New York Flora Association Blog

The first wetland we visited may be only the second dwarf shrub bog documented for Delaware County. It is dominated by low shrubs of Leatherleaf, Chamaedaphne calyculata.

Pitcher plants were fairly common and in flower.

Here is the nodding flower of one of the pitcher plants shining in the rain.

The blue-green color of a small black spruce stands out in contrast to the surrounding shrubs.

Spatterdock was common in the bog lake.

White water lily was there too (darker red leaves) as well as water shield (Brasenia schreberi) that beads up rain water into perfect circles.

An old boardwalk affords access to the lake across the bog and here we saw a variety of wetland wildflowers, shrubs and ferns.

On the way to the other bog we walked through an eerie forest where flooding rains had washed the soil from around the roots of the trees.

Another beautiful sight awaited us as we broke through the surrounding shrubs into the open wetland.

We saw lots of wild calla, Calla palustris, in fruit here.

Some very tall specimens of sheep laurel, Kalmia angustifolia, grew on the edge of the bog.

After a day of slogging through bogs, Alex Young and Laura Lehtonen finally found a nice log where they could rest and take in the scenery. It was a great day despite the rain.

It was another beautiful wetland on another beautiful day. The fen is dominated by Calamagrostis canadensis, bluejoint grass, Carex stricta, hummock sedge, and Carex lasiocarpa, American woolyfruit sedge, with some shrubs of Alnus incana ssp. rugosa, speckled alder and lots of Sphagnum.

We had to be careful not to step into a drainage channel that can be camouflaged by the tall grasses.

Here is Greg standing in one of the ditches taking notes on the aquatic vegetation present.

A muddier opening had some plants of round-leaved sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, that is in bloom this time of year. They also tend to occur in the muddier areas along deer trails. Try not to step on them!

The muddy area also had a nice stand of Lycopodiella inundata, northern bog clubmoss, with its horizontal stems.

I thought I had seen all the species in one of our plots when Greg spied a small green woodland orchid, Platanthera clavellata. It was the first orchid we had seen during the surveys.

Another common sedge on the periphery of the plot was Carex folliculata, one of the most beautiful members of the Carex genus in my opinion.

Here is a closeup of the spikelets with the long perigynia.

One of the most common wildflowers in the plots was narrow-leaved gentian, Gentiana linearis.

This is a view across the wetland to the northwest. To the west it turned into a shrub swamp dominated by northern meadowsweet and sweet gale.

Both Spiraea species were here. This is the pink inflorescence of Spiraea tomentosa, hardhack spiraea.

This is a view across the marsh showing the deep water sections. It was dominated by sedges, especially Carex utriculata, and Sphagnum.

In the water the Brasenia shreberi, water shield, was in bloom.

Sparganium americanum, American Bur-reed, was common and in flower and fruit.

The wapato, Sagittaria latifolia, was in flower and had very narrow leaves here, resembling S. engelmannii.

Scattered around in the muck were the tiny flowers of Utricularia gibba, Cone-spur bladderwort. I had difficulty distinguishing it from the closely related U. geminiscapa.

The long male catkins of speckled alder, Alnus incana ssp. rugosa, hang down below the drooping female catkins. Smooth alder, Alnus serrulata, has shorter male catkins and the female ones are more erect.

Siberian elm, Ulmus pumila, has flowers in small tight clusters of black and red flowers. Slippery and American elms have flowers on longer pedicels and are not so compact.

These hairy catkins of quaking aspen, Populus tremuloides, with red anthers were waving in the wind.

A cluster of female flowers of red maple, Acer rubrum, shows off its very red styles.

Still some months from flowering, young leaves of common mullein, Verbascum thapsus, poke through the dirt.