Evelyn Greene, Dear Friend and Cherished Mentor

Stunned by grief, I have found it hard to express my feelings of loss, because my dear mentor and friend, Evelyn Greene, died of cancer on May 27. I know many of my naturalist friends will also grieve her death. Her son David Greene has informed us that Evelyn remained positive, physically and mentally and socially active and relatively pain free until literally the last day of her life, when her hospice nurse helped her passing to be more comfortable. A remarkably smart, funny, generous, deeply knowledgeable, one-of-a-kind kind of gal, I am enormously grateful that she recognized a kindred nature-nut spirit in me and took me under her tutelage about all things nature: plants and birds and "holey boulders" and "frazil ice," to name just a few.  Longtime followers of this blog will recognize Evelyn from the many blogs I posted about our adventures together. My mantra about my friend was "I would follow Evelyn anywhere!" Wherever she led me, the rewards were always amazing, her companionship always delightful.

Evelyn liked this portrait (below) because she told me she was wearing her favorite hat. I wish I could remember the story behind it. Evelyn had LOTS of stories. As the daughter of Paul Schaefer, a foremost advocate for the protection of wilderness in the Adirondacks, she and her siblings were required to climb all the Adirondack high peaks as children (whether they wanted to or not). When I met her in our mutual maturity, she preferred paddling and exploring lower-altitude wild places and had no use for "mindless mountaineering and oblivious hiking." Together, we moved slowly, paid attention, and bowed often. Evelyn is pictured here on the Hudson River shore called the "Ice Meadows," an area she knew very well, becoming a true expert on the often-enormous build-up of a special kind of ice that has created the remarkable habitat along this section of the river north of Warrensburg, N.Y.

These are not snowbanks behind Evelyn, but rather that special kind of ice called "frazil."  Evelyn was known as "the queen of the Hudson River Ice Meadows" because of her expertise regarding this snowy-white ice that forms in turbulent river waters during sub-zero weather. 

Sometimes this frothy-looking (but powerful!) ice will mount up so high it will cover the riverside road to heights of 10 feet or more, pushing over trees in the riverside forest and requiring weeks for road crews to clear passage along the road. The remarkably rich botanical habitat along these shores is  caused by the effects of such massive deposits of ice. Often not melting until nearly June, the weight and freezing temperature of all that ice discourages the intrusion of invasive plant species, preserving this habitat as home to many rare plants, including some that are found nowhere else in the state.

Here, Evelyn stands before an Adirondack boulder that displays a remarkable weathering pattern that has puzzled many geologists: granitic gneiss pocked with very odd holes of different sizes, formations that even the state's chief geologist couldn't explain. 

Thanks to Evelyn's diligent efforts to learn more about them, she eventually found a name to put to them: "tafoni" rock formations. The cause of them is not simply wind or water erosion but probably some kind of weathering process involving the mineral makeup of the rock. The exact cause remains mysterious. This is just one example of Evelyn's always active mind: observations would impel her to find out not only WHAT she observed, but also WHY.

Evelyn and I met because we both had Hornbeck super-lightweight solo canoes we could carry ourselves and paddle alone at the speed most effective for observing natural wonders along waterways: slow and close to the banks, more interested in what we might see of plants and animals there, instead of seeing how fast and far we could go. (That's how we walked together, too, slow and observant of all that lay around us, not giving a hoot about reaching a mountaintop.) Whenever Evelyn invited me on an adventure, I jumped at the chance, for this life-long Adirondack explorer knew of many isolated ponds I would never find on my own. On the day pictured below, we visited three of them: Wakely Pond, Helldiver Pond, and Ice House Pond, all situated in a part of the Adirondack Park called the Moose River Plains, a vast area of state forest accessed by seriously rutted old logging roads and snowmobile trails.  Evelyn had volunteered to monitor all three for the presence of aquatic invasives. Happily, we found none.

