Another Perilous Embrace--Wisteria and Horse Chestnut

It's almost like someone chose to plant horse chestnuts in front of Princeton's Monument Hall knowing that their blooms would coincide with Memorial Day ceremonies. Here, while taps is being played, one of the first African American marines, Wallace C. Holland, Jr, salutes, and fellow veteran and guest speaker Elana Duffy (under the bell of the horn) looks on.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in Princeton, in front of a home where Thomas Jefferson reportedly stayed when Princeton was briefly the nation's capital, another horse chestnut has less in the way of freedom to celebrate. The blue flowers are of a wisteria vine that's been steadily consolidating its claim to the tree's infrastructure.

From a distance, the scene looks like this, with the wisteria each year adding weight while reducing the tree's access to solar energy to maintain its strength. The effect is pretty, but we'll see how long the tree can take it.

Unlike the American colonies, the tree has no way to free itself of oppression.

Some Unusual Trees

 Here are some encounters with unusual trees in Princeton. 

In the Institute Woods, we saw a couple beech trees some distance from a trail and took a closer look. Not quite the California redwood that people could once drive a car through, but similar in concept. 

Another beech nearby was harder to pose with.

The view up the inside of the trunk.

Bark with this shaved appearance, seen recently in a deep forest in northeastern Princeton, is called "ash blonding," said to happen when woodpeckers go after the emerald ash borers inside the ash tree. Note the tell-tale "D"-shaped holes where the borers exit. 

More uplifting was this tall spruce, which during the holidays sports a shining star, which then gets replaced on the owner's March 17 birthday 

by an Irish clover. 

Here's an odd sighting. It looks like an ordinary stump, but the tree was clearly cut down and removed. The forest is quite old, so the logging must have been long ago. My guess is that it's the stump of a chestnut tree harvested a century ago. One of the many wonderful traits of the native chestnut, lost to an introduced disease a century ago, was its resistance to decay. Working briefly for a forester in Massachusetts in the 1970s, I saw whole logs of fallen chestnuts still intact despite the passage of many decades. I'm ready to be wrong on this ID, but that's what I'm going with for now.

A month ago, I stopped by the TRI property to check up on a couple native butternuts planted there by Bill Sachs. The two trees are flourishing except for some vines that I really need to get back there and cut. They were planted close to where Bill and I harvested about fifty nuts, perhaps the last native butternut harvest in town before the bounteous tree was blown down in a storm. Thanks to Bill, the harvest turned into many saplings that we've planted in many locations in town, including Harrison Street Park, Herrontown Woods, Mountain Lakes, Stone Hill Church, and TRI. The tree has a gangly growth form, but the nuts are said to be delicious. The tree needs our help because of an introduced disease that has laid it low. This one's look really healthy thus far.

Some other stories about unusual trees:

How lightning that struck one tree at Morven actually killed the adjacent tree instead.

An extraordinary giant white pine that may still grow near 206.

Nature Trail: From the All Saints Tract to Herrontown Woods

One of the entryways into the long corridor of preserved land called Princeton Ridge East, including Herrontown Woods, begins on a bikeway that heads up past Princeton Charter School on Bunn Drive. You can enjoy this asphalt bikeway's smoothness, and note that the trees are far enough away that their roots haven't made ridges in the pavement.

For anyone who's curious, a little ways up, across from the water tower, just in from the road, a native chestnut tree is hanging on in deep shade. It was discovered by arborist Bob Wells while he was inventorying Princeton's street trees, and is the only wild native chestnut that we know to exist in town.

Up the hill are the new Copperwood apartments. Though some grand old beech and oak trees were sacrificed to build it, the developer heeded strong resistance from local environmental groups and, rather than spread the allowed units out across the property, he clustered the apartments so that some 20 acres of ridge forest could be preserved.

Look down and to the right from the Copperwood entrance and you'll see a long straight trail extending into the woods. That's the pathway leading through land preserved by the municipality, county and environmental groups, with particularly significant effort put forth by DR Greenway and the Friends of Princeton Open Space.

Just in on the left as you walk down the trail is a large berm that holds back stormwater from Princeton Community Village and Copperwood. There's a slow drama underway on the berm. Woody plants aren't allowed to grow there, so the berm's floristic destiny might be native wildflowers like these late-flowering thoroughworts,

but Chinese bushclover is starting to get a foothold. It was introduced into the U.S. for use in erosion control, and promoted as offering abundant seed for wildlife. But the seeds proved undigestible, and the species has proved extremely invasive, outcompeting native wildflowers and creating inedible monocultures. With a few hours' work, the Chinese bushclover could probably be eliminated from this berm, but management doesn't tend to be proactive, which means the species is likely to increase in number until it's too intimidating to deal with. Where's that Friends of the Berm group when we need them?

