Enjoying the Beauty of Spring at Beaver Brook

I thought I might find several shades of spring green on the trees up at the Beaver Brook Natural Area but no, most of the trees were still wearing just buds. That wasn’t too much of a disappointment really, because there would still be astounding natural beauty to see here even if there were no trees. I went up there on three different days to take photos for this post. Two days were showery and one was sunny, so if you think you see darker and lighter /wetter and drier photos you aren’t imagining it.

There were ferns coming up everywhere. The cinnamon ferns had grown a lot since I saw them last and were just about ready to transition from the fiddlehead stage to the fully open adult stage.

There were lots of native hobblebushes blooming all along the old abandoned road. The pretty, pure white outer flowers are just for show; there to entice insects. It’s the smaller flowers in the center that will become the fruit. The oval berries will start out green, then turn bright red, and finally ripen to a dark purple. They’re as interesting as the flowers.

I had to stop and see the smoky eye boulder lichens. They’re one of my favorites. On this day they looked like part of the sky fell with the rain, and tiny bits of blue scattered over the rocks. The blue apothecia outlined in black are really striking. The color is caused by the way the light falls on the waxy coating that covers them.

And then of course there is Beaver Brook. I used to lean on that tree to steady myself when I wanted a photo looking upstream but ever so slowly it leaned. And it kept leaning until it finally came to rest as we see it here.

The tree would have been just another log in the brook but it got hung up on others, so for now it leans. What I thought was interesting is how this shot showed that the tree grew for years on a rock, and nobody ever knew it that I know of. Since it was only connected to the earth on one side it’s no wonder it fell. This is a popular spot for dog walkers, who let their pets swim when the water isn’t high. The water does get high at times and will come right up and over where I stood to take these photos. I had an old timer tell me that he saw the water come up over the road years ago but I try not to think about that, especially when I’m here.

I love the way that Solomon’s seal plants unfurl in spring. They come out of the bud in a spiral and have a fluid, flowing, almost musical appearance and I think they’re quite beautiful. The tiny little flower buds will hang down under the stem as the plant ages.

Call it wake robin, stinky John, or red trillium; it’s another of our beautiful ephemeral spring flowers. They grow here by the hundreds on both sides of the old road.

I stopped to see the glittering wood moss, which was quite wet. This is also called stairstep moss because of the way the new growth “steps up” from the old and you can just see that happening just to the left of center. This is a rare moss which usually grows in more northern boreal forests, reaching the Arctic circle, I believe. This is the only place I’ve ever seen it.

This is not a moss and it isn’t rare either, but every time I see it I wonder how many people glance at it thinking it’s just another moss. It’s actually a liverwort called greater whip wort. It always reminds me of a nest of centipedes and each “branch” is indeed about the size of a small centipede. Its species name is “trilobata” and it gets that name from the way each tiny 1/8 inch wide leaf terminates in three lobes or “teeth.” This liverwort loves to grow on rocks so next time you see a mossy rock take a closer look. You might see a liverwort.

This moss is also rare in this area. It’s called rose moss for obvious reasons and it is another moss that prefers growing on stones. Limestone actually seems to be its favorite and it’s a good indicator that limestone is present in the area. I don’t know how rare it is nation wide but this is the only place I’ve ever seen it. I like the way its growth habit makes it look like tiny flowers. It’s a very pretty little moss.

I’ve known this dog lichen for many years but this year for the first time it was showing a huge burst of new growth. As we see here the older part of the lichen forms the dark background and the new growth is the tan /red-brown lobes in the foreground. This is what it looked like when it was wet…

…and this is what it looked like when dry the next day. The difference was really amazing; all the new growth now had frosted edges. I know it is a dog lichen but I didn’t try to find out its species name. As I look back on this blog I see that it is most likely the scaly pelt lichen (Peltigera praetextata.)

The walk to the end of the old road is a steady but gentle uphill climb the whole way. Unless they happened to have weak lungs most people would hardly notice it.

New beech leaves were everywhere, and they were beautiful. They are why walking here in the fall is like walking through a painting.

New maple leaves were everywhere too. I’m not sure why this tree thought its leaf stems needed to be so long but it knows more about what it is doing than I do.

