<\/a>Tree foam can form when running water collects debris and dissolved materials. (Photo by Kerry Howard)<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
One day toward the end of July, I walked with a friend up the Crow Hill trail and through the big meadow, avoiding the muddiest spots made by recent deluges. We immediately discovered that a bear had been there before us, leaving a trail of bent vegetation, numerous digs in the moss layers, and a tidy scat. I sure would like to know what it was grubbing for!<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
We found lots of the small white swamp gentians, but none of the big blue ones that we had found in a previous year. Bog Swertia (its common name is the same as its genus) was blooming, with fringed grass-of-Parnassus in places, and even a nice stand of purple monkshood in one corner. Scattered here and there were quite a few ladies’ tresses orchids in full bloom. Chocolate lilies had produced fat seed pods but, interestingly, almost always just one pod per stem, rarely two. But this plant often bears several flowers on a stem — was pollination limited this year or did the plants here have insufficient resources to produce more fruits?<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Cheerful little white eyebrights lined the trail. So-called sticky false asphodel (formerly Tofieldia, now Triantha glutinosa) had set seed, and fat green caterpillars were busily chewing on the reddish capsules and enclosed seeds. These caterpillars do not get stuck on the sticky stem as smaller bugs do — where they can be digested by the plant, which gets some nutrition that way. We noticed that the leaves of wild crabapple trees were already turning shades of orange, but surely it was too soon for fall to be here! Several of the small shore pines bore large “galls” on their usually-dead branches. These are probably caused by a fungus known as the western gall rust. I’ve been told that branch death usually comes not from the fungus itself but from secondary infections by other fungi or insects.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t