Rambling New England Nature

September 16, 2017

 A single, rough-stemmed goldenrod (Solidago rugosa), also known as wrinkled-leaved goldenrod because the heavily-veined upper leaves appear wrinkled, is growing at the edge of Dam Road, leaning toward it. It’s five feet tall, arching, mostly unbranched, but for a few small branches near the top of the plant. The leaves are toothed, narrowly ovate and rough. The stem is green and densely hairy.

   The panicle of yellow flowerheads is spike-like. It’s a pretty goldenrod. A few rough-stemmed goldenrod plants also grow nearer to the Pond, in Dam Road Meadow. These have more branches, and they’re maroon-stemmed, with open, plume-like inflorescences. A couple maroonish-brown weevils with long, curved snouts are on a couple of the blooms.

   While walking along Dam Road, I hear what sounds like a series of sharp quacks – “quack-quack-quack….” It’s harsher than that of a duck, but not a bad imitation. But, then it releases drawn out squeals like a hawk: “Squeeeal-squeeeal.” I see a gray squirrel with its tail over its head. Is this squirrel really trying to imitate a hawk the way a blue jay does? Supposedly, this is the squirrel’s alarm call.

   The dense clusters of crab apples that dangle from the crab apple tree at Dam Road Meadow are red now. They’re actually quite sweet-tasting. In previous centuries, these would have been picked by local residents and used to make jelly.

   As I approach the Pond along Dam Path, I think back to yesterday (September 15th), when I saw two garter snakes swimming at the edge of the water just below the slope from Dam Path, near the sluiceway. They swam gracefully over the water’s surface and across the dense mat of lily pads, moving to shore, then back to the water, their heads up, their tongue flicking in and out. They were most likely in search of the abundant small pickerel frogs that spend their time at the shore this time of the year. It’s unusual to see garter snakes swimming. I asked myself if these are ribbon snakes, which spend more time at the edge of ponds; but, no, these are garter snakes. Ribbon snakes have a different look, slenderer with long, narrow tails. Though the color-scheme is similar, once you’ve seen a ribbon snake, you won’t mistake it for a garter.

   Though the peak of our fall foliage color is still a month away, the red maple trees north of Center Bridge are beginning to show off their red leaves.

   On the small swale below the path, to my left (west), the brown cattails have formed and appear graceful amid their taller, green, sword-shaped leaves. Just beyond this swale, the fruits of climbing bittersweet have formed. The casings are yellow, but soon they’ll each split open to reveal the scarlet berry inside. On the pond-side slope, a pickerel frog is squatting amid the brown sticks and leaves. No doubt, this is what the garter snakes were after yesterday.

   On my way to Center Bridge, I enter the woods above Dragonfly Beach. Chipmunks are everywhere as they scramble to build up their store of nuts. They squeal as they dart off, but then stop and turn to look at me from the top of a stone wall, from just above their protective hole or from the safe-side of a tree trunk.

   At Center Bridge, I see small-flowered gerardia with long-tubed blue blooms, growing below the Bridge. Its lavender blooms are out along with its maroon-tinted leaves. A pileated woodpecker is calling out, goldfinches are flying over Center Bridge and song sparrows are hiding in the dogwood thicket. What I believe is a vole scurries along the dry side of the dam and then disappears. I imagine they utilize these dams as safe roadways. Last winter, I saw coyote tracks inspecting this area. While birds are smart etymologists, these coyotes and the foxes are proficient rodent biologists.

   A few of the swamp milkweed pods have already split open to release the brown seeds that develop inside them, each fitted with its own parachute. These pods are smaller, but more elegantly curved than those of common milkweed.

   The scarlet fruit of winterberry is clustered tightly against the stems, amid the green leaves. These berries make this the most conspicuous New England shrub in late fall and into early winter.