Unless you're going to the imagined Friends of the Berm workday to remove Chinese bushclover, continue down the straight and narrow until you encounter one of two trail signs on the left.

These are DR Greenway signs, as part of their followup to preserving the All Saints tract. Down the hill from the preserved property is the All Saints Church itself, which is also home to the Princeton Learning Cooperative, for teens who seek an alternative to a traditional middle or high school education. Our Friends of Herrontown Woods group has partnered with them on nature walks.

Sometimes, it takes a village to maintain even a small sign like this. A resident of Copperwood told our Friends of Herrontown Woods group that he and his wife couldn't find the signs leading to Herrontown Woods. We went looking for the map, found it had disappeared, then told DR Greenway staff, who replaced it. Such is the fabric of connection that keeps Princeton's open space navigable.

Earlier in the fall, I led a walk through the All Saints tract for local digital technology educator John LeMasney and some of his friends. Along with all the beautiful moss-covered boulders of the ridge, we encountered a white oak tree that cleaved but did not break in one of the windstorms of recent years.

Here, Peter Abrams, designer of "B Homes" made of used materials like pallets, and John seek out the right angle for photographing this angled tree.

Where All Saints transitions into Herrontown Woods, we took a look at an umbrella magnolia tree, which may be the only example of this species along the Princeton ridge. The Institute Woods hosts a larger population.

These trails can also be accessed from the Herrontown Woods parking lot, down the street across from the entry to Smoyer Park (where another friend of John's showed off a manual chain saw, which could be useful for invasive shrub removal), and from Journey's End Lane, off of Terhune Road.

The Wet Meadows Project Turns 25

It was in southern Michigan that I first fell in love with prairie and savanna habitats, and so a favorite place to visit, when in Ann Arbor for a gig, is the Children's Wet Meadow Project in Buhr Park. There was a time when tall grass prairies extended into southern Michigan, with stately bur oaks sometimes rising above to create savannas. The persistent grass stems and oak leaves would invite what I call "mildfires" to sweep through, recycling nutrients and creating a clean slate for the next year's growth. And so some of these wet meadows are burned annually by professionals, while neighborhood families gather some distance back to enjoy this controlled, elegant horticultural show that speaks to a wild past. Kids then scatter wildflower seeds in the ashes.

The story of the wet meadows, now in their 25th year, grows out of the transformative relationship between one woman, Jeannine Palms, and the park that serendipitously stretched beyond her backyard.

I've written about it in other posts, about how her love of people, plants, and the local Mallett's Creek spurred a community initiative to turn turfgrass into native grassland. Since Jeannine ran a daycare for many years, this has very much been a kid-powered project, as can be seen during workdays and in the signs that explain how the meadows filter runoff headed for the creek.

A favorite prairie grass is little bluestem. It's always seemed like fall colors of prairie grasses are more vivid in the midwest. Perhaps a colder climate plays a role? The most brilliant example is Indian grass, whose bright orange and yellow mimic the flames that sometimes consume it.

Milkweed, anyone? Common milkweed spreads underground. A mildfire clears away the dead stems without harming the roots.

Dead stems can be as beautiful as the flowers. New England aster, wild bergamot, and the red leaves of blackberry mix with Indian grass.

After planting many wet meadows, the Wet Meadow Project began creating a food forest, to the right in this photo, with trees bearing apples, cherries and pawpaws, a grape arbor, raspberries, and many other edibles. 

Though a native meadow can be low-maintenance, it still requires ongoing vigilance to pull invasive species before they get established. A food forest, too, is only as good as the care it receives.

And sometimes that care involves using targeted treatment of weeds with herbicide. The food forest may well be organic, but a habitat is different from an organic farm. You can't till or mulch a prairie to control invasive plants. It's more like a body that may sometimes require medicine. In this case, low toxicity herbicide was applied to woody plants that, in a prairie, are considered weeds.

It looks like they made an exception for one very special tree--a native chestnut, which was planted in one of the meadows.

The local wildlife has a casual presence. What appeared to be a large green ant was crossing the asphalt path that winds through the park. It turns out to be variously named an oil beetle or blister beetle, Meloe campanicollis, though I must not have disturbed it enough to prompt it to secrete the oil that could blister my skin.

A hawk (red-tailed?) seemed unperturbed as we walked by.

Congratulations to Jeannine and all the other volunteers who have brought prairies back to life in Buhr Park.

