The Color-Coded Forest, 2010 Edition

This past Saturday, on a classic fall day, I led a walk through Community Park North and Mountain Lakes. This is the time of year when trees and shrubs emerge from their green camouflage to announce their identity in bright colors. Scanning a hillside, one can quickly inventory the woody constituencies it serves. I keep thinking the leaves should have numbers on them--1 for yellow, 2 for orange, 3 for persistent green, etc.

The first photo shows spicebush in yellow, competing with the persistent green of honeysuckle shrubs.

Orange this time of year at Mountain Lakes typically means Asian photinia. It was easier to appreciate their beautiful fall color before it became apparent they were taking over large areas of the park.

This closeup shows the Asian Photinia's obovate leaf (wider towards the tip).

Viburnum dilitatum, which unfortunately is also an invasive, has its own color scheme.

Catalpa, with its big oval leaves, pops up in the forest as it does in people's backyards.

The native hazelnut (note catkins on the left that emerge this time of year) numbers only three or four individuals at Mountain Lakes. We're trying to get more of them growing.

Towards the end of the walk, we stopped by the eponymous lakes, where repair of the dams is coming along nicely.

Several days later, I stopped by to find tree stumps dropped in a heap in the upper lake. These, saved from a small patch of woods that had to be cleared for the contractor's staging area, will be secured to the lake bottom as fish habitat.

Witherspoon Trail Reopens, Chestnuts Survive First Year

The winter storm that downed hundreds of trees in Community Park North and Mountain Lakes obliterated portions of the trail heading up to Witherspoon Woods. The Friends of Princeton Open Space trails committee soon established new trails to sidestep nature's logging operation, but many regular hikers were asking when the old trail would reopen.

Clark Lennon, who has done so much to improve trails at Mountain Lakes and elsewhere, finally took chainsaw in hand and spent three days cutting through the horizontal forest. "Fifty one trees!", he reported.

Just to the left of this scene, in openings left by the storm, grow three native American Chestnuts, planted by Bill Sachs this past spring, then watered by Bill throughout the dry summer.

These are two of the labors of love that enrich life in Princeton.

Norway Maples Say "Here I am."

 Now is a good time to spot all the Norway maples springing up along your fenceline. They sprout from windblown seeds and grow well in the shade, advertising their location this time of year by turning bright yellow when most other trees are bare. This photo, taken along the Guyot pathway near Valley Road, shows a Norway maple pushing up into the canopy of a native pin oak. This is the urban version of forest succession, and is not necessarily a good thing. Norway maples are largely inedible to wildlife, and discourage other plants with their dense shade and growth inhibitors released through their roots. It's a good idea to remove them from your fencelines before they get too big to cut by hand.

 Now's also a good time to see spring flowers (!) along Walnut Street,

and ginkgo leaves ornamenting the sidewalk along Hamilton. None of these are native species, but only the Norway maple is invasive.

Invasive Shrub Removal along Guyot Pathway This Thursday

A neighbor of the much-used Guyot pathway (behind Conte's, and bordering the back of the Valley Road soccer field) has organized a workday for tomorrow, Thursday, Nov. 18, at 1pm to remove some invasive shrubs along the edge of the trail. We'll focus on liberating some of the natives from exotic competition. If you'd like to help, bring work gloves and meet us along the trail.

The Care and Feeding of THE CLAW

 While most Princetonians are away from their homes, a beast with a gaping claw roams the borough in search of food. Hungry after a long summer's foraging for scattered bits of yardwaste, it feeds voraciously this time of year on leaves, and would likely come right into our backyards in search of sustenance,

if not for the timely intervention of private landscapers who dutifully blow all the leaves into the street.

True, blocking sidewalks and roadways with nature's fertilizer may seem counterintuitive to the untrained eye, but THE CLAW must be fed.

 THE CLAW has been observed forming symbiotic relationships with a dumptruck, which hauls the leaves off to a stronghold where even larger machines can feast upon them.

 A vulturous creature often follows behind, eating whatever scraps remain.

