes on them.

Enchanted Forest

"That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people.  There are no trees like the trees of that land.  For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold.  Not till the spring and the new green opens do they fall, and then the boughs are laden with yellow flowers; and the floor of the wood is golden, and golden is the roof, and its pillars are of silver, for the bark of the trees is smooth and grey."

-- Legolas, elf of the Woodland Realm, describes his homeland Lothlorien, in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. 

I thought I had been transported to an enchanted elven forest today, as I walked in the silvery spell of a beech grove in the Skidmore Woods, a radiant sun pouring down warmth from a cobalt sky, the translucent leaves of the baby beeches fluttering in the slightest breeze, setting the air alight.  At last we had a lovely warm day that truly felt like Spring!


Pretty pink Hepaticas were holding their newly opened faces to the sun.

Even their tattered leftover leaves were glowing like rubies, lit from beneath by rays that made it all the way down through the trees to the forest floor.

And wonder of wonders, all the frog princes were filling the air with their songs of love!

Wood Frogs and Spring Peepers were sharing a pond, and oh, how the forest rang!

Ospreys Return to Ballston Creek

 Reports were coming in that Ospreys are nesting now, so my friends Sue and Ruth and I made our way today to one of their known nesting sites, the Ballston Creek Nature Preserve near Ballston Lake.  This is another of the many wooded areas in Saratoga County protected by the land-conservation organization Saratoga PLAN, and this site offers not only a beautiful forested trail, but also views of a swamp that is home to many wetlands-loving birds.

Great Blue Herons are the birds that come most immediately to view, and how could anyone miss them?  The Ballston Creek swamp is pillared with tall dead snags, many of which hold large shaggy heron nests, each one watched over today by a single long-shanked, yellow-billed giant of a bird.

One nest stood out from all the others, not only because it was easily twice the size, but also because it had no heron standing guard on its rim.   We guessed that this might be the nest that the Ospreys had appropriated from the herons, and it didn't take long for our guess to be proved correct.  After we sighted first one and then another Osprey soaring around the swamp, eventually one approached the nest and began to circle around it.

Sue, with her excellent eyesight, was the first to spot the twig in the Osprey's talons.  One of the pair was bringing new nesting material, and it soon proceeded to install the twig in its nest.   It once again  flew away, but only a few moments later it returned with yet another twig.  It won't be long before this pair will be sitting on its eggs, which take about five weeks to hatch.  Then we can return to this site to watch the parents rear their young.

 This makes the fourth year I've been visiting this heronry at Ballston Creek, and every year the Ospreys have returned,  sometimes squabbling with the resident herons over prime nesting sites.  The nest they were using two years ago was demolished by storms last year, and the nest they are currently using was once occupied by Great Blue Herons.

This photo  below was taken at Ballston Creek by my husband Denis Donnelly about three years ago, using his own camera, which has a much better lens for distant birds than does mine.

 Although birding was our primary objective today, botanizing is always on our agenda as well.  Here, Sue and Ruth are scrutinizing the forest floor, searching for signs that our spring wildflowers might soon be preparing to bloom.  Although weather forecasts call for warming temperatures in the coming week, this morning started off really cold (note hats and gloves), with a roaring wind that made it seem even colder.  So we didn't really have our hopes up about finding any flowers.

But we sure found signs that it won't be long!  The buds of Hepatica are well defended against frosty mornings, wrapped as they are in their furry buntings.

And oh look, one of the buds was actually open!

I have never seen such multitudes of Carolina Spring Beauty as carpet the woods of the Ballston Creek Nature Preserve, and evidence was rife today that their blooming will happen soon. The leaves are green and buds are clustered on their stems.  I'm not quite sure if that pink-beaked growth is part of the Spring Beauty plant, but whatever it is, it looks as if it's about to do something wonderful, too.  Hurray for Spring!