Evelyn owned several Hornbeck canoes, which she generously would lend to friends she invited to come along on her adventures.   I believe that was her true mission in life, to share her knowledge of and love for all things natural to as many folks as she could, among those who expressed a similar interest. What a generous mentor she was to all of us! And what a fun companion, whether teaching us about frazil ice or tafoni boulders or birdsong or plants or moss or the rarest liverworts in the country! She loved welcoming neophyte nature explorers under her wing and enlarging our worlds enormously. She certainly recognized that incipient passion for nature in me, and she changed my life. I will miss her as long as I live.

This blog contains at least 40 posts about our nature explorations together, so I am comforted that I can revisit these posts to recall the many ways that Evelyn enriched my life.   These posts can all be visited by typing "Evelyn Greene" into this blog's search bar. Here's the link to just one of those posts, one that I think epitomized the kind of fun and adventure that Evelyn Greene added to my life.

Spring Saves Her Best For Last!

 The best? Well, let's say "the showiest." Lord knows, I adore the pastel-colored blooms of hepatica in earliest spring, then the shy violets that follow,  the trilliums of earlier May, and who could not adore the lovely aptly named Starflowers still holding their own in the woods?  But WOW!  Just LOOK at the colorful spectacle these gorgeous blooms produce, as the chill of spring makes way for the warmth of coming summer! These are only a few of the glorious flowers I encountered just this past week.

In the deep-shaded swamps and on forested river banks, Early Azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) is as brilliantly colorful as its flowers are intensely fragrant.

It's hard to believe that the dryest, most low-nutrient soils of sandplains and pinebushes could provide the favored habitat of one of our most generous and beautiful bloomers, the Sundial Lupine (Lupinus perennis).

As I said, a truly GENEROUS bloomer! (The photo below was taken at the Gick Farm Parcel of the Wilton Wildlife Preserve and Park, which manages this property to produce such floral abundance of the lupines to provide larval food for the endangered Karner Blue Butterfly.)

 Moving from the lupine meadows into the pine woods, I am often amazed by the vast carpets of blooming Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense).  Individually, one probably would not call these flower clusters all that "showy," but such an abundance of bloom most certainly is!  And their fragrance is lovely, too, especially on warm humid days.

The acidic soil under pines is also the favored habitat of our gorgeous Pink Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), one of New York State's nearly 60 species of native orchids.  Many of our native orchids are the opposite of what could be called "showy," but not THIS one!

The Yellow Lady's Slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum) is equally as showy as its pink cousin orchid, but it prefers a more basic, lime-rich soil, in shaded, often rocky habitats.  Oddly enough,  that could be just a ditch along a country road, which is where I photographed these.

Now, I doubt anyone would classify the tiny, yellowish-white terminal flowers of Tower Mustard (Turritis glabra) as "showy."  But oh, have you ever seen another species so rigidly erect? I found this multi-height population along a sandy path quite delightful, like the vertical lines on a sonograph, a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies in a sound.  I playfully imagined these plants were representing a happy spring song.

Here's another charming view of the Sundial Lupine, "showy" if you look closely at the crystal drops at the center of its radiating leaflets.  The lupine leaves are textured in a way that they can't be wetted, so the misty rain falling on them slid right into the center to form a single droplet. When the brief shower passed and the sun returned, the entire acres of lupine leaves sparkled like a field of diamonds.

The Swampy Stretch of Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail

Yes, my last post also featured a walk along Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail.  But that was just the first stretch of this two-mile trail, a section I think of as wet meadows.  Except for the trailside trees and shrubs, the trail mostly passes through open sunlit meadows that stretch for miles in each direction.  What grows there? Mostly Phragmites, Tussock Sedge, Poison Sumac, and non-native honeysuckles that line the trail and provide the shade for Nodding Trilliums to shelter beneath.  Coming in from the other end of the trail, the habitat consists of quite a bit of open marsh, where waterfowl paddle about in open ponds, cattails and willows flourish along the watery shores, and beavers do their bit every year to try and flood the trail.  That leaves the middle stretch of Bog Meadow Trail, which consists of wooded wetland, a part of the trail that is damp underfoot and densely shaded by trees. In other words, this is swamp.  And it's my favorite part. I hope by this post I can demonstrate why.