Less likely to survive evolution's rigors is another highly mechanized caravan moving laboriously through a neighborhood nearby. Lacking a claw, this beast probes the asphalt with a proboscis, inhaling all that its attentive servants place before it. Motorists keep a respectful distance, well aware that the beasts must be allowed to feed undisturbed, lest they turn on their supposed masters.

Creating "Rooms" in Your Yard For Leaves

One of the perennials that keeps growing in my mind is puzzlement over why people dump leaves on the street each fall. All that good fertilizer and organic matter piled on the asphalt, as incongruous as a beached whale! One contributing factor I've hit upon is that most yards lack "rooms." If the yard can be considered an outdoor extension of the indoor living space, it makes sense to divide it up like we divide up our indoor space--into compartments each with a different purpose.

The typical yard has shrubs pushed against the house and fenceline, defining only one sprawling "room" that extends uninterrupted to the curb, all of which is then required to be ornamental.

If, instead, we use shrubs or wooden walls to define and obscure small utility areas in our yards, it becomes very easy to store leaves while they decompose and slowly return to the soil from which they came. Nature's miraculous trash-free economy is then allowed to function, and we're spared a big mess in the streets and the considerable municipal cost of hauling, grinding and mechanically turning leaves at a distant composting center.

The photo shows one such configuration in a friend's backyard. Another version, using shrubs to define the space, is shown two posts prior to this one, below.

Mountain Lakes Dam Restoration Update

 Work is proceeding apace on restoring the two historic dams at Mountain Lakes. The dams were originally built around 1900 as part of an ice harvesting operation that supplied Princeton with ice for several decades before refrigerators became available. An anonymous donor provided the nearly $3 million needed to fund the restoration and lake dredgings. In the photo, workers are rebuilding the stone facing of the upper dam.

Meanwhile, on the upstream side of the dam, new concrete is being added to reinforce the structure. The dirt access road on the right will be removed after restoration is complete. When the lake is allowed to fill up again, possibly as early as this December, the water will regain its original depth of eight feet. Prior to dredging, the lake was barely one foot deep, with seven feet of sediment under that.

Seen from the upper dam, the drained lower lake is an expanse of mud, with any remaining fish and turtles huddled in a small area where water remains. Snapping turtles with 2 foot wide shells (they get bigger with retelling) were frequently sighted in the lower lake, and one of them may still be lurking in the remaining water. Fish in the two lakes were removed prior to draining in July, and mostly relocated to Lake Carnegie.

Archeologists recently used metal detectors to find some century-old tools buried in mud in the lower lake, left over from the ice cutting era.

The Annual Leaf Quandary

This time of year, Princeton, like all towns, exhibits two philosophies of yard maintenance that are diametrically opposed. One governing philosophy sees fallen leaves as a valuable resource to be composted or used as mulch and slow-release fertilizer. The other philosophy views leaves as useless and annoying litter that must be banished from the yard.

A 10/15 New Yorker magazine article entitled "Blowback: The Suburban Leaf War" describes the point of view that lawns "enhance your property by extending your living space and by advertising your ability to bring nature to heel." A clean yard and close trimming of shrubs exemplifies this view.

Scenes such as this, then, replicated all over town, can be seen as a victory for a community shrugging off nature's assaults on imposed order.

Dumping leaves in the street, though, has many negative impacts, including making the streets messy and more dangerous. Private purification becomes public hazard.

There is a way that residents could have clean lawns AND clean streets, simply by changing the location of a few shrubs. Typical landscaping puts shrubs up against the house and along the fenceline.

But these two photos show an easy way to accommodate a pile of leaves in the yard by planting shrubs around an area designated for the leaf pile. The shrubs serve both as a visual screen and as a way to contain the leaves.

Here's the view from the street. Privet isn't my favorite shrub. Something like Itea virginica or Ilex glabra would work as a native substitute, but the main idea is to reconfigure how shrubs of any kind are planted in the yard, so as to create refuges for leaf piles that will quickly be flattened down by the weight of snow and benefit shrubs and trees through the steady process of decomposition.

