A Day Along the River

I took a walk along the Ashuelot River to see if the closed gentians were blooming yet. This scene seemed fall like to me but my color verifying software sees just varying shades of green. Still, the greens are lightening in color, I think. No matter what the colors were it was beautiful scene, I thought.

The trail is wide here; level and easy to walk, and more and more people are using it I’ve noticed. When I was a boy I could be out here all day and not see a soul.

Cinnamon ferns grow all along the path and in the surrounding area. They usually turn pumpkin orange in the fall and I took this shot because I thought I saw a little orange on these. My color finding software confirms that.  

A staghorn sumac was quickly changing into its fall colors and they were beautiful. It looked like a branch full of maroon and yellow feathers.

And here was what I came thinking that I might see. The closed gentians were blooming better than I had seen them do in the past. This tells me that they, like so many other plants, like lots of rain. They aren’t common here but I shouldn’t call them rare. Fringed gentians are the ones that are quite rare. I’ve seen one of them in bloom just once.

I’ve been saying for years that these flowers must take a strong insect to pry them open and as I was standing here on this day along came a bumblebee and did just that. I used my cell phone to try to get photos of the action but not one of them came out. But it doesn’t matter; I’ve seen how it all works now.

Gentians weren’t the only flowers to be seen along the river. White wood asters grew in large numbers as well.

Helianthus didn’t grow quite as numerous as the asters but I saw them here and there.

Hog peanut was another plant I saw a lot of and they were covered with their unusual small, blue flowers. This plant is a legume in the pea/ bean family and, like a true peanut, after pollination some of its flowers bury themselves in the soil and form a small, edible, bean like seeds that give the plant its common name. Mice collect these seeds and store them in large caches that Native Americans used to search for. They can be eaten raw or cooked. The plant also forms inch long, pea-like, above ground pods that contain three or four inedible seeds. Hog peanut is a strong, wiry vine that can cover large areas of forest floor but in this case it grew over the shrubs along the shore.

It is said that this plant’s common name is a derogatory term referring to Native Americans but I’m not so sure, because the early settlers kept hogs and those animals could easily have dug the plant’s fruit. Hogs dig up everything when left to their own devices in a forest.

There was a strange film on the water in the current-free backwaters that made it look like the river had iced over. It’s too late for pollen to be blowing around I think, so I’m not sure what it was.

The last time I was out here in mid-August, I took this shot of these young red maples leaning out over the river, enough so the leaves were almost touching the water. When the river floods it washes the soil away from the roots of many trees and if a good wind comes along they’re the first to topple. On this day there was no trace of these trees here at all so they must have finally fallen in.

A group of mallards was soaking wet from feeding in the shallows on the other side of the river. This is the only shot I have where all of their heads are out of the water at the same time.

I could still see water in the woods here and there; remnants of a very wet summer. You can just barely see it in this shot but I liked the light so I left it in. There was beautiful light everywhere on this day.

I thought this squirrel was going to jump on my head but it didn’t. It seemed very interested in what I was doing though.

I turned a corner and there was a cormorant standing on a log. It seemed to be looking at the sky with its teal blue eyes. The inside of their mouth is blue as well but I think they must have to grow into that feature because this one’s mouth was not blue.

I thought it was a juvenile double crested cormorant. Juveniles I’ve read, are brownish with a whitish throat and belly and adults are black with black legs and feet. I couldn’t find an example of a juvenile with gray feet online so I had to send the photo off to a friend who knows his birds. He said it was a juvenile double crested cormorant, so that was good enough for me. I don’t see cormorants often so I was happy to see this one. It just stood on the log preening and looking around until I left. I had seen them fishing below the falls in the past so I thought I might come back in the evening and see if maybe I could get some shots of it in action.

The river was as still as it ever gets and I thought of a friend who loved reflections when I saw how the trees were reflected in it. Sometimes reflections can be so perfect you can turn a photo upside down and not know that it isn’t the way it should be. This was that kind of day.

I was surprised to see white rattlesnake root still blooming. A tonic to treat dysentery was once made from the roots of this plant and it was also thought to cure snakebite. I like the way the long red styles split and curl at the ends.

I went home for a while and then went back to the river in the evening, hoping to see the cormorant. They’ll often stay in a place for several days if the fishing is good but I saw no sign of one fishing at Ashuelot falls, so I looked at the flowers in a small public park instead. I saw a very beautiful Japanese anemone.

