Some Fall Color

Some of you who came here expecting to find flowers might be a little disappointed but I’ve been taking a lot of fall foliage photos and I need to put them in a blog post, otherwise I’ll still be showing them in December and everyone will be confused. On this day I wanted to take just a short walk by the Ashuelot River to see if the cinnamon ferns had changed into their beautiful fall pumpkin orange color yet, but everything was so beautiful, what started as a short walk turned into a complete blog post. Sometimes it seems as if nature just throws itself at you and this was one of those days.

Not only was the forest beautiful, the weather was as well. So far we’ve had a very warm October and that has meant that the leaves are changing later than they usually do, so this might be an extended fall foliage year.

I saw a few orange cinnamon ferns but most hadn’t turned yet, which is unusual.

Turtles were even out, still soaking up as much of the weakened autumn sunshine as they could. These were painted turtles, I think. It’s unusual to see them in October.

Other creatures were active as well. Do you see the great blue heron walking along the far shore? It’s over on the far left, just by the last tree on the left side.

The big bird was hungry and on the move. Here it approaches a fallen tree from the left. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to watch the heron or the trees so I stopped to get shots of both.

But then it saw me and froze. I thought it would stay that way but it continued on, very slowly.

I hoped it would see a fish or a frog but it didn’t catch a thing while I was there. I know there are still frogs to catch because I scared a few into the water while getting these photos.

I’ve watched enough blue herons stalking food to know that this wouldn’t be over soon, so I moved on.

When I left it was watching what I was doing rather than looking for food.

I had leaves to see, so I left the bird alone. I didn’t come here looking for colorful foliage but since the trees surprised me by being so beautiful already, I stayed. My color finding software even sees salmon pink in this view.

They were beautiful no matter if you looked forward or back.

I liked this view but it might have been better if if duckweed hadn’t covered the blue of the water.

It was hard to watch where I was going instead of looking up.

The branches on the old sunken tree still looked more like the ribs of a a sunken ship.

The way these polypores were spaced on this tree made me think of squirrel steps.

The forest glowed and beckoned, so I had to go and see. I love walking into scenes like this that have such soft, beautiful light.

I found a fine old American hornbeam, also known as iron wood or muscle wood (Carpinus caroliniana.) The latter name comes from the way it looks like tendons are rippling under its bark. It is common along our rivers but seeing one this big is not common because these trees don’t seem to live long. Low down on its trunk I can see a good example of a maple dust lichen (Lecanora thysanophora) in this shot that I didn’t see in person. It’s that light grayish spot. The tree also had lots of spidery Frullania liverworts on it. They are the darker blotches. They like places where the humidity is high, like here along the river.

New England asters bloomed here and there but they won’t last too much longer.

Many asters looked more like these.

Well there wasn’t peak color here yet, but when leaves start turning they can do it quickly and most of these have started. Sometimes in just a day or two a tree, especially a red maple, can change from green to red or orange so you’ve got to be on your toes if you want to catch them at thier most colorful. I hope you have plenty of color where you live, if not from leaves then maybe flowers. I’m still seeing flowers here so there should be at least one more flower post soon.

The fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light. ~Malcolm Lowry

Thanks for coming by.

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Looking For Trout Lilies

I haven’t been seeing many trout lilies blooming in the usual places that I find them so last Saturday I decided to take a walk along the Ashuelot River in Keene to a colony of a few hundred plants that grow there. It was a beautiful spring day but the river was quite high. The Thursday before we had an inch and a half of rain and that brought all the rivers and streams up.

I thought I might be in for a solitary stroll but by the time I got back I had seen a dozen or more people.

The water had covered the base of a leatherleaf shrub (Chamaedaphne calyculata) but it didn’t seem to mind. I think I can also see some sweet gale catkins (Myrica gale) mixed in, and that’s a surprise because I didn’t know it grew here. I see it up in Hancock 25 miles to the north east regularly but never here that I can remember.

Blueberry buds were just about ready to open. The river bank is lined with native bushes.

Dandelions bloomed happily along the trail.

Cinnamon fern fiddleheads (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum) were still surprisingly a week or more behind their cousins the interrupted ferns (Osmundastrum claytoniana).

