Relaxed ramble in the Woods.. they were still today.. cold.. low to mid 30's. East Pond and small pool in Wash were mostly frozen over. West Pond was 80% open water. One cottontail rabbit dashed away near an isolated patch of wild onion 200 feet north of Fence Corner. Four or five recent deer beds- ellipses of flattened leaf litter- northeast of northeastern corner of North Loop. Nice fresh Pleurotus oyster on freshly down pecan snag #175. Lots of fruiting polypores in large deep hole left when snag fell. This is the origin of odd large vertical holes in the Woods.. uprooted rotten snags.
Ecology students can map: Ligustrum privet, Rosa multiflora rose, vines (what vines are on what trees?), cedars (branchy? in rows? dead?), Crataegus hawthorn (by early April blossom), Eleagnus Russian olive, catalpa (by blossom), more 'Liriope monkey grass, persimmons. All large trees in 3 or 4 acres (each 200 x 200' block =~ one acre).
Along the south boundary and elsewhere through the Woods there are patches of junipers all blown over in the same direction, now supporting impenetrable thickets of honeysuckle off the ground.. cozy sanctuary for any wildlife sheltering within.
Winter green on the ground: Geum, Stellaria chickweed (good snack), Galium bedstraw (very small), Stachys-like horse mint-like (same leaf odor, shape and venation).
Need to remap with GPS all of Carpenter's posts found:
1-5: C10,D10,F10,G10,H10
6-8: NE quarter off Pipeline Trail NE of flagged Liriope patch; and SW of patch in Wash; and at the jct of N Loop and Trans OWP
9-10: at Barney Jct; and by Grandfather Cottonwood
11-12: first found post between two green ash; and west in sedges (east of line to break in Chautauqua fence)
13-17: at old western gate; and north (found in the ice); and east on pink line along south border of sedge; and north to small raised clump of trees in eastern sedges; and north (on pink line) to large sedge lobe in middle of woods opening;
18-21: SE corner of West Pond; SE corner of East Pond (in water pit); by big cottonwood; just off trail between two ponds at trail turning.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Opuntia Prickly Pear and Briers
December 25, needing some exercise, I went to the Woods with saw and machete and opened the old game trail from the Two Friends across the dune to the Grandfather Cottonwood.
At the crest of the sand dune was a good small patch of Opuntia prickly pear, not common in the Woods. The dune supports a different community from the surrounding Woods. It is never flooded. The exotic Lonicera honeysuckle grows thickly along with Ligustrum privet, Cercis redbud, and other shrubs and forbs down to a sharp boundary defined by the high water mark of the floods. The two species of Smilax briers under the junipers were particularly dense and I needed some impervious clothing to wrestle with them and open a path. The woods east of the Two Friends had many small 1-3 inch diameter green ash. All the mature green ash down to 1-2 diameter should be killed when Agrilus planipennis, the Emerald Ash Borer arrives. It will be of great interest to observe the fate of this advance regeneration. After beetles kill the mature ash, will the beetles remain and kill the young regen, or will beetle populations disappear and allow many young green ash to survive and the species remain an important part of floodplain forest? I think we will lose green ash entirely and will want to find out what returns.. grasses and sedges? elms? (but Ophiostoma novo-ulmi), redbud? persimmon? Maybe a chance for cottonwood to re-establish. Perhaps it would be good to establish some of the other tree species already present, before the ash die.
At the crest of the sand dune was a good small patch of Opuntia prickly pear, not common in the Woods. The dune supports a different community from the surrounding Woods. It is never flooded. The exotic Lonicera honeysuckle grows thickly along with Ligustrum privet, Cercis redbud, and other shrubs and forbs down to a sharp boundary defined by the high water mark of the floods. The two species of Smilax briers under the junipers were particularly dense and I needed some impervious clothing to wrestle with them and open a path. The woods east of the Two Friends had many small 1-3 inch diameter green ash. All the mature green ash down to 1-2 diameter should be killed when Agrilus planipennis, the Emerald Ash Borer arrives. It will be of great interest to observe the fate of this advance regeneration. After beetles kill the mature ash, will the beetles remain and kill the young regen, or will beetle populations disappear and allow many young green ash to survive and the species remain an important part of floodplain forest? I think we will lose green ash entirely and will want to find out what returns.. grasses and sedges? elms? (but Ophiostoma novo-ulmi), redbud? persimmon? Maybe a chance for cottonwood to re-establish. Perhaps it would be good to establish some of the other tree species already present, before the ash die.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Christmas Eve in the Woods
Two o'clock walk in through the NE Gate. Good to get into the Woods and out of the chill wind. Last night's storm brought only 5/100ths of an inch but it has turned much cooler with the wind. Under three damp decomposing logs southeast of the East Pond, I found three carabids.. all the same species of Agonum. The isopods were clumped together in tight clusters like honey bees sheltering from the coming cold. One millipede adult (polydesmid??) and a dozen tiny (first instar? white millipedes). At first I thought they were dolichopodid fly larvae. One thin earthworm.
