From the Field - Crow's Nest Preserve

Farmland II

I can’t let the spring planting season pass without writing again about farmland preservation.

My friend Glenn Nelson, Environmental Educator for Chester County Parks, frequently reminds us of a message delivered by a college professor he had who came from China. Dr. Chen said [I paraphrase], “Never forget, what makes America great is that she can feed herself.”

At that time China was a net importer of food, and historically, the U.S. has been a net exporter, although imports here are rising faster than exports (U.S.D.A. Economic Research Service).

In this region we live amidst the richest agricultural soils in the nation that do not need irrigation. To pave that over, to convert it to houses, shopping centers, and parking lots, is to take that land out of food production pretty much forever. It also precludes any future that involves restoring natural habitat.

It seems to me that it is a matter of national and regional security to ensure that we have a local way to grow our own food. To do that, we need to preserve the land on which that food grows.

Please support your local farmers, your local land trust or conservancy, and ask community leaders to support measures to protect the open space upon which we all depend.

New flowers

Here's a flower I haven't noticed before: cut-leaved toothwort (Dentaria laciniata). According to the Audubon Field Guide to Wildflowers it is named for tooth-like projections on the roots. I'll take their word for it; I'm not going to dig one up.

And here's a very different one that is just about to flower (the photo is from early May last year). Philadelphia fleabane (Erigeron philadelphicus) is a wildflower that comes up in the lawn and by the roadside near the visitor center. Technically speaking, members of the Compositae, or Aster family, have both disk and ray flowers. What looks like petals here are actually small flowers, as are the cluster of disk flowers at the center.

Also blooming right now: the paw paw tree (Asimina triloba). There's just one planted in the yard here, but there are suckering groves of it growing on the ridges of French Creek State Park. It is the only member of the Annonaceae, or Custard-apple family that grows in Pennsylvania, according to Rhoads & Block The Plants of Pennsylvania. Custard-apple is a good name, since the fruit is somewhat pear shaped and the consistency of a bananna, like custard. Ours has not fruited, but I have tasted them elsewhere. They wouldn't ship well and have never enjoyed commercial success as a food. The tree usually grows in moist sites, and indicates to me that the ridges of French Creek State Park have "perched" wetlands in places.

Spring Scenes

Spring is beautiful at the preserve, as in this scene along Pine Creek. Birding has been good as well; after the storm front came through over the weekend there were some warblers flitting in the tree tops, eating insects among the oak flowers. I heard my first wood thrush in the deep woods south of Northside Road yesterday, and soon they will be heard throughout the preserve.

In case you were wondering how the savanna we burned is doing, this is what it looks like about four weeks after the burn: the Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans) is really greening up.

Carolina silverbell is blooming around the Preserve Center, and the spring beauties, violets, and Jack-in-the-pulpits are up.

The tent caterpillars that feed on black cherry trees and other members of the rose family are already hatched and growing in their tents in the crotches of the trees. Their feeding on the leaves can cause some damage to entire branches of leaves, but rarely do major harm to the tree.

We invite you to the preserve, open daily dawn to dusk, to see some of these beautiful scenes, such as this pink dogwood and redbud growing together.

Happy Earth Day

I’ve enjoyed this rainy Earth Day, typing up notes for work with a cat tucked under one arm and a dog under the other. Fortunately, the Earth Day Outdoors Fest we are attending at Warwick County Park is scheduled for next week, when the weather is likely to be better.

In the spirit of Earth Day, a few words about resource use and management. Most of our management on Natural Lands Trust preserves involves getting two things accomplished out of each one action. Hazard trees that need to be removed are made into paneling for the barn and wood chips for our trails. It’s a process of moving something that is located where it isn’t helping to some place where it might. Most brush is left where it falls, but if there isn’t space for it, we move it or transform it in a way that solves the problem where it was and solves another problem where it is going.

Luke DiBerardinis made the stepstool in the library out of a Norway spruce that stood in the yard at the Lodge house on the preserve but that had declined. A few years ago Natural Lands Trust’s arborist Tom Kershner cut it down—I remember the day well, but I can’t find the pictures I took of the event. We painted the log ends to keep them from checking, and stored the log until we found the right use for it. Luke based the design on a Shaker stepstool with a post added to help one balance on it. Even the library shelves are red oak that came from hazard trees at Natural Lands Trust preserves.