I usually enter this middle part of the trail by following a spur trail that starts in a posh neighborhood of stately homes off Meadowbrook Road. A quick stroll through upland forest brings me directly into the middle section of the Bog Meadow Trail, after crossing a boardwalk crowded on either side by masses of Skunk Cabbage, Cinnamon Ferns, and Horsetail Reeds.  Later in summer, this swamp is beautified by many towering plants of Swamp Thistle topped by their big bright fuchsia-colored flowers. Today, it was a mass of many shades and shapes of green

I love the frothy texture the Horsetails (Equisetum spp.) provide along the boardwalk.

Three different species of Equisetum flourish here, the solo-branching Field Horsetail pictured below in the center (E. arvense), the multi-branching Wood Horsetail (E. sylvaticum) just to the left, and the tiny wiry-branching Dwarf Horsetail (E. scirpoides), which today was well hidden beneath all the other greenery, including the broad leaves of Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus).

Just where this spur trail connects with the main trail, I always look for a solo plant of Water Avens (Geum rivale), which comes into bloom about this time in late May.  In all the more than 16 years I've been finding it, a solitary plant is all that persists.  And I did find it today. It's not a very showy flower, unless you look at it closely. That's when you notice the yellow petals nestled within the reddish-purple calyces. And the flower never opens wider than this, so you have to peer inside to notice the crowded mass of stamens, which will continue to lengthen as the summer proceeds.

Probably the most numerous flower blooming today was the Hooked Crowfoot (Ranunculus recurvatus), a common wetland denizen. If not for its bright shiny star-shaped flowers, this plant might be easy to overlook, the flowers are so small. If you peer very close, you could see the tiny hooks that cover its developing seed pod, a feature that suggested both its scientific and vernacular names.

The most numerous fern along this boardwalk was Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum), an easy fern to identify, thanks to its cinnamon-colored spore stalks. I have found Lady Fern and Marsh Fern here in past years, but I did not take the time to look for them. I did find Maidenhair Fern as well, just beginning to open its delicate fronds.

When the boardwalk ended, I stepped onto the main avenue of Bog Meadow Trail, which now resembled a tunnel of spring greenery.

A number of lovely native wildflowers were blooming now along the trail. Here was a pretty patch of Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense).

It would take a long time to pick a bowl of the fruits of Dwarf Raspberry (Rubus pubescens), since it usually bears but a single ripe berry at a time.

The flowers of Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) grow on a separate stalk from the stalk that supports its overtopping leaves.

Aha, here were some Maidenhair Ferns (Adiantum pedatum) adding their delicate beauty to this scene along a trailside brook, enhanced by a few Foamflower blooms (Tiarella stolonifera).

I'm so glad I found a few specimens of the Star-flowered False Solomon's Seal (Maianthemum stellatum) still in perfect bloom. They are blooming earlier than usual this spring, and many in this abundant patch already had fading flowers.

I believe these are the flowers of a species of Chokeberry, probably Black Chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa), since that's the species I've found along this section of trail in past years. My Newcomb's Wildflower Guide would have helped me with the ID, but I neglected to bring it with me. Very pretty, whatever its name!

The evidence of a solitary Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea) close to the edge of the trail alerted me to enter the woods at this point and seek out this abundant patch of it some distance from the trailside. This plant is happiest in swampy spots.

I was hoping I'd find some Early Azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum) in bloom, but I could not remember exactly where I'd find it along the trail.  I trusted my nose would alert me to it, and I was right. Some time before I espied its gorgeous vivid-pink blooms some distance away in the woods, I detected its fragrance on the air, looked around, and there it was! 

It cost me some difficulty to approach it, teetering on tussocks and tripping over downed branches and stepping in mud, but I just had to fill my nose with that exquisite scent and my eyes with a closer look at the beauty of its blossoms.