Under one log there were patches of bright orange slime mold in small decorative beads. Under other logs there were swatches of mauve, or white or orange polypores.. just the thin body of the fungus with no conk. One log has nice charcoal black Loculoascomycetes on top and beneath.
At the base of the biggest down cottonwood there is a nice fresh clump of oyster mushrooms in good shape. I broke off a good sized chunk and enjoyed a fresh snack.
From the bottom of the tree looking up into the hollow center it looks like a cotton rat has constructed a nest there.. lots of broken sticks and chunks of bark piled in a loose assortment providing shelter. This is less than a hundred meters from the only other old cotton rat nest I've seen in the Woods, in the broken triple trunk mulberry.
I have not seen any deer the last four times.. the last five days in the Woods. I have not seen dog(s) last 2-3 times.. although this time I heard a dog when I was on the south border trail.. sounded like it was over by the Beaver Dam.
I discovered (again?) one of Carpenter's solid 1.5 m steel stakes, H9, just 25 feet WSW of Barney Jct. The base fully enclosed in a vigorous young hackberry. I relocated two others of Carpenter's stakes I'd seen before, just off the Pipeline trail NE from Ramin and Victoria's flagged Liriope monkey grass patch.. and laying in the wash just SW of the patch. And I found again Carpenter's stake (with orange flag) by the Bumelia NW of the Two Friends.. just off an extension of the Two Friends Trail.. looks to be due north of the W(?) corner of the new trash station. The trail beyond that point follows a well formed game trail to cross the Dune where I once painted small blue dots.. emerging on the north side by the grandfather cottonwood. It is probably worth opening this trail from the greenbriers as a second way across the dune without having to go to the South Boundary Trail with its new construction worker litter and mess.
No water in the wash.. except the small black pool above Island Crossing. The East Pond (and West Pond) still have good water levels. West of the Burr Oak Bridge the bright red berries of the tall honeysuckle shrub have shriveled to tiny red raisins with the winter drought.
Few birds. The Woods were fairly still. A few cardinals foraging on the south border by my southeastern bug traps. A few robins up high above the Elm Bridge. Two days ago there were a pair of golden crowned kinglets on the South Border Trail.
Looks like fresh active foraging by armadillos along the SE Creek Trail under the cottonwoods.
Along the Main SW trail 50-150 meters west of the beaver dam the soil surface is bare.. the leaves all stripped away by the wind. The soil is cracked into plates. There are small patches of windblown sand and sediment. No sign of the white calcareous deposits Linda Wallace and I puzzled over when she visited there with me.
Under one log there were patches of bright orange slime mold in small decorative beads. Under other logs there were swatches of mauve, or white or orange polypores.. just the thin body of the fungus with no conk. One log has nice charcoal black Loculoascomycetes on top and beneath.
At the base of the biggest down cottonwood there is a nice fresh clump of oyster mushrooms in good shape. I broke off a good sized chunk and enjoyed a fresh snack.
From the bottom of the tree looking up into the hollow center it looks like a cotton rat has constructed a nest there.. lots of broken sticks and chunks of bark piled in a loose assortment providing shelter. This is less than a hundred meters from the only other old cotton rat nest I've seen in the Woods, in the broken triple trunk mulberry.
I have not seen any deer the last four times.. the last five days in the Woods. I have not seen dog(s) last 2-3 times.. although this time I heard a dog when I was on the south border trail.. sounded like it was over by the Beaver Dam.
I discovered (again?) one of Carpenter's solid 1.5 m steel stakes, H9, just 25 feet WSW of Barney Jct. The base fully enclosed in a vigorous young hackberry. I relocated two others of Carpenter's stakes I'd seen before, just off the Pipeline trail NE from Ramin and Victoria's flagged Liriope monkey grass patch.. and laying in the wash just SW of the patch. And I found again Carpenter's stake (with orange flag) by the Bumelia NW of the Two Friends.. just off an extension of the Two Friends Trail.. looks to be due north of the W(?) corner of the new trash station. The trail beyond that point follows a well formed game trail to cross the Dune where I once painted small blue dots.. emerging on the north side by the grandfather cottonwood. It is probably worth opening this trail from the greenbriers as a second way across the dune without having to go to the South Boundary Trail with its new construction worker litter and mess.
