Rambling New England Nature

LaPlatte River Marsh Natural Area
South Burlington, VT
July 26, 2015

At 6:00 a.m., on July 26, 2015, while driving from Essex Junction where I was spending the night with my family to South Burlington, Vermont, I noticed large stands of a tall yellow wildflower lining the roads that reminded me of golden Alexanders. But, golden Alexanders blooms early in the summer, in rich forests. This then, must be wild parsley, and it’s in bloom on roadsides all across Vermont.

   I saw it at Bay Road as well, on my way to this property. I parked off Bay Road at Shelborne Park, adjacent to the Shelburne Bay fishing access. I walked across the street, back a ways on Bay Road and entered the LaPlatte River Marsh Natural area, a property managed by the Nature Conservancy. This property consists of 211 acres and runs alongside LaPlatte River and McCabes Brook.

   According to the Conservancy’s website, this property is located at the end of the LaPlatte River, which extends sixteen miles from Lake Iroquois to Lake Champlain. The marsh and floodplain bordering these waterways, including this property, flood regularly so that the plant species found here include those that can endure wet conditions.

   As I passed the information kiosk just off Bay Road, I heard robins singing across the small open field that stretches from the path toward the water. Chokecherry grows here, the bright red berries arranged in a drooping cluster (racemes) and each containing one white pit inside.

Over the next month, these berries may turn darker, to nearly black. It seems, however, that the birds aren’t going to wait for the berries to mature; most of the berries have already been eaten.

   Pale dogwood’s berries are forming, but they’re still green.

   Some dogwoods are easy to identify – flowering, alternate-leaved and round-leaved, for instance - but silky (Cornus amomum), pale (C. oblique) and gray-stemmed (C. racemose) are similar enough to cause some problems. Even red-osier dogwood (C. stolonifera) can be difficult. Gray-stemmed is easier to distinguish when the fruits are ripe because they’re white while the first two have blue fruits. The dogwood here is pale dogwood. It has two inch leaves with four upcurved veins, and they tapered to sharp point. Abundant stands of it grow along the right edge of this path.

   The field is overgrown with a variety of typical open field wildflowers, including blue vetch, white vervain, Virginia creeper, brome grass, Queen Anne’s lace, milkweed, purple loosestrife horsetail, bull thistle and buttercup. A small boardwalk leads through this field, which must be seasonally wet. Green ash grows alongside the boardwalk. A catbird was meowing from a tree off to my right. I looked for it, but it was well hidden, which is its habit.

   I turned to the field and looked out over LaPlatte River as several blackbirds flew from a tree, over the field and back out over the water.

This early hour is a great time to walk through a place like this; the fog is just beginning to lift, there’s a dampness and dimness in the air that heightens the emotional aspect of my view, and the birds are more active while the air is still cool. 

   Garden valerian, a garden escape, is the most conspicuous plant on this field. Several of them stand five or six feet tall throughout, at least a foot above most other plants here. Except for its height, this escape from civilization looks like it belongs here; in fact, it looks more like a weed than a cultivated flower: its leaves are inconspicuous, the maroon stem is crooked and thick, and the many small flowers with white petals and long sepals, though attractive close-up, appear scraggly from a distance. And, by late summer, the slender tan seeds, each on a parachute, like a dandelion seed, give the large flower head a hoary appearance.

   According to F. Edward Hulme (a British writer) in Familiar Wild Flowers (1902), the plant’s botanical name suggests its medicinal value; country folk would apply the leaves to fresh wounds, and the roots have their medicinal value as well (preservative against pestilence, a sedative in nervous disorders, etc. – Timothy Coffey in The History and Folklore of North American Wildflowers, 1993).

   “One old name for the plant,” Hulme also writes, “was phu, or, as we should say now, faugh! an expression of aversion, the plant having a somewhat strong and disagreeable smell that becomes more especially noticeable when one attempts to gather it.” Fortunately, lacking a flash wound or nervous disorder and having no fear of a pestilence outbreak, the scent of this plant isn’t a concern. I’m more interested in its attractive appearance and habits of growth. If I want an attractive scent, I’ll smell the milkweed that grows nearby.