This maple was more like what I expect to see at this time of year. The red coloring is so the leaves don’t get sunburned, I’ve read. It only lasts for a short time before they turn green. Many trees, not just maples, do this. New oak leaves seem to be everything but green in spring.

Here were more hobblebush flowers. If you’ve ever gotten all tangled up in a colony of these native viburnums you know why they’re called hobblebush. If you don’t watch where you put your feet you can quickly find yourself face down on the ground. It’s better to walk around a colony of them than through them, I learned the hard way years ago.

Since the disappearing waterfall was running I had to stop and take some photos of it. I call this the disappearing waterfall because it only runs after we’ve had a certain amount of rain. This is just how this photo came out of my cellphone, blown out highlights and all. A tree had fallen across the streams run, I noticed. So many trees fall here that a walk without seeing any would seem odd.

It was just about in this spot that I heard a beautiful bird song that I had never heard before. The Merlin app on my phone told me it was a winter wren and I was surprised to learn that such a tiny bird had such a powerful voice. Its bubbly music was easily heard over the sound of the brook and it was beautiful.

This great shot of a tiny winter wren that I found on Wikipedia was taken in Prospect Park in New York City by someone who calls themselves Rhododendrites. If you click on their name it will take you to their Wikipedia information page, which is quite interesting. He used an Olympus camera to get this shot and one of the things I read there is how Olympus is getting out of the camera business. Anyhow, I was shocked to see that such a big, beautiful sound came from such a small bird. If you have time you might want to go and have a listen online. After seeing this photo I wasn’t surprised that I wasn’t able to see the bird; it has good camouflage. I like its little eyebrow.

Here was another trillium willing to pose. All of these plants grow under trees and in a short time they’ll be growing in shade instead of the bright sunshine that they see for just a short time. The flowers are here and then they’re gone in maybe a month but plants that have formed seed pods will persist for several months.

Another fern fiddlehead. I think this one was another young cinnamon fern but I couldn’t swear to it. I’ve always liked seeing how ferns unfurl. It’s always amazing to see them grow from a tiny fiddlehead into something three feet tall and three feet across in such a short amount of time.

I saw some nice turkey tails here as well, growing on some of the logs that came from fallen trees.

This one wanted to grow in a spiral, which is something I don’t see that often.

I was able to get a passable shot of Beaver Brook Falls through the brush but when all the leaves come out it will be almost completely hidden. As I do sometimes these days, I stood looking down the narrow trail leading down to the water. It is quite steep and gravel makes it slippery and if you ever fell here you could break bones, so though my mind sometimes tries to convince me that I could still do it, I no longer listen to that voice.

I usually turn around and go back at the falls because the end of the road is not too far behind where I was standing when I took this shot. The end of the road is the new route 9 north highway that was built right across this road in the late 1960s so if you keep going you run into a huge mound of dirt with a highway on it.

Going back, it isn’t far from here to the starting point but there is so much to see, what isn’t even a mile of distance can (and does) take hours. I spent parts of three days here and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what there is to see here in this post.

I took one last look at Beaver Brook before leaving. It was behaving itself and it gurgled and giggled and chuckled softly beside me the entire time I was here. It was my only companion; I saw nobody else on the road during any of the days I visited the place, and that seemed odd. Part of what makes this place so special is how there is a paved path right through a forest that has remained pretty much untouched since the road was built in the 1700s. It’s perfect for families with baby strollers, those in wheelchairs, or those who wish to simply experience the beauty and silence of nature.  And it’s just minutes from downtown Keene, NH.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. ~Joseph Campbell

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April (and May) Showers

It used to be we’d get a day or two of rain each week, enough to keep the lawns green and fungi growing, but now it seems everything happens in bunches. Weather comes in and stays for a week or two, and it has been like that lately. The latest low pressure system has taken two weeks to slowly creep out of the midwest and arrive, as of Wednesday, in Rochester, NY. Hopefully by the time I post this it will have moved out over the Atlantic. Its spin has brought wave after wave of rain, and it has rained at least a little almost every day. There was even a flash flood alert in there somewhere, but it never happened here. The Ashuelot River has overrun its banks in the lowest places but those places, often hay fields, are left open and empty so it can, and there is no damage done.

