Rip Van Winkle Winter Day

 Cold (17F) winter morning. Decided to go to the Woods to see if the NW Pond had frozen over; but prudently waited until the afternoon, when it was a pleasant 38F. Wandered in past the NW pond to the big down cottonwood and decided I would find a sunny, warm, south-facing tree trunk. I sat and rested against a big box elder, with the warm sun on my face. Enjoyed a half hour nap, like Rip Van Winkle. Woke up looking through the forest of green ash and wondered just how many big trees I could see. It seemed like hundreds. Fun question: how many trees in Oliver's Woods? I think I'll try to estimate. Maybe make counts at random locations along twenty 20 m x 5 m transects and extrapolate to 67 acres. I'll guess somewhere between 67,000 and 190,000. 

Sitting quietly I began a 'Seton watch'. From my comfortable sunny seat I noticed strands of gossamer blowing in the wind.. and wondered if the abrupt change in the weather had produced a fluctuation in the local electric field and gotten spiders to go "ballooning" - as suggested by Morley, Gorham and Darwin. 

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/spiders-fly-on-the-currents-of-earths-electric-field

Electric Fields Elicit Ballooning in Spiders.  Erica L. Morley and Daniel Robert.  Current Biology 28, 2324–2330  July 23, 2018

I set out on a slow ramble avoiding the trails. I love to get lost in the Woods and see what new things and thoughts I find. Let new questions roll into my head. 

I came to an (unusual) group of four sycamores, two tall and two smaller. One of the trees looks like it could compete for the tallest tree in the Woods. I should start carrying around a forester's prism and recording the heights of the biggest trees I find. It would be interesting to know. Barring violent storm breakage, the sycamores could easily become the largest trees in the Woods. Four centuries ago this species was the largest species in the eastern US. Giant sycamores grew along the Mississippi River.

Patterns in the Woods reveal the past. I came to an old dead juniper with limbs top to bottom, a 'wolf tree' characteristic of trees growing in open fields or trees with lots of room and no over story competition. Then I saw another dead juniper much the same, and a third. They were in a line, suggesting they may have once lined the side of a road through the Woods - then perhaps an open field. It would be fun to map other limby juniper snags in the Woods and see if it was possible to reconstruct a map of where the old wagon roads may have been.

Last week I was wandering in the Woods in dry crackling leaves. Looking down at my feet, there was an accumulation of scores of small shells in a shallow depression, the size of a bathtub. Sphaeriid Fingernail clams and Physella aquatic snails (identified by mollusc experts at Oklahoma Biol Survey). No water for a quarter mile in any direction. Last winter & spring that portion of the Woods had been flooded under a couple inches of water for many months. The flood was contiguous with water from the cattails south of the NW Pond, an area that could normally sustain populations of aquatic molluscs like these two species. They would have been stranded in the small depression when the summer came and the forest dried.

Mild winter days

 Out to the Woods many times these past several days. I love watching how it changes. When the overhead canopy of leaves goes, I enjoy seeing what remains green and still able to carry on photosynthesis, still able to grow. 

List from this past few days: Acer Box Elder (green twigs), Allium Wild Chives (abundant in alluvial soil by wash), Carex Sedge, Cocculus Snailseed vine, Elaeagnus Autumn olive shrubs, Euonymus Strawberry bush/ Spindle trees two species vine and shrub, Geum Avens, Glechoma Creeping Charlie (abundant mixed with chickweed), Hedera English ivy, Ilex Holly,  Juniperus Eastern redcedar trees, Ligustrum Privet shrubs, Lonicera japonica Japanese honeysuckle vines, Lonicera maacki Amur honeysuckle shrubs, Lonicera fragrantissima honeysuckle shrubs, Smilax Greenbriers two species, Stellaria Chickweed (this covers the top quarter of the 12 acre sand dune), Symphoricarpos Coralberry, various moss species, ferns two species Asplenium? and Polypodium? 

.. and a few more:

Clematis, Virgin's bower vine (by Oak Bridge), Liriope Monkey grass, Nandina Heavenly bamboo, Rosa Wild rose (stem), Sambucus Elderberry, Viola violets, some unknown spp of grass and an unknown green herb with oval leaves.

I have enjoyed thinking about immortal trees, willows, oaks, mulberries and others that are pushed over with strong winds, falling far enough over to touch the ground, and root from there, or send up new suckers from the base of the tree. The new shoots can go on to become another full-sized tree (and then repeat the process),  regrowing continuously from the same tree. As long as the roots survive with enough stored starch to produce new shoots, these trees could go on and on. I wonder if there are any really old trees in these Woods.

The Pleurotus oyster mushrooms I noticed and enjoyed on the willows in mid November are gone now, chewed into lace like remnants that mark their former location. Happily, other oysters continue to put up fresh new mushrooms - these from large fallen pecan trees. Daughter Sarah gathered a basket and fried them up fresh with butter. 

And thinking about trees as metronomes for earthquakes or tremors. On Dec 15 at 11:59 CST I was sitting on a long, tilted bur oak stump, fifteen feet from the root ball to the end, when I felt a small shake in my seat. I wondered if the tree could be serving as an amplifier of subtle shaking of the ground from a small local earthquake tremor. At that instant there was also a roaring heavy truck just accelerating up Chautauqua and I thought maybe it was just a little ground shaking from the truck 50 feet away. But then there was a second small shake with no truck. Today I checked a record of local seismic activity and found that there had been small tremors that day in the same Cleveland county. Left me thinking about new forces I had not considered, acting on the many leaning trees in the Woods. Foresters have occasionally remarked on large leaning trees that suddenly crash for no apparent reason, no wind, no rain. I wonder if small tremors (< 1-2 on Richter scale) could explain many of these.

Always something new in the Woods. I am going there now to see what I find.

The Golden Woods is gone

 This early December afternoon I went to the Woods to see the rapid changes. Over the last fortnight there has been a near simultaneous fall of all the canopy leaves elm, pecan, walnut, mulberry, Kentucky coffee tree, southern hackberry, post oak, cottonwood, green ash, red bud and others. With the newly bare canopy, it is interesting to see what green is left. The chittamwood trees holds their leaves late. The biggest bur oaks still have yellow and green leaves. A few exotic invasive species stand out. Bradford pear leaves are golden or red and the few individual young trees are like beacons in the late last light of day. Numerous young invasive Chinese pistache still hold their compound leaves, glowing burnt orange. Two or three Euonymus spindle trees are still fully green as are the climbing green Euonymus vines. Both are producing their 'bursting heart' fruit capsules with red seeds. There are many invasive green privet shrubs widely distributed, although most of these were top-killed in February and have only produced new green leaves in the lower 2-3 feet. The exotic Elaeagnus autumn olive shrubs have fared better. There are a half dozen hollies with evergreen leaves, and of course the native juniper evergreens. But the overall impression is now of a bare canopy, and a bare Woods. It is the time when the shape of the individual trees is most visible. In the summer, with the filled canopy, individual stems are lost in the riot of green. At sunset I paused a while and enjoyed looking up the stems of two or three old persimmons with their pebbly bark to the orange clouds overhead. The curving stem framed the glowing clouds above.