No water in the wash.. except the small black pool above Island Crossing. The East Pond (and West Pond) still have good water levels. West of the Burr Oak Bridge the bright red berries of the tall honeysuckle shrub have shriveled to tiny red raisins with the winter drought.
Few birds. The Woods were fairly still. A few cardinals foraging on the south border by my southeastern bug traps. A few robins up high above the Elm Bridge. Two days ago there were a pair of golden crowned kinglets on the South Border Trail.
Looks like fresh active foraging by armadillos along the SE Creek Trail under the cottonwoods.
Along the Main SW trail 50-150 meters west of the beaver dam the soil surface is bare.. the leaves all stripped away by the wind. The soil is cracked into plates. There are small patches of windblown sand and sediment. No sign of the white calcareous deposits Linda Wallace and I puzzled over when she visited there with me.
Monday, December 20, 2010
What a Day to be in the Woods
What a Day to be in the Woods.. at 3 PM on the south side it was nearly 80 F.. mid December! I drove on the grassy service road down to the blower building and then carried a short machete and saw to clear the 100 foot section of trail along the south border fence from G0 post east to H0. Lots of Smilax greenbrier and Symphoricarpos coralberry entangled with dead fallen juniper. I cleared a meter wide path there.
Then I drove out to the Chautauqua entrance by Rudy's. Despite the dryness of the Woods, the toe slope West Pond there is full. There were small fish, likely Gambusia, busily feeding at the surface. Eastward to the Ravine trail I encountered three dogs, a black lab and two German shepherds who growled and barked at me and then ran off east along the trail. I have seen this same group of dogs in there before. Down in the mostly dry West Wash flocks of robins were gathering. A dozen stood by the edge of bathtub-sized pool above Island Crossing.
Then I drove out to the Chautauqua entrance by Rudy's. Despite the dryness of the Woods, the toe slope West Pond there is full. There were small fish, likely Gambusia, busily feeding at the surface. Eastward to the Ravine trail I encountered three dogs, a black lab and two German shepherds who growled and barked at me and then ran off east along the trail. I have seen this same group of dogs in there before. Down in the mostly dry West Wash flocks of robins were gathering. A dozen stood by the edge of bathtub-sized pool above Island Crossing.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Cool Saturday Afternoon
I went to the Woods at 3 today, NE Gate. I walked most of the trails except for the NW. Larger group of seven deer down in the SW sedges. No flowing water in the Wash .. a pool was there above Island Crossing from the very light 2/100 of an inch of rain this week. The land hereabouts is unusually dry.
What's green in the Woods now? Sideroxylon Bumelia keeps its old leaves this late in the year; Juniperus cedars, of course; Ligustrum privet is green cover for birds with black fruit ripe now; Lonicera honeysuckle is starting to put out fresh new purple green leaves. Sedge beds in the west are a mix of green and older decadent. There is also herbaceous ground cover starting up..but not much with the drought.
At the G0 post I blazed and partly cleared a trail eastward towards the base of the NS fence. Found again and flagged the H0 post there. I need to return with loppers or saw to clear the trail through dense greenbrier and brush at one point.
Work crews have grubbed out the south side of the Dune trail clearing away leaf litter and soil. Not sure this is good.
Old barb wire fence line is cut at Fence Corner.. good to remove trip hazard.
End of my walk out at Pipeline trail at sunset beautiful brilliant gold sky illuminated the fallen compound walnut leaves laying on top of the leaf litter.
Old tin sleeves wrapped around trees maybe to keep squirrels out of pecan trees?
I found the den of a young mutt living in the Woods beneath a fallen huge cottonwood near and north of the F0 post.
What's green in the Woods now? Sideroxylon Bumelia keeps its old leaves this late in the year; Juniperus cedars, of course; Ligustrum privet is green cover for birds with black fruit ripe now; Lonicera honeysuckle is starting to put out fresh new purple green leaves. Sedge beds in the west are a mix of green and older decadent. There is also herbaceous ground cover starting up..but not much with the drought.
At the G0 post I blazed and partly cleared a trail eastward towards the base of the NS fence. Found again and flagged the H0 post there. I need to return with loppers or saw to clear the trail through dense greenbrier and brush at one point.