I also saw many beautiful native great blue lobelias, but these have been planted in the park. Though they are native I’ve never found one in the wild.

A phlox leaned so far out over the water this photo makes it look like it’s floating in the sky.

A cedar waxwing fell out of the sky at blurring speed and stuck itself to an elm branch right beside me as if it was nothing at all to come to a full stop in a fraction of a second. It was either surprised to see me or it had something to say that it thought I needed to hear. It looked like it was saying Wow, what a ride!

I walked upriver to where I had seen the cormorant earlier but the log it had stood on was empty, so I returned to the park. I sat on a park bench and saw, far off in the distance, what looked like white bird’s wings. The zoom on my camera showed them to be pickerel weed leaves shining silver in the setting sun.

As I sat on the bench with this view in front of me I realized that I had never been here in the evening before and I wondered why. A few clouds rolled in and the light kept slowly changing, getting more and more beautiful, and I kept taking photos with my cell phone camera every few minutes. Once I got around to looking at the photos I had to choose which one to show you. It wasn’t easy but I think this one was closest to what I actually saw. In my opinion the light in it was certainly the most beautiful. Soon all the trees off in the distance, mostly red and silver maples, will be ablaze with the beautiful colors of fall. They often turn early along the river so it shouldn’t be too much longer before I’m walking here several times a week. This is one of my favorite places to go to see good color on the trees.

When I was leaving the river there was a crepuscular ray bonus. It was the perfect end to another beautiful day.

I have nothing to complain about. I am here to enjoy the breathtaking beauty of nature.
~Debasish Mridha

Thanks for coming by.

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Along the River

There were two things I wanted to know last weekend; were turtles active yet and were trout lilies blooming. I couldn’t think of anyplace better to answer those questions than along the Ashuelot River, so last Saturday off I went along one of my favorite riverside trails. The water was quite high, probably from snow still melting in the higher elevations. Snow is still chest deep in the northern part of the state and they’re still having avalanches in the White Mountains, so reports have said.

I’ve been walking this trail for over 50 years so I know it well. There used to be a small wooden hut up ahead where that paved spot is. It had an open front facing the river and a bench to sit on, almost like a bus stop. It was made of wood so of course every young boy with a pocket knife had to come here and carve their initials into it, including me. I’ve wondered for years why it was there because in the 1960s this trail saw very little traffic. Traffic or not the trail was here and I think that it’s been here for quite a lot longer than I’ve been around because I think it was originally used by Native Americans. It’s close to many shallow areas in the river and there are lots of places to fish. It seems like it would be perfect for someone who lived off the land.

A pair of Canada geese chatted quietly off across a setback.

My question of active turtles was answered quickly. I also heard toads and tree frogs out here, as well as the little frogs we call spring peepers. It was great to hear them again. I wanted to get a better view of this turtle so I walked on, hoping for a side shot.

But all that was left was the log the turtle sat on. Not a very interesting subject.

I thought I had scared the turtle away but then I saw those two geese come steaming up the river and I wondered if they were what the turtle was afraid of. Do geese bother turtles? I don’t know the answer to that one. It’s a question that would require much sitting and watching to answer.

The geese weren’t afraid of me. In fact they followed along beside me as I went on. Maybe they thought I had a pocket full of bread. A couple of young boys on bikes came along, saw the geese and dropped their bikes. Once the geese saw them sit on the river bank they swam right over. Whether or not the boys had bread for them I don’t know.

It was a beautiful day but at 70 degrees F. it seemed warm and I was glad I hadn’t warn a jacket. The shirts I had on were plenty warm enough. There were lots of insects out but I didn’t get bitten by any of them.

There was still ice to be found in cool, shaded backwaters but the frogs were active and chirping even in places that still had ice.

A couple of posts ago I showed a papery trumpet shaped stem and wondered what it was. Luckily reader Eliza Waters recognized them and said they were jewel weed (Impatiens capensis) stems. I knew a lot of jewel weed grew in a spot along this trail and when I got there sure enough, there they were. Thanks again Eliza! Each stem is about a foot tall and has a trumpet shaped opening that looks just about right for a pea to sit in.

