Deceptive Age of a Tree

The stumps from a couple oak trees pushed over by Hurricane Fran have remained to ornament Nassau Street, like mortars from the Civil War.

Counting the rings of one, I was surprised to find that, though 3 feet wide at the base, it was only 40 years old.

Translated to the trees we encounter in Princeton's open space, it goes to show how young a mature-looking forest may be, and how some of the woods that feel like they've always been there may in fact have been pastures or farm fields not too many decades back.

In contrast, other woods in Princeton may harbor trees 180 years old, like this slice of an ash on exhibit at the Frist Center on the Princeton University campus. It was sacrificed as part of the stream restoration next to Washington Rd at the university.

Nature Walk This Sunday at Mountain Lakes

All are welcome to join a post-Sandy "Turkey Trek" I'll be leading this Sunday at 1:30pm, along trails cleared by FOPOS trail committee volunteers. We'll survey the changes in the woods brought about by the storm, and also visit the dams in all their restored glory. The walk will be accompanied by a TV30 film crew who are putting together a feature on Mountain Lakes. No need to arrive in finest feather. Just look natural.

Meet at Community Park North parking lot, on Mountain Ave. just off 206. Entry to the parking lot is right next to the 57 Mountain Ave driveway that leads up to the Mountain Lakes House. Wear some good walking shoes, and in the meantime, happy thanksgiving to all.

Princeton's Mountain Lakes Dam Restoration Story

(Also posted at PrincetonPrimer.org)Quite a story will be told this Thursday, Nov. 15, 7pm, at the Princeton Library community room, about the reservoirs that once provided Princeton with ice in pre-refrigeration days. Engineers identified the need for restoration of the dams as far back as the 1970s, but only when an anonymous donor came forward with several million dollars (eventually totaling 3.5) was the project able to move forward, in 2010. (The donor had also helped to purchase Mountain Lakes back in the 1980s.)

Here's a description of Thursday's event:

"Created as an ice pond in 1884, Mountain Lake gradually filled in with sediment and the severe deterioration of its dams threatened to drain it altogether. Princeton Township engineering staff and consultants review Mountain Lake's ice harvesting history, archaeological discoveries, and the careful rehabilitation over the last two years that has restored the beauty of this National Register site and has preserved it for future generations."

The Mountain Lakes Preserve is one of Princeton's best-kept open secrets. Despite being in the middle of Princeton geographically, Mountain Lakes feels tucked away, accessed down a long driveway at 57 Mountain Ave, not far from town hall, across 206 from the Community Park fields.

You can access a pictorial and descriptive history of the restoration project at this link (scroll to the bottom and work your way up chronologically), but I'll show a few photos here.

The small wooden posts in the foreground of the above photo show where a ramp once conveyed big blocks of ice out of the lake and up into barns that once stood three stories high just below the dam. The barns, insulated with straw, could store ice for up to two years. The ice, of course, was delivered to people's homes to cool their ice boxes, in those more sustainable days before refrigeration became widespread in the 1930s or so.

Mountain Lakes House, built around 1950 and now used for weddings and other events, has a beautiful view of the upper lake and dam.

Dredging of the thick sediment (The 1600 truck loads were taken to a sod farm) during restoration apparently uncovered a rich seedbank of native wetland rushes, sedges and wildflowers that carpeted the lakebeds while the lakes remained drained. Friends of Princeton Open Space board member Tim Patrick-Miller led efforts to rescue some of these plants prior to refilling the lakes. They now make a fine native border along the upper lake.

Native woodland asters flourish along a lakeside trail in an area we cleared of invasive shrubs. All trails are open to the public.

This area too, just below the upper dam, is being managed for native species.

Though the restoration was primarily the work of Princeton township engineers, consultants and the very capable contractor who did the elaborate stonework (done primarily by a man named Wolfgang) and concrete reinforcement needed to restore the original beauty while bringing the dams up to current standards, I was able to contribute to the project in various ways.

As resource manager for Friends of Princeton Open Space, I helped correct some misperceptions about the lakes' original depth, made sure that areas near the dams with rare native plants remained undisturbed, and also pointed out the importance of restoring not only the two main dams, but also the smaller dams just upstream that had served to capture stream sediment before it could reach the two lakes.