Canada mayflowers (Maianthemum canadense) are up and bent on taking over the world. Thought they’re a native plant they can be very invasive and are almost impossible to get out of a garden. If you try to pull the plant the leaf stem just beaks away from the root system and it lives on. This plant is sometimes called two leaved Solomon’s seal or false lily of the valley. The “May” part of the name refers to its flowering time. Native Americans used the plant to treat headache and sore throats.

Canada mayflower can form monocultures and I’ve seen large swaths of forest floor with nothing but Canada mayflowers, as the above photo shows. 

The tiny flower buds were already showing on many of the plants. They’ll be followed by speckled red berries that birds and small animals love.

I saw a very hairy fiddlehead of a fern I can’t name but if I had to guess I’d say bracken fern (Pteridium aquilinum).

Canoeists were paddling upstream, probably thinking about how easy returning downstream would be. There are lots of underwater hazards in this river, mostly fallen trees, so canoeists and kayakers wait until high water in spring to navigate the river.

I always wonder what is over on the other side of the river. It’s a sizeable piece of land and is posted no trespassing so maybe it will remain in its natural state.

In the backwaters where the current doesn’t interfere, duckweed grows. If the ducks aren’t eating it yet they will be soon.

I saw a dozen turtles sunning themselves on a log. I told a man and his wife I met on the trail about how I’ll often tell small children that I meet out here about the turtles they always seem to miss. I’ll ask them “did you see the turtles?” “No”, they’ll say, getting excited. “They’re right there on the log. See them?” Then a parent will lift them up and they’ll spot the turtles and squeal with delight and all the turtles will slide into the water with a plop. The man’s wife thought it was a hilarious story, apparently, but it has happened again and again in just that way. The delightful squeal of a child is not something a turtle can appreciate, so if you have a little one you might want to warn them to just squeal on the inside.

These two obviously weren’t speaking. They didn’t even want to see each other. I didn’t ask.

A willow was golden against the sky.

And an old apple tree bloomed off in the woods.

And the red maples were so very red. Even I can see their color, and that’s always a surprise.

And there were the trout lilies, in shade so deep they thought it was evening and so had all closed up. It was only just after noon but they know more about when their day is done than I do. At least I got to see some that were actually blooming. I still wonder what is going on with them, because they seem to be blooming much later these days.

They’re a flower pretty enough to seek out and admire, so my walk wasn’t wasted. Far from it.

The trout lilies grow right near the bridge, which is always my turning point because there is a highway up ahead.

I had the radio on in my car when I was driving here and the song that was playing when I arrived was Grazing In The Grass, by The Friends of Distinction. I remembered it as I walked back:

Flowers with colors for takin’
The sun beaming down between the leaves
And the birds dartin’ in and out of the trees
Everything here is so clear, you can see it
And everything here is so real, you can feel it
And it’s real, so real, so real, so real, so real, so real
Can you dig it?

I could, and I did.

Your deepest roots are in nature.  No matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of life you lead, you remain irrevocably linked with the rest of creation.  ~Charles Cook

Thanks for stopping in. Happy Mother’s day to all you moms out there!

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Before the Storm

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We had a white Christmas because 16 inches of snow fell, but the photos in this post were taken before that storm. Getting into the woods becomes more difficult after a deep snowfall, and the walk along the Ashuelot River shown in this post becomes especially so. That’s because snowmobiles don’t come here to pack down the snow, so you’re walking in a trail of thousands of other frozen footprints. It can be exhausting and that’s why I decided to come here before the storm. I was happy to see Ashuelot falls back to normal. The last time I came here the river had dried up enough so the huge granite blocks that this dam is made from were showing.

It was a cloudy day but warm enough to bring out a few of the last witch hazel blossoms we’ll see in 2020. This is our native fall blooming witch hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, not the vernal, spring blooming witch hazel. Seeing flowers in December always seems like a great gift and if I didn’t see a single thing more on this day I would have gone home happy.

There were black locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) seed pods falling. I often see them all over the snow but as of this walk they were falling in the grass. It must have been a good year for these native trees; I see there were nine seeds in this pod. Multiply that by the thousands of seed pods that fall and you can see why this tree is so successful. Its wood is very rot resistance and fence posts made from it can last in the ground for 100 years or more.

