By Josie Laing
Just as how busy the natural world is getting with the coming of spring, this Wonder Wander is chock-full of happenings. With the bursts of flowers during the recent warm spell and the lush foliage following the rain, I couldn’t help but include finds from multiple wanders. Enjoy!
Our spring phenology tour begins on April 12th, at Thompson Pond in Pine Plains, just south of the Columbia County border. This conservation area is at the base of Stissing Mountain, and the trail winds through a floodplain forest, and all around a kettle pond where we saw ducks and swans, and heard the singing of frogs.
The trail begins at the base of the mountain, with a vernal pool adjacent to the parking lot, and sets out through a rich, floodplain forest. These little pantaloons are a characteristic plant of rich, deciduous woods. They are called Dutchman’s Breeches (Dicentra cucullaria) and the flowers are a sculptural masterpiece. With the unique shape of the flower and its specialized nature, bumble bees are the primary visitors and pollinators of this plant. Once the flowers have been pollinated and the seeds ripen, they are collected and dispersed by ants. The ants are attracted to the seeds because of the elaiosomes attached to them. This is a fleshy tissue that is rich in proteins and lipids, and once the ants consume it, they discard the seed where it will eventually germinate.
The Northern Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) is also a plant associated with floodplain forests and rich soils. Its tiny winter buds have opened into these small yellow, clusters of flowers. The leaves of this shrub are the preferred munching grounds of the caterpillars of the Spicebush Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio troilus). Later, this spring, look out for green caterpillars with fake eye markings that make them resemble a snake (they are quite cute).
Moving up into some of the dryer woods of this forest, overlooking the pond, we found lots of the Round-lobed Hepatica (Hepatica americana). This species has showy, petal-like sepals that can range from white to pink to blue, and various shades in between. It can be distinguished from our other native Hepatica by its round and thick, basal leaves which are divided into three blunt-tipped lobes.
Hanging out on a dry slope, we saw a few Rue Anenome (Thalictrum thailictroides) flowering. This is another species that has petal-like sepals that can have tones ranging from white to pink to blue. The compound leaves form a whorl beneath each flower. Their leaflets have three or more shallow lobes and remind of those of Wild Columbine.
As we descended from the dry, upland forest to the border of the pond, we clearly entered beaver territory. The banks were covered in stumps with the infamous points of beaver-felled trees and large trees with only the bark stripped away, exuding sap from the damaged cambium.
Out in the marsh, we spotted a beaver lodge.
While watching Eastern Newts swimming in the water, we noticed these mounds of mud and litter, lining the bank like a suburban neighborhood. We speculated they are the dens of muskrats, which are entered through an underwater tunnel.
The trail wrapping around the pond was closed so we continued on a loop that skirted the base of the mountain. Here we saw the Spotted Wintergreen (Chimaphila maculata) which is an acidophilic plant species. Perhaps the weathered gneiss (a form of granite) of the mountain has led to acidic soils or microhabitats that support acidophilic plants like this one.
The rest of these photos are from a few days later (April 14/15) and were taken in Columbia County, around Hawthorne Valley, and a few other places. I couldn’t help including more things in bloom! The Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) around the Creekhouse are in full swing!
These dainty, pink-striped flowers with pink anthers belong to the Virginia Spring-beauty (Claytonia virginica). This woodland species can be found in moist soils of deciduous forests and alluvial banks. This one was in a very wet area along the creek behind the Creekhouse. This is the more common species of the two spring-beauties, but the flowers are quite similar. However, the Carolina Spring-beauty has shorter, oval-shaped leaves compared to the long and slender leaves of the Virginia Spring-beauty.
The Yellow Trout Lily’s namesake is for the leaf markings’ resemblance to the skin of a Brook Trout. These plants arise from corms which are underground storage organs like tubers and rhizomes. It can take many years for a Trout-Lily to flower. They grow in colonies, and many corms are sterile, growing only one leaf and no flowers. Mature corms that produce flowers usually have two leaves. This is another plant that produces elaiosomes with its seeds and relies on ants for seed dispersal.
This clustering plant is a Marsh Marigold (Caltha palustris). The leaf shape is round with a heart-shaped base, and its flowers resemble those of a buttercup. This plant can be found in swampy woods and wet meadows. In this case, it was growing as an ornamental in an artificial stream.
This Green Frog (Lithobates clamitans) was sitting nearby the marigold, sunning itself at the edge of a pond. To distinguish it from a Bull Frog, you can look to see if there is a raised line or ridge from behind the eye and along the back of the frog. If there is no raised ridge, it’s probably a Bullfrog! This is a female Green Frog, which you can tell by the size of the tympanum, the round circle behind the eye. This is the hearing structure of the frog and if it is much larger than the eye, it’s a male, and if it is around the same size, it’s a female.
Another colony-forming, ant-dispersed, spring ephemeral is Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). The flowers of this species race ahead and open up before the single, irregularly-lobed leaf unfurls.
After only a few days of blooming, the delicate petals fall off and the fruits begin to develop. In the center and on the right side of the photo, you can see the oval, green fruit forming at the top of the stem.
Some sedges are in bloom also! This is the Brome-like Sedge (Carex bromoides). It is a tussock-forming perennial, meaning it forms these raised clumps. This species can be found in swamp forests and wet meadows; this one was the bank of a stream.
My favorite spring-flowering plant has phased into its leafy form, the Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus). The purple, tear-drop-shaped spathe which covered the flower throughout winter, has become inconspicuous, and the leaves have emerged in a similar fashion to that of a cabbage. These plants can be found in floodplain forests and swampy areas, and the leaves are out from spring into summer. And just like when the spathe is bruised, when the leaves are crushed, they smell like a skunk’s spray.
This is the flower of Wild Ginger (Asarum canadense). The flowers grow at the base of the plant and are described as “carrion flowers” because of their coloring and fetid scent. The ability of plants to mimic the smell of rotting flesh has evolved in multiple plant families, and studies have shown that these plants are actually able to produce volatile compounds that are very similar to those produced in the early decomposition of flesh. These scents are an adaptation to attract pollinators like flies and beetles. Skunk Cabbage and the Paw Paw tree (Asimina triloba) are other species with this general type of mimicry but with slightly different scents. The Skunk Cabbage even produces its own heat, which is thought to mimic the heat given off by decomposition.
This shrub or small tree is an Eastern Leatherwood (Dirca palustris). This individual first began flowering on April 11th, just outside the Creekhouse. This photo was taken on April 18th, just 7 days afterward, and already, green fruits are developing. This species is one that we track on our phenology trail along Phudd Hill, here at Hawthorne Valley. We have marked certain trees and patches of shrubs which we visit once a week to note down what “phenophase” the individual is in. The next image is a visualization of when the Leatherwood on the phenology trail has opened its flowers for the past five years.
Longitudinal studies that span decades and centuries are really important in helping us to observe underlying changes that might be occurring in things like climate or the timing of phenological events. Nineteenth-century naturalists like Henry David Thoreau kept diligent records of these events for many years, such as the arrival of migratory birds or the first calls of Spring Peepers. In the last few decades, this kind of information has been used as historical data for studies looking at the timing of these same events, 200 years later. While our phenology trail at Hawthorne Valley provides us with a still relatively small data set, it is interesting to see how timing can differ from year to year. In this graph, you can see the weekly variation in the first opening of the Eastern Leatherwood flowers. Thus far, we observed that 2020 was the earliest year that the flowers were first open, the week of March 26th and April 1st. And last year was the latest, where the first open flowers were observed during the week of April 16th to April 22nd. This year was on the early side of things, which could be attributed to the warm spell we experienced recently in Columbia County.
Recording the timing of seasonal changes is something that with a little bit of practice, anyone can do! It can be in the form of keeping a personal journal, posting images on iNaturalist, or even creating your own project through Nature’s Notebook, a community science initiative through the USA National Phenology Network. If the study of phenology interests you, on our website we actually have a searchable database of historical, phenological data that was incorporated into a published journal article, coauthored by Anna and Conrad. Below, you can find links to that database, the published paper, information on our iNaturalist projects, and a photo walkthrough from 2020 of what was in bloom each week of spring in Columbia County.
https://www.hvfarmscape.org/cms/
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2745.13926
Progress of the Seasons Journal 