Restoration of one of these upstream dams, built in 1950, was made possible by additional funds from the anonymous donor. Now cleaned of seven feet of sediment accumulated in its first 60 years, it should substantially increase the life of the two main lakes.

I also encouraged the township to dig several vernal pools nearby to serve the local frog population. State regulations may have bogged down those plans.

If you haven't been to Mountain Lakes, take a walk out there some day to see the award-winning dam restorations, an occasional great blue heron, "Devil's Cave" at the top of the boulder-strewn slopes of Witherspoon Woods, and maybe even hear the call of a pileated woodpecker. It's one of the finer meetings of nature and culture, wild and tamed, natural and man-made beauty.

Squirrel Carvers Disappoint

I have to admit to some disappointment in the carving the squirrels did on our pumpkin this year. Didn't really show much effort on their part, compared to their past work. But isn't that just so typical of those who are above all critics? Sure, it was easy enough for the squirrels to find flaws in our carvings in previous years, and make their uninvited, radical revisions, but when we gave them a clean slate and dared them to make their own creations, all they could manage is a splotch here and a nibble there.

Surely they didn't lack for training, having practiced on our squash crop all summer long. A more sympathetic interpretation might be that this is the work of an apprentice, the local gnaw master having considered a small pumpkin unworthy of its talents. Or maybe squirrels, like people, have become too rushed and harried to do a pumpkin carving justice anymore.

Thanksgiving Day Nature Walk at Mapleton Preserve

A friend sent me this information about a Thanksgiving Day nature walk just down the road in Kingston. Info below:

Thursday, Nov 22 at 10 am
Mapleton Preserve, 145 Mapleton Road, Kingston, NJ

Join Friends of Princeton Nursery Lands President Karen Linder for a Thanksgiving
Day morning exploration of the Mapleton Preserve. Find out what’s on the menu for
Thanksgiving dinner for the animals and birds at the Preserve, and enjoy the abundance and
subtle beauty of late fall. The program will begin at the Main Office for the D&R Canal State
Park, 145 Mapleton Road, Kingston.

The event is FREE and open to all, but preregistration IS requested. Please call 609-683-0483
to reserve a spot. For more information and directions, see www.fpnl.org

For more information, call 609-683-0483 or visit www.fpnl.org.  

Directions are available at:  www.fpnl.org/?page_id=197 

Hurricane Sandy on Campus

If not for the eye of an observant little girl passing by, I might not have noticed the odd bird foraging in front of the Firestone Library on Princeton University's campus.

 I had gone in search of an internet connection, and found instead what may be a northern bobwhite quail, which a birder friend says may be "a farm escapee or a local bird displaced and disoriented by the storm." It certainly was tame. Other potential identities mentioned were spruce grouse and grey partridge.

 Elsewhere on campus, another evergreen tree was caught by the winds--this one a hemlock--

while the magnificent tulip poplar in front of Prospect House appeared unfazed, despite its high exposure to the gale-force winds. My daughter pointed out how the tree has plenty of room to spread its roots. Another factor is that all of its previous exposures to wind have strengthened it. Trees that haven't swayed in the wind, such as saplings that are staked for many years, or trees growing in dense stands, do not have a chance to develop the same strength.

Note: The princeton.edu website reports 50 trees on campus were blown down by the hurricane.

The Huff and Puff of Hurricane Sandy

All of Hurricane Sandy's huff and puff blew some homes down. This prime-looking squirrel real estate, in one of the big white ash trees behind Nassau Hall,

got split in two as a big limb fell off, leaving only the front door.

Not sure if birds reuse nests from the previous year, but this one got stripped from its moorings.

For a post at my princetonprimer.org blog entitled Thousands of Trees Remain Standing after Hurricane Sandy, click here.

Ode To Willow Oak Leaves

Recently, walking through a pleasant blizzard of falling willow oak leaves on Franklin Avenue, I remembered an ode to willow oak leaves I had written in the fateful fall of 2000 while living in Durham, part of North Carolina's Research Triangle. It was this time of year, in a city whose streets were and still are lined with willow oaks, and the enormous specimen in our yard was laying down a fresh layer of soft, attractive mulch.