   Next, I step onto Long Bridge and lean against the wooden rail to look out onto the Pond. The mudflats, interspersed throughout the Pond, are popular congregation areas for ducks and sandpipers. Today, however, I see two otters digging through the muck with their mouths on a mud-flat on the south side of the Pond, opposite from where I’m standing. These beautiful, muscular-looking beasts slip gracefully in and out from the water, their fur always wet and slicked back. Every so often they both pop their heads up above the water’s surface as if checking to see where they are. I see them now staring toward the far side of the Pond. They soon disappear again, only to reappear as they climb from the water to the mud.

  Closer to Heron Island, a great blue heron is on mud-flat, staring, stoic-like, its neck in the shape of an “S.” After watching the otters for several minutes, I continue ahead on Wildlife Pond Loop Trail, to the north side of the Pond. Club-footed clitocybe mushrooms (Ampulloclitocybe clavipes) are growing beside the path.

   These are large brown-capped mushrooms with white gills and a brown-tinged white stem. There are three mushrooms here and one has the characteristic bulb at its base. The edges of the caps tend to turn upward to expose the gills. Many red russula mushrooms and larger, white short-stemmed russula mushrooms are out now.

   Silverrod, a white member of the goldenrod family, is in bloom.

   This is a very attractive goldenrod with a single white-bloomed spike. It stands two feet tall and leans over the path. The fruits of maple-leaf viburnum are a deep blue, almost black, and its leaves are tinged with purple. So many of these blue-berried plants – cucumber-root, pokeweed, etc. - seem to show a rush of dark ink running up from the roots to the berries, but with remnant color staining the stems and leaves on the way. This doesn’t happen with a plant like false Solomon’s Seal, whose berries are a bright red now.

   I walk toward the water’s edge, looking for evidence of beavers or muskrats, but instead, I see that many of the lily pads are covered with toad scat, small black pellets, over fifty per…. Wait, a closer look through my binoculars reveals that this isn’t toad scat; these are water lily planthoppers (Megamelus davisi), small blackish-gray insects with a ridged thorax. Some are brown and others are a pale tan. They’re in various instars or stages of growth.

   As I watch more closely, I see dozens of them moving about the overlapping flat, green pads, on which they feed and breed. The fifth instar will move to the shore, where they’ll overwinter in the leaf-litter. My apologies to the toads for blaming them for making a mess of the lily pads!

   Near to where the wood lilies grow, beyond Witch Hazel Bridge, I see several globe-shaped clusters of deep blue berries radiating outward from a central point on two-inch stems. This is carrion-flower (Smilax herbacea), a vine, so named because the blooms have the fragrance of carrion.

   This rancid smell attracts flies as pollinators. The small blooms, which appear in mid-June, lack petals; the sepals recurve from the six creamy white stamens. The many blooms are arranged in this same roundish cluster, similar to those of sarsaparilla. The plant’s relationship to catbrier, another Smilax, is obvious from the shape of its leaves.

   The blooms are fairly inconspicuous within a thicket. The real show is the fruit, each round cluster consisting of at least forty-four blue berries, each berry consisting of five brown seeds. This particular vine is climbing up a small red maple tree on the pond-side of the path, its firm, curled, brown tendrils reaching out haphazardly to the nearest twig for support. These tendrils don’t seem as methodical as those of catbrier.

   As I circle to the southern side of the Pond, I see angel wing mushrooms (Pleurocybella porrigens) growing from the exposed roots of a hemlock tree, in the middle of the path. These are pretty, stemless, all-white mushrooms with a smooth half-circle cap. The caps are under two inches wide. 

   A killdeer flies from one mud-flat to another. I can see its orange tail feathers as it flies, then its ringed neck once it lands. I’ve seen up to a dozen noisy killdeer here, passing through in fall, on their way south. Nearby, three mallards are swimming in the muddy water, and a single female wood duck is quacking softly, but repeatedly as it swims. Phoebes are everywhere, making quick sorties from a tree branch at the edge of the Pond. From the south side of the Pond, I see a kingfisher perched on the large beaver lodge as it preens itself; then, it flies with a rattle across the Pond to a tree limb near Long Bridge.

   A hemlock looper moth (Lambdina fiscellaria) is on the side of a hemlock tree, on the south side of the Pond.

