I was going to do this post on the day before Thanksgiving but then it snowed so I got a little off track. Anyhow, here is another forest mystery for all of you mystery lovers out there. See the hole in the stone wall? There is no way the wall was built with that hole there, so how did it get there and what is holding up the stones above it that appear to be floating in air? Move one stone and they all go.
Japanese barberry berries (Berberis thunbergii) couldn’t seem to figure out what color they wanted to be. This shrub is one of our most invasive and it has been banned here in New Hampshire but there are so many in the woods, all covered in berries, that it is close to impossible to stop its spread.
Up in Nelson, New Hampshire the black bears like using telephone poles to mark their territory and they bite and claw them to make sure everyone pays attention. They can take quite large chunks of wood from a pole with their teeth.
Does the chipmunk live in that hole in the log? He wasn’t about to go into it while I was watching so I can’t answer that question. They usually live in stone walls in these parts so I’m guessing no, but he could have a food stash in there.
The larches (Larix laricina) went out in a blaze of glory this year. The wood of larches is tough but also flexible and Native Americans used it to make snowshoes. They called the tree tamarack, which not surprisingly, means “wood used for snowshoes” in Algonquin. They also used the inner bark medicinally to treat frostbite and other ailments.
Larch needles are very soft and quite long compared to many of our other native conifers. Larch is the only conifer in this area to lose its needles in the fall.
There are good reasons why expert mycologists want little to do with little brown mushrooms, and this photo shows one of those reasons. Deadly galerina mushrooms (Galerina autumnalis) are, according to mushroom expert Tom Volk, so poisonous that eating even a little bit can be deadly. It is common on rotting logs in almost all months of the year and can fruit in the same spot several times. If you collect and eat wild mushrooms it is one that you should get to know very well.
Orchids might seem fragile but many are actually quite tough, like the evergreen downy rattlesnake plantain shown here. I get as much enjoyment from seeing its beautiful silvery leaves as I do its small white flowers. I was pleased to find these plants in a spot where I’ve never seen them before. According to the USDA this native orchid grows as far west as Oklahoma and south to Florida, though it is endangered there.
In the summer when there are leaves on the understory shrubs striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) is almost invisible, but at this time of year it’s easier to see and I’ve found more and more plants each fall. It is still quite rare here though; I know of only two or three small colonies. It likes to grow in soil that has been undisturbed for decades and that helps account for its rarity.
Pisissewa (Chimaphila umbellata) is another native wintergreen, though not as rare as some of the others. Its glossy green leaves make it easy to see in both summer and winter. It prefers cool dry sandy soil and I always find it near conifers like pine, hemlock and larch. The large colony where this photo was taken usually flowers quite well, as the many seed pods show. This plant, like many of the wintergreens, is a partial myco-heterotroph, meaning it gets part of its nutrition from the fungi that live in the surrounding soil. Odd that a plant would be parasitic on fungi, but there you have it.
Five chambered starflower (Trientalis borealis) seed pods look like tiny soccer balls and are very hard to get a good photo of. Luckily the chalky white color makes them easy to see against the brown leaves. I bent one over this penny so you could see how small it really was. You can imagine how small the seeds inside are. Seeds are carried here and there by insects and don’t germinate until their second year. Germination is so rare that it has never been observed in the wild and, though they are easily grown from seed in nurseries, most of the plants found in the forest have grown vegetatively from underground tubers.
This powdery goldspeck lichen (Candelariella efflorescens) had a tiny number 6 on it.
Tiny ice stalactites and stalagmites grew and pushed up a crust of soil covered ice. This formed a small cave, and I had to get a look inside. The penny gives a sense of scale.
This bit of ice looked like a tiny trimmed Christmas tree.
This salmon pink oak leaf with violet red veins was a very beautiful thing, but I had a hard time identifying it. I think, because of the leaf’s shallow lobes and color, that it might be a white swamp oak (Quercus bicolor.) I can’t remember ever seeing another one like it.
If you reconnect with nature and the wilderness you will not only find the meaning of life, but you will experience what it means to be truly alive. ~Sylvia Dolson
Thanks for coming by.
New Hampshire Garden Solutions 
You have an awesome site and have enjoyed learning from it and sharing with my friends.
Thank you Darlene, I’m glad that you’re enjoying it!
A good quotation too.
Thanks Ben. That quotation is very true, I think.