On a similar subject I recommend the book Nature’s Operating Instructions: The True Biotechnologies, a short volume of essays edited by Kenny Ausubel. The title does not imply that nature needs to be operated upon, but rather we have a lot to learn from nature in how we might better operate our own affairs. It covers—among many other things—biomimicry, bioremediation, natural capitalism, and the magic, or wonder of nature.

Spring Programs Begin

There's nothing quite like WebWalkers or Spiderlings to stir things up at Crow's Nest. We have minimal programming for the spring sessions; we just get out and see the preserve. Both age groups took long hikes this week, from the Deep Woods Trail to the loop along the Creek Trail. We looked for wildflowers, the homes of wildlife, and we played "Sardines" in the boulder-strewn deep woods.

The Week in Review

This has been a busy week at the preserves, typical of spring and appropriate for Earth Week. I can report only on the small portion that I participated in or heard about. Early in the week we hosted vegetation management training at Crow's Nest, led by Art Gover from Penn State, to help us get a handle on the mile-a-minute and other weed problems. I understand that on Wednesday tree seedlings and wildflower plugs were successfully planted at Binky Lee. Then on Thursday a few of us planted this native garden at Hildacy Farm with plants reprentative of the Piedmont: mountain laurel, rhododendron, native azaleas, spicebush, redbud, and dogwood. Sean changed the bush hog blades to get the Crow's Nest tractor ready for mowing trails next week, and we bought more mulch for around existing plantings. And our afternoon kids' programs started this week: WebWalkers and Spiderlings.

Allegheny pachysandra

I really like our native groundcover Allegheny pachysandra (Pachysandra procumbens). I planted it in the garden around the house and I like the mottled semi-evergreen foliage, and love these flowers. There's nothing wrong with the Japanese pachysandra (Pachysandra terminalis—with terminal flowers instead of those of the native species that grow from the plant's base)—except it's overused in the landscape and occasionally escapes into the woods. I prefer the unique and distinctive native pachysandra.

Also blooming this week at the preserve, Dutchmen's breeches (Dicentra cucullaria). And the dogwood bracts are opening—in the case of this pink variety, spectacularly.

Pushing Dust

Most folks in my neighborhood started mowing their lawns this weekend. I'll put it off as long as I can, perhaps another week or more. I don't enjoy mowing grass that much, and will be doing plenty of it between now and November anyway. I've tried to reduce the area in lawn, but still have it in program areas and other high-use areas.

It has been very dry, and before long I think we will be only pushing dust around with our mowers. We've all done that before, though seldom so early in the season.

Other blooms coming out at the preserve this week are dog-tooth violet or trout-lily (Erithronium americanum). And I've been seeing a lot of the pileated woodpecker in the woods.

Now at the preserve

Trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens) has just started blooming in the woods. Its leaves are evergreen, and the flowers delicately fragrant. There's just a hint of pink on the petals. This one's difficult to cultivate, so appreciate it where it is growing protected on the preserve.

The oak trees are also now starting to flower, turning the hillsides fuzzy brown with the wind-pollinated flowers on their branches. I'm allergic to the pollen, and I knew the season was coming not only because of the calendar, but because I was sneezing last week at Sadsbury Woods. Located in central-western Chester County, its season is advanced a few days ahead of ours. The allergies are a short-term inconvenience for living and working in this beautiful setting.

The last few nights the spring peepers have quieted down but the American toads have been calling steadily. Added to the symphony, the pickerel frogs (Rana palustris) have also been calling.

Today when I went for a hike I saw some wood ducks along the creek. We haven't had many visitors lately, so if you're looking for some solitude in nature, come here for a walk.

More plants we love...

A pair of redbuds (Cercis canadensis) greet visitors at the barn ramp entrance to the visitors' center. This is an ideal small tree for informal spaces and transitions between yards and woods.

The shadbush (Amelanchier spp.) is another small native tree or shrub that lightens up the woods. It blooms, as the name suggests, when the shad are running in the rivers, something they are beginning to do again in streams where dams have been removed. This flower closeup is not how we normally view them. More commonly we see their ethereal light in the woods, like this:

And there's ironwood (Carpinus caroliniana), hardly known for its flower catkins—but they are showy up close! It's a subtle understory tree that kids easily identify by its smooth bark covering a trunk that looks muscular (it's also called musclewood). It has very hard wood and is used for tool handles.

You can see these plants at the preserve right now. And save the date for Natural Lands Trust's native plant sale at Hildacy Farm, May 19 (members) and May 20 (everyone).