Back there, near the azalea, I noticed a few stalks of Water Horsetail (Equisetum fluviatile) nearby.  This was my signal to continue along the trail to one of the only actual boggy pools along the Bog Meadow Brook Trail.

Just a few yards further along, I spotted this pool, so thick with Water Horsetails I could hardly make out the water.

I also spotted this thick patch of Sphagnum Moss, definitely a clue about this being a boggy, acidic habitat.

And here were the final plants I had hoped to find on my walk today.  But alas, the showy white flower clusters of Bog Buckbean (Menyanthes trifoliata) had faded by now, yielding  clusters of seedpods but not the masses of blooms I have found in other years. But at least it was reassuring that this flower HAD bloomed this spring.  Next year, I will have to look for it earlier in May.  My knee should be well-healed by then, the pain that kept me from seeking these many lovely plants earlier this spring only a memory by then.

One last treasure awaited me.  What a splendid dragonfly, and the cool, damp day had chilled it to the point where it would not fly away, even as I moved my camera close.  My "Snopes Beginner's Guide to Dragonflies" offered no ID, aside from suggesting this might be a spiketail.  Then my friend Sue Pierce checked iNaturalist, which offered the name Delta-spotted Spiketail. Except for the brown (not blue) eyes of this dragonfly, the images matched completely. Close enough, at least for now.

In Time to Find the Trilliums!

I was so afraid my slow-to-heal knee would keep me off Bog Meadow Brook Nature Trail this spring.  Ever since finding the beautiful Nodding Trilliums (Trillium cernuum) along this trail at least 16 years ago, I've returned each year in time to admire them anew.  Happy for me, my knee pain from recent surgery has subsided sufficiently that I could walk at least part of this delightful and level trail quite easily, while these lovely flowers were still in bloom. And to add to my great pleasure, our dear friend Ruth Brooks had returned north from her winter Florida home, just in time to join me and our mutual friend Sue Pierce on our trillium hunt.

Of course, this  trail offered many delights other than Nodding Trilliums. One of the first to halt our footsteps was this Painted Turtle right alongside the trail. We helped it cross the trail in the same direction it appeared to be heading.  With wetlands on either side, it could have been either coming or going, and we wanted it to get where it wanted to go before some other trail-walker might think it would make a nice pet.

I was delighted to find many dozens of new shoots of Canada Lily (Lilium canadense) coming up, and only one single Scarlet Lily Beetle among the entire widely separated bunches. Not the dozens of ravaging beetles I once found each visit in recent years. A few years ago, hordes of this invasive beetle's larvae devoured nearly every single one of these lilies that once abundantly thrived at this location.  Perhaps the larvae-devouring wasp introduced to our region few years ago has discovered this site at last! 

Before we reached the section of trail where we expected we'd find Nodding Trilliums, we did enjoy several other native wildflowers that also grow here;

Grove Sandwort's tiny flowers (Moehringia lateriflora) spangled the trailside grasses like stars in the sky.

Many plants of Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum) line this trail, and a few had already opened their large and lovely pinky-purple blooms.

We were surprised to find a single plant of Golden Ragwort (Packera aurea) blazing its bright-yellow blooms along this open and relatively dry part of the trail. Further along, thousands would be thriving in a wooded swampy area we would not get to today.

Along the half-mile of the trail we walked today, only a single plant of Red Baneberry (Actaea rubra) did we see, distinguished from its White Baneberry relative by its spherical (rather than oblong) flower cluster and the slender pedicels of each floret. This baneberry also blooms a bit earlier than the white-berried one.

Starting about 20 miles north of Saratoga, populations of Rose Twisted Stalk  (Streptopus lanceolatus) grow much more abundantly, but the two widely separated plants of it I find along Bog Meadow trail are the only ones I have found in Saratoga Counnty, at least, so far.  What a treat to see it, with its tiny pink bells dangling down!  Of course, you have to stoop low to see those charming little blooms, hiding beneath its leaves.