Work crews have grubbed out the south side of the Dune trail clearing away leaf litter and soil. Not sure this is good.
Old barb wire fence line is cut at Fence Corner.. good to remove trip hazard.
End of my walk out at Pipeline trail at sunset beautiful brilliant gold sky illuminated the fallen compound walnut leaves laying on top of the leaf litter.
Old tin sleeves wrapped around trees maybe to keep squirrels out of pecan trees?
I found the den of a young mutt living in the Woods beneath a fallen huge cottonwood near and north of the F0 post.
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Dry Winter Woods
One hour noon visit to the Woods today. The past 90 days are among the driest for this time of year in the record books. Along the south border and just south of the fence a bulldozer has scraped away many of the brushy young trees, cottonwoods, etc.. leaving a narrower buffer along the fence. The black erosion fence along the construction zone was also scraped away. New rains will push red clay into the Woods until the fence is reestablished. The tree cutting and clearing of the power line right of way will allow much more light (and summer heat). (The growing tall cement wall of the new trash station will shade some or much.) Honeysuckle and poison ivy should take off.
Crew clearing electric line right of way on the north has applied Cambistat to most of the trees along the northern fence line..with aluminum tags.
Crew clearing electric line right of way on the north has applied Cambistat to most of the trees along the northern fence line..with aluminum tags.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Veg Plots Revisited and Leaf Layer Cake
August 1966 student paper by Charles E. Olmsted in Botany 348 class with Elroy Rice describes vegetation and soil data from two approx. one acre plots set up along the western border of Oliver's Woods. I have found thin (1/8"-1/4") rebar stakes along two parallel lines that look to be the location of the North plot 145 yds by 33.5 yds. The two east west running lines are 100 ft apart. They should run 435.6 feet. It is not clear where they begin on the western end: at the fence line of Chautauqua (as Olmsted states) a few feet further west along the earlier fence line.. or some feet east into the sedges. The SW corner looks like it could have been a now-half empty green ash.. left open as a low hollow stump with live trunk above it.
Olmsted reports all the trees greater than 4 inch DBH.
I would like to mark the boundary of the two plots and do a before and after 44-45 year snap shot of the changes. Have as exercise for Ecology lab? publish in POAS?
Olmsted's discussion lists 234 juniper seedlings (>6 inches tall) along the western edge of the southern plot. Today there are many good sized junipers there; but almost all are dead, over topped by oak, elm, hackberry or pecan. Olmsted also mentions the common grass in the south plot Leersia virginica. It barely occurs in the forest there now.
In the north plot in 1966 there were 101 green ash greater than 4 inches DBH, six persimmon, one cottonwood and one elm. Today the near west end of the plot is choked with ~30-40 yr old green ash 2-3 in DBH. They are likely most all regeneration from the years after 1961 when cattle were removed. Half are dead standing from periods of high water table.
Coming in the SW entrance the trail is filled with dry new fallen oak leaves. Beneath these are the earlier fallen leaves of hackberry and elm. The different species, ash, elm, oak, persimmon, hackberry each year drop their leaves in the same sequence and deposit a leaf layer cake with oak on the top. Interesting to contemplate the consequence of the phenology being reliably translated into a spatially repeating sequence of species layers in the leaf litter.. with the arrangement varying place to place depending on species near by.
Olmsted reports all the trees greater than 4 inch DBH.
I would like to mark the boundary of the two plots and do a before and after 44-45 year snap shot of the changes. Have as exercise for Ecology lab? publish in POAS?
Olmsted's discussion lists 234 juniper seedlings (>6 inches tall) along the western edge of the southern plot. Today there are many good sized junipers there; but almost all are dead, over topped by oak, elm, hackberry or pecan. Olmsted also mentions the common grass in the south plot Leersia virginica. It barely occurs in the forest there now.
In the north plot in 1966 there were 101 green ash greater than 4 inches DBH, six persimmon, one cottonwood and one elm. Today the near west end of the plot is choked with ~30-40 yr old green ash 2-3 in DBH. They are likely most all regeneration from the years after 1961 when cattle were removed. Half are dead standing from periods of high water table.
Coming in the SW entrance the trail is filled with dry new fallen oak leaves. Beneath these are the earlier fallen leaves of hackberry and elm. The different species, ash, elm, oak, persimmon, hackberry each year drop their leaves in the same sequence and deposit a leaf layer cake with oak on the top. Interesting to contemplate the consequence of the phenology being reliably translated into a spatially repeating sequence of species layers in the leaf litter.. with the arrangement varying place to place depending on species near by.
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