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.

Poetry Trail Dedication

Who knows what you'll find sprouting from a London Plane tree? In an allee of these trees, just up the hill from the soccer fields at Greenway Meadows Park, some 30 poems have sprouted from the ground to draw the attention of passersby.

On October 17, a perfect Indian Summer day greeted attendees at the dedication for the Scott and Hella McVay Poetry Trail.

On hand was no less than Paul Winter, of Paul Winter Consort fame, to frame in melody the ceremony and assorted readings by poets whose works have magically drifted off the pages of books and into the full light of the Princeton landscape. Afterwards, maestro Winter explained to me how music, alternating with poems, allows the audience more time to digest the imagery of the poems, and shift activity from one side of the brain to the other.

The poetry readings and music mixed with the soft breeze and the distant chatter of the soccer games to make a pleasing and memorable impression on all present. The park can be reached by heading out Rosedale Road and turning left into the parking lot just before the Stonybrook bridge.

Washington Road Stream Restoration

Members of the Princeton Environmental Commission (that would be me) and the Planning Commission got a chance to tour the sight of an upcoming stream restoration in the valley between Washington Road and the new Princeton University chemistry building. In the shade of giant blackgums, oaks and beech trees, most of which will be saved, Randy, a specialist in stream restoration at Rutgers, explained the concept and the detail drawings.

The stream, which drains much of the campus, is very "flashy", meaning that the buildings, roads and well-trodden ground shed water quickly in a storm. The resulting powerful surges of runoff have been busy eroding the streambanks near Washington Road. A healthy stream tames and dissipates the power of storm runoff by overflowing its banks and spreading out into the floodplain. But an eroded stream eventually becomes too deep to overflow, meaning that all the runoff goes surging down the stream channel, dissipating its energy by causing even more erosion.

This is an upstream shot of a "headcut", which describes the process by which a stream burdened with unnatural doses of stormwater runoff cuts deeper and deeper into the ground. The headcut is the sudden dropoff--a transition to a new depth that starts at a downstream point and actually migrates up the stream channel until the whole length of the stream has become more deeply incised. As a stream cuts more deeply, it drains the surrounding groundwater, drying out the valley and stressing the plants. This stream is an example of how the town's "hardscape" of buildings and roads has been slowly transforming the local stream corridors.

The goal of the restoration is to prevent headcuts like this, re-establish a natural meander and a floodplain into which the stream can spread out and dissipate the energy from storm surges. Overall, the result should be a stable and naturalistic stream.

Though exotic plants in the stream corridor will be replaced with native species after the streambed is recontoured, there are exotic shrubs and trees on the upland slopes that need to be removed. I'm hoping to work with university staff to organize removal of these, and also rescue native wildflowers like horsebalm (photo) that would otherwise be bulldozed as part of the stream work.

Native Bluestem at the Princeton Battlefield

In an expanse of exotic turf grass at the battlefield, a few clumps of native bluestems pop up between mowings to show what used to be there in centuries past. Little bluestem, big bluestem, broomsedge, Indian grass, purple top and switchgrass are all tallgrass prairie species that can be found growing in Princeton in meadows and along right of ways where annual mowing keeps tree species from moving in.

I periodically contact the battlefield caretakers with the idea of restoring the landscape there to a more historically authentic condition. They have it in their longrange plan. The mowed grass is great for flying kites and throwing frisbees, but there's far more mowed expanse than I've ever seen actually being used.

One section--in the distance in the first photo--is mowed annually, allowing the bluestems and other prairie species to grow to maturity.

Baccharis in Mercer County

 What's that bright, beautiful white bush blooming with the goldenrods, up the road from the Mercer County fire training facility behind Quaker Bridge Mall? Why, it's Baccharis halimifolia, the groundsel tree, up from the coast.

Baccharis is native to the coast, and gloriously beautiful, but when I lived in North Carolina, it had traveled up the highway corridors from its native coastal territory and had started invading the prairie openings of the piedmont in a startlingly aggressive manner.

The same piedmont extends up the coast to Princeton, so I'm a little worried that Baccharis could behave similarly here. But for now, it seems minor compared to relatively new invaders like Callery pear (on the left in this photo).

If you happen to take the train to New York over the next couple weeks, keep an eye out for Baccharis shrubs covered with white flowers, and send me an email if you see any. It would be interesting to know if it's migrating inland along the rail line.

The species name, "halimifolia", could refer to its leaf shape being similar to witch hazel's (genus Hamamelis), but this is speculation. In searching for confirmation, I found a website that describes Baccharis's invasive tendencies in Europe and Australia, as well as southeastern grazing land. The plant is toxic to animals, so its invasion of a pasture or grassland and resulting displacement of other species can render the landscape inedible over time. There are several kinds of insects that feed on it along the Atlantic coast. By migrating to the piedmont, it may have escaped the insects that normally would keep its numbers in ecological balance.

