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.