News from the preserves, parks and backyards of Princeton, NJ. The website aims to acquaint Princetonians with our shared natural heritage and the benefits of restoring native diversity and beauty to the many preserved lands in and around Princeton.
Fall colors beckon at Herrontown Woods. This Sunday, Oct. 30 at 1pm, I will lead a nature walk entitled "The Color-Coded Forest." This is the time of year when trees slip out of their green anonymity and reveal their identity through color and texture. Meet at the Herrontown Woods parking lot at 600 Snowden Lane, across Snowden from the Smoyer Park entrance. Sturdy shoes are a good idea. Maps at this link.
Even this late in the fall, some shrubs and trees announce their identities by the colors of their leaves. They can appear as if a child carefully colored in a number-coded landscape-- oaks and blackhaw Viburnums bronze, the Asian photinia a golden yellow that turned to dark brown in the hard frost. Here is a photo of Pettoranello Gardens, with native oaks bronze above a shrub layer of still-green exotic honeysuckles.
The logic here is that the honeysuckles evolved in a milder climate on another continent, whereas plants native to America adapted to longer winters by dropping their leaves earlier.
Just upstream of Mountain Lakes, the extent of exotic invasive shrubs is especially revealed this time of year, as the vistas open up. The pink of winged Euonymus has just fallen, but the invasion of honeysuckle shrubs can easily be tracked by their persistent green.
Flowers, like fall colors, create a color-coded landscape that can provide a snapshot of trends in plant populations. Blooms have seemed especially abundant this spring, with native dogwoods and Rhododendrons laden with flowers, and now the elderberries, Korean dogwoods and catalpas showing profusion. Catalpas have a knack for sprouting along edges, then spreading their branches of elephant ear leaves (front right in photo), tubular flowers and long seed pods up and over everything else. The branches take interesting, gnarly shapes. When catalpas are in flower, it's easy to notice how they have gained dominance in that prime front-row seating along the edge of this clearing, on waste ground near the Princeton Shopping Center. The opening itself is being taken over by Chinese bushclover, which also tends towards exclusionary dominance.
For all those who happen to be fancy free and wanting to get out tomorrow, I'll be leading a nature walk through the color-coded forest at Herrontown Woods in the morning. Meet at 10am at the preserve's parking lot, which is at the end of the deadend road opposite the Snowden Lane entrance to Smoyer Park. Included in the walk will be a visit to the grounds of the Veblen Farmstead, and a discussion of recent progress towards preserving and restoring the long-boarded up buildings there.