Not all leaves need be handled the same way. Here, pine needles and honey locust leaves are so small they can be simply mowed over or raked underneath shrubs to serve as a mulch. Leaves of silver or red maple also tend to "melt" back into the lawn, decomposing quickly. I believe the county extension agents these days recommend simply mowing over leaves and letting them filter back into the turf.

Many leaf blowers come with a bag and a reverse setting that allows them to vacuum up leaves and grind them, making an excellent mulch for around shrubs.

Wednesday Workdays at Mountain Lakes

Note, Dec. 7: These workdays are on hold, given the cold weather and holiday season.

If you have a flexible schedule, consider helping out on Wednesday's at 3pm at Mountain Lakes, where some steady effort is shifting a valley from exotic to native species. I call the valley "Frog Hollow", because of the frequent encounters with amphibians that thrive in this varied landscape of pond, brook, swamp, woodland and unmowed field.

These photos were taken in late summer, when we tagged the many kinds of wildflowers and sedges planted there over the past several years. The native plants survived the fierce summer drought without watering--further proof that low, sunny fields are optimal for wild gardening. Hopefully, the Monarch butterflies these swamp milkweeds fed are well on their way to Mexico for the winter.

Activity this time of year is focused on removing invasive shrubs. The area we're working on borders the upper Mountain Lake, just past and down the hill from Mountain Lakes House, at 57 Mountain Ave.

Stony Brook Pedestrian Bridge Dedicated

From earlier in the month:

Auspicious weather accompanied a gathering on October 3rd to dedicate the new pedestrian bridge over the StonyBrook behind Hun School.

Funded mostly through a federal grant, the bridge is a vital link in a circum-Princeton trail originally envisioned by a small group of trail advocates in town, including Helmut Schwab and Ted Thomas, long time trustees with Friends of Princeton Open Space.

The bridge would not have been built if not for the persistence of Helmut Schwab. At the dedication, Helmut gave an account of how the bridge came into being. It was first imagined by local architect Ron Berlin, one of four people who explored the perimeters of town in search of routes for the circum-Princeton trail. Though the township successfully applied for a $500,000 federal grant, the project remained in limbo for many years for lack of a plausible way to make the bridge handicapped accessible--a stipulation of the grant. Helmut was finally able to solve the puzzle, gaining help and cooperation from FOPOS, DR Greenway, the Hun School, Princeton Township, Jazna Polana, and the owner of a key parcel of land that allowed room for the switchback trail needed for handicapped accessibility. In his speech, Helmut urged everyone to make a difference in the small part of the world each of us navigates.

I don't know everyone here, but can tell you that Helmut Schwab is on the left, followed by former township mayor Phyllis Marchand and Bill Rawlyk of D.R.Greenway. Chief township engineer Bob Kiser is in the far back. On the right are members of Bob's engineering staff, Anthony Soriano--writer of the grant application--and Deanna Stockton, who attended to the myriad details of the construction project.

Friends of Princeton Open Space provided a bench to be placed next to the bridge, honoring Helmut's work.

The bridge can be accessed from a small parking lot just down from the Jasna Polana golf course, or from a beautiful trail that follows the Stony Brook down from Greenway Meadows Park.

Leaves and Relativity

Before the leaves leave the trees, a bit of gratitude.


Long Ago

Long ago,

When all was elemental,

God said to the beginnings of life,

“Take water and air,

And make sugar with the sun.

That should be good for a nice long run.”

Without Leaves

Without leaves,

There’d be no us, no we,

No I or me.

There’d be no irony,

No victory, no Theory of Relativity.

Plants of Mt. Tammany

 When I was a kid, I had the good luck to spend some quality time on top of mountains. They all had telescopes on them, which was my dad's work, but I was more drawn to the vistas, the rocks, the smell of dry earth. On one fantastical evening, I walked to the edge of a mountain in Chile to find an infinite expanse of fog stretching out below like a frozen ocean illuminated by moonlight. Yes, mountain tops are a fine place to be.

