A Wildflower Walk

A couple of weeks ago I took a walk down an old road I had never been on and was amazed by all the wildflowers I found there. There was a river nearby and since it was the Asuelot River that I grew up on, I felt as if I had come home. I had never been along this section of it but I felt as if I knew every inch. The river was high; high enough to flood some of the open meadows along its banks.

Watercress grew in the shallows. This plant is edible and is said to have a kind of peppery bite but since it grows in water I’d never eat it. These days you never know what pollutants might be in the water, and when I was growing up parts of this river were terrible. We’ve done a great job of cleaning it so now even trout swim in it once again but for me, it’s hard to forget what we did to it in the past.

There were turtles. There are always turtles. My grandmother called them mud turtles but I think most of our turtles are either painted or snapping turtles. I haven’t seen any of the big snappers yet. They’ll come along in June when the females lay their first batch of eggs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this spot was full of them.

Though the old road looked like it had a wall of growth on either side I knew there were game trails and other places where you could get through. The reason the edge of a forest always looks like an impenetrable wall of growth is because that’s where the most sunshine is and the plants, shrubs and trees compete for all the sunshine they can get. The forest never seemed like a wall to me when I was a boy; it was more like a mirror. I felt at home there and knew I belonged as much as the trees, plants and animals did.

One of my favorite mosses, cypress leaved plait moss, grew on a log. I like the way it seems to reach out and explore new areas of the logs it grows on.

Plaited means braided, and a closer view shows that it is a good name for this moss, because that’s just what it looks like.

Coltsfoot plants were still blooming when I was here and they’re still blooming now. All the spring flowers are having an extended season due to the cloudy, cool weather we’ve had.

There were thousands of bluets here and these were the deepest blue I could find. They’re very cheery little things that everyone is happy to see each spring.

The first strawberry blossoms were appearing when I was here. Now I have hundreds of them blooming in my yard. In June the plants will bear some of the sweetest, juciest strawberries you could hope for. Unfortunately, they’ll also be some of the smallest strawberries ever seen. It takes a while to pick a handful.

It’s a good year for violets and I found many of the first I had seen in bloom here.

The cooler spring weather has meant that fern fiddleheads just go on and on slowly, in no hurry to reach adulthood.

Sedges also had an extended bloom but now grasses are taking their place. In this example many of the butter colored male flowers of this Pennsylvania sedge had given up the ghost and hung shriveled against the stem, but the wispy white female flowers still waited for the wind to bring them pollen from other plants.

The first butterfly I saw this year was this eastern tailed blue. I waited for it to open its wings so I could get a shot of their beautiful blue color but it refused to open them. I knew if my shadow fell on it, it would fly away but I thought if I could put just the tiniest sliver of shadow on it, it might open it wings. Carefully I moved until just a whisker of shadow fell on it but that’s all it took; it opened its blue wings and flew off before I could get a shot. I also saw a mourning cloak butterfly here and heard an amazing chorus of birds, including finches, warblers, wrens, and eastern phoebes.

Wood anemones were tucked in everywhere. I think of all the flowers I’ve gone here and there looking for and here they are, all in one spot. The only thing missing is spring beauties, but they could be here too. It’s possible I just haven’t found them yet.

I came to a clearing and there was the Ashuelot River in full view. I thought about how, when I was a boy of 8 or 9 years old this river was a barrier, but as soon as I found the courage to cross the train trestles alone my world expanded. It suddenly opened up and seemed vast and there I was, free to explore it. The first places I explored were just like this place and the world became my playground. All children should have a chance to run free and learn from nature in places like this. It was a wonderful place to grow and discover so many new things.

Dormant buds under the bark will break (or erupt) when or if something happens to the terminal bud, which in this case was an entire tree. The beavers here did exactly what my grandmother did when she pinched out the growing tip of her geraniums to make them bushier. I became interested in the study of botany by wondering about such things, and that’s why I’ve always thought that nature was the best teacher a child could have. The wonder of nature is in its ability to teach us something new each day. I was an empty jar, and nature filled me to overflowing.