   Because of its height and the bright yellow of its scraggly-petaled blooms, elecampane is another conspicuous wildflower on this field.

   Though this plant suggests a sunflower, the bloom’s rays are shaggier and the clasping leaves are larger. This rougher appearance gives it more character than the tidier-looking woodland sunflower. Elecampane arrived in this country at an early date when immigrants from Europe and Asia brought it with them as an indispensable medicine for their horses; they planted it on their new-world farms, and it eventually became naturalized.

   Once it outlived its usefulness, Victorian naturalists differed as to their opinion of it as a naturalized wildflower. “There are flowers that speak to us of the sunshine, and there are those that cast about a shadow,” wrote Alice Lounsberry, in A Guide to the Wild Flowers (1899). “Happily we associate the elecampane with the sun because its face is so bright and golden. It has also done many good deeds to man and beast during its long residence on the globe.”

   “Harriet L. Keeler, on the other hand, eighteen years later, in The Wayside Flowers of Summer (1917), seemed to possess the strongest opinion of her day: after acknowledging its early use, she describes elecampane as “a course, unattractive, worthless weed, surviving in damp, waste places because no one has had the energy enough to destroy it.” Wow!

   Before leaving the field, I noticed, just off the path, below a dogwood shrub and behind a yellow buttercup, a white orchid, the white ragged fringed orchis, a flower that favors wet places. I knelt for a closer look.

   Finding an orchid amid more common wildflowers is always special. It seems a stranger, out of place, and yet there it is, delicate, intricately structured and beautiful. Not everyone considers this particular orchid a beauty: “So far as superficial beauty and conspicuousness are concerned,” wrote Mrs. William Starr Dana in How to Know the Wild Flowers (1902), “these flowers do scant justice to the brilliant family to which they belong, and equally excite the scornful exclamation, ‘You call that an orchid!’” I disagree; many features attract me to this orchid: the pale, almost translucent main stem, the spiked arrangement of the blooms and the frilly appearance of the lower petal or labellum (Peterson calls it “bearded”), the way this lower petal catches the light as it bursts outward from the hood or upper petals. Beauty, however, has always been and will forever be subjective.      

   A few species of Carex grow here: the stiff spike of C. Stipata, the prickly-looking C. lurida and the drooping, elongated inflorescences of C. crinita (shown below, left). Dark green bulrush also grows here (middle picture below). I also saw asparagus, another garden escape (right picture below). It’s a frilly plant with inconspicuous flowers. For some reason, I find this on several properties as if it’s becoming naturalized, and Lawrence Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide covers it.

   I heard a flicker calling out from the edge of the water, and goldfinches chattering as they flew over the field, toward the woods. There’s always something happy about a goldfinch’s song in flight. It’s blithe and airy, and reminds me of children running through a field laughing and enjoying a carefree life.

   Farther along, big-toothed aspen grows over the dogwoods on the right side of the path, and throughout this field, river grape leaves climb over honeysuckle and up other shrubs. Of all the grape species in New England, the leaves of this species are the most artistically cut.

   A few smaller dogwood shrubs grow farther along the path, with St. Johnswort, heal-all and hop clover’s yellow, cylindrical flower heads, growing beneath. Two flickers suddenly appeared from a tree at the water. They flew toward me, over the field, and they disappeared between the trees on the right side of the path. 

   A song sparrow began to sing while I was looking for the flickers.

   I turned to see it on an exposed branch and watched it sing until it flew away. The several flower spikes of purple vervain adorn the edge of the path ahead, suggesting a purple candelabrum. Staghorn sumac grows beyond the vervain, the deep red spiked flowers making a good post to mark the far edge of the field.

