May 10, 2013

Notes and Changes since last report

• It was 70°F, cloudy and calm at 5:00 PM on May 10, 2013.
• A very late start - not great for butterflies, but birds were singing evening songs.
• The low light too was not great for photography but...
• The warm, humid air held the spring time scents of flowering plants, the woods, the earth.

The Trails

• The lilacs at Gifford House parking lot had opened. The air carried their scent from the parking lot out over the Old Hayfield.
• By now the grass on the paths was tall enough to cut.
• In the back of the front Old Hayfield, an apple was in its glory.
• All around the edge, honeysuckle bushes were budding up.
• Along the high side of the Sedge Meadow Trail, the bizzare gall of cedar-apple rust - a fungus - was dangling from several branches.
• The path was strewn with common strawberry and dwarf cinquefoil.
• Way in the back Old Hayfield, shagbark hickory was in bloom.
• So too as ironwood.
• Pretty, but invasive burning bush would soon follow.
• Flowering dogwood had started last week and was now in profusion.
• Tucked in the dark side of the Sedge Meadow Trail was another apple with a different looking blossom.
• Even this late in the day, fresh leaves were glowing green in the view from the bluff over the Wappinger Creek.
• In the path through the flood plane, cut-leaved toothwort had been blooming.
• So too were a mustard as well as hooked- and small-flowered crowfoot, obscure members of the buttercup family.
• Near by, trout-lily was forming its fruit now.
• On the Cary Pines Trail gaywings were about to bloom!
• In the Fern Glen along the road, hobblebush was nearly done blooming. A week seems to be about all you get.
• Dainty oak fern was up in a number of patches in the Glen.
• Not so dainty Solomon's seal threatened to engulf the bench. Hummingbirds and deer both enjoy this plant.
• Star-flowered Solomon's seal was in one little patch.
• Ostrich fern was all over the place.
• Maidenhair fern was leafing out in the limestone cobble.
• Large-flowered trillium, brilliant white when new, was gracefully aging to pink.
• The air was filled with a heavy sweet fragrance; the lilacs couldn't have followed me here... It was wild blue phlox.
• In the fen, cinnamon fern fiddleheads were errupting.
• The swamp shrubs did not do well this past winter, but a few rhodora were making a valiant effort.
• Highbush blueberry seemed to be an exception.
• Lo, the gaywings were in full bloom here! So strange a flower.
• Equally strange, large yellow lady's-slipper was budding up. Our other patch has made no appearance whatsoever this year. Apparently from time to time, they simply don't come up for a year.
• Red baneberry was flowering in many places.
• Right along the road near the bridge was interrupted fern, so called because the fertile spore producing, leaflets are right in the middle of an otherwise regular, sterile frond.
• On the way out of the Glen, choke cherry was now blooming along the trail.
• The big patch of hay-scented fern took me by surprise as I rounded a bend on the way to the Old Gravel Pit. There is a dizzying quality to the sight of them.
• A last surprise for the day was a fallen branch or trunk, really, of a large white pine. I imagined the noise traveled quite a distance.