Reblogged this on Dawn of Divine Rays and commented:
Another lovely post, Allen. Thank you for placing the coin there .. at least we can gauge the size of the stalactites and stalagmites. It’s very interesting to see how nature have its own way of ‘having a breath of fresh air’ through the soil. I’m very surprised that there are leaves still left on the trees. The strong wind here have since taken all the leaves off. Looks like I might be growing more evergreens next year for the birds here. Wishing you a happy holiday in advance Allen. Have been very busy cleaning up this old house before the ‘real winter’ sets in. No front main entry door .. hopefully next week .. they will finally get it installed. Take care, Allen. Namaste
Thank you Agnes. Most of our tress have lost their leaves now except the beeches and birches which always hang onto theirs until spring. Evergreens make good shelter for birds and animals and they also make a good wind break to keep those winter winds off your house.
I hope you don’t mean that you literally don’t have a front door! That could be a little cool. It would be nice if they got the new one installed before the real cold weather sets in.
I hope you and your family have a great Christmas too! Thanks again.
Yes, we still have the old front main entry door intact .. just that there are lots of drafts and I’ve to use masking tapes to keep the foyer in a more ‘reasonable’ temp. It’s not a standard door with just one door . .it also have two side lites with a mail drop opening at the bottom right corner. I don’t think that the old blown glass on the frames are a bit loose and the old seal should be gone by now – built in 1918. Thank you Allen for your very kind tips and advices. Evergreens take a long time to grow and I’ve already planted two Korean firs for the front yard, 3 golden arborvitae at the back to act as windbreaker ‘cos all my plants are pointing south east .. lol. Well, wishing you a happy week, Allen. Namaste
Yes, old houses come with a lot of drafts, it seems. A couple of shovelfuls of composted (not dehydrated) cow manure used as a top dressing around the base of each evergreen once per year will help them grow faster and be healthier. Just make sure it doesn’t touch the trunk.
Thank you, Allen.
You’re welcome.
wonderful post as always. I love seeing the bear claw marks and such on poles. Reminds me we share the environment with so many creatures, whether we see them every day or not.
Thanks Martha. I think they see us far more often than we see them.
That hole in the wall is quite curious. I like the little chipmunk, wish we had them here, they’re very cute and mischievous looking. Berberis is very common in gardens here, I have some, but I’ve never seen it growing in the woods.
Chipmunks are cute unless you try to touch them. Then they become all teeth-very sharp teeth! It could be that your birds don’t like to eat barberry berries. They spread them everywhere here and in some places it’s becoming a real problem. Neither people or animals can get through the woods where thickets of them grow.
They do have very sharp thorns.
I’ve heard that guys hunting rabbits with a dog, or dogs, would tear down a place in a stone wall where a rabbit had taken refuge; so the dogs could get at the rabbit. And I’ve seen quite a few messy places in wall where it looked like just that had happened. I doubt if your mystery wall had that happen, but I thought I’d mention it. The theory of a desirable rock, rose quartz maybe, being taken out; or a piece of a log rotting away, I like best.
Thank you for the input Charlotte. Actually there has been a law on the books since 1791 that says “if any person shall dig up or carry away any stones, ore, gravel, clay or sand belonging to the proprietors of
any common land, or to any particular person or persons, every such offender shall forfeit and pay treble damages to the party or parties injured thereby” and this includes stone walls, so nobody should be touching them. The reason it’s so important is because they are often used as property boundary lines.
I agree though, that someone could have taken a stone to make the hole in this wall. It’s a mystery that I don’t think will ever be solved!
Every item was pretty and interesting! Great work!
Thanks Montucky!
The chipmunk is adorable and definitely looks like he’s storing food for the winter, and if this past week is any indication, is going to be one to remember.
It pays to watch squirrels and chipmunks in the fall. They usually know more about winter than we do. I think they’ll do fine getting through it this year-there are more acorns than I’ve ever seen out there.
I would agree about the swamp white oak. Funny about the stone wall with a window. Maybe a quirky passing backpacker?
Thanks, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a swamp white oak before this one. That’s another plausible explanation for the hole in the wall, but that stone would have to have been removed very carefully. A backpacker with time on his hands and a sense of humor maybe.
Excellent shots, and I like the snowflakes. Rock balancing is fascinating. Check out this guy’s site. His rock balancing is amazing. http://www.gravityglue.com/
Thank you Paula. I’m wondering why people have mentioned snowflakes. I have them turned off and I can’t see them, but apparently some can.
