Yale Forest in the Fall
November 2, 2019 by New Hampshire Garden Solutions

Last weekend I decided to visit Yale forest in Swanzey, and I chose the part of the forest with the old paved road running through it. Yale University has owned this parcel of land since the 1930s and allows public use. The road was once called Dartmouth Road because that’s where it led, but the state abandoned it when the new Route 10 was built and it has been all but forgotten ever since.

There were a lot of leaves down so you couldn’t see the pavement that still exists here. Yale founded a school of forestry