If you decide to be a nature blogger the first thing you learn is, you take what comes. You don’t have to sing in the rain but you do have to put up with it, so you dress for weather and out you go. I happen to like occasional days like those shown in these photos, so they don’t bother me. You find, if you pay attention, that on windy days the wind doesn’t usually blow constantly, so if you wait a bit the flower you want a shot of will stop whipping around. The same is true with rain; there are often moments or even hours when it holds off. But you have to pay attention and catch the right times, otherwise you’ll learn how to shoot with one hand and hold your umbrella with the other.

Rainy days are best for photos of things like lichens, because their color and form are at their peak when they’re hydrated. A dry lichen can look very different, so trying to match its color with one in a lichen guide can sometimes be frustrating. Foliose lichens especially, like the Tuckermannopsis in the above photo, can change drastically. Mosses, lichens, and fungi are all at their best on rainy days, so those are the best days to look for them. Species of the above lichen could be cilliaris, which is also called the fringed wrinkle lichen.

My phone camera decided this view of a shadbush needed to be impressionistic, so that’s what I got. Since I’ve always liked the impressionist artists I was okay with it. Shadbush (Amelanchier) is usually the earliest white flowered roadside tree to bloom, followed quickly by the various cherries, and finally the apples and crabapples.

The common name shadbush comes from the shad fish, which used to run in great numbers in our rivers at about the same time it blossomed. It is also called shadblow, serviceberry, Juneberry, wild plum, sugar plum, and Saskatoon, and each name comes with its own story. I used to work with someone who swore up and down that his ornamental Amelanchier trees were not shadbushes, when in fact they were just cultivated varieties (cultivars) of the shadbush. If the original tree is taken from the wild and improved upon by man by selective breeding or other means, that doesn’t mean it becomes a different tree. One look at the flowers tells the whole story.

The buds of the shadbush, as far as I know, are unique and hard to confuse with any others, so if your Amelanchier has buds like these it is a shadbush. People get upset when they discover that their high priced ornamental tree has the heart of a roadside tramp, but that’s because they don’t understand how many years and how much work it took to “improve” upon what was found in nature. Cultivars can have double the number of flowers that roadside trees have but they are also often bred for disease resistance and other desirable, unseen characteristics as well, and that’s why they cost so much. It can take 20 years or more to develop a “new” tree, and even longer to profit from the time and effort.

Wood anemones have sprung up but with all the clouds it has been hard to find an open flower. Finally, one cloudy day this one said “Hey, look at me,” so I grabbed a shot while I could. If ever there was a sun lover this is it, but on this day it could wait no longer.

I went to the Beaver Brook natural area to see if the hobblebushes that lived there were blossoming, and found them in full bloom, along with many trilliums. This one pictured had taken on an unusual upright shape. I usually see them grow low to the ground with their branches hidden by last year’s fallen leaves. They’re easy to trip on, and that’s how this bush hobbles you. I was careful not to trip and end up in the brook.

Or at least, the bushes were half way blooming. All the unopened buds in the center are the fertile flowers that do all the work and the larger, prettier flowers around the outer edges are the sterile flowers, just there to entice insects into stopping in for a visit. Hobblebushes are a native viburnum, one of over 200 species worldwide, and they are one of our most beautiful spring flowering shrubs.

Red elderberries go from purple buds to white flowers, so I’d guess by now I should go back and see the flowers. The flower heads are pyramidal; quite different from the large, flat flower heads of the common elderberry.

While I was at Beaver Brook I decided to check on the disappearing waterfall, which runs only after we have a certain amount of rain. What draws me to this scene is the mosses. Mosses grow slowly here, often taking many decades to cover a stone wall, and that’s because it has always been relatively dry with a normal average of an inch or so of rain each week, but turn up the rainfall and what you see here will happen. Most of that moss is due to splash over from the stream and or/ water runoff from above, and it’s beautiful and unusual enough to sometimes make people stand in line, waiting to get a photo. I saw them stacked three deep here one day, but if ever we live in a time with twice the average rainfall people will walk right by this spot without giving it a second glance, because then everything will look like this.

By the way, if you’re interested in mosses the BBC did a fascinating one hour show about them. Just Google “The Magical World of Moss on BBC.”  It’s well worth watching.

Beaver Brook was rushing along at a pretty good clip and the trees along its banks were greening up.

But not all the new leaves were green.

