Our first snow was just a dusting and didn’t amount to much, but it did grease up the roads and remind people that it was time for snow tires and windshield scrapers. There were a surprising number of car accidents for a seemingly small amount of snow, but the temperature dropped over night and it turned to ice on the roadways. There’s nothing worse to drive on than black ice.
Where the snow didn’t fall the frost did, and it coated this juniper haircap moss (Polytrichum juniperinum) one cold morning. The mosses and other plants looked like they had been dusted with powdered sugar.
Ice needles have started to form in places where there is plenty of groundwater. For them to form the air temperature has to fall below 32 degrees F right at the soil surface while the soil and groundwater remain thawed. Hydrostatic pressure forces the groundwater, sometimes super cooled, out of the soil where it freezes instantly into a “needle.” As more water is forced out of the soil the process is repeated over and over, and each needle grows in length because of more water freezing at its base. I’ve read that each thin needle is hexagonal in shape, and that needles have been found that were 16 inches long. The needles in these photos were 2-4 inches long I’d guess.
Ice needles start growing slightly below the soil surface and lift the soil as they lengthen. They also lift pebbles, as this photo shows. Though these examples are just pebbles, frost in the soil can heave quite large stones to the surface. When water in the soil freezes and expands, the ice grows into a kind of lens shape and pushes against everything above it. Large objects like rocks are pushed upward, sometimes as much as a foot. When the ice melts, the mud and sediment collapses in the space under the rock. This leaves the rock sitting at the height the frost has raised it to. Over time the rock eventually reaches the surface. This is also the way that frost breaks water pipes that aren’t buried deep enough, and heaves and breaks apart our roads each winter.
Frost can also break stone. This stone cracked somehow and water got into the crack and froze, breaking the top of it right off. This, along with wind and rain, is what turns mountains into sand.
The side of Mount Monadnock that I see on my drive to and from work has shown a snow capped peak, but this side at Perkin’s Pond in Troy gets more sun and most of the snow had melted by the time I got there. Monadnock is at its most beautiful with a dusting of snow, in my opinion.
There was snow on this side of Monadnock but you had to have a zoom lens to see it. I’ve been up there when the snow was so deep you almost had to swim through it. And that was in late April.
“Monadnock” in Native American Abenaki language means “mountain that stands alone,” and over the years the word has come to describe any isolated mountain. In 1987 Mount Monadnock was designated a national natural landmark. It is the second most climbed mountain in the world, after Mount Fuji in Japan.
The wind was blowing this lake sedge (Carex lacustris) around when I took this shot and that accounts for the blur, but I didn’t care about that because it was the color I was taken by. I thought it was very beautiful.
Winterberry (Ilex verticillata) is a native holly that gets its name from the way that its bright red berries persist throughout most of the winter. They persist because birds don’t eat them right away and the reason they don’t is thought to be because of the levels of toxicity or unpalatable chemicals in the berries declines with time. Winterberry makes an excellent garden shrub, especially near ponds, streams and other wet places. Many birds will eat the berries eventually, including robins, catbirds, mockingbirds, Eastern bluebirds, and cedar waxwings. There are several cultivars available, including dwarf varieties. If you’d like to grow them make sure that you buy both male and female plants or you won’t see any berries.
I love seeing juniper berries at this time of year. A waxy coating called bloom reflects the light in a way that makes them a bright and beautiful blue. I always wonder how many gin drinkers know that the unique flavor in their drink comes from this plant’s fruits. Though they’re called berries, botanically speaking juniper fruits are actually fleshy seed cones. Unripe green berries are used to flavor gin and the ripe, deep purple-black berries are the only part of a conifer known to be used as a spice, often used on game like venison, moose and bear meat. Birds also love them.
The horizontal rows of holes made by the yellow bellied sapsucker cause “phloem” sap to dam up and accumulate in the plant tissue just above the wounds. The bird enlarges the holes over the course of several days and then adds another row above the first, eventually resulting in square or rectangular patterns of many holes. Sapsuckers have a kind of brushy tongue that they lick up the sap with. The kind of sap that we tap maple trees for is “xylem” sap, which is much thinner and less sweet than phloem sap. Because phloem sap is so much thicker and stickier than the watery xylem sap that we make maple syrup from, scientists can’t figure out how these birds get it to flow so freely. Insects, bats, other birds, and many animals also drink sap from these holes. I usually see sapsucker holes in trees with sweet sap like maples and birches, but these examples were in an eastern hemlock.