   As I approached the water’s edge, I heard two kingfishers cackling over the water. I couldn’t see them, but I could imagine them flying over the open water, from one tree branch to another across the way.  Alder grows down by the water, along with a large patch of fringed loosestrife. The pretty, yellow-petaled flowers of this loosestrife always seem to face shyly downward, perhaps to make it easier for ants to pollinate it. During the 1700s and perhaps into the 1800s, it’s written that farmers would lay a handful of loosestrife plants over the yoke of oxen to keep them civil; to prevent or lose strife between them.

   True forget-me-not is also abundant here. My first thought upon seeing this attractive wildflower goes back to the young man who, while falling into a lake to his death, threw a handful of these blue flowers back to his lover, requesting that she “forget-me-not!” The deep blue, yellow-centered flowers unfurl from a stem that suggests the tail of a scorpion.

   Wild peanut winds around and grows over and under the loosestrife and a few plants of wild mint and Canada anemone. Canada anemone (below picture on right) has interesting fruit pods that extend from the large leaves on six inch long stalks. Fragrant bedstraw with its six whorled leaves and a single plant of meadow-rue are mixed in with these plants.

   From the edge of the water, while leaning against a silver maple, I watched three red-wing blackbirds fly from the ground, across the river, to a railing beside some boats, and ultimately fly off toward the woods. The trees at this river’s edge include black willow, American elm, silver maples, red maples and green ash. Harriet L. Keeler in Our Native Trees (1905) writes that silver maple, in “poise and outline” suggests the American elm. It’s an interesting comparison, considering they’re both often found on river banks, leaning over the water. I haven’t yet confirmed this similarity because I’m typically standing beneath one or the other when at a river’s edge. I can’t imagine she means to compare the silver maple to the wide-spreading, vase-shaped roadside elms. 

   I returned to the path and noticed several very attractive hedge nettle plants with deep pink flowers. They’re just beginning to bloom.

   Also known as Stachys nettle to those who rather not make a distinction between the very similar hedge nettle and marsh hedge nettle, both in the mint family and both with blooms that represent the family well. “The flowers grow in rings upon the stem,” wrote F. Edward Hulme in Familiar Wild Flowers (Fifth Series – 1902), “each ring being separated from the other by an intervening space of the stem, and the whole forming a long terminal spike. The number of flowers in each ring is variable, but half a dozen would be about the normal state of things, and below each ring are its floral leaves.” There’s some talk about this plant being related to wood betony (Stachys officinalis), an important medicinal herb during early medieval Great Britain. There are a couple plants known as wood betony, but, I look forward to tracing this plant’s family tree to learn more about the historical uses of its important relatives.

   Arrowwood viburnum grows here with its berries showing. I also saw Timothy, more dogwood, wild peanut, purple vetch, Queen Anne’s lace and bastard toadflax, all well out.

   I continued ahead and entered a pine forest, the ground dotted with true forget-me-not. I walked onto a small boardwalk, bordered by patches of sensitive fern. Suddenly, it began to rain, slowly at first, but then harder. Fortunately, I was protected within this pine woods and stayed dry. Eventually, the rain slowed, and I continued ahead.

   This place seems full of surprises. Two ducks suddenly flew upward from the water; they flew deeper into the marsh at the far side of the river. While inspecting a pretty Jewelweed bloom, I heard wood frogs croaking at the water’s edge. I left the jewelweed and noticed the delicate spikes of enchanter’s nightshade growing ahead. The path moves away from the water on the far side of the boardwalk. Young black cherry, a stand of self-heal and agrimony leads me to another boardwalk. Jewelweed fills the moist sections beside the boardwalk, and is mixed with dogwood and an old crab apple tree with green crab apples.

   I heard a chickadee singing its “phee-a-bee” notes, and goldfinches sang as they flew over the trees. While I was admiring a single boneset plant, a bird flew to a nearby thicket. It hid behind the leaves so that I could barely determine its color.