Lessons in Forest Forensics

 Tom Wessels (above, center) can read the woods the way most of us can read a mystery book -- except he will figure out whodunit long before most of us casual woodswalkers even have a clue about the forest's cast of characters.  An ecologist and professor at Antioch University New England, Wessels is the author of Reading the Forested Landscape, a guide to discerning the history of virtually any piece of wooded land, and on Saturday afternoon, he led a group of interested folks through the forested landscape of the Hennig Preserve up in the Town of Providence at the western edge of Saratoga County.  The experience was offered as a gift to its volunteers by Saratoga PLAN (Preserving Land And Nature), and took place in this land-conservation organization's largest nature preserve, which, as these photos reveal, still lay deep in snow.


The brilliantly sunny afternoon began at the Providence Town Hall with a lecture/slide show in which Wessels illustrated the many ways humans have left their impact on the landscape, including lands that have reverted to mature forest after decades, even centuries, of use as pasture, cropland, or woodlots.  The 604-acre Hennig Preserve offered a splendid example of just such a forest, containing such obvious evidence of human habitation as old stone walls, a pre-Civil-War house foundation and well, and other intriguing features.  Armed with much new information about how to interpret this evidence, we then followed our master sleuth into the forest itself for a fascinating several-hour adventure.

This old stone wall gave Wessels an opportunity to demonstrate how to determine which side of the wall was once used for pasture and which was plowed for crops.  The very level land on the left would indicate a field that was annually plowed and cleared of rocks, while the rockier and more uneven land on the right would suggest that this parcel could have been pastureland, which did not need to be plowed as often, nor cleared of rocks.

Another section of the woods was filled with what Wessels calls "pillows and cradles," humps and depressions that form when living trees are blown over, creating pits in the forest floor that the trees' roots once filled, surmounted by heaps of roots and soil that came up with the fallen tree.  Over time, as the tree roots decay, these pits and mounds smooth out, but the forest floor retains a billowy quality that would have been leveled by plowing or beaten down by the hooves of grazing animals.  A landscape like this, then, was most likely used solely as woodlot and never cleared for agriculture.

This obvious evidence of human habitation, a cellar hole, also includes a clue that the house pre-dated the common use of cast-iron stoves for interior heating.  The rectangular structure in the middle of the far wall is what Wessels called a "basement," a word that was originally used to describe the masonry structures that supported a fireplace and chimney.  This evidence would indicate that the house pre-dated the Civil War of the 1860s.

When we reached a part of the forest that contained a large mound that was mostly clear of trees, Wessels described to us the methods and dangers of burning charcoal in just such mounds, a process that required constant attention by skilled colliers and could take several months.

When we explored areas of the forest that had not been cleared for pasture or cropland but rather left as woodlots for timber and firewood, we could see evidence of old tree stumps long after they had rotted away.   These two little Yellow Birches, for example, did not start to grow in mid-air, as they now appear, but rather began their life as seedlings sprouting on the surface of a stump that has since disappeared with age.

We encountered a good number of well-rotted tree stumps and learned to tell a White Pine from an Eastern Hemlock stump by either the presence or absence of  bark.  Hemlock bark is full of tannin and thus resistant to rot, and so we could find rings of Hemlock bark containing nothing but crumbles of what had been the wood.  In the case of White Pines, its bark drops off after about 25 years, but this conifer containes whorls of branches resistant to rot, as in the case of this stump with the whorl still intact. According to Wessel, it would take at least 70 years for a pine stump to achieve this degree of decomposition.

These are just a few of the fascinating lessons we learned on this afternoon's walk in a beautiful woods with a friendly group of folks committed to preserving such remarkable woodlands as the Hennig Preserve.  Or any of the other tracts in Saratoga County preserved by Saratoga PLAN.  Tom Wessels provided far more information than I could retain at first hearing, so I was happy to be able to purchase Forest Forensics, a clearly illustrated field guide that accompanies his even more comprehensive Reading the Forested Landscape (www.countrymanpress.com). 

It will be fun to see if I can apply this information as I move through all my favorite woodlands.  I'm sure I won't always be able to deduce the meaning of every feature I find, since even Wessels himself can't always explain the mysteries he encounters.  Near the end of our walk on Saturday, we came across several piles of rocks in the woods that by Wessel's own admission didn't conform to any of the theories he had posited.  But that's okay.  I like to think that some mysteries remain that have yet to be explained.