On a day in late October 2017 Pam and Mike did a photography walk. Here is Pam pausing to pose during a descent into the gorge on the cliff staircase after visiting the overlook high above Lucifer Falls, Robert H. Treman New York State Park in the Finger Lakes Region.
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Pam on the Cliff Staircase
Grasses, hemlock saplings, goldenrod, spent leaves and ferns on the wall of the 223 Cliff Stair steps.
Cliff Stair Wall, autumn with hemlock
Click for a slideshow of this sequence of Lucifer Falls view from the overlook.
Pam on the Cliff StaircaseCliff Stair Wall, autumn with hemlock
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Several possible sources have been proposed for the name Taughannock, all of which describe Native American origins. One translation suggests that the name is derived from a combination of Iroquois and Algonquin terms meaning “great fall in the woods”. An alternate theory suggests that the name may refer to a Lenni Lenape (Delaware) chief named Taughannock who died near the falls during a battle.
A nice lady offered to take the photo….challenged to keep it straight.
During the second half of the nineteenth century, steamboats, railroads and Victorian hotels were built in the region to serve tourists who traveled to view the falls. By 1925 the hotels were failing due to a decline in tourism, and New York State began acquiring land to form a park.
Pollywogs!! Catch and release
J.S. Halsey built a two and a half story hotel in 1850, known variously as the Cataract Hotel or Taughannock House (or simply as Halsey’s Hotel) at the Taughannock Falls Overlook.
Visitors could reach the hotel by taking a train to Cayuga Lake, take a steamboat across the lake to Goodwin’s Point, then finally board a stagecoach to reach the hotel. The hotel site today is the location of the park visitor center and parking lot.
Enjoy!!
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
The waterfall and gorge comprise an example of a hanging valley, formed where Taughannock Creek’s stream-carved valley meets the deeper glacially carved valley that contains Cayuga Lake.
The gorge has continued to retreat westward from Cayuga Lake as easily eroded shale near the fall’s base is worn away by the stream, which supports erosion-resistant siltstone and sandstone found in the upper portions of the gorge.
Pollywogs!! Catch and release
Annual freeze and thaw cycles also act upon small faults in the rock, causing large sections to occasionally break away, further expanding the gorge.
Taughannock Falls’ main cataract is a 215-foot drop (66 m), making it 33 feet (10 m) taller than Niagara Falls. It is the tallest single-drop waterfall east of the Rocky Mountains. The waterfall is located along Taughannock Creek, which flows through a long gorge with cliffs up to 400 feet (120 m) high.
Enjoy!!
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Dam on Buttermilk creek that forms Lake Treman. Here is stunning Civilian Conservation Corp (1930’s) work in this 36-foot-high stone dam that is not only a spectacle to observe but also serves as part of the trail that encircles Lake Treman. The man-made lake’s wooded shores and placid waters are a stark comparison to the gorge’s rocky cliffs and surging water
August 2023, Buttermilk Falls New York State Park, Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Two species of wild ducks rest on a fallen tree trunk.
That is a female Wood Duck (Aix sponsa) on right.
Wood Ducks mainly eat berries, acorns, and seeds, but also insects, making them omnivores. They are able to crush acorns after swallowing them within their gizzard.
August 2023, Buttermilk Falls New York State Park, Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
As with other members of the family Asteraceae, Thin Leaved Sunflowers are composed of ray florets. The scientific species name “decapetalus” is inaccurate on several counts. The flower is composed of 8-12 (not only 10, as in “deca”) of these ray florets, not petals. These ray florets are part of the flower reproductive organs, a flower petal is adjacent to, not a component of, a flowers reproductive parts.
The flowers attract many kinds of insects, including bees and butterflies, some of which, such as the painted lady and the silvery checkerspot, use the plant as a larval host. The seeds provide a source of food for birds. Muskrats eat the leaves and stems and use the stems in the construction of their lodges. Here we see a honeybee gathering nectar and pollen.
August 2023, Buttermilk Falls New York State Park, Ithaca, Tompkins County, New York.
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
I found these popping up from leaf litter, a mixture of last year’s maple and elm, on an August morning. The dappled light, varied from bright to very dark, exceeded the dynamic range of my equipment, so I set up the Sony dslr Alpha700 with the Sony lens DT 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 on a tripod and, using the remote feature, placed the flash at an optimal angle.