Each time I walk here I think about the archeological dig that took place a few years ago that showed that the Abenaki people lived here along the river over 12,000 years ago. They fished, hunted and had their homes here. The area where Keene was, according to some, called “place between” or “collection of many waters” or “place between the waters.” Others say it meant “place where waters meet” but whatever they called it, it seems to have been all about the water and that makes perfect sense.

The Abenaki tribe called beavers “Tomakwa.” They ate beavers and would wait for a pond to freeze so they could walk across the ice to the beaver lodge, which they would then take apart. I was surprised to see that beavers had girdled this huge oak tree. The tree must have been 15 inches through and its life has now ended. Without its inner bark connecting its roots to the crown a tree cannot live.

In the still, shallow backwaters duckweed had frozen into the ice.

The ducks didn’t seem to mind that there was no duckweed to be had. They were tipping up in the shallower water along the river banks and bottom feeding.

Canada geese were doing the same. I saw a lot of geese and mallards here on this day.

There is always one Canada goose watching while the others do goose type things and on this day this one was the chosen guard goose. It was clear that my pretending to be a tree wasn’t fooling anybody. Still, the guard didn’t sound the alarm and my presence was tolerated. I was thankful for its indifference; I once lived where there was a rooster that attacked me every time it saw me, and it was a lot smaller than that goose.

Large puddles had formed in depressions, frozen over and then soaked into the ground, leaving the ice behind.

This ice was quite clear, meaning it had little oxygen in it. I’ve read that white puddle ice is white because of all the oxygen it contains.

Evergreen ferns lay splayed out on the forest floor. By now I’m sure they’re covered by snow but no matter; they’ll stay green until spring when new fiddleheads appear.

Not all the fronds were lying on the ground. Quite often fertile fronds will stand longer than the rest, and when I see one standing like this I always look at the underside.

Sure enough this standing frond was fertile, as its spore producing sori showed. I believe this was the evergreen wood fern (Dryopteris intermedia) which is also called the intermediate woodfern. According to what I’ve read this fern contains toxins that can paralyze some cold blooded animals and invertebrates. This would explain why it never appears to have been eaten.  

This fern, along with mosses and lichens, have decided to call a hole in a tree trunk home.

Imagine trying to wade through this tangled thicket. Take it from me; it can’t be done without tools.

That’s because the thicket is armed with very sharp thorns that have no problem ripping your clothes and skin. This thicket is made of the canes of the invasive multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora). Multiflora rose has beautiful, wonderfully fragrant small white (rarely pink) flowers that are about an inch across but unfortunately it is very invasive. It is from Japan and Korea and grows to huge proportions, arching up over shrubs and sometimes growing 20-30 feet up into trees. A large plant bearing hundreds of blossoms is a truly beautiful thing but its thorny thickets prevent all but the smallest animals from getting where they want to go. Its sale is banned in New Hampshire but since each plant can easily produce half a million seeds I think it’s here to stay.

Multiflora rose hips are bright red and about as big as a pea. A single plant can have many hundreds of them and birds love them, so the genie is out of the bottle and this plant is here to stay.

Just a fallen cinnamon fern leaf, but such beauty it held; like a gem that belonged in a jewel box. There is incredible beauty all around us all the time and I do hope you’ll let yourself stop for just a moment or two so you might see it. Just look anywhere at any time. Let the beauty speak to you. Let it take you out of yourself.

The river was pretending to be a pond on this day; very calm and still. Liquid serenity, you could say.

At this point all of what we’ve seen is covered by snow and I’m sure the normally easy trail is a lot more difficult now, but that will pass and before I know it I’ll be out here looking for wildflowers again.

Have you learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time? That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.
~ Hermann Hesse

Thanks for stopping in.

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Down by the River

I know of only three places to find gentians and only one place to find bottle or closed gentians, and that place is along the Ashuelot River in Keene. Last year I got upset when I went looking for them and found that the Keene Parks and Recreation Department had sent someone out here with a weed wacker, and that person had cut down countless beautiful wildflowers all along the trail, including the gentians. I didn’t know what I would find this year but last Saturday down the trail I went.