Ah, but we also had to stoop low to see the charming white blooms of Nodding Trillium dangling beneath its leaves.  There seemed to be fewer of these native wildflowers this year, but perhaps they were simply better hidden this year by the huge leaves of Skunk Cabbage that also shares its habitat beneath trailside shrubs.  Those Skunk Cabbage leaves were much more advanced on this year's date than in former years.

My recent knee surgery would not allow me to kneel, so I had to tip the plant over a bit to better make out the floral parts of the Nodding Trillium flower. Note the pure-white petals, the white ovary, and the white filaments that elevate the reddish anthers from the base of the ovary: distinguishing features of this species of trillium, along with its sharply recurving petals.

In previous years, I have found varying numbers of anomalous Nodding Trilliums, which appeared to be possible hybrids of the species T. cernuum with the related Red Trillium species (T. erectum), which also grows close by along this trail.  The bloom time of the two species also overlaps slightly, so cross-pollination is a definite possiblility.  I wondered if I would find any of these possible hybrids today.  And well, I think I did!  Just one, but its flower's tell-tale dark-rose color could be detected, even when half-hidden beneath its leaves:

Here's a better look at this rose-colored trillium bloom:

The petals of this anomalous trillium are closer in color to the scarlet of the petals of T. erectum.  But the white ovary would signal that this was T. cernuum, since T. erectum has a red ovary. Also,  the dark anthers are held erect on slender filaments from the ovary's base.  The lighter anthers of T. erectum are virtually sessile to its ovary's base.  Except for the color, then, this flower seems close to the straight species of T. cernuum.  Would color be enough to think it might be a hybrid? I am curious what expert botanists might think. Whatever it is, it is certainly a beautiful anomaly!

A Misty Morning Ramble Around Lake Moreau's Back Bay

I suppose some folks might have thought it wasn't the nicest day for a walk.  It was cool and it rained a bit now and then.  But Moreau Lake is lovely, whatever the weather, and the wind was calm so the still water of the lake's back bay offered a nearly perfect reflection of the mountains that rise to the west. And the mist that shrouded the mountain tops only added to the quiet beauty of the scene.

Happily, a number of my friends in our Thursday Naturalists group were not dissuaded by the rain-dampened day, and we set off to circle the lake's back bay, crossing the fishing bridge to follow the trail that divides the bay from the main lake and continuing around the bay in a counter-clockwise direction.

Of course, as we walked we often paused, surrounded by the bright spring-green of the forest's new leaves. I believe that some of our friends were here admiring the dangling flowers of a trailside Striped Maple tree.

The misty light of this gray day almost seemed to amplify the colors of wildflowers along the trail.  The dangling scarlet blooms of this Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis) glowed almost neon-bright.

So did the raindrop-spangled blooms of the Fringed Polygala (Polygaloides paucifolia) that carpeted wide areas of the woods.

Highbush Blueberry shrubs (Vaccinium corymbosum) were hung with clusters of small white bells.

We were delighted to find an abundant patch of Perfoliate Bellworts (Uvularia perfoliata) dangling pale-yellow blooms on slender stems that appeared to pierce their leaves.

Starflower!  What a perfectly descriptive name for this lovely native wildflower (Lysimachia borealis).

I hope I can remember to return to taste the fruit of the many Wild Strawberry plants (Fragaria virginiana) that thrived along the path. Usually, though, the birds and other woodland creatures get there before I do!

The vivid purple of Ovate-leaved Violets (Viola fimbriatula) made them easy to spot on wooded trailside banks. Another vernacular name for this is Northern Downy Violet, suggested by the downy hairs that cover leaves and stems of this native wild violet.

Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) bears its orbs of tiny whitish flowers on separate stalks from the stalk of its over-towering leaves. 

We were pleased to find many trees bearing flowers today, and low enough that we could easily enjoy their beauty. The flowers of this young Sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum) were not quite open, but the pale yellow of their blooms was lovely.