The Flora and Tiny Fauna of Camp Sacajawea

When I was a kid, my family would drive to northern Wisconsin to help set up and take down the tents and pier at a girl scout camp. Last month, I went along with my daughter's troop to one of New Jersey's versions, down in the pinelands.

What I found, in stark contrast to the Princeton area, was a nearly all-native forest, with fields of highbush and lowbush blueberries beneath an open canopy of oaks and other hardwoods.

Mountain laurels that had the benefit of sunlight from an opening in the canopy were loaded with spent flowers, suggesting quite a show earlier in the year.

 The resident ranger was glad to know about a native chestnut tree I found there. On the left are new stems sprouting from the roots after an older stem, right, was killed by the blight. Since the blight, introduced accidentally to America around 1900, kills only the above ground portion of the tree, new shoots keep emerging, to grow until the blight again sets in.

 One reason the canopy was open enough to support a healthy understory was the attrition of some of the oaks. Though the numerous white oaks were not affected, quite a few red oaks and black oaks were succumbing. Here, the base of one of the dead trees is ringed by the fruiting bodies of a fungus, which may have contributed to the tree's decline, or merely moved in when the tree was already weakened by some other factor.

A look up into the canopy of the dying trees revealed many swollen branches. Some internet research suggests the trees were succumbing to a severe infestation of gouty oak gall, perpetrated by a tiny, non-stinging wasp. The adult wasp lays eggs in new stems in the spring. Chemicals emitted by the wasps fool with the tree's growth chemistry, causing the twigs to swell into convenient houses for the wasp larvae to live in and feed on. This one we decided looked like a snowman, or an ant.

Speaking of ants, the kids and parents were very surprised to learn that there was a thriving ant lion community beneath their feet. The ant lions are little insects that make small cone-shaped craters in the sandy soil along the edges of roads and paths. When an ant accidentally stumbles into one of the craters, it slides down to the bottom, where it is grabbed by the mandibles of an ant lion hiding in the sandy wall.

Salvaging A Hidden Garden in Harrison Street Park

To salvage something of value, we don't need to seek out ships at the bottom of the ocean. Just go to the neighborhood park, where good intentions have left a legacy of blue flowers that, without intervention, would be lost in a sea of weeds.

The wood phlox (Phlox divaricata), a native pollinated by sphinx moths, looks in this photo to be doing great. No threat to be seen.

There's a healthy spread of violets as well.

There's even a native chestnut seedling planted in a deer-proof container, meaning the site is taking part in an effort to bring back one of the great north American tree species.

But step back and you start to see that these thoughtful plantings are beginning to be buffeted by waves of invasives. That white flower is garlic mustard. It's edible and makes a decent pesto if the leaves are picked when young, but in the meantime it is overgrowing the phlox and waging underground chemical warfare against other species.

Here we're looking down on the dense seedlings of mostly garlic mustard that will be next year's dominating wave.

Mugwort, even more of a threat, is advancing from the north.

Burdock (large leaves at top of photo) and curly dock (rosette of smaller leaves close to wall) also shade out the phlox. One could say live and let live, except the longterm consequence, given the Phlox's inability to compete with the invaders, is live and let die.

The good news is that the phlox is showing enough vitality that, with just a little timely intervention, it could continue to flourish in this hidden public garden right next to busy Harrison Street. Since I've never seen wood phlox growing wild in Princeton, this planted garden can show what may have grown in Princeton before development, invasive species, and the deer's intense browsing pressure transformed the landscape.

We can look most anywhere and see a sea of weeds. Here's a chance to sustain a distinctive sea of blue.

On 11.11.11, Some Princeton Trees

In honor of 11.11.11--a uniquely unique, highly vertical day--some Princeton trees of note, in no particular order:

The brilliant red maples at Princeton Shopping Center in a photo taken today, with Fothergilla shrubs adding orange in the foreground;

A clock tower looking very one-ish today next to the trees;

A photo my daughter took beneath a red oak in the backyard;

A descendant of the famous Mercer Oak at the Princeton Battlefield;

A 15/16th native chestnut planted at Princeton Battlefield in front of the Clark House;

A hican behind Clark House, showing the change in bark where a pecan/hickory hybrid was grafted to a hickory base.

Another red maple, planted by a couple in honor of their newborn son at Potts Park in the borough, positioned to shade the play equipment in future years;

And in memorium, a photo sent to me by Eric Tazelaar, of the old, old white oak near the driveway to Mountain Lakes House, before it was blown down this year during Hurricane Irene (see Oct. 28 post).