One of the first things I noticed was how ripe the false Solomon’s seal fruit (Maianthemum racemosum) was getting. It goes from mottled to solid red and many of these were red. They’re very pretty berries that are said to taste like molasses.

Virginia bugleweed (Lycopus virginicus) bloomed all along the trail. This is a close relative of water horehound (Lycopus americanus) and looks much like it except for its purple tinged leaves.

It was a beautiful day for a walk in the woods and I petted dogs, talked to strangers, and was happy to be in a place I’ve known since I was about 10 years old. To think I was walking a trail which was, in high probability, a Native American fishing trail which has probably changed little in thousands of years. Remains of settlements dating back 12,000 years have been found very near here and it boggles the mind to think about all that might have gone on in this place.

I always seem to see something I haven’t seen before out here, even though I’ve walked this trail for over 50 years. On this day it was a nice colony of one of our prettiest native orchids, the pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule.) I wonder if I’ll remember where they are next June when they’re in bloom.  

One of the lady’s slippers still had last year’s seed pod on it, and on that was a spider’s egg sac.

The branches of this fallen tree always make me think of the ribs of an ancient sunken ship. Indeed, at one time sections of this river were dredged so that river boats could navigate it, but the railroad coming to town put a stop to that.

Other trees might add to the hazards in the river; I could see right through this hollow red maple (Acer rubrum.)

There was lots of duckweed on the backwaters where the current is almost nonexistent.

Mad dog skullcap (Scutellaria laterifolia) grew on the sunny parts of the riverbank. The skullcap part of the common name comes from the calyx at the base of the flower, which is said to look like a medieval skull cap. The plant was once thought to cure rabies, and that is where the “mad dog” part of the common name comes from. There is powerful medicine in many skullcap species and when Native Americans wanted to go on a spirit walk or vision quest this was one of the plants they chose. The small blue and white flowers always grow in pairs in the leaf axils on mad dog skullcap but you have to look closely because sometimes one bloom will fall off before the other, which is what has happened with this example.

The seed pods of fringed loosestrife (Lysimachia ciliata) are unusual and hard to confuse with any other plant. I saw hundreds of seedpods but only one flower left, growing out of reach down the river bank.

Royal fern (Osmunda spectabilis) hasn’t changed into its fall yellow yet. When they are near a water source royal ferns 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 and also grow here. 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.

I think, in the eight years I’ve been doing this blog, that I’ve only show beech nuts (Fagus grandifolia) one other time and that’s because I rarely see them. But on this day I stumbled onto hundreds of them that must have just fallen, because many of the kernels were still inside the prickly looking husks seen here. If you harvest beechnuts and then leave them alone for a day or two they will open and out will drop two kernels. Like many trees and other plants, beech trees will have a year of heavy production, known as a mast year, and then produce very few nuts for a few years afterwards.

I put a kernel on a penny so you could get a sense of scale. A penny is 3/4 of an inch in diameter. Chipmunks and squirrels and even bears love the kernels, so you usually find more empty husks than anything else.

As I’ve said so many times, spring and fall really begin on the forest floor, much earlier than many of us realize. This wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) is a good example of that. It might be leafless before many of the trees it grows under have even started to turn color. The roots of the plant were once used to make root beer but the drink that was called sarsaparilla contained no part of the plant. It was made from birch oil and sassafras root.

There was a single blossom on what looked like an all but dead St. John’s wort plant (Hypericum perforatum.) I haven’t seen these blossoms for a few weeks now so I’m going to say this may be the last one I see this year. It’s a beautiful thing. This plant has been used medicinally for thousands of years. It likes to grow in open meadows in full sun but will stand some shade as it did here.

Wild cucumber (Echinocystis lobata) climbed up over the shrubs along the trail. It likes to grow in sandy soil and prefers a bit of shade over full sun. The flower spikes (Racemes) grow to 6 inches or more all along the main stem.

When those maples on the other side of the river turn scarlet in the fall this is an awesome view, but it isn’t really so bad in green either.

I saw a single New England aster blossom (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae.) As I’ve said in previous posts, they are our biggest, most showy aster. Some tower up over my head but this one had bent down to about knee level.