We had long since given up trying to grow lawn in deeply shaded piedmont clay, in favor of letting pine needles and willow oak leaves fall where they may. The pines down there are loblolly and shortleaf. Unlike the more northern white pine planted in Princeton, they are "self-pruning", meaning they drop their lower limbs to eventually become a vaulted canopy, creating an expansive, protected, cathedral-like space beneath, through which leaves and needles make their long, idiosyncratic descents to earth in the filtered light.

The piece below was published on the editorial page of the Raleigh News and Observer as one of their periodic pastoral pieces, almost certainly completely overlooked in the tumult following the Bush-Gore election that had taken place the day before.



The Work of an Autumn Breeze

The narrow leaves of willow oak spin earthwards, catching flashes of morning light. In walks along the treelined canyons of city streets, we are all victors in a ticker tape parade. The sun's rays, having lost their summer harshness, now angle into the sheltered air beneath trees, illuminating the languid descent of leaves from vaulted canopy.

Not all leaves are so elegant. Pine needles plunge earthward like clouds of arrows. The broader leaves of maples fall in rocking zig-zags. But willow oak leaves are so designed to celebrate their momentary freedom in one long graceful pirouette. They spend summer clustered overhead, anonymous in dense masses of green. Then, made expendible by autumn's chill, refined of all colors but gold, they become a million individualists in their first and last dance back to earth. In loose embrace with gravity they fall, each spinning in its own manner, at its own tempo, each captured by the sun's beaming light for all time and but for a moment.

The young girl next door tries to catch one, and quickly discovers how illusive they are--so tangible in their approach, yet like phantoms unwilling to have their only dance cut short. Having reached the ground, again anonymously massed, they mingle and merge and return by degrees to the soil from which they came.

At such times, it is hard to think of leaves as anything but a gift. In the competition between lawn and leaf for my heart, lawn has had to yield. I used to pick up the sticks, and rake the leaves, and mow threadworn grass. But now I channel my yard's sylvan tendencies rather than struggle against them. The leaves fall where they do for a reason: to soften the soil, to catch the rain, to help dogwoods through the droughts and give kids one more reason for delight. What pleasure to trace a leaf's whimsical flight, and find at bottom a sense of rightness and rest, rather than impending chore. The Triangle is a forest masquerading as metropolis, and we are the beneficiaries of its golden rain.

Durham, NC, Fall, 2000

Porous Pavement

As the cracks in our asphalt driveway slowly deepen and spread, the thought of having porous pavement such as this becomes more and more attractive. Given the heat-island effect of asphalt in summer, and the runoff it sends down the slope during heavy rains, it would be nice to have pavement that absorbs some of the rain and turns less sunlight into heat.

Each plug of soil in the concrete matrix looks like a different plant exhibit. It's basically a driveway you can mow. This one, on Linden Lane, was installed about five years ago, and looks to be aging well, apparently without need of the recurrent maintenance an asphalt driveway requires.

Evergreen Trees, Deciduous Needles

One of the first trees to shed leaves in the fall is the white pine. Though it's an evergreen, it has as distinct and coordinated a dropping of leaves as any deciduous tree.

As deciduous trees begin to turn color, pines get into the act by turning a mottled brown and green,

as the 2-year old needles turn brown and fall off, leaving the 1 year old needles to remain through the winter and another growing season.

Other evergreen species have the same cycle.

Here's a spruce tree on Hamilton Ave. shedding older needles as a means of reducing the amount of living tissue exposed to the stresses of winter.

Mega-spider Web Scares Geese Away

Alert! An extraordinarily large spider web was observed at Mountain Lakes recently, spread across the entire extent of the earthen dam below the lower lake. The spider was nowhere to be found, but is reported to have only half the normal number of appendages.

Follow-up inquiries revealed that the webbing is designed not to catch anything, but instead to spook the geese that might otherwise eat the newly planted grass on the dam. More research is needed, but initial observations suggest that the spiders are doing better at outsmarting the geese than most humans.