Ever since I was a young boy I’ve wondered what was over there on the other side of the river but since it probably would involve a lot of bushwhacking due to the lack of a trail, I’ve never gotten up enough ambition to find out. Maybe it’s better that way, but that glow does look inviting.

I suppose it’s a good thing I never did cross the river and follow along its far side. I might have been arrested. No hunting, no fishing and no trespassing pretty much covers everything.

That dark spot ahead is actually a wet spot, one of surprisingly few along this trail. The trail through these woods isn’t that far from where the railroad repair depot used to be in Keene, and the trail is black because it was “paved” with the unburned slag from the big steam locomotive fireboxes. This slag is usually called “clinkers” or “clinker ash” and it is made up of pieces of fused ash and sulfur which often built-up over time in a hot coal fire. Firebox temperature reached 2000 to 2300 degrees F. in a steam locomotive but they still didn’t burn the coal completely. A long tool called a fire hook was used to pull the clinkers out of the firebox and in Keene we must have had tons of the stuff, because it was used as ballast on many local railroad beds. The section that ran by my house was as black as coal.

I had finally reached the little red bridge, and this was the spot where my second question would be answered. I had been to another spot where thousands of yellow trout lilies grow and didn’t see any sign of them, not even a leaf. I thought this place might get more sunshine and maybe the soil warmed quicker, but there was still no sign of trout lilies. I could be rushing it though; I just discovered by looking back through the blog that April 20 is the earliest I’ve seen them.

I did admire some American wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) The leaves are just coming out of their purple winter color and turning green so they can begin photosynthesizing again. This plant is also called teaberry or checkerberry and its small white flowers resemble those of the blueberry. It is probably the easiest of all wintergreens to identify because of the strong, minty scent that comes from its crushed leaves. If you have ever tasted teaberry gum then you know exactly what it smells and tastes like. The plant contains compounds that are very similar to those found in aspirin and Native Americans used it medicinally. They also chewed the minty leaves on long hikes.

Alders love water and many grow here. This speckled alder (Alnus incana) lived up to its name.

I’ve tried for a long time to show you what alders look like with all their male catkins open and dangling like jewels and with the help of a flash I was finally able to get a photo. It isn’t as easy as I thought it would be; it only took 8 years.

The bent tree marks a side trail that I keep telling myself I’ll have to follow one day, but I never do. I hope to have much more time for such things once I retire. I’d love to be able to just sit in the woods again without a care like I did when I was a boy.

One of the many feeder streams along the trail had a lot of what looked like orange rust in its water and that’s why this photo of it looks so strange. It might be algae coloring it, or maybe last year’s decaying leaves. The reflections of the trees look as if they have leaves but the leaves are really on the bottom of the stream.

The greatest joy is not finding something that we’ve been looking for. The greatest joy is when we’d given up on ever finding it and then it found us.
~Craig D. Lounsbrough

Thanks for coming by.

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A Day on the River

Longtime readers of this blog know how much I enjoy exploring the banks of the Ashuelot River; it is something I’ve done since I was a young boy. On this day I chose a section with nice wide trails through a beautiful forest.  The old trail winds through a place called Ashuelot Park, which is in downtown Keene. It has been a big hit with joggers, dog walkers, bikers, and families with children but when I started coming here 50 or so years ago there was no park. Back then it was just a trail through the woods and you hardly ever saw anyone, but on this day it was busy and it was nice to see so many people out enjoying nature. It was a hot humid day; more August than May, and like me I suppose they sought out the shade of the forest and the breeze off the river.

The trail through these woods isn’t that far from where the railroad repair depot used to be in Keene, and the trail is black because it was “paved” with the unburned slag from the big steam locomotive fireboxes. This slag is usually called “clinkers” or “clinker ash” and it is made up of pieces of fused ash and sulfur which often built-up over time in a hot coal fire. Firebox temperature reached 2000 to 2300 degrees F. in a steam locomotive but they still didn’t burn the coal completely. A long tool called a fire hook was used to pull the clinkers out of the firebox and in Keene we must have had tons of the stuff, because it was used as ballast on many local railroad beds. The section that ran by my house was as black as coal.

It’s hard to believe that the seeds of red maples (Acer rubrum) are falling already. It seems like it was hardly more than a week or two ago that I was taking photos of the flowers. Though I felt like I was 10 years old again walking along this trail this little seed reminded me just how fast time passes.

Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum multiflorum) was one of the first flowers I found along the trail, but this was no ordinary Solomon’s seal. The plant was large and very robust, much bigger than our native plants. Its leaves and flowers were also at least twice the size of those on native plants, and that’s because it is a hybrid plant that has escaped a garden and is now naturalizing in the woods. It’s the first one I’ve ever seen in a forest and there’s really no telling what it will do.

False Solomon seal (Maianthemum racemosum or Smilacina racemosa) have just started blooming and they were all along the trail. False Solomon’s seal has small white, star shaped flowers in a branching cluster (raceme) at the end of its stem, unlike the dangling pairs of flowers of true Solomon’s seal. Soon the blossoms will give way to small reddish berries that provide food for many birds and other wildlife. It is said that a Native American tribe in California crushed false Solomon’s seal roots and used them to stun fish. Other native tribes used the plant medicinally.

Last year at this same spot I saw a turtle wiggling its toes in the breeze and had to laugh, because it looked like it was trying to fly. This year on the same sunken log here was another turtle doing the same thing, and as I watched a woman stopped and asked how long my monopod extended. “Would it be long enough to help that poor turtle?” she asked. “Just look at the poor thing; it’s stuck and can’t get back into the water.” Last year a helpful reader told me that this is one way turtles regulate their body heat, so I passed that on to the concerned woman. “Well that’s a relief” she said, “now I’ll be able to sleep tonight!” We humans, I thought after she left, sure do come up with some strange ideas about nature. And yes, I do include myself in that statement.

When they are near a water source royal ferns (Osmunda spectabilis) can grow quite large and appear to be a shrub, but this one was young and on dry ground so it wasn’t very big. The royal fern is found on every continent except Australia, making it one of the most widespread of all living species. They are also thought to be one of the oldest living things, with fossil records of the Osmundaceae family dating back over 300 million years. Individual plants are believed to be able to live for over 100 years. Cinnamon and interrupted ferns are also in the Osmundaceae family. It is thought that the genus might have been named after King Osmund, who ruled in the British Isles in the eighth century. Royal ferns are one of my favorites because they are so unlike any other fern.

Royal ferns have just started growing their spore bearing fertile fronds. Another name for this fern is “flowering fern,” because someone once thought that the fertile fronds looked like bunches of flowers.

At this stage the sporangia of royal ferns are green but soon they’ll turn a beautiful purple color, and that’s why the plant was named flowering fern.

Chokecherries blossomed on the river bank. Like most of the white spring flowering trees, chokecherries (Prunus) and chokeberries (Aronia) grow on the edge of the forest. Though they look alike from a distance, chokeberries and chokecherries are only distantly related in the rose family. The common name is the giveaway here: A cherry is a stone fruit with one seed, so the chokecherry will have one seed. A berry will have multiple seeds; in the case of the chokeberry 5 or fewer.  Chokeberry flower clusters are smaller than chokecherry and kind of flat on top. Chokecherry flower clusters are usually long and cylindrical like a bottle brush. Positive identification between these two is important because chokecherry leaves and seeds contain prussic acid which can convert to cyanide under the right conditions, so it wouldn’t be good to eat too many seeds. The simplest way to be sure is by counting the seeds in a piece of fruit before picking and eating from the tree.

After walking the trail for a while you see it begin to narrow a bit and that’s because it doesn’t see a lot of traffic on the more northern section. Many people turn and go back rather than walk the entire trail and they miss a lot of beauty by doing so.

In spots with little to no current the tree pollen collected on the water’s surface. With all of the different species of trees we have pollination is an extended event in spring, and then after the trees come the grasses, so it goes well into summer. It’s a tough road for allergy sufferers.

You would expect to see insects along a river and I saw this one, which I think must be some type of crane fly.

I came upon the biggest colony of Indian cucumber root plants (Medeola virginiana) I’ve ever seen, right there beside the trail and I have to say that I was astounded. I’ve walked by this spot literally hundreds of times since I was a boy and have never seen it, so that shows that it’s worthwhile to walk the same trail again and again. In years past I’ve spent hours searching for just one plant and here were hundreds upon hundreds of them. So much for my “excellent powers of observation;” I miss as much as anyone else.