Walt Whitman said “There was a child went forth every day, and the first object he looked upon and received with wonder or pity or love or dread, that object he became, and that object became part of him.” Since it flowed just a few yards from our house the first “object” I looked upon was the river. As I grew older I felt as if I had found a magical painting that I could step into; an artist had painted a beautiful earthly paradise and here I was walking through it. Nature taught me to see and appreciate the beauty of life. It showed me the worth of silence and the meaning of serenity. Nature became my teacher, friend, and companion. I had plenty of childhood friends but, as author David Mitchell wrote, “Trees are always a relief, after people.” Before I had ever heard the word solitude I seemed to crave it, and here along the river is where I found it.

This particular slice of paradise was populated by more trout lilies than I had ever seen growing in one place. They weren’t all in bloom but there were many thousands of them.

On this flower the big, reddish anthers were just starting to produce pollen.

This shot is of the trout lilies covering the forest floor for as far as the eye can see, and they did this along both sides of the old road. There must be millions of plants here and I’m sure they’ve been here for a very long time. Since a trout lily colony can last 300 years or more they might even have been here when this area was first being settled.

The flowers were the biggest trout lily blooms I’ve seen; possibly 2 inches across. It’s obvious where the “lily” part of the plant’s name comes from, and the mottled leaves in this shot show where the “trout” part of the name came from.

Shadbushes were everywhere out here, some in full bloom and others just starting. Since they melted so well into the surrounding vegetation they were hard to get a good shot of.

I left the old dirt road and walked a little on the main road, where I found mother goose sleeping on her nest of cattail stalks. I wasn’t too far away when I took this photo but she seemed fine with my being there. I’ve read that Canada geese are in the top tier of parents in the animal world so I’d guess it would take quite a lot to get her off that nest. I went back a few days later to see if the eggs had hatched and two or three people told me that nine goslings were now swimming peacefully beside their mother. May they all live long and bliss filled lives.

Must we always teach our children with books? Let them look at the stars and the mountains above. Let them look at the waters and the trees and flowers on Earth. Then they will begin to think, and to think is the beginning of a real education. 
~David Polis

Thanks for stopping in. Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!

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A Rail Trail Hike

I planned last weekend to show you the last of the fall foliage colors but a freeze the night before finished that plan and all the leaves had fallen by the time I was able to get to one of my favorite rail trails. But, and this is a big but; just because all the leaves have fallen doesn’t mean you can’t still see colors. They’re always there, but in some months you just have to look a little closer to see them.

When I set out the fallen leaves were edged in frost. It had been a cold night.

These little red mushrooms didn’t seem to mind the cold. I don’t know what their name is but that doesn’t matter. I can admire and enjoy them without knowing it.

Little bluestem grass (Schizachyrium scoparium) glowed a luminous pink in the sunshine.

It is the seed heads on little bluestem that catch the light as they ripen. This grass is a native prairie grass which grows in every U.S. state except Nevada and Washington. According to the USDA its appearance can vary in height, color, length of leaves, flowering, and clump diameter from location to location. It is also grown in many gardens.

When you’re on a rail trail and you see a stream running under it, that’s the time to climb down the embankment to see what kind of culvert it runs through.

As I expected, this one was an old box culvert built by the railroad about 150 years ago, and still working just fine.

Down by the culvert a boulder was covered by moss.

Most of it was brocade moss (Hypnum imponens.)  This pretty moss  is very shiny and sometimes has an orange brown color. Its common name comes from the way it looks as if it has been embroidered on whatever it happens to be growing on.  It is easily confused with knight’s plume moss (Ptilium crista-castrensis,) but the spore capsules on knights plume moss are elbow macaroni shaped and horizontal, while those of brocade moss are cylindrical and stand vertically.

I saw quite a few small tree stumps with beaver teeth marks in them, meaning they came quite a way from the river to get them.

Winterberries (Ilex verticillata) also told me there was water nearby. I often see this native holly growing in standing water but I’ve heard that it will grow in drier soil. Birds love its bright red berries. These shrubs are dioecious, meaning they need both a male and female plant present to produce seed. If you have a yard with wet spots winterberry is a great, easy to grow native plant that won’t mind wet feet and will attract birds as well.