Squirrel Art

The squirrels ate all our tomatoes this summer. And I mean all. After the first couple weeks of bearing, we didn't get a one. Maybe the drought made the tomatoes seem more appealing.

Now the neighborhood squirrels have decided they can do a better job of carving a pumpkin than the humans, who of course no longer have time to carve pumpkins anyway. This looks to me like the face of a very scary rabbit.

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.

YouTube Video About Friends of Princeton Open Space!

Today, PrincetonNatureNotes goes multi-media, with its first video. Back in June, students taking a class on sustainability and the media came to Mountain Lakes to interview me about my work there, and to shoot some footage of the landscape and wildlife. The result was a five minute video about the value of open space, posted on their website and on YouTube.

The summer course is run by the Student Environmental Communications Network (SECN), in the Princeton University Office of Sustainability. More student videos can be found on the SECN website. Thanks to the students and teacher David Benin for all their informative portraits of sustainability in the community.

PDS Freshmen Clear Invasives at Community Park North

Early on the morning of September 17, some 100 freshmen and six teachers walked through the preserved woodlands that stretch from Princeton Day School to Community Park North. Their goal was to help clear invasive plants from the woods around the CP North parking lot, as part of PDS's community day.

When they arrived, I told them about the work Friends of Princeton Open Space has done over 40 years to help preserve the lands they had just hiked through, and explained how habitat restoration can effectively increase the acreage of functional open space in town by shifting the plantlife to native species that wildlife prefer to eat.

There were also some tool safety tips and warnings about poison ivy to impart.

Armed with this knowledge, and a whole bunch of loppers and garden rakes provided by the school, the kids broke into six groups and took on the somewhat daunting task of clearing multiflora rose and other invasive exotic species from the woodland.

Teamwork was emphasized, as one student would push the branches back with a garden rake so another could get underneath and cut the stems.

For me, the primary goals were for kids to learn how to use the tools safely, work together and gain some confidence in identifying shrubs like honeysuckle, privet and Asian photinia--the same sorts of weedy shrubs that likely grow along the fencelines around their homes. Any progress towards tipping the balance in the understory from exotic to native would be gravy.

Turned out there was a lot of gravy, as the kids worked hard through a morning session, and even harder after lunch. For the afternoon session, we took a teacher's advice and marked off sections of woods that each group was to clear before hiking back to school. Seeing the boundary of their task, the kids worked harder, which for many led to the discovery that the hard work of land stewardship can have satisfactions beyond reaching the day's goal.

The result was a dramatic change in the landscape, new vistas and an opportunity for natives to repopulate the woods.

Thanks to the freshmen students and teachers of Princeton Day School for all their help. And thanks also to my friends Andrew, Linda and Annarie for coming by to help supervise.

Stony Brook Trail Preview

Andrew Thornton recently showed me the new trail that he, Clark Lennon and Ted Thomas have been building along the Stonybrook. This is the trail that's part of a celebration this coming Sunday, to which all are invited (see other posts).

One of the most striking features is the age and size of trees that grow in this rich Stonybrook floodplain, gaining more character with each passing year. There are impressive specimens of tulip poplars, red oaks, sycamore, shagbark hickory, and many other species, including a pecan tree leaning out over the stream.

After a summer of drought, it's easy to step off the trail and take a look at the frogs, crawdads, fish and other critters eking out an existence in the brook.

Fowlers Toads kept an eye on us throughout the walk.

This photo tells the story of how reduced deer browsing pressure in Princeton Township has allowed the native plants to bounce back. Ten years ago, when deer numbers were very high, many spicebush shrubs were barely hanging on, with only one stem high enough to avoid being eaten. All new sprouts from the base would be browsed, preventing the bush from replacing the aging stem. As deer numbers were brought down, the spicebush have successfully developed new trunks to replace their aging lifeline. Prosperous native shrubs mean more high-lipid berries for birds and leaves to meet the specific needs of various butterfly and moth species.

At the end of the trail, a lovely new bridge spans the Stonybrook. Though the bridge is the result of various grants, and cooperation and initiative shown by FOPOS, Princeton Township, D&R Greenway and others, to me it symbolizes the fruits of patience and perseverance, as exemplified by Princeton resident Helmut Schwab. Some years back, I would listen to Helmut's updates on the project at Friends of Princeton Open Space meetings, and wonder how he could possible keep going in the face of what seemed like insurmountable regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles. Now, my eyes have been opened. What a fine destination after such a long journey.

Though I say the bridge is at the end of the trail, it is actually part of a circum-Princeton route that, with the building of this bridge, has come closer to realization.