Beauty in the Beast

Morning sunlight, leaves still wet from yesterday's rain--what better time to capture the dazzling beauty of......What might this be, growing beneath a spruce tree on the well-coiffed grounds of Westminster Choir College?

One clue is in the leaves of three. Best appreciated at a distance, it's well away from where anyone might walk, so does no harm.

Groundcovers/Fencecovers/Towncovers

Some groundcovers are content to cover the ground, slowly expanding year to year. Looking up Hamilton Drive near Harrison, here's some Lamb's Ears (grey), and some sort of Sedums further up.

Other groundcovers, like english ivy, are more ambitious,

becoming treecovers,

fencecovers, sidewalkcovers, wallcovers, and probably even roofcovers over time. Only the existence of moving objects--the abrasion of passing people and cars--keeps it from expanding to become a towncover.

As with other vine species, english ivy blooms only on the climbing portion of the vine.

Flowers Come Lately

 Competing with the autumn leaves, New England aster;

turtlehead (occasionally encountered growing wild along streambanks; here used in a frontyard raingarden);

the native witch hazel, blooming now at Mountain Lakes and in other preserves, most commonly on slopes next to streams or lakes;

and, say what?, iris? Maybe fall is the new spring.

Teasel

One plant encountered during a recent visit to Princeton Day School (see post about their extraordinary school garden project at PrincetonPrimer.org), is teasel (Dipsacus sp.).

It has a bristly grace.

Not native to America, it shows moderate invasive capability. I tend to group it with other moderately invasive species moving east from the midwest, like Queen Anne's Lace, interesting and attractive in some ways, but also with the potential to displace native species over time.

Pampas Grass

Pampas Grass is in its full glory right about now. These specimens, along Cherry Valley Road, surely help differentiate their owner's driveway, on dark, stormy nights, from all the others along the road. Given the human transformations of habitats, it's common for plants to be rare in their native range, and pampas grass is no exception. It's easier to find in suburban landscapes of the U.S., or escaping into wildlands of southern California, than in its native habitat--the pampas of Argentina. This I discovered by driving through the great expanse of grassland west and south of Buenos Aires years back. Only after two days of driving through lands frequently modified with ditches and agriculture did we arrive in a valley where the pampas grass grew--with plants considerably smaller than the towering specimens we see here.

Retention Basin Beauty

Most visitors to Farmview Fields, across the Great Road from Coventry Farm, go there for soccer or baseball. I was there last week to check out the retention basin. It's tucked behind the soccer field, in the far back of this photo, essentially a big scooped out area designed to hold stormwater runoff from the parking lot and slowly release it into the stream, in this case Pretty Brook. They're common in housing and office developments around town, and are usually mowed to look like sunken lawns.

Most don't draw attention, but this one actually has a sign, and is mowed only once a year, if that. To the right of the mowed pathway you can see big bluestem grass leaning this way and that, fine fodder for the woodland bison that once lived hereabouts.

When I was naturalist for Friends of Princeton Open Space, and visiting the park to watch my daughter's soccer games, I decided that the mowed retention basin was an eyesore and a waste of gas. Its short grass wasn't doing a very good job of filtering nutrients and pollutants out of the runoff, and the turf was of little use for wildlife.

Eric Schrading of Partners for Fish and Wildlife came to the rescue, offering to replace the turf with native "warm season" grasses (Indian grass and big bluestem are tallgrass prairie species that do most of their growing during the hot summer months). The effort was federally funded, at no cost to Princeton Township.

Despite the requisite drought (there's always a drought after someone plants a native prairie), many of the grasses grew and prospered, and I added some local genotype wildflowers like Hibiscus moscheutos and late-flowering boneset. Goldenrods came in on their own.

Here's the before shot, in 2006.

Here's the basin last week. The late-flowering boneset (white) has spread, and in the distance is a nice patch of woolgrass (reddish brown) that came in on its own. This is the best shot I have thus far to show the potential for turning drab basins into beautiful habitat.

Last week, the monarch butterflies were clearly in agreement with the change, feasting on nectar in preparation for their long flight south to Mexico.


Note: A post from 2006, prior to this transformation, can be found here. (http://princetonnaturenotes.blogspot.com/2006/12/wetland-arks-in-princeton.html)