The flowers of Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum) dangle down in long clusters of small greenish florets, reminding me of the dangling ornaments in a Japanese geisha's elaborate hairdo.

The pale color and rounded lobes of these small leaves cause me to think they are those of Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor), from a tree that is mature enough to bear strings of flowers. This twig was lying on the path, perhaps severed by a Red Squirrel clearing its highways through the treetops.

These dangling clusters of rosy-colored Red Maple seeds (Acer rubrum) were just as lovely as any flowers.

These baby Red Oak leaves (Quercus rubra) were deeply scarlet and spangled with tiny rain drops. Many young leaves of both woody and herbaceous plants are colored red by the presence of a chemical pigment called anthocyanin.  This pigment serves to prevent the tender young leaves from being damaged by strong sunlight.

These equally rain-spangled baby leaves of a White Oak (Quercus alba) are also tinged with red, for the same reason the Red Oak leaves were.

More rain-spangled leaves, but these all green, not tinged with red, and held as erect as candle flames. This multi-leaved cluster belonged to a young Sassafras tree (Sassafras albidum), which I ascertained by nibbling a twig and tasting its sweet flavor, somewhat resembling that of Juicy Fruit gum.

I wonder if this Twelve-spotted Ladybug (Coleomegilla maculata) was also enjoying the Juicy Fruit flavor of the Sassafras leaf.  But then I read that these native ladybugs are beneficial insects, feeding primarily on aphids and other plant pests, not on the leaves. I did not see any aphids on these Sassafras leaves, only several of the ladybugs hiding within the leaf cluster.  Maybe they were just taking shelter from the rain. 

Here was a tiny cluster of slightly curving slender green leaves I was hoping to find today. They belong to the Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrush (Cyperus subsquarrosus), an Endangered species that actually grows by the thousands on the sandy and pebbly shore of Moreau Lake.  I sometimes wonder if this plant might not be as rare as depicted, simply overlooked, since the entire leaf cluster could be covered by a half dollar. The leaves shrivel and disappear in late fall, so I was delighted to find them emerging again in spring.

I was surprised we did not find much in the way of fungi today, considering how much rain we have had this week.  But the ones we DID find were certainly fascinating.  This glossy heap of Black Witches' Butter (Exidia nigricans) looked especially photogenic while underlaid by the pale-green patch of a foliose lichen.

These tiny baby-blue growths on our path caused us to halt our striding, since none of us had ever seen this before, and a few of us are not exactly neophytes in fungus knowledge. 

This fungus was so small it was hard for my camera to get a clear photo of it.  This photo below was the best it could do. Joining the tiny blue puffs were some tan ones as well.

My friend Sue got better photos she could submit to iNaturalist, where contributors identified it as a stage of a fungus called Chromelosporiopsis coerulescens.  I could not find much further information about it, other than that "young spore-producing structures (synnemata) are white or blue, and will become rosy pink, and finally mature to ocher."  Quite I find!  I guess.

Here my friends are peering at a large beaver lodge, and I am aware that we are only halfway around the back bay and my knee pain is suggesting maybe I should go back to my car.  But halfway back is just as far as halfway forward.  So onward I persisted. While limping.

I am glad I persisted, in order to join my friends to picnic later at a table on Lake Moreau's beach.  That's where we met one of Sue's friends she calls "bug guy," and for a good reason. This person (his real name is Alex) is a whiz at finding cool bugs, including this Eyed Click Beetle (Alaus oculatus), which he shared with us while we sat at our picnic table -- and demonstrated how it got the name "Click" Beetle.

A perfectly harmless (to humans) insect, it makes a clicking sound when it flips.  A Click Beetle possesses a spine-like structure as well as a notch under its thorax. When the spine is released from the notch, it snaps and propels itself into the air, with a clicking sound we could definitely hear as Alex demonstrated this action several times. This strategy is probably its way to either escape from or deter any predators.  And it also served as a source of wonder and delight as we ended our adventure on this marvelously pleasant day. (Despite the occasional rain.)