Anyone who spends time in the woods knows that the number of fallen trees is high right now. Trees that were already weakened by insects or fungi, sandy soils, road salt, or other stresses were hard hit by the ongoing drought and they continue to fall. The question is; for how long? For now, I stay out of the woods on very windy days.
I went out to get some shots of the super moon on the 13th, but it only looks super when there is something else in the photo like trees, mountains or buildings to relate a sense of scale. In this shot it just looks like any other full moon.
I didn’t know that maple dust lichens (Lecanora thysanophora) grew on stone until I saw this one doing just that. There were several of them on the stone and some were quite large. One of the easiest ways to identify this lichen is to look for the white fringe around its perimeter, but up until now I’ve looked for it on tree bark. They are usually the size of a penny but these examples were bigger than quarters, or about an inch in diameter.
I haven’t seen many turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) this year and the ones I have seen have been in shades of brown rather than the brilliant blues, purples, yellows and oranges that I know they can wear. Though I can’t see it my color finding software tells me that there is salmon pink in this example, which is a new color for turkey tails in my experience.
These mushrooms grew on an old stump and then froze. I don’t know their name but they sure were peachy.
Our native striped wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) has foliage which in winter turns deep purple where the darker areas are on the leaf and stays that way through the winter. It’s hard to tell from a photo and hard to explain why but these plants are so well camouflaged that I have looked right at them many times in the summer and not seen them. They are one of our rarer native wintergreens, and also one of our prettiest.
A friend sent me a photo of a bobcat that he took with his trail camera recently. I had a bobcat walk right in front of me, maybe 30 feet away last summer. They’re about 3 feet long and weigh about 19 pounds on average. They’re bigger than a housecat but smaller than a Labrador retriever. It’s said that bobcats are doing well because their prey; turkeys, squirrels, rabbits, birds, and rarely deer are also doing well. Rabbits, for instance, are doing very well. I saw a lot of them this summer. I was interested to see that this one had all 4 paws on that fallen branch. I wonder if it did that so it wouldn’t rustle the dry leaves and alert any prey to its presence. I also wonder if Native Americans learned how to walk through a forest so stealthily by watching animals like this one. It isn’t easy to walk silently through a forest, especially at this time of year.
Since I started this post with snow it seems odd to end it with a flower but though there haven’t been fields full of them I’ve seen a surprising number of flowers this month, including goldenrod, yarrow, meadowsweet, false dandelion, and this cheery little Johnny jump up I saw just last week. It’s almost enough to start me thinking we might have another mild winter, but I’ve seen flowers fooled by winter enough times to really believe it.
The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. ~Shannon Hale
Thanks for coming by.
Beautiful photos and educational, Allen! Winter is late here as well, but about to arrive. The locals were saying it might snow by noon today, but that hasn’t happened. The weather forecast says 20s by Tuesday night, possible snow tomorrow. And I still have nasturtiums blooming!
I love the Bobcat photo. Beautiful animals.
Thank you Lavinia. We have snow forecast for this week too, but not a lot. I didn’t realize that you got that cold there. It’ll be interesting to see how the nasturtiums come through it.
Bobcats are beautiful. They remind me of a big house cat.
We can see single digits, teens or 20s here, although it usually does not last long. We are at about 800 feet in the Cascade foothills. The valley floor is warmer. We have had frozen pipes in past years, so there is a space heater in the well house, and the field spigots all get insulated with fresh straw under a barrel. 24 degrees this morning, better than what had been predicted. Rain and temperatures in the 30s and 40s in the forecast the rest of the week.
Your weather sounds much like ours! I’m glad you don’t get the double digits below zero that we often get.
I don’t think I’ll ever see ice spikes around us but it reminds me of a blog I follow in Wales who gets ice spikes in his garden https://thegardenimpressionists.com/2016/01/21/ice-and-snow-and-fireflies-garden-opening-2016/
The bobcat is very impressive. Amelia
That’s pretty impressive. I’d like to see one some day!
so that bobcat wouldn’t hurt humans? S/he looks big in the photo.
