Last Sunday was a beautiful day for a change, with bright sunshine and relatively warm temperatures for November, so I thought I’d hike a rail trail I know of up in Westmoreland. This is the one I travel in May when I want to see the wild columbines in bloom, but I don’t know if I’ve ever come out here in the fall. That’s a shame; I’ve missed a lot of beauty.
I was a little dismayed but not surprised to see water on the trail. We’ve had a deluge of rain over the past few months and there is water everywhere. Usually though, you don’t find it on rail trails because the railroad built drainage ditches along the sides of the rail bed. They never would have put up with seeing this much water here. It’s possible the drainage ditches have failed because of fallen debris in them, but I don’t know for sure.
The forest that the rail trail goes through is mostly hardwoods like beech, oak and maple with few evergreens.
It’s hard to tell from this photo but these ledges are way up on the top of the hillside we saw in that previous shot. With all that stone warmed by the sun it looks like a great place for animals to den up.
Speaking of animals, this is a known bear area. I’m not sure if these marks were done by a bear but they were as big as my hand and they were on several trees.
The glimpses of sunlit beeches were enough to make me just stop and admire them for a while. Beeches are such beautiful trees, from bud break in spring until their leaves finally fall the following spring, they are year round friends.
There is an unusual box culvert out here that had a lot of water running through it due to heavy rain the previous day. I’ve been out here many times but this is the first time I’ve seen this much water here; usually there isn’t any. The box culvert is unusual because its joints are mortared. Almost every other one I’ve seen was laid up dry with no mortar. The mortar could have been used in a repair years after it was built though, which is what I suspect. You don’t find much mortar in railroad stonework.
I saw some nicely colored turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) decorating a log. There were hundreds of them. I think my favorites are the ones with blue or purple colors in them.
Of course there were stone walls; there are always stone walls in New Hampshire. Property owners almost always built them along railroads to mark the place where their land ended and railroad right of ways began. The walls here are unusual because they were built largely of railroad cast off stone that had been blasted out of the ledges. If the railroad didn’t use it to build with they often simply dumped it in large piles throughout the woods and landowners picked from them. You can tell by the way there is hardly a round corner to be found in a wall. The stones have square and angular corners and flat faces, though the section in this photo does have more rounded fieldstones than most of the wall did.
If you look closely you can see the hand of man in the stones. These finger size grooves were made by hand with a star drill or possibly a steam drill. You drilled your holes and then tapped small tools called feathers and wedges into them. The pressure exerted by the wedges would break the stone, leaving a flat face with finger shaped grooves. It was a huge amount of work but once the stone was cut the stone masons used it to build culverts, bridges, tunnels, walls and anything else they needed to get the tracks down and moving forward.
And they’re still building walls out here. They recently logged this land and the loggers built a road to where they had to be. The stones are used as a retaining wall to hold the road up and they’re big. They also have that “new” clean look that tells you they haven’t been there long.
We’re almost there. What looks like a dark tunnel up ahead isn’t a tunnel and it isn’t that dark, and that’s where we’re going.
I saw quite a few maple seedlings still hanging on to their colorful leaves.
I think the seedlings were red maples (Acer rubrum) and I think that because larger maples showed target canker which, if I understand what I’ve read correctly, only attacks red maples. It is caused by a fungus which kills the tree’s healthy bark and the patterns of platy bark seen in this photo are the tree’s response to the fungus. It grows new bark each year in the circular patterns seen here to contain the fungus. Usually the fungus will not kill the tree.
More signs of the railroad; a tie plate with a bent spike still in it was beside the trail. You can find a lot of railroad artifacts by walking rail trails.
And here we are at the ledges where the columbines grow, looking back the way we just came. The stone here is very dark but I have a feeling these ledges have limestone in them because of the lime loving plants that live here.
There isn’t much soil on the stones but there is enough to grow columbines (Aquilegia canadensis) and in some cases even trees. I was wishing I could have seen some of the beautiful red and yellow flowers but I’ll have to wait until next May for that.
I did see some asters scattered along the trail, and though I don’t know their name they were a welcome sight. Any flower is welcome in November.
I wasn’t expecting to find columbines blooming out here but I was hoping to find blue cohosh berries (Caulophyllum thalictroides) and there they were. I found this plant when I came out here in May to get photos of the columbines and a chance to see the beautiful blue “berries” is what brought me back on this day. The berries are actually brown seeds with a fleshy blue coating that protects them, and the seeds are what are considered the plant’s true fruit, so the plant is a bit unusual. Now that I’ve seen the foliage, flowers and fruit I need to come here in the spring, in April I’d guess, to see the beautiful dark blue spring shoots. They look like tiny blue hands reaching out of the soil.
Blue cohosh fruit is actually darkly colored like a blueberry and like a blueberry the “bloom” made up of waxy white crystals that cover the berries reflect the light in a way that makes them appear lighter colored. Some describe them as “blueberries dipped in confectioner’s sugar.” This plant is very rare in this area so I’m hoping these fruits will grow new plants, but deer love eating the plant so the odds are against it. I should mention that, though Native Americans used the roots of the plant medicinally and herbalists still use it today, science says that it has “poisonous properties” and the “berries” can make you quite sick.