I was very surprised to see turtleheads (Chelone glabra linifolia) blooming out here. I’ve never seen them here before this day.

And there they were; one of my favorite shades of blue is found on bottle gentians (Gentiana andrewsii) but I don’t see many because they are quite rare here. This is the only place I can find them so you can imagine my delight when I found that they hadn’t been cut down again. When they start to go by theses flowers become even more beautiful by turning very dark blue and then a kind of purple. They closely resemble narrow leaved gentian (Gentiana linearis) but that plant has much narrower leaves. Why anyone would cut such a rare and beautiful thing is beyond me.

I’ve been here enough times to know that the only thing beyond this bridge is a highway, so this is where I turn and go back. As I chose what photos to use for this post I was amazed that I saw so much on what is a relatively short walk of only an hour or so, and once again I was thankful that it hadn’t all been cut down again, because it’s a beautiful walk.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring- these are some of the rewards of the simple life. ~ John Burroughs

Thanks for coming by.

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Along the Ashuelot

You can see a lot of interesting things along rivers, so last weekend I decided to walk along the Ashuelot River in Keene. Archeological digs and radiocarbon dating of artifacts have shown that Native Americans lived alongside parts of this river at least as long as 12,000 years ago. The word Ashuelot is pronounced either ash-wee-lot or ash-wil-lot, and is supposed to mean “place between” in Native American language. Between what, I don’t know; possibly between the hills that surround the Connecticut River valley that it flows through.

There have been trails along this section of river for at least as long as I’ve been around and I used to walk them as a boy, so I know the area fairly well. Still, even though I was born just a few scant yards from the river, almost every time I walk its banks I see things that I didn’t know were there. A river is full of surprises.

There are many side trails that beckon, but there is only so much time in a day.

Most of our red maples have finished flowering and are now in the business of leaf and seed production.

Silver maple seeds (samaras) are losing that crimson red that I like so much but the animals that eat them like squirrels aren’t going to care what color they are. I read once that squirrels can get all the moisture they need from trees and never have to come down for a drink. Eating seems to be another story though.

This section of forest has had all of the brushy undergrowth cleared away for some reason, and it looked as if it had been carpeted with green carpet.

Violets are just one of the plants that make up that green carpet seen in the previous photo.

Sessile leaved bellworts (Uvularia sessilifolia) also carpet the forest floor, and I saw them by the many thousands. In botanical terms the word sessile describes how one part of a plant joins another. In sessile leaved bellwort the leaves are sessile against the stem, meaning they lie flat against the stem with no stalk. These leaves are also elliptic, which means they are wider in the middle and taper at each end.  New plants, before the flowers appear, can resemble Solomon’s seal at a glance. The plants I find always have just a single nodding, bell shaped, pale yellow flower but they can sometimes have two. Sessile leaved bellwort is in the lily of the valley family and is also called wild oats.

Even as the female box elder flowers still bloom seed production is in full swing. The bright lime green parts are the female flower stigmas and the dark parts are the newly emerging seeds.

Two turtles vied for prime space on the end of a mostly submerged log. The trilling of frogs was very loud here but though I spent I few minutes looking, I didn’t see a single one. When I was a boy there were huge bullfrogs in this river; some as big as cantaloupes.

There are beavers in the river, and they get hungry. This tree was big and I wondered if maybe they had given up. Still, I’ve seen them drop trees even larger than this one many times.

Duckweed was just getting started on the river’s surface.

Native shadbushes (Amelanchier canadensis) blossomed here and there along the shoreline. They usually stand very straight, reaching up to 25 feet tall. Shadbushes originally got their name from the way they bloomed when the shad fish were running upriver to spawn. Another name, Juneberry, refers to when its fruit ripens. The fruit is said to resemble a blueberry in taste, with a hint of almond from the seeds. Native American used the fruit in pemmican, which is made with fat, fruit, and preserved meat. Shadbush wood is brown, hard, close-grained, and heavy. It can also be very straight, and Native Americans used it for arrow shafts. They also used its roots and bark medicinally. Shadbush makes an excellent garden shrub or small tree and is easily found in nurseries. It grows naturally at the edge of forests and along river banks.