Beech buds are breaking and there are beautiful angel wings everywhere in the forest.

In the garden the cartoonish flowers of henbit have finally appeared. Not that long ago I could count on them being one of the first flowers I showed here in spring but now they bloom as much as a month later. Why hens peck at them I don’t know, but that’s why they’re called henbit. They’re in the mint family and the leaves and flowers are edible, with a slightly sweet and peppery flavor.

How intense the blue of scilla was on a cloudy day. This and other spring flowering bulbs are having an extended bloom this year I’ve noticed, most likely because it has been on the cool side for a week or two.

The blue of grape hyacinths was just as intense. My color finding software calls it slate blue, indigo or royal blue, depending on what area I put the pointer on. These plants have nothing to do with either grapes or hyacinths. They’re actually in the asparagus family, but more beautiful than their cousins, I think. I like the small white ring that surrounds the flower’s opening, most likely there to entice insects.

A slightly different colored glory of the snow has come along. These are very pretty flowers, almost like a larger version of scilla, but not quite the same shape. If I had more sun in my yard I’d grow them all.

The small leaved PJM rhododendrons had just come into bloom when I took this photo. The plants were originally developed in Massachusetts and are now every bit as common as Forsythias in this area. In fact, the two plants are often planted together. Forsythia blooms usually a week or so before the rhododendron but yellow and purple flowers blooming together is a common sight in store and bank parking areas in spring.

The old fashioned bleeding hearts are blooming nicely. They can get quite big in the garden but they die back in summer. This can leave quite a big hole in a perennial border, so they take a bit of planning before you just go ahead and plant one anywhere. They are native to northern China, Korea and Japan and despite a few drawbacks are well worth growing. They also do well as stand alone plants due to their size, and since they don’t mind shade they look good planted here and there under trees. That’s the way the plant pictured above is used in a local park.

Even the ferns are being held back by the cool, wet weather; this sensitive fern is one of only two or three I’ve seen trying to open. A sunny day or two will perk them up and will also mean an explosion of growth, so I’m hoping I can bring you a sunnier post in the near future.

Cinnamon ferns are in all stages of growth but I have yet to see one fully opened.

Lower down on its stem this fern had a visitor. I was near a pond and mayflies were hatching. According to what I read online the dull opaque color of the wings means this mayfly was at the “subimagio stage,” halfway between the nymph and adult stages. This is when they are most vulnerable, so that explains why it was in hiding on this fern. A single hatching can produce many millions of them, so there were probably others around. They are among the most ancient types of insects still living, having been here since 100 million years before the dinosaurs. I’m glad they’re still with us; I think they’re quite beautiful. I hope everyone is able to get out and see all of the wonders of spring.

As I stood and watched the mists slowly rising this morning I wondered what view was more beautiful than this. ~Hal Borland

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Beaver Brook Natural Area in Spring

I saw hobblebushes blooming in the woods along the roadsides so I knew it was time to visit the Beaver Brook Natural Area in Keene. It’s a place where I know I can get close to the hobblebushes and many other plants. I start off by following the old abandoned road that used to be the route to Concord, which is the state capitol, from Keene. The road was abandoned in the 1970s when the new Route 9 north was built, and nature has been doing its best to reclaim it ever since.

The old road is full of cracks, which are filled in immediately by green, growing life. This of course makes the cracks even wider so more plants can move in. Its a slow but inexorable process that will go on until the forest takes back what was carved out of it.

Cinnamon ferns (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) unfurled by one of the vernal pools found along the old road.

Foamflowers (Tiarella cordifolia) grew near another pool. These pretty white flowered plants like wet feet so when you kneel for a photo you usually get wet knees. They have hairy, maple-like leaves and foot high flower stalks, and small, bright white flowers. Their leaves are bright green at first and then turn a darker green, sometimes mottled with maroon or brown.

The “Foam” part of the name comes from the many stamens on the flowers, which give large colonies a kind of frothy look. Each flower has 5 white petals, 5 white sepals, and 10 stamens. Foam flowers are popular in garden centers and are grown in gardens as much for their foliage as the flowers. Native Americans used the leaves and roots medicinally as a mouthwash for mouth sores. The plant is also called “cool wort” because the leaves were once used on scalds and burns to relieve the pain.

New maple leaves are still wearing their bright colors.