That rock balancing sure is amazing, but he has a lot more free time than I do!
Nice, love seeing the Orchids and wintergreen, we have both of those around here on the mountain! 🙂
I’m glad to hear that Michael. I hope there are big colonies of both of them there.
I have had another thought. In thinking about the phytophthora ramorum disease again I looked it up and saw a photograph of a tree with a bleeding canker. It was a pinkish patch on the tree trunk. I seem to remember you posting a photograph of a tree trunk with one such coloured patch. I hope that it isn’t diseased. I read that the disease is present in the USA but hasn’t had such a devastating effect as it has here.
I Googled it too. I’ve never seen anything like the bleeding cankers, thankfully. That’s a nasty looking disease. I have seen pink patches on trees but they looked good and healthy. I remember where one of them is and I’ll have to keep an eye on it to see what happens.
The larches looked wonderful. They are one of my favourite trees. Sadly the European Larch is slowly being wiped out by the pathogen phytophthora ramorum which causes ramorum disease. Very sad. I liked the ice cave and also the stone wall mystery. From my experience of seeing many stone walls I know that skilled builders could quite easily build a gap into a wall. The original builders, without any knowledge of physics, knew how to place stones to make arches etc without the need of mortar.
Thank you Clare. I’m sorry to hear about your larches. It seems like there’s always something waiting to attack our trees, and they can have a rough time of it.
I’ve built s few dry stone walls and I could build a hole into a wall easy enough, but I couldn’t do what appears in that photo without a removable form or another pair of hands. Those stones are resting against each other perfectly so one holds another up without a keystone like an arch would have. It looks like a good wind would blow them down!
Mysterious! I see what you mean.
Were there sheep farmers around Keene in years past? Sheep farmers built “lace walls” loosely laid with gaps in the stones because sheep go nuts if they can’t see what’s on the other side of a wall. Martha’s Vineyard is covered with stone walls that look like rocks have been removed, and Ireland’s walls are built that way too. Maybe the farmer here made just a few windows for his sheep and not the whole wall!
Yes, in the early 1800s all of the hills around town were cleared and many farmers raised sheep. I’ve never heard of or seen a lace wall, but it’s an interesting theory. This hole would have been big enough for a lamb to wriggle through, but not a full grown sheep. I’ll have to look up lace walls. They sound very interesting. Thank you for the information!
Viewing your work is like reading a good text book while on an adventure of discovery with a knowledgeable guide. We clearly enjoy the same things, it is clear, and we probably are neighbors.
Thank you, I appreciate the compliment. I think you said that you live in Fitzwilliam so we are sort of neighbors. I spend quite a lot of time in Fitzwilliam in the summer visiting Rhododendron State Park and Rockwood Pond.
You seem to have a never ending supply of new and interesting subjects! Enjoyed.
Nature just keeps on giving! I’m glad you’re enjoying seeing what I see.
OH I enjoy!
The hole in the rock wall would make me do a double-take as well, although I have no new ideas as to how it came to be there.
I think that you’re right about the chipmunk stashing food in the hollow tree, they prefer to live in burrows over the winter, but store food in many places.
The Galerina mushrooms are just one of the reasons that I don’t eat wild mushrooms, the other reasons are all the other poisonous kinds.
The ice cave and tree were really cool, as were the larches.
Thanks Jerry. I don’t eat wild mushrooms either, for the same reasons as you. 9 times out of 10 when you see a chipmunk here they run into gap in a stone wall, so they must build their burrow entrances inside the wall where larger animals can’t dig it up. Clever little rascals!
Was neat to see one of our bear-clawed utility poles up here in Nelson. Yesterday morning I walked by another pole in the woods between Tolman Pond Rd and Lead Mine Rd and noticed bear hair stuck among the splinters–they often rub against the poles. In some areas it’s hard to find a pole that has not been marked by a bear, unless the pole is near a house or on a heavily travelled road. Sue Mansfield (my ex-) studies black bears in Ely, Minnesota (check out bear.org and bearstudy.org)–when she was living here we documented many such poles and other bear sign.
Thank Al, I was hoping to find some bear hairs but I didn’t see any. I was on Bailey Brook Road and looked at several poles. I go up there occasionally to see how the falls are running. they’ve been kind of disappointing this year but we had a dry September so I’m not surprised.