The flowers of Indian cucumber root have 6 yellowish green tepals, 6 reddish stamens topped by greenish anthers, and 3 reddish purple to brown styles. These large styles are sometimes bright red- brown. These plants were blooming earlier than I’ve ever seen them bloom. Each flower will become a shiny, inedible dark purplish black berry. Native Americans used Indian cucumber roots as food. As its common name implies, this plant’s small root looks and tastes a lot like a mini cucumber.  It’s easy to identify because of its tiers of whorled leaves and unusual flowers. It likes to grow under trees in dappled light, probably getting no more than an hour or two of direct sunlight each day.

There were also some large colonies of blue bead lily out here, which I have also never noticed before. Since I just featured them in my last post I’ll just show their photo here.

The round white flower heads of wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) hide beneath its leaves and quite often you can’t see them from above.  Compared to the ping pong ball size flower heads the leaves are huge and act like an umbrella, which might keep rain from washing away their pollen. These flower heads are usually covered with insects and I think this is the only time I’ve ever gotten a photo of them blooming without insects on them.

Each sarsaparilla flower is smaller than a pea but as a group they’re easy to see. Dark purple berries will replace the flowers if pollination is successful, and it’s usually very successful. This is one of the most common wildflowers I know of and I see them virtually everywhere I go, including in my own yard. Every now and then you’ll find a plant with flowers but no leaves over them. I don’t know if these leafless plants are a natural hybrid or how the plant benefits from having fewer leaves. Fewer leaves mean less photosynthesizing and that means less food for the plant but maybe animals eat them, I don’t know.

I saw the strangely shaped pine tree that I’ve wondered about for years. Something traumatic must have happened to it. I’m guessing another tree fell on it when it was young.

There were many violets blooming all along the trail, including beautiful little northern white violets (Viola pallens.) As I’ve said in previous posts, this seems to be a banner year for violets. I’ve never seen so many.

All journeys back into childhood have to end somewhere and mine ended right here. Not too far up ahead is a busy highway that I didn’t need to see so I turned and meandered back to my starting point, giving a good look to everything that caught my eye along the way.  I saw kayakers and friendly dogs, spoke with friendly people, and saw a nice big patch of lilies that will bloom in a month or so, so all in all it was a fine day. I hope yours was and will be the same.

Every summer, like the roses, childhood returns. ~Marty Rubin

Thanks for stopping in.

 

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A Walk In The Park Part 2

Note: This is part two of the story of a recent visit to Ashuelot Park in Keene, New Hampshire.

Regular readers of this blog are probably starting to wonder if I haven’t got some kind of a strange fungi fetish, but it isn’t as if I go looking for them. We just seem to like the same places and when I visit an area there they are, waiting to have their picture taken. Ashuelot Park, which follows the Ashuelot River, was no exception; fungi were everywhere.   

I like the shapes, textures, and colors of winter fungi. I didn’t take the time to try to identify these bracket fungi sitting on a stump. Instead I just admired them and took pictures. 

These might be one of the most common sights in the winter woods, but the colors and shapes are very pleasing, in my opinion. If I had to guess, I’d say they were turkey tails (Trametes versicolor.) If I had taken the time to look for pores along their undersides I would have known for sure. If they have pores that are easily seen without magnification then they are most likely turkey tails, or at least in the Trametes family. It’s surprising that these still look so good after going through so much cold, wet winter weather. 

I would have thought that cold winter weather would leave most fungi looking like these dried up specimens. They looked as if they were made of paper and would blow away at any minute, but they felt quite leathery and were still firmly attached to the tree. Their undersides were very white and clean. 

These were quite high up on this tree and I couldn’t see their tops, so I’m not sure what they were. Whatever they were, they looked very fresh. Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulphureus) maybe? Laetiporus sulphureus, a yellow-orangey shelf or bracket fungus, typically grows quite high up on hardwood trees and is a parasite that causes heart rot. Others in the Laetiporus family grow on other parts of the tree such as roots or cut, butt ends. Some only grow on conifers.

 The color of this one resembles witch’s butter but I think it’s actually a slime mold going through its jelly phase. It could also be Dacrymyces stillatus, or common jelly spot. Whatever it was the sun shining on it made it seem to be glowing, almost as if it were fluorescent.

Thanks for visiting. Part three of this trek through Ashuelot Park will be posted soon.

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