   Eventually, it moved to an exposed branch, and I saw its yellow belly and heard it call out - “chip-chip….” – I knew immediately that it was a female common yellowthroat. Why do these warblers, sparrows and towhees “chip” when they’re looking for insects in a thicket? To whom are they calling? Wouldn’t it benefit them more to keep quiet? Anyway, this yellowthroat drew my attention. It had no eyeline and a grayish back. If it lacked any yellow, I would have assumed it was a song sparrow, another bird that skulks around thickets that boarder water.

   Where the path approached the water again, I saw water hemlock. Though deadly poisonous, it’s an attractive plant with full white corymbs (large rounded, domed cluster of white flowers). The leaves are compound, deep green and lend an attractive quality to this wide-spreading plant.

   Beside the hemlock grew wild mint, bastard toadflax and Virginia rye.

   As I picked a small piece of the mint leaves to taste, I heard a great blue heron calling from the marsh that edges the path. The rain died down. I approached the water and saw a bird far off from the near shore. Looking through my binoculars, I saw that it was a kingfisher on a log that juts out over the water, preening itself. Suddenly, a fish jumped from the water just below the log, and I wondered if the kingfisher noticed.

   I heard a common yellowthroat singing from the woods behind me, away from the water. Was this the spouse of the female yellowthroat I saw in the thicket? Following the path, I passed a large stand of water hemlock, daisies and primrose, and then I approached the water’s edge to look for the heron. It must have been tucked within the dense thicket of cattails because I couldn’t find it. I casually glanced upward and was surprised to see a bird, a cormorant, sitting on the limb of a dead tree directly above me, about thirty feet up. I don’t typically see cormorants perched in trees, so it was an unusual sight. Even from just its silhouette, it's a very recognizable bird. 

   I continued to watch until it flew away, out over the water and upstream.

   Silverrod goldenrod was growing beside the path along with white birch, bulrush, St. Johnswort, cleavers, wild peanut, bastard toadflax, yarrow and Joe-Pye weed. A mallard flew from the water, circled and disappeared. A common yellowthroat sang from across the water, and once again, a kingfisher cackled. “The harsh cry [of the kingfisher] has been aptly likened to the sound made by springing a watchman’s rattle,” wrote Winfrid A. Stearns in New England Bird Life (1883), “and it is no less startling in effect when breaking suddenly upon an unexpecting ear.” A watchman’s rattle? During the early 19th Century, watchman would carry a lantern and a wooden rattle that when turned would make a very loud, grinding sound to warn neighbors of danger.

   Then, I heard the great blue heron again, though I still couldn’t find it. However, directly in front of me, just off the shore, about where McCabes Brook begins, I saw the heart-shaped leaves and small, white, cup-shaped flowers of floating heart (left below). Flowering rush (middle below), standing tall nearby, has pretty, pink flowers that jut out on long stems from the top of a three-foot tall stalk, similar to that of wild garlic. The leaves of flowering rush are sword-shaped, long and thin. A few of these plants grow about three feet out from the shore. Nearby was swamp dock (right below), a two-foot tall plant that’s as interesting looking as the flowering rush is beautiful. Each of the twenty or so greenish-white blooms of swamp dock has a 1½ inch long, pink-tinged narrow throat. These little, fanfare-trumpet-shaped blooms are arranged in whorls around the stem and droop, giving the plant a shaggy appearance.

   Cattails grow alongside the near shore. I looked at them, on this near shore and across the water. I began to wonder if there was some pattern to their encroachment. Like birch and aspen on dry land, cattail will be the first plant to encroach into the water when the mud builds up enough for it to take root. Is there an order among wetland wildflowers that encroach into water? Perhaps tussock sedge is next, than pickerelweed…. Suddenly, a large bird flew from a tree downstream. It’s was an osprey. It excreted as it flew and then landed in a tree overlooking the water. I watched for a while to see if it would dive for a fish. It didn’t; and, anyway, I feel as though this is an event I should happen upon rather than wait for: waiting for nature to conform to my expectations, on my schedule, feels forced.  