Wow-your ex must have nerves of steel to walk and sleep with bears! if I slept with a bear it would be because I passed out when I saw him! Those are excellent websites-thanks for the links.
One of the things that the researchers (Sue, and Dr. Rogers) are trying to do is to dispel some of the myths about black bears. A common one is the danger of getting between a mother bear and her cubs—dangerous to do if it’s a grizzly, but not so with black bears (which is what we have), unless perhaps you are in a tree with the cubs above you and the mother below you. When I was out there I got between a mother an cubs several times with no problem, Other times had nervous bears lunge at me (these are wild bears with radio collars). As the researchers have said, when you are in the woods you might be concerned about falling and breaking your leg, getting a stick in your eye, stumbling on a hornet nest, or getting a disease from ticks or mosquitoes—but if you are realistic you don’t worry about bears, even if you see a mother and cubs. (I might be a little more careful around a moose and calf, from what I’ve heard, or wary of an unfamiliar dog or person, or a raccoon or fox that seemed too tame and might have rabies).
Thanks Al. I don’t live in fear of bears-it would be hard to spend time in the woods everyday if I did-but I think we’re probably both better off if I stay out of their way. I would think that seeing a human would stress them out even if it was in a small way.
Most of the animals I see are running away and I expect a bear would do the same, but on the other hand a hiker was just mauled to death in New Jersey by a black bear and I’ve watched videos of bears stalking humans on you tube, so I think a healthy respect for them is wise.
It’s common for people to remove quartz chunks from walls. I would wager that someone removed a large piece of quartz and then finessed the wall to make it look like it is. How do I know people do this? I plead the 5th.
That could be too, but balancing those rocks like that must have been quite a job!
The ice sculpture to me looks like a miniature pagoda… 🙂
I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right!
Love the stone wall mystery. 🙂
Thank you Judy. That’s a really odd thing to see!
Were the Oak leaves fuzzy hairy on the backsides? Did you notice any acorn caps nearby? Quercus bicolor caps are often paired and on relatively long stalks (peduncles).
Good questions Josh. Unfortunately the oak was on the side of a road and it had been cut in the past, several times I think, and was barely knee high so it didn’t have any acorns on or near it. I didn’t look at the back of the leaf, even though I know better. The worst part is, I go so many places that now I can’t remember exactly where I saw it. I’ll still keep an eye out for those unusually shaped leaves in the spring though.
We don’t see the evergreen downy rattlesnake plantain in central Ohio but have seen this beautiful plant in the mountains of Georgia and North Carolina. The hole in the stone wall is hard to explain. Perhaps the wall was built around something that rotted away or otherwise disappeared with the passing of time.
That’s interesting. The USDA map says it grows in your area, but I have trouble with the reliability of those maps so I’m not surprised that you haven’t seen it in Ohio.
Amelia guessed the same thing you did about that hole in the wall and it is possible that it happened that way. Maybe a farmer in the 1800s thought he’d play a joke on the future!
Some of your posts are not just showing us the things that you have seen but more like sharing secrets with us. I think you could write a book on the secrets of the forest that you have seen! I love a good mystery! Do you think a log or something perishable (sandy stone?) had been placed in the wall and after all the stones settled in place after time the perishable element has disappeared? (I have to have a go at a mystery 🙂 ) Amelia
Thank you Amelia. I’ve actually been thinking recently that a book about not only the things I find but how to find them might help others find them too.
A log rotting away would certainly explain that hole in the wall but we also have earthquakes here occasionally and I wondered if the stone that was there might have simply rolled out during an earthquake. Both theories are certainly plausible.
Your ice sculpture photographs are so interesting, Sylvia Dolson has it just right. I had not considered before that there would be Black Bears where you walk, have you seen one?
Thank you Julie. I’ve seen them here in my yard twice now but luckily I haven’t met one in the woods yet. It’s bound to happen eventually though, so I hope I’m prepared.
Love the shot inside the ice cave. Such beauty and wonder in nature!
Thanks Laura. I’m glad you like the ice cave. It was a tough one to get!
I loved the puzzle about the hole in the wall and the sweet little ice tree. You were clever to spot that.
Thank you Susan. I had to lie flat out on the ground to peek into that ice cave so I’m glad you liked the tiny ice tree.
Thank you for posting these beautiful photographs. You are a true nature detective!
You’re welcome, and thank you.