I think every time I’ve seen lemon drop fungi (Bisporella citrina) they were growing on a smooth surface; often the cut end of a log or the smooth debarked surface, but here they were growing on a craggy old stump. Lemon drop fungi start life as a tiny bright yellow disc and look as if they lie flat on the log, but they actually hover just above the surface on a short stalk. As they age each disc becomes cup shaped. The Citrina part of the scientific name comes from the Latin Citrin, which means “lemon yellow.” They are very small, so you’ll need a loupe or a macro lens to see them properly.

You might see dark green or purple spots on the bark of smooth barked trees like maple and beech and think you are seeing moss but this is a liverwort. There are about 800 species of frullania liverworts and many grow as epiphytes on the bark of trees and shrubs where the humidity is high. Epiphytic plants take nothing from the host plants they grow on, so this liverwort does no harm to trees. As it gets colder they turn color until they become a dark purple; almost black, so they are much more noticeable in winter than in summer when they’re green. Some can get fairly large but this example was about an inch across.

The tiny leaves of frullania liverworts are strung together like beads. Some frullania liverworts are said to be very fragrant but the few that I have remembered to smell didn’t seem to have any scent at all. This liverwort can cause something called woodcutter’s eczema. This eczema, called phytodermatitis (basically an itchy rash,) has been seen on loggers and others who regularly handle logs or cord wood with it on them. It doesn’t sound like anything serious and usually disappears in two or three weeks once the person stops handling logs with liverworts on them.

If you see a flat, whitish bracket fungus on an oak or other hardwood you might think it wasn’t very interesting but you could be seeing a thick walled maze polypore (Daedalea quercina,) which is actually quite interesting.

The Daedalea part of the scientific name comes from the Daedalus of Greek myth who designed the labyrinth that hid the Minotaur, so it makes sense that you’d find a maze on the underside of this polypore. Of course the maze is simply this mushroom’s way of increasing its spore bearing surfaces. The more spores it produces the better its chance of continuing the survival of the species, and the survival of the species is of prime importance. The quercina part of its scientific name refers to the oaks it prefers but it will also grow on other hardwoods. It appears in the colder months and causes brown rot in the tree. Fresh example are white and older examples more grayish brown, or even black.

There were fence posts along an old stone wall, and that told me that animals were probably kept here at one time.

The fence posts were strung with barbed wire as I suspected. You can leave a trail at any time and just walk into the woods, but you had better know what you’re doing and you had better watch where you’re going because much of what is now forest was once pasture and there is barbed wire everywhere. I still shudder when I think of the book I read once by a man in Massachusetts who said one of his favorite pastimes was running through the woods at night. Good luck to him is about all I can say.

This oak seedling was wearing its fall best and I thought it was a beautiful thing.

A wasp nest was somehow damaged and part of it had blown into the trail. It was a fascinating thing to see, with its multicolored ribbons of paper.  According to what I’ve read “paper wasps gather fibers from dead wood and plant stems, which they mix with saliva, and use to construct water-resistant nests made of gray or brown papery material.” Usually the ones I see show swirls of various shades of gray but this one was quite colorful.

There are people who seem to think that a plant’s buds magically appear in spring but the buds are there now, just waiting for spring. This photo shows the male catkins of the American hazelnut (Corylus americana.) A hazelnut catkin more or less, is a string of flowers which will open in a spiral pattern around a central stem. The pollen these flower produce will be carried by the wind to the sticky female flowers and we’ll have another crop of hazelnuts.

Before I knew it I was at one of the many old railroad trestles that cross the Ashuelot River. I stopped for a while and admired the view of the river that I’d probably never see if this rail trail wasn’t here. I’m very thankful for these trails. They get me quite far out into the woods without having to do a lot of work bushwhacking my way through.

So in the end we’ve seen quite a lot of color even though it wasn’t in the form of flowers or leaves. All seasons have their own beauty; who can deny the blue of the river, always seemingly darker than the blue of the sky? My hope is that readers will get outside in all of their seasons, whether they have two or four, and enjoy the beauty that will be there waiting.

Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster. ~Albert Einstein

Thanks or stopping in.

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