This was a real head scratcher. There are 3 trees in this tangle, all broken. I’m glad I wasn’t anywhere near them when it happened. I heard one fall very close to me two years ago on Mount Caesar in Swanzey and it must have been big because it made a tremendous crashing sound.

At the start of this post I said that I almost always see something here that I didn’t know was here and this large colony of trout lilies is one of them. Over the course of my lifetime I’ve walked past this spot hundreds of times but I’ve never seen these plants. Why is simple; I’ve just never walked here when they were blooming and I’ve always missed seeing their foliage. The leaves blend into their surroundings quite well when there are no flowers. Native Americans cooked the small bulbs or dried them for winter food, so they would have been very happy to see them.

Many of these trout lilies had beautiful red anthers. According to a blog called The Trout Lily Project “Trout lily (Erythronium americanum) exhibits striking variation in the color of its anthers & pollen grains.  Anthers that lack red pigment are pure yellow in color, whereas those that produce red pigment range in color from pale orange to deep brick red. Although this variation is well known, its ecological significance remains virtually unstudied.”

New Hampshire has four native cherry trees: black cherry (Prunus serotina), choke cherry (Prunus virginiana), pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), and wild American plum (Prunus americana). The blossoms in the above photo are pin cherry blossoms, I believe. It can be difficult to tell them apart. Cherry trees usually bloom right on the heels of shadbush but sometimes the bloom times overlap, as they are this year.

Mayapple foliage was easy to see, but there were no flowers yet. The flowers nod beneath the leaves and can be hard to spot but the buds are usually easily seen. I’m going to have to get back here this week for photos of the flowers.

The highbush blueberry bushes (Vaccinium corymbosum) had plenty of buds. It looks like it’ll be a good year for blueberries as long as we don’t have a late frost. It is said that blueberries are one of only three fruits native to North America, but the crabapple is a fruit and it is native to North America as well. The others are cranberries and concord grapes. Native Americans called blueberries “star berries” and used the plant medicinally, spiritually, and of course as a food. One of their favorites was a pudding made with dried blueberries and cornmeal.

On my walk back down the trail I noticed that one of the two turtles that I had seen at the start of this walk had won top spot on the almost submerged log. It crossed its hind legs contentedly as it looked over its (probably) hard won territory.

There is no rushing a river. When you go there, you go at the pace of the water and that pace ties you into a flow that is older than life on this planet. Acceptance of that pace, even for a day, changes us, reminds us of other rhythms beyond the sound of our own heartbeats. ~ Jeff Rennicke

Thanks for stopping in.

 

 

 

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Time for a Climb

Last Sunday the forecast was iffy, with possible showers and high wind gusts predicted, so I had to shake a leg and get moving earlier than I would have on a sun filled day. As the puddles in this photo of the old logging road that starts this climb show, it had rained the night before. It has been very dry here so the rain is welcome.

I chose High Blue trail in Walpole because of the forecast. It’s an easy and relatively quick climb and I know it well. I was hoping the showers would hold off, and they did.

Before you know it you’re in the meadow. I met a porcupine here last year but I didn’t see him this time.

I did see some orange hawkweed (Pilosella aurantiaca) though, and I was happy to find it because it’s something I don’t see much of. Yellow hawkweed is far more common here. Orange hawkweed is native to the alpine regions of Europe, so apparently it likes high places. If you look at the flower over on the left you’ll see a tiny crab spider pretending to be orange like the flower.

Crab spiders can change their color to match the background, but I think this one went a little heavy on the red. They change color by secreting pigments into the outer cell layer of their bodies and I wonder if they carry a whole case full of different colored pigments along with them. This one needs to mix in a little yellow to get the desired orange, I think. I’ve seen white, yellow and purple crab spiders but never red or orange.

I don’t know what kind of spider this one was, but it was living in a buttercup and it had a visitor. I don’t know the visitor’s name either, but it was able to balance on the edge of a petal.

Then all of the sudden the visitor was gone. I don’t know for sure where he went, but I can guess.

An eastern swallowtail butterfly appeared to be sunning itself on the edge of the meadow. It let me take 3 photos and then flew off.