   Then, the elusive great blue heron flew upward from the cattails; it circled, flew high, close to the tree tops, and disappeared. Farther from shore, I saw what I believe was partially submerged broad-leaved arrowhead mixed with the floating hearts. It was deeper than I usually find it, but the three, larger white petals were visible. I wouldn’t have listed arrowhead as one of the early encroaching plants; for the most part, it seems to remain near the shore.

   Continuing along the path, I listened to a hermit thrush singing from the opposite shore. The path led through a river-side woods consisting of red and silver maple, white pine, hemlock and hickory. Wood ferns adorned the edge of the path along with daisy fleabane and buttercups. Ahead, I noticed that water disappeared where vegetation - cattails and other wetland shrubs - took over. I circled back to return to Bay Road; I walked over one of the several boardwalks here and noticed painted trillium. These must have been sterile plants because I didn’t see any fruit. I noticed horse nettle and red baneberry with a few deep red fruits attached to the stems, the others apparently eaten by birds. While listening to a red-eyed vireo, I opened one of the berries and counted only two black seeds inside. Fragrant bedstraw was also here with its six leaflets, arranged in a whorl.

   When I approached the open field at the entrance to the property, I noticed a house wren in the brush. It was chattering, which made me think it was a young bird. It moved quickly through the brush, but I could see the characteristic wren tail and its chestnut colored feathers.

   Several weeks earlier, I was in Connecticut, walking along the Connecticut River in East Hartford. The walkway was paved and the lawns adjacent to the water were manicured. In places wildflowers sprang up. I saw horse nettle and vervain, for instance. But, this river-side walk was unmanicured, wild, given up to Nature; and, like choosing the path untaken, that makes all the difference.

Red Rock Park

That same afternoon (July 26, 2015), I visited Red Rock Park with my family. This 100 acre park begins at Central Avenue in South Burlington and stretches alongside Shelburne Bay and Lake Champlain. We parked at the “lower parking lot” and walked toward the so-called “Swim Area” at Shelburne Bay. Purple flowering raspberry surrounds the parking area.

   The two inch-diameter blossoms with pinkish-red petals are still out. These rose-like blossoms are nestled amid the large green leaves that suggest those of striped maple. Though the blossoms suggest a rose (Genus Rosa), flowering raspberry is actually related to bramble or blackberry (Genus Rubus).

   From the beach, I could see over the lake to the distant Adirondack Mountain range in New York, beyond the ridge or peninsula to the right that forms this bay, and which hides the greater part of Lake Champlain.

   The paths that lead along the steep cliffs that overhang these massive bodies of water showcase wildflowers typical of the Great Lakes. These wildflowers are more common to a place like this than the rich, deep forests of Massachusetts, for instance. So, this became a wildflower walk.

   At the back of the beach, I noticed, against the rising, wooded slope, a beautiful cottonwood tree.

   The cottonwood is a tall, attractively-sharped tree with a pale, almost ghostly appearance. The fruits of basswood are showing and river grape winds up the shrubs.

   This unusual fruit package consists of several small, round, pea-sized nuts that dangle from a curved leaf or bract that acts like a sail. “The tree’s name has nothing to do with gamey sea fish,” according to Rutherford Platt in American Trees (1952). “It is derived from bast, fibers that are used to weave mats or robes or to wind around split handle of a hoe or rake. This bast, or inner bark, encloses the trunk of the tree like a tough, stringy shirt, and is also used for weaving into chair-bottoms and baskets.”

   My daughter and I ascended the steep path through the upland woods toward the parking area. To the left of this path runs a dried trench where water from winter run-off has carved out the ground as it runs from the upland section of the property to the Bay. Tick trefoil adorns this pathside; the rich, pinkish-purple, orchid-like flowers seem haphazardly arranged on a loose spike above the leaves and give the plant a wild appearance.

