Natural Lands Trust Preserve Blog

Requiem for Phragmites

On Monday, a patch of phragmites was removed from our native warm season grass and wild flower meadow.  If left to its own devices, this invasive plant would have smothered every other plant in the meadow.  In its place is a hole - a tiny hole that even the most punctilious ecologist wouldn't notice. 

What's the big deal?  In art jargon the big deal is the "negative space."  Negative space is the absence of matter that gives present matter its form.  For example, a donut would not be a donut without the hole - the hole is the negative space.  The duty of any land manager is to manipulate both the negative and positive to give the landscape form.  Want to see the landscape taking form?  Come soon, come often, and keep your eyes open for things that aren't there.

Beauty this week

Here's New York ironweed (Vernonia novaboracensis). This picture unfortunately makes it look like Canada thistle—sorry! (They're both in the composite family, but otherwise are very different.) The real thing has a deeper purple-blue flower color, and of course grows eight or more feet tall in our wet meadows. It's a stately wildflower and a butterfly magnet in late summer.

The elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) fruit have already been eaten by birds and deer, but the red stems which bore them are themselves showy.

Great blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) is also blooming in a couple of wet meadows. It's in the same genus as cardinal flower, but blooms later with these blue flowers (again not reproduced well in this photo). The botanic name refers to the medicinal use of this species as a supposed treatment for syphiilis.

Pet Peeve: "Its" Grammar

I don't want to sound like a stick-in-the mud, but I hate to see the misuse of the apostrophe in "its." I thought the only time this word should be spelled with an apostrophe is when it stands for the contraction of "it is." When serving as a posessive pronoun, it does not receive an apostrophe. "It's proper to leave off its apostrophe in these situations."

In the last couple years, have we undegone collective amnesia? Have they changed the rules since I went to school? I don't mind the mistakes in a quickly-scrawled note or hastily-typed email, but I have started seeing it in museum interpretive signage.

The Beavers are Back!

Last week when I was controlling mile-a-minute in a wetland north of woods between Northside and Harmonyville Roads, there was no sign of beaver activity. The sunny wetland is criscrossed by small streams that were a little less deep than my boots are high. Not so this week, I realized as the water poured over the tops—not a bad feeling in August.

There is a new dam on one of these little springs, and a little bit of beaver-chewed alder trunks, and some conspicuous footprints. I think their presence will benefit this wetland, adding a bit of water and thinning some of the red maple trees. They're not likely to control mile-a-minute for me, since this invasive thrives on disturbance, but it also probably doesn't germinate in flooded areas.

This is the time of year when beavers switch from a summer diet of grasses and wildflowers and begin to cut and stash their winter food of twigs and branches.

Lost and Found

Did you lose a dog leash during a recent visit to the preserve? If you did, please call me (610-286-7955) and describe it and we'll make arrangements to get it back to you...

Tree Cookie Quiz

These tree “cookies” were taken from two trees of the same species, same forest; in fact only a few yards apart.  Can you guess which one is older?

This is a picture of Jamie Leary taken at our Nature Day Camp.  Jamie did an excellent presentation at Day Camp on our forests.  He works for the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR) in the Bureau of Forestry.  Jamie is the Service Forester for Northampton and Monroe couties.  He wears various hats in that position, but one of his main duties is working with land owners.  If you have questions about your woodlot or forested land, your first call should be to your Service Forester.  His professional advice is free!

Jamie, like the other Service Foresters, is a wealth of knowledge.  Contact him if you are wondering  what you can do to make your forest more attractive to wildlife, or yield more firewood, or if you notice a tree disease.  Forest owners are often approached by loggers, and amazed at how much the timber is worth.  But before you sign any contracts, contact your Service Forester.  Remember his experience is free.  Your Service Forester can walk you through the contract and help you make sure that the forest cutting is managed to your goals, and not the logger’s.  Even if you never plan to harvest your timber, you should make an appointment to walk your woods with your Service Forester.  They see interesting things that are important to your forest’s health.  Besides, it is a lot of fun to walk through the woods with them, to see the forest through their eyes.

Back to the tree cookies.  The smaller one is older.  It was 29 years old; the bigger tree was 26 years old. 

You will often hear people say that you need to cut out the big trees to let light in, so the younger trees can start growing.  Not necessarily so.  These two trees were about the same age, and one was much better at utilizing resources than the other one.  Before you knew their ages, you might have cut the bigger tree to allow space for the smaller one to grow.  But the smaller (older) tree will probably never reach its potential.  If you leave the bigger one, it can drop acorns and pass its genes onto the next generation of forest.  And I learned that from my Service Forester.

My thanks to Carole Mebus, who took these photos, and many more, to document our Nature Day Camps.