I've long wanted my kids to know the pleasure of climbing a mountain. What is life after all, but a long and challenging hike towards a view of the infinite? So news of a substantial mountain only an hour and a half away, combined with the promise of fall colors, prompted me to pull my family out of its weekend routine for an autumn jaunt.

Recognizing the plants that make the mountain home adds tremendously to the meaning of a walk up a mountainside.

First plants to catch my eye were the witch hazels, blooming incongruously in late October, their flowers mixing with the yellow of the leaves.

The chestnut oaks, very common in this woodland of thin moutainside soils, are easy to identify just by the bark, which looks like gray blocks stacked one upon another.

The leaf of a chestnut oak is somewhat reminiscent of the chestnut leaf, but broader and with rounded lobes.

As the trail got steeper, I was beginning to wonder how all those very heavy rocks had magically arranged themselves conveniently in stepwise patterns, when we encountered a volunteer crew fixing a section of trail. With techniques harkening back to a pre-machine era, they had strung a heavy cable between trees and were in the process of pulling a substantial rock (left in photo) across the mountain slope and into position on the trail.

A pack animal, too, hinted at an era long past. It's good to see that terriers are assuming the role, now that mules are hard to come by.

The first panorama was downstream along the Delaware River. The rock bluff to the left was covered with columbines, which would be quite a show in the spring.

The summit appeared sooner than expected. Walk down the slope a ways to get a clearer view up and downstream. From here, basking in the sun, we watched a pair of ravens soar and play high over the gorge. Two more joined in, their game seeming to be to see how close they could get to each other without colliding. Vultures, of less mind than ravens, soared peacefully in the distance, showing little interest in games.

Vistas like this are made to be drunk in, to fill the mind with immensity and color until the next chance comes along.

Shifting focus to the close at hand, it was time to see what kinds of plants can eke out a living in this spectacular but thin-soiled setting. There was a hawthorn or two,

winged sumac (note the "wings" along the central leaf axil),

and an alder of some sort, though I'm accustomed to finding alder in a floodplain.

Underfoot was a squiggly grass that's probably poverty oat grass (Danthonia).

The way down on the blue trail starts by going slightly up, along the spine of the mountain. Lichens grow on rocks and tree trunks, making them seem part of a whole. Growing amidst the rocks is a native, fine-leaved evergreen grass that may have been the main constituent of early American lawns.

One of the real delights encountered on the broad mountain top is lowbush blueberry, which turns radiant red in fall.

This open woodland of chestnut oaks with a thick understory of blueberries is reminiscent of savannas that once were common in the east. It's easy to imagine black bears gorging themselves on the berries in August. I've seen similar oak/blueberry pairings in the NJ pinelands under a mix of oak species, and in the piedmont of North Carolina under post oaks. All these locations had in common a very poor soil.

Sometimes the trees imitate the meandering trails.

I was glad to encounter an old and rarely seen friend, the striped maple (Acer pennsylvanicum), more shrub than tree, with white and green stripes on its trunk.

Mountain laurel mixes with the blueberries in the understory, and becomes more numerous as the blue trail begins to descend.

Wintergreen, which my daughter said smells like toothpaste, grows under the mountain laurels.

The blue trail merges with the Appalachian Trail at the base of the mountain, where a stream cascades down through a lush valley of Rhododendrons, ferns, native wild hydrangeas and purple-flowering raspberry.



A note about the trails. The trailhead for the "Red Dot" trail is accessed from I-80 as it heads into the Delaware Water Gap. There are two parking lots several hundred feet apart, the second of which has very basic facilities. Most people take the "Red Dot" trail up and down, but the "Blue" trail, which is a bit longer but gentler in slope, is a great way to hike down the mountain. It's easier on the knees, escapes the traffic noise rising from the Gap, and passes through the savanna woodland at the top and a gorgeous valley of waterfalls down near the bottom.