“Monotropa uniflora, also known as ghost plant, ghost pipe, or Indian pipe, is an herbaceous perennial plant native to temperate regions of Asia, North America, and northern South America, but with large gaps between areas. The plant is sometimes completely waxy white, but often has black flecks or pale pink coloration. Rare variants may have a deep red color. The name “Monotropa” is Greek for “one turn” and “uniflora” is Latin for “one flowered” as there is one sharply curved stem for each single flower. It flowers from early summer to early autumn, often a few days after rainfall. The fruit, an oval capsule-like structure, enlarges and becomes upright when the seeds mature, at this point stem and capsule looking desiccated and dark brown or black. The seeds of Monotropa uniflora are small, ranging between 0.6–0.8 mm (3⁄128–1⁄32 in) in length.“
“Unlike most plants, it is white and does not contain chlorophyll. Instead of generating food using the energy from sunlight, it is parasitic, and more specifically a mycoheterotroph. Its hosts are certain fungi that are mycorrhizal with trees, meaning it ultimately gets its food from photosynthetic trees. Since it is not dependent on sunlight to grow, it can grow in very dark environments as in the understory of dense forest. The complex relationship that allows this plant to grow also makes propagation difficult.“
“The flowers of Monotropa uniflora are visited by various bee and fly species, most commonly bumblebees. Bumblebees are an important pollen dispersal agent for the plant.“
“Like most mycoheterotrophic plants, Monotropa uniflora associates with a small range of fungal hosts, all of them members of Russulaceae.“
“It is often associated with beech trees.“
“The plant contains glycosides and may be toxic to humans.“
“In addition to various reported medical uses, the plant has been used as an anxiolytic in herbal medicine since the late 19th century.“
Reference: in italics is from “Monotropa uniflora,” Wikipedia
Copyright 2023 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved
Visitors to Robert H. Treman park think nothing of crushing millipedes on the trail, it is concerning to encounter evidence of such disrespectful and boorish behavior. Here is an intact millipede I found last week. Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterized by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; […]
Visitors to Robert H. Treman park think nothing of crushing millipedes on the trail, it is concerning to encounter evidence of such disrespectful and boorish behavior. Here is an intact millipede I found last week.
Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterized by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; they are known scientifically as the class Diplopoda, the name derived from this feature. Each double-legged segment is a result of two single segments fused together. Most millipedes have very elongated cylindrical or flattened bodies with more than 20 segments, while pill millipedes are shorter and can roll into a tight ball. Although the name “millipede” derives from Latin for “thousand feet”, no species was known to have 1,000 or more until the discovery of Eumillipes persephone, which can have over 1,300 legs.
There are approximately 12,000 named species classified into 16 orders and around 140 families, making Diplopoda the largest class of myriapods, an arthropod group which also includes centipedes and other multi-legged creatures. Most millipedes are slow-moving detritivores, eating decaying leaves and other dead plant matter. Some eat fungi or drink plant fluids, and a small number are predatory.
Millipedes are generally harmless to humans, although some can become household or garden pests. Millipedes can be an unwanted nuisance particularly in greenhouses where they can potentially cause severe damage to emergent seedlings. Most millipedes defend themselves with a variety of chemicals secreted from pores along the body, although the tiny bristle millipedes are covered with tufts of detachable bristles. Its primary defense mechanism is to curl into a tight coil, thereby protecting its legs and other vital delicate areas on the body behind a hard exoskeleton. Reproduction in most species is carried out by modified male legs called gonopods, which transfer packets of sperm to females.
Millipedes are among the first animals to have colonized land during the Silurian period. Early forms probably ate mosses and primitive vascular plants. Millipedes also exhibit the earliest evidence of chemical defense, as some Devonian fossils have defensive gland openings called ozopores. Millipedes, centipedes, and other terrestrial arthropods attained very large sizes in comparison to modern species in the oxygen-rich environments of the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, and some could grow larger than one meter. As oxygen levels lowered through time, arthropods became smaller.
Most millipedes are detritivores and feed on decomposing vegetation, feces, or organic matter mixed with soil. They often play important roles in the breakdown and decomposition of plant litter: estimates of consumption rates for individual species range from 1 to 11 percent of all leaf litter, depending on species and region, and collectively millipedes may consume nearly all the leaf litter in a region. The leaf litter is fragmented in the millipede gut and excreted as pellets of leaf fragments, algae, fungi, and bacteria, which facilitates decomposition by the microorganisms.