It’s doubtful they’d attack a human unless they were cornered but yes, they could do some damage. I wouldn’t want to tangle with one!
I absolutely loved the photo of the juniper haircut moss, it’s about the perfect photo for the season!
I also liked the lake sedge and the fallen tree a great deal too.
It’s rare for me to see ice needles as long or as well formed as you find quite often, it must have to do with the composition of the soil here.
I’m not looking forward to winter, and people learning to drive in it all over again, since they forgot what it’s like since last winter, I am looking forward to your posts though, you always manage to find such interesting things.
Thanks Jerry! I’m seeing frost on most mornings now, but we haven’t had any extreme cold. In fact November averaged 4 degrees above normal.
Ice needles form in sandy soil I think. I almost always see them in gravel that water can easily percolate through. It seems like clay soil would inhibit their growth.
I’m not looking forward to winter either. So far the 10 day forecast doesn’t show any extreme cold or heavy snow, so I’m liking it!
Great images and info, per usual!
Thanks very much Eliza!
You have included some really lovely shots in this post Allen. The lake sedge is a wonderful colour and like Susan, I found the photo of the poor broken tree so beautiful!
Thank you Clare. The lake sedge seems to grow in large colonies and nothing else grows through it, which seems a bit strange but makes for a nice scene.
The shot of the tree was taken just after sunrise so the light had a golden quality. I’m glad you liked it!
Yes I did very much! Thank-you Allen.
You’re welcome!
You have said before that Mt Monadnock is a magnet for visitors so I looked it up and it certainly has some great views when you get to the top and is more interesting to walk up than it looks from a distance.
Thank you. Yes, there are some great views from the top if you can find a place to stand and view them. It’s very busy up there in summer and you could find hundreds of people on the mountain at any given time. That’s one reason I don’t climb it anymore.
It looked busy in many of the pictures that I saw on-line.
I’d bet that it did! The traffic is nearly non stop.
The Winterberries and Juniper berries are beautiful. I like the ice needles also. And the bobcat picture is amazing!
Thanks! I love seeing the colorful berries this year.
For a trail camera I agree, the bobcat shot is pretty good!
As entertaining and illuminating as ever. 🙂
Thanks very much Ben!
You’re welcome.
Winter has been rather late coming this year, hasn’t it. We have had traces of snow in the valley and not all that much more in the mountains around here. the forecast (which is usually wrong) is for snow coming up and a low of around 1o Monday night. Maybe winter will come after all. It’s interesting that you still see flowers. They have been long gone here.
Thanks Montucky! Yes, it has and that’s okay with me. I’d like winter much more if I didn’t have to shovel, snow blow and shovel roofs, but right now that’s the way it is.
I hope you see some snow though so it can help with that ongoing drought. We’ve had rain for days here and the drought has become much less of a problem because of it, so we’re all thankful for that.
The flowers I’m seeing are few and far between but there are a few still hanging on, even thought we drop below freezing most nights now. They’re a lot tougher than I ever thought!
I’m glad you said that – about seeing so many late blooming flowers this year. I had noticed the same thing and wondered if I had just been out more due to the warm, dry fall Could still be that, I suppose (and you were out more too). Or perhaps this fall more closely mimicked spring with it’s light and temps.
Thank you Cindy. I saw some goldenrod blooming just the other day on a hilltop, which is unusual. The first or second winter after I started this blog I saw dandelions in January, but that was a very mild winter that year. I don’t really know if it’s light and temperature together that triggers such a late bloom but it happens more often than I would have ever guessed.
Thanks for identifying that wintergreen plant. I saw this plant on our Thanksgiving hike inching above the snow cover in Litchfield, CT and wondered what it was.
You’re welcome. Depending on snow depth you should be able to see them all winter. They get very purple.
Reblogged this on Poltrack Pix and commented:
Another excellent post by New Hampshire Garden Solutions
Thank you John!
Great post, I learned about ice needles, those sapsucker holes and I can identify the striped wintergreen.Thank you.
Thank you John. I hope you’ll see them all on your next hike!
I loved the bark with the sapsucker holes and the fallen tree with its reflection. The colour of that final flower is amazing.
Thank you Susan. I was surprised to see sapsucker holes on a hemlock and learned something that day.
I was able to see that Johnny Jump Up from quite far away because of that color. It was a beauty.