There are places where the bedrock thrusts up into ledges and some of the biggest rock tripe lichens (Umbilicaria mammulata) that I’ve ever seen grow on them. They look like green rags hanging from the stone. These were very pliable because of the previous night’s rain. If you want to know what they felt like just feel your ear lobe, because they feel much like that, only thinner. Rock tripe is edible and eating it has saved the lives of people who were lost and starving in the past.

I put my new camera above one of the rock tripe lichens so you could get an idea of their size. The camera is about 2 X 3.5 inches and though it looks like it was on that’s just a reflection on the viewing screen.

This camera is hopefully going to replace the Panasonic Lumix that I’ve used for years. The Lumix was a great camera that took macro photos better than any camera I’ve owned, but it finally gave up the ghost after taking many thousands of them. Since you can’t get that version of the Lumix any longer its replacement is a Canon Power Shot ELPH 180. The jury is still out on its capabilities. I’ve noticed that it gets confused and can’t find the subject occasionally but it took all of the macros and close ups in this post, so I’ll let you judge for yourselves.  I need to put it through its paces a bit more, I think.

The eriophyid mite Acalitus fagerinea produces erineum patches on American beech that look and feel like felt. In fact the definition of erineum is “an abnormal felty growth of hairs from the leaf epidermis of plants caused by various mites.” The patches can turn from green to red, gold, or silver before finally turning brown. They don’t cause any real harm to the tree but if you had a copper beech as an ornamental they could be unsightly.

I finally stopped dawdling and reached the summit to find that the view was hazy as I expected. But at least the clouds were casting deep blue shadows on the hills, and that’s something that I had hoped to see on my last climb of Hewe’s Hill in Swanzey.  I could just make out the shape of Stratton Mountain, off across the Connecticut River valley in Vermont, on the left. It’s easier to see in winter when it has snow on it.

I sat and watched the cloud shadows race each other over the hills for a while like I remember doing as a boy. This view is to the west and the clouds coming toward me were beginning to darken and stack up, and the wind had started gusting enough to make the trees creak and moan. This spot is always windy even on a good day, so I decided it was time to be on my way.

But first I wanted to see the pond to see if it was covered with duckweed like it was last summer. It wasn’t covered yet but the tiny plants floated along the shoreline. It also had a lot of tree pollen floating on its surface. The tree and grass pollen has been bad this month because we haven’t had much rain to scrub it out of the air, and allergy sufferers are having a hard time of it.

Last year the duckweed all disappeared from this pond and readers told me that it sinks to the bottom in winter, and comes back in spring. So far it seems they were right.

I swished the end of my monopod through the duckweed and came up with these plants. Each plant has 1 to 3 leaves, or fronds, of 1/16 to 1/8 inch in length. A single root or root-hair grows from each frond. Many ducks eat duckweed and carry it from pond to pond on their bodies. I suppose if you had it in a home pond the only way to control it would be to scoop it out with some type of net. It does flower and makes seeds, so chances are good that you’d have to do it at least once a season for 2-3 years.

I saw several native pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) growing near the pond but all but one had lost its blossom, maybe to a hungry deer. This photo shows a view of the hole at the top of the blossom that insects need to crawl out of to escape the pouch after entering through the slit down its middle front. There is another hole just like it on the other side, so they have a choice. Downward pointing hairs inside the pouch prevent them from crawling back through the central slit, so forced to exit through a hole they get dusted with pollen.

I decided to take another side trail through what I’ve taken to calling fern gully; there was one more thing I wanted to see.

The fern fronds dancing back and forth in the wind were mesmerizing and I could have sat watching them for a while if the swaying, groaning trees hadn’t quickened my step.

I wondered if the dinosaur and coins would still be there on the quartz ledge and they were. I don’t really know anything about them but I like to think that a child was thankful for what nature had shown them and wanted to give something back out of gratitude, so they left their favorite toy and their allowance money. At least, that’s the story that has written itself in my mind.

Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind.
Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation.
Suddenly, you know you are alive.
~Vera Nazarian

Thanks for coming by.

 

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Time For A Climb

If you want to immerse yourself in nature the High Blue Trail in Walpole, New Hampshire is a good place to do it. Immersed in nature is my favorite condition, so I chose to climb here recently.

The trail from the start to the overlook is all uphill but it’s a gentle grade and a short climb.