   Like all the trefoils – and mints as well - the individual blooms deserve a closer look for a full appreciation of this attractive wildflower. 

   Beyond the parking area, as we approached the so-called “Lake Trail,” I saw agrimony still in bloom, fading dogwood, chicory and false Solomon’s seal. Soon after entering the woods, I saw sweet cicely growing against a rock outcrop. Its leaves have been described as fern-like and according to Harriet L. Keeler in Our Early Wild Flowers (1916), “The chief beauty of the plant likes in the foliage, which, abundant in April, in May, often overshadows other plants and virtually covers the forest floor.”

   It certainly didn’t cover the forest floor here, but they’re attractive, and they do overshadow the slender but longish seed pods. These woods are dominated by white pine, cedar and oaks.

   I saw hedge nettle, cedar, basswood and hickory at an outlook over the Lake. The views over the water, to the distant mountains and nearer sailboats are picturesque, framed by the branches of nearby trees.

   Leaving the overlook, I found thimbleweed, always an interesting wildflower with long single stems rising from leaves that suggest separated wild geranium leaves. Each stem terminates with a single white-petaled flower; and, when the flower matures, it’s replaced by a thimble-like fruit cluster.

   Meadow-rue also grows here, but I don’t see any of the frilly white flowers, just leaves, each superficially shaped like a small cat paw. White avens grows nearby, the white-petaled flowers still showing, but most passed. A few stunted motherwort plants grow here and they’re still in bloom. More typically, motherwort grows to three or four feet, while these are less than two feet tall. This wildflower suggests a mint with the blooms arranged in whorls.

   Herb Robert grows in large patches throughout, and though most of it is passed, there were several small blue blooms still showing. The quarter-inch diameter flowers are smaller than wild geranium, and the leaves more intricately traced, but the beak-shaped fruit pods reveal the relationship of these two plants, both being in the Geranium family.

   We came to another clearing with a view over the steep cliffs and outward, to the water and beyond. More herb Robert covered the ground at this clearing. I also saw woodland sunflowers and the delicate-looking harebells, the petals and slender stems quivering against the wind.

   We descended a steep slope to the level of the water. This rocky slope was adorned with more harebells. “In rocky or mountainous country in late summer,” wrote Maud Going in With the Wild Flowers (1894), “we find the lovely campanula.

   It is often called bluebell, but it is in reality the harebell of the Scottish poets and another fair immigrant from the Old World. The branching stalks are very slender, and the leaves narrow and grass-like. The plant swings its dainty blossoms from rocky ledges wherever it can find a cranny for its delicate roots.” Going also notes something that I found to be the case at this place: “The purple-blue drooping bells nod provokingly just at that part of the cliff where one cannot reach them from above or clamber after them from below.” In this way, they teased me: what is something so prettily delicate in form and color doing on these rough cliffs, exposing itself to the winds and just out of reach for a closer look?

   There was a narrow trail here with treacherous footing that runs along a small section of the shoreline. When the path ended, we ascended through a narrow opening in the outcrops and came out at the Lake Trail.

   Heading back toward the parking area, I saw lopseed (below left) and catnip (below right), both interesting wildflowers.

   Lopseed is the only species in the family Phrymaceae, giving it “individual family status,” as Peterson’s Wildflower Guide puts it. It’s not a particularly attractive plant, the spiked, rather inconspicuous blooms rising from the two, large-toothed leaves. In the mint family, the more attractive catnip is most famous for its effect on the psychology of even the most staid and conservative of cats.

   Eventually, we left the woods and came to the Pump House which was fronted by a small wildflower meadow. I saw white skimmer and brown skimmer dragonflies dancing from plant to plant and a dusky wing butterfly seeming to do the same.

   It was a pleasure to experience wildflowers - their color and form and manner of growth - that are indigenous or at least introduced to this area, and which I wouldn’t come across so readily back home.