Here is a photo of a blue cohosh flower that I took on May 12th of this year, so it’s an early bloomer. Each of the yellow green striped sepals of the flower contains a nectar gland to attract insects. 6 yellow stamens form a ring around the center ovary and the true petals are the shiny green parts that ring the center between the sepals and the stamens. The word cohosh is believed to be Native Algonquin name used for several different plants with different color fruit so in this case the blue refers to the fruit color, even though all parts of the plant including the leaves and stems have a bluish cast to them in the spring.
The trail went on, north to Walpole before crossing into Vermont, but I did not. I turned around, happy that I had now seen such a rare plant in three stages of growth. This is only the second time I’ve seen it and the first time all I saw were the blue fruits, so the hike was well worth the effort. I’m really anxious to see the dark blue shoots in spring, and that probably means that winter will pass slowly. But then I suppose that it always does.
If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things in nature have a message you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive. ~Eleanora Duse
Thanks for stopping in.
Beautiful! I really like the photo with the tunnel of trees and the dark “cave” at the end. And I learned more about cohosh! We usually walk at Aman Park for spring wildflowers, and we went there this year in the fall. It was as pretty as in the spring. Thanks.
Thank you Chris. You probably see a lot more cohosh than we do. It was a thrill for me, and the day was a fine one.
Your woods are just gorgeous this time of year, and your fall seems to be extended much more than ours has here.
Thanks Montucky! We did seem to have a longer than average season but it’s about done now.
I liked the railroad memorabilia that you found, along with the turkey tails and other small things along the way. I’m glad that you were able to find the blue cohosh seeds as well. But, as some one who lives in an area that has seen only 5% of the sunshine for the last three weeks, seeing the beautiful fall colors against a blue sky truly brightened my day immensely!
Thanks Jerry! I think you’d like these rail trails. There’s a lot to see and also a lot of birds along the way.
I’m glad the sunny day helped. We aren’t seeing many right now either!
Such a beautiful November day for your walk! Lots of interesting things to look at and even some asters!
Thank you Clare, it was a great day and we had another today. Lately we’re lucky to get one each week.
The asters were a real surprise!
Your trees have more than ours at this point. I actually planted a blue cohosh but not sure if it is still alive. Love how the ground is carpeted with colorful leaves.
Thank you. Yes, pretty much all the leaves are down now.
I hope the cohosh makes it, but it sounds like it might be fussy about where it grows.
I hope that you find your plants in the right place next year. You still had some beautiful autumn colour on your walk.
Thank you, me too!
Beautiful autumn colors. The beech and oak have been particularly nice this year, though the rain and wind are putting a quick end to the show, alas.
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Thank you Eliza. It’s hard to see it pass. It was a glorious season this year.
I am so glad that I subscribed to this. I forward it to others and they all love it, too.
Thank you for a glimpse of beauty.
Patricia Wadley
You’re welcome and thank you very much. I’m glad you found the blog as weel, and thank you for passing it on to fellow nature lovers.
I always learn something from reading your wonderful posts.
Thank you Lee, I’m happy to hear that. I don’t really try to teach anyone anything but I do like passing on what I’ve learned. It’s all about loving this beautiful world we live in!
Lovely New England walk. Watch out for bears!
Thank you Laurie. I don’t see many bears but I’ve seen plenty of evidence that they’re there!
Big, beautiful, shy creatures. We have them in the woods behind our house, but we never see them.
We see them here! I’ve had them in my back yard and one morning I saw one walking down the road in front of my house like he owned the place. Right then I guess he did own the place; I wasn’t about to argue!
No, indeed!
As always a wonderful walk in the woods. I loved the beech trees, all golden and graceful, and the cohosh flower was so interesting. I’ve seen the berries in the woods, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen, or perhaps just not noticed, the flowers. Now I can’t wait to see a shot of the cohosh shoots in the spring. The quotes always make me think, but this one made me smile. Thank you for all of it.
Thank you, I love beech trees as well and I hope they’re with us for a good long time.
The most surprising thing about blue cohosh for me is how early it blooms. When you see bloodroot and purple trillium blooming that’s the time to look for this plant’s flowers. They’re quite small.
I can’t wait to see those spring shoots. I’ve seen photos online and they’re beautifully colored.
Not always seeds eaten by animals are lost. Some are not digestible and pass through the digestive tract of mammals or birds that even adds fertilizer to it. Hundreds of seedlings of the yew tree in our garden bear witness. Thanks for your always interesting reports.
Thank you Zyriacus. That’s true and blue cohosh seeds aren’t harmed by passing through an animal’s digestive tract, but deer can move over a very large area and finding the place where they dropped the seeds would be close to impossible. These woods could be full of blue cohosh but finding them could take a lifetime, so I’m hoping the seeds fall and grow in this place so I can see the plants.
Loved the quote and the bits of rail memorabilia. Glad you found the pant you wanted too..
Thank you Susan. It was a great day for finding things!