Coltsfoot coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) leaves reminded me of spring, which seems like it happened just a couple of weeks ago.

Before you know it you’re out of the woods and in the meadow. You have to walk through here to get to the second half of the trail, so it’s kind of a midway point. I was glad that it had been mowed. I’ve been bitten by ticks 3 times this year.

I stopped to admire the marginal wood ferns (Dryopteris marginalis) that grow along the meadow’s edge. Many ferns are already starting to yellow but these are evergreen.

The round spore producing sori growing along the margins of the leaflets (pinnae) told me that this was marginal wood fern. Just before the spores are ready to be released the sori turn bluish purple, so I’m going to have to try to remember to watch closely.

Striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) showed how it came by its name. It is also called moosewood because moose will often eat its bark in the winter. It is said that Native Americans used this tree’s fine grained wood to make arrows.

Jack in the pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) stops photosynthesizing early but its green berries will continue to ripen to red even after the leaves have withered. It could be that the plant sheds its leaves to put more energy into fruit production.

Every time I come up here I have to stop at what’s left of the old fieldstone foundation and wonder about the people who once called this place home. I know nothing about them except that they were hard workers.

And I know that by the stone walls that they built and the land that they cleared as they built them, probably by using a single axe. What is now forest was once open pasture and chopping that pasture out of old growth forest must have been near back breaking labor.

I’ve always wondered if the small pond near the foundation was their source of water. I’ve never seen duckweed on it before but it was almost covered with it on this day. I wonder how it got here. Ducks, maybe? I often hear them up here.

I realized that I’d gone through life up to this point completely ignoring duckweed, so I got down on all fours at the pond’s edge and reached out with the camera in one less than steady hand to get this close up of it. Since then I’ve learned that these are the smallest flowering plants known, with some flowers measuring only .012 inches (0.3 mm) long. I’ve also learned that if duckweed covers the entire surface of a pond for an extended period of time oxygen depletion happens, and without oxygen fish die. Duckweed can also kill submerged plants by blocking sunlight, so these tiny plants can have a big impact.

The paint seems to be weathering off the summit sign quickly now.  It can be very windy up here but the sign is protected by the tree it’s on, so I doubt that it’s the cause of it.

It’s a good thing I don’t climb solely for the view because I’d often be disappointed. This day was very hazy, hot and humid and the camera just didn’t seem to like landscape photography. Still, you could see Stratton Mountain across the Connecticut River Valley in Vermont. On a day so hot it seemed hard to believe that they would be making snow over there soon, but they’ll expect full lifts on Thanksgiving Day, which is November 26th.

Zooming in on the hills made things even worse but the view, though hazy, was very blue, as it always is. Since blue is my favorite color I was happy with it.

I’ve learned that when you pay attention to the little things in life like these beautiful clover leaves, the big things take care of themselves, and some even disappear altogether. I often end these walks feeling as if I don’t have a care in the world and, after walking regularly for a while, I now feel that way most every day. Living is easy once you’ve learned how.

I saw a large piece of tree bark beside the trail that seemed strangely colored but because I’m colorblind I couldn’t really tell what colors I was seeing. It was only when I used my color finding software that I found salmon pink, India red, sandy brown, sienna, rosy brown, gray, and even peach puff. I wish I had turned it over to try and figure out which kind of tree it came from because I’d really like to know what trees are hiding such beautiful colors on their inner bark.

I took a trail that I’ve never taken before on my way down. It looked like a game trail at first but it quickly became too wide for that. A stone wall crossed the trail near a glade full of ferns and when I stopped to look at a piece of milky quartz in the wall I spotted a dinosaur standing guard over 4 or 5 coins.  I can’t speak for the age of the dinosaur but the coins were old enough to have to decipher them by size rather than the markings. I made them out to be about 61 cents worth. As I walked on I had to smile to think of a little boy or girl loving this place enough to leave their favorite toy and the loose change in their pocket as a thank you gift to nature. I hope they’re still as thankful at 70.

It’s all still there in heart and soul. The walk, the hills, the sky, the solitary pain and pleasure–they will grow larger, sweeter, lovelier in the days and years to come. ~Edward Abbey

Thanks for coming by.

 

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