Reference: “Millipede” Wikipedia
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
This Hepatica acutiloba, the sharp-lobed hepatica, I found in Fillmore Glen last April, capturing them with the Apple Iphone 14 proMax.
Hepatica acutiloba is also known as sharp-lobed hepatica, liverwort, kidneywort, pennywort, liverleaf. The perennial nature of this plant is seen here in the purplish leaves hanging below, from a previous year’s growth.
The word hepatica derives from the Greek ἡπατικός hēpatikós, from ἧπαρ hêpar ‘liver’, because its three-lobed leaf blotched leaves resemble a diseased human liver.
Plants of genus Hepatica are native to Europe, Asia, and North America.
Europe: Albania, Austria, the Baltic states, Belarus, Bulgaria, Corsica, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, European Russia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Yugoslavia
Central Asia: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Western Siberia
Eastern Asia: North China, South Central China, East China, Japan, Korea, Manchuria, Primorsky Krai
South Asia: Pakistan, Western Himalaya
Canada: Manitoba, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Québec
United States: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin
Plants of the genus have been introduced to Belgium.
These tufted perennials grow to 10 centimeters in height with wiry roots. Leaves usually three-lobed and untoothed. Flowers can be blue, pinkish, or white. Three sepals, small and green. Petals usually 5, can be more, without a nectary. Stamens numerous. Ovary superior; styles short with capitate stigmas. Pollination is by insects. Fruits many, one-seeded. Seeds are green when ripe. dispersed by ants.
References:
Wikipedia, “Hepatica”
“The Botanical Garden, Vol II” by Roger Phillips and Marytn Rix, Firefly Books, 2002
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
This Hepatica acutiloba, the sharp-lobed hepatica, I found in Fillmore Glen last April, capturing them with the Apple Iphone 14 proMax.
“’The liverleaf puts forth her sister blooms of faintest blue soon after the late snows have melted. Indeed, these fragile-seeming, enable-like flowers are sometimes found actually beneath the snow, and form one of the many instances which we encounter among flowers, as among their human contemporaries, where the frail and delicate-looking withstand storm and stress far better than their more robust-appearing brethren.”
Each clump-forming plant grows 5 to 19 cm (2.0 to 7.5 in) tall, flowering in the early to mid-spring. The flowers are greenish-white, white, purple, or pinkish in color, with a rounded shape. After flowering the fruits are produced in small, rounded columned heads, on pedicels 1 to 4 mm long seen here in these gone to seed flowers. When the fruits, called achenes, are ripe they are ovoid in shape, 3.5–4.7 mm long and 1.3–1.9 mm wide, slightly winged and tend to lack a beak.
“The rusty leaves of last summer are obliged to suffice for the plant’s foliage until some little time after the blossoms have appeared, when the young fresh leaves begin to uncurl themselves. Someone has suggested that the fuzzy little buds look as though they were still wearing their furs as protection against the wintry weather which so often stretches late into our spring.”
Hepatica cultivation has been popular in Japan since the 18th century (mid-Edo period), where flowers with doubled petals and a range of color patterns have been developed.
Noted for its tolerance of alkaline limestone-derived soils, Hepatica may grow in a wide range of conditions; it can be found either in deeply shaded deciduous (especially beech) woodland and scrub or grassland in full sun. Hepatica will also grow in both sandy and clay-rich substrates, being associated with limestone. Moist soil and winter snowfall are required; Hepatica is tolerant of winter snow cover, but less so of dry frost.
Propagation is done by seeds or by dividing vigorous clumps in spring. However, seedlings take several years to reach bloom size, and divided plants are slow to thicken.
Hepatica was once used as a medicinal herb. Owing to the doctrine of signatures, the plant was once thought to be an effective treatment for liver disorders. Although poisonous in large doses, the leaves and flowers may be used as an astringent, as a demulcent for slow-healing injuries, and as a diuretic.
References:
The quotes are from From “How to know the wildflowers,” by Mrs. William Starr Dana, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1989 Otherwise, Wikipedia, “Hepatica acutiloba” and “Hepatica”
Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