Map of New Stony Brook Regional Trail

Responding to a groundswell of demand, here is a map of the new trail that starts at Greenway Meadows and heads downstream to the new bridge. As mentioned in a previous post, and on the fopos.org and drgreenway.org websites, the public is invited to a celebration of the completion of this trail and bridge this coming Sunday, beginning at 3pm. This section of trail is being, or by now has been, built by Andrew Thornton and Clark Lennon, with guidance from the FOPOS Trail Committee.
  
You can click on the box with four arrows to make the map larger.


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Bridge and Trail Celebration October 3rd

The Friends of Princeton Open Space and Princeton Township are inviting everyone to join in a celebration of a new trail and bridge along the Stonybrook. As part of the event, I'll be leading a walk from Greenway Meadows to the bridge at 3pm. More on the new trail in an upcoming post. Click on the little box with four arrows, just to the left of the "Download" box, to see the invitation full size.


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Plant Rescue at Mountain Lakes

Now, that's strange. Seems to me there was a lake around here somewhere. The plug has been pulled, the 7 feet of fertile sediment accumulated over the past 100 years is being dug and hauled off to farms and topsoil makers, and the dam is being restored to its cerca 1900 appearance. Given the highly conducive weather thus far, the contractor is hoping to complete restoration of the upper lake and dam by December.

One of the streams that feeds the lakes enters back where the trees meet the mud in this photo, between the two backhoes. From an old aerial photo the engineers determined that the pond used to extend further up into that valley, and I was alerted that some more mud and associated plants would be coming out.

FOPOS board member Tim Patrick-Miller agreed to help me rescue some of the wetland species before the digging started. Much to my surprise, we found 4 species to add to the list of plants growing at Mountain Lakes.

In the wheelbarrow (our manual labors contrasted comically with the big machinery of the dredging operation) is pickerel weed, which is rarely found growing in the wild in Princeton. It likes shallow standing water at pond's edge.

Nearby was a little gravel streambed, away from the main current, that was clearly perfect habitat for three other species of plants also rarely encountered. This one, new to me, turned out to be ditch stonecrop. Not a pretty name, but it's true it was growing in something akin to a stony ditch.

Water plantain has oval leaves and tiny white flowers. It also needs a very stable hydrology, quickly perishing for lack of water.

Petals and branchings come in threes.

Bur Reed has leaves like an iris and seed capsules like those that fall from a sweet gum tree.

All four of these species only survive in locations that stay consistently wet throughout the summer. Though this continent once had abundant wetlands with much more stable hydrology, suggesting these plants were once abundant, the only places I find them now are in areas kept artificially wet, such as the edges of impoundments like Mountain Lakes, and the pump-enhanced marsh at Rogers Refuge.

Two Native Shrubs in Princeton Nature Preserves

These are the two most common native shrubs found in Princeton's nature preserves. We call them native because they co-evolved on this continent for millenia with wildlife and other plants, and so have developed complex interactions that make for a stable, diverse ecosystem. Exotic shrubs introduced to this continent over the past few hundred years, by contrast, are still typically not eaten by the native wildlife, and so are not nearly as beneficial as native species are for habitat. To see more photos and text about these species in Princeton, type the name of the plant into the search box at the upper left of this website.

SPICEBUSH: Crushed leaves fragrant, alternate branching, leaf margins smooth

BLACKHAW VIBURNUM: Opposite branching, leaves roundish with slightly toothed margins and white central vein. Bark cobbled like flowering dogwood’s.

Common Exotic Invasive Shrubs

In anticipation of 100 Princeton Day School 9th graders coming to Community Park North tomorrow morning to help remove invasive shrubs, I brought home some leaves of the various kinds of shrubs they will be encountering in the woods, and scanned them into my computer. Below are the shrubs we'll be removing, along with some descriptions. They are as common in people's backyards as they are in Princeton's nature preserves. To see more photos and text about these species in Princeton, type the name of the plant into the search box at the upper left of this website.

MULTIFLORA ROSE: Sharp thorns curved backwards. Alternative leaves. Each leaf has about 7 leaflets.

ASIAN PHOTINIA: Leaves are alternate, and wider towards the tip. Little teeth along the margins of leaves.

HONEYSUCKLE: Leaves opposite (come off stem in pairs), with graceful narrowing of leaves at tip. Leaf margins smooth. Bark is tan.

PRIVET: Leaves are opposite, narrow, with smooth margins. Bark is grayish.

Asian Tiger Mosquitoes

One of my side specialties is reading palms, and after carefully looking at my life lines here, I came to the determination that I was about to be bitten by an Asian tiger mosquito. The story I heard is that it hitchhiked from Asia on a ship carrying old tires that landed in Florida, and has been moving northward ever since.

It was well established in North Carolina when I lived there, and has been in the Princeton area for a number of years. Note the striped abdomen, and you're likely to note also, much to your chagrin, that the tiger mosquito is very active during the day. Native mosquitoes tend to become active only at dusk.