I’ve seen this spot when all the green you see to the right was underwater, but the brook was tame on this day. Maybe a little higher than average but not too bad.

I’m surprised flooding hadn’t washed all of this away, or maybe it was flooding that carried it here. This is just upstream from where I was in the previous shot.

There were an amazing number of trees in the brook so it will take quite a flood to wash them downstream. I’d cut them up if I was in charge because “downstream” from here means right through the heart of Keene. There must be a thousand places further on where a mess like this could get hung up. Waiting until high summer when the water was at its lowest and then having two men wade in with a battery-operated chainsaw would be the way to go.

But I was glad I wasn’t in charge because clearing that log jam will be worse than pulling apart a beaver dam by a longshot. How lucky I was; all I had to do was keep walking and enjoying a beautiful day.

I stopped to see the beautiful smoky eye boulder lichens (Porpidia albocaerulescens) that live here. It always looks like someone has spilled jewels on the stone.

Not too far up the old road from the smoky eye boulder lichens are the hobblebushes, and that’s the amazing thing about this place; just walk a few steps and there is another beautiful thing to stop and see. This is why, though it is less than a mile’s walk to Beaver Brook Falls, it often takes me two hours or more. I don’t come here for exercise, I come for the beauty of the place.

And there is little that is more beautiful than the flowers of our native hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides). The large, sterile flowers around the perimeter are there just to attract insects to the smaller, fertile flowers. The outer flowers are delicate, and a strong wind or heavy rain can strip them from the flower head.

Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) were bright yellow among last year’s leaves. They like wet, sunny meadows and open woodlands and there are a lot of them here.

There were no flowers on them yet though, just buds. The plant is said to be important to a number of short-tongued insects that are able to easily reach the nectar in the small yellow flowers. Each flower will be only about an eighth of an inch long with five sepals, five petals, and five stamens.

There were lots of blue marsh violets (Viola cucullata) (I think) blooming along the roadsides on this day. The long flower stems held the flowers high above the leaves and I believe the blue marsh violet is the only one that does this.

Jack in the pulpits (Arisaema triphyllum) still hadn’t unfurled their leaves but they had nice color on their spathes.

The old road goes uphill the entire way but it’s an easy climb and there are many interesting things to see along with all the plants and trees, like the old guard posts still guarding against accidents that will never happen. The electric lines seen here run through the area on their way to elsewhere. There are no houses along the road.

The disappearing stream that runs down the hillside had done just that. It was too bad because it can be beautiful in spring.

Here it was in March while there was still ice melting. The stream ran then.

There aren’t many places where you can get right down to the brook but there are two or three and this is one of them. All the stone along the embankment was put there to prevent washouts and it’s hard to walk on, so you have to be careful.

The stone didn’t prevent all washouts. This old culvert washed into the brook years ago. The brook slowly eats away at the road and in the end it will most likely win.

All the walking and hiking I’ve been doing has improved my legs and lungs so much I thought I could just skip down the embankment to see Beaver Brook Falls. It didn’t work out quite that way but I made it without breaking my neck. The amount of water going over the falls was perfect. There’s a huge stone that juts out right in the middle and when there is too little water it splits the falls in two, so the scene isn’t quite as photogenic in my opinion.

The only trouble was, I took the wrong trail down to the brook so I was even further away from the falls than this. I was glad I had a zoom lens. There used to be just one trail down to the brook but now somehow there are three, all looking equally worn. Since I took this one, I would have had to wade in the brook to get any closer. I wasn’t interested in getting wet but it could have been done. People used to swim here all the time, rocks and all.

This shot shows the climb back to the road, or half of it anyway. About half way up I leaned my back against a tree and took a photo to show what you’re up against if you decide to do this. The small trees kept me from getting too much forward momentum on the way down, and then they helped me climb back up. That big rock will slide right down the hill if you put too much weight on it but the others were pretty firm.

Just to the right, out of camera range in that previous photo, there was a colony of what must have been twenty trilliums or more. I saw them along the road all the way up and saw those I had missed on the way down. In fact I saw more trilliums here than I’ve ever seen in one place before, so if you live in the area and it is wildflowers you want to see, this is a great place to start looking. Those I’ve shown in this post are really just a small part of what can be found here.

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. ~Washington Irving.

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