   This is a pretty, pinkish-brown moth with beautifully carved or scalloped wing borders and darker high-lighted brown wavy lines across its front and hind wings. The front wings have two sets of these wavy lines with a dot between them. I feel comforted by Nature’s continuity; my Journal has a record of this moth at Mount Wachusett in Massachusetts on or around this date twenty-one years ago [September 20, 1996]. I’ve also seen it on the way to Center Bridge earlier this month (September 15, 2017) on an American chestnut leaf.

   A coyote left a pile of pale brown, cylindrical scat just before Cattail Marsh Bridge. Two pieces of the scat are just over an inch thick, five inches long and contain mostly corn. With all the surrounding farms in Hollis, these coyotes eat well. Corn ripens between mid-August and mid-September. So, it would seem that coyotes are not only rodent biologists, but good farmers also.

   Walking back toward Dam Path, I notice that white wood aster, calico aster, flat-topped white aster and white whorled wood aster are fully out, dominating these woods. Backswimmers appear at the surface of the Pond, only to drop back into the pond weeds. Water striders and a few remaining whirligigs dominate the Pond’s surface.

   Autumn meadowhawk dragonflies (Sympetrum vicinum) are mating and laying eggs in tandem, the females dipping the tips of their abdomens into the water while attached in a rough circle with the male. These red dragonflies are the most prominent now of the odonates. Some years, I’ll see dozens of these pairs dipping their abdomens in their beautiful communal dance.

   A tall stately-looking destroying angel mushroom is growing five feet off the path to my left, and, just before Cattail Marsh Bridge, a group of seven mushrooms, Mycena inclinata, commonly known as the clustered bonnet, are growing from the crack in an old, dead, prostrate stump. They’re a grayish-brown, with similarly colored stems and white gills that ascend the stem, almost distant from it. The genus name, Mycena, is supposedly associated with the archeological site near Athens, Greece, Mycenea, an important military stronghold in Greek history. This was during the Mycenaean Period, which peaked about 1350 B.C. As the story goes, Perseus (the Greek warrior who cut off the head of Medusa) named this area after a mushroom he plucked from the ground (Myces means mushroom, hence Mycena and Mycenea). 

   Still closer to the bridge are several fly agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria) at different stages of growth, a couple just pushing through the sandy ground at the slope to the brook that passes beneath the bridge. I see one beautiful, tall agaric, straight and over five inches tall with an orange-yellow cap over three inches wide and specked with pale warts. The large cream-colored veil beneath the cap flairs out a bit at the bottom. The white stem is scaly, and the swollen cup at the base resembles the old frilly, white pantaloons worn by women going back to the sixteenth century.

   Beyond Cattail Marsh, just off the path, is a single orange mycena mushroom (Mycena leaiana) growing close to an old dead branch. These typically grow in clusters from wood, but, they’ve been reported to grow alone in the leaf-litter below wood. This is a beautiful two-inch tall mushroom with a bell-shaped orange cap, orange gills and a pale orange stem. New York aster (Symphyotrichum novi-belgii) grows just beyond this mushroom. This is the aster that’s often confused with purple-stemmed aster. It grows here on drier ground. There’s the possibility that I’m mistaken about this identification, but I’m going to stick with it. As Plutarch wrote a long time ago, I have to call a trough a trough… or a fig a fig… I suppose today we say, a spade a spade or a rose a rose.

 “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a
  duck, I call that bird a duck”
                                                         - James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)

    Back at Center Bridge, I see a painted turtle swimming, just below the dam. Coincidentally, I see that turtlehead, the flower, is fully in bloom nearby.

   And, after leaving the Bridge, on Old City Trail, I see that beggarticks are fully out now, which isn’t like saying that mountain laurel is fully out; the inconspicuous blooms are crowded out by their own green leafy sepals, which are like an overprotective parent, not allowing the bloom to venture out into the world and expose itself to insects.

   Though late in the season, there’s still a lot of life left in these woods. Nevertheless, the sense that this place is transitioning to fall is unmistakable.