By Steve Young I took a stroll along the Mohawk Bike Path in Aqueduct, Niskayuna today to see what wildflowers I could find. The trail runs at the base of a slope where it meets the floodplain of small creeks flowing into the Mohawk River. Here are the wildflowers that greeted me along the way. One of the first wildflowers visible was the beautiful bloodroot, Sanguinaria canadensis. Some of them were already in fruit. Early blue cohosh, Caulophyllum giganteum, flowers as the leaves expand. The endless patterns of trout lily leaves,  Erythronium americanum, continue to amaze. Most ..read more

On Saturday October 26, Michael Wojtech, author of Bark, a field guide to trees of the Northeast, presented a workshop to help participants identify native trees in Eastern New York based on bark types.  Michael started out with an indoor class on the characteristics and ecology of bark and, using photos, tested us on how we thought bark on young trees would look on older trees.  By knowing the different types of bark – blocky, ropy, vertical strips, smooth, etc. – it was easier to guess how these bark types change over time.  After our classroom lesson, we were excited to get o ..read more

Liana Williams, age 5, enjoys botanizing and birdwatching with grandma (and NYFA Board member) Connie Tedesco. For the last 3 years they have taken a fall walk on Whalen Hill, near Hartwick NY, to find the Spiranthes cernua along the trail, occasional among the clubmosses.  Liana was the first to spot one this year and shows it off for the camera. Liana finds happiness in an autumn orchid ..read more

If you have not use the iNaturalist app to enter plant photographs and location information you haven’t had the opportunity to use the automatic identification feature. For those of us who have, we are increasingly amazed at how good it is at identifying the plant to species, especially those that are not grasses, sedges, or rushes. This feature works with computer machine learning that compares your photo to the millions of others in the database that have been confirmed by others to pick the closest match. It is not uncommon now to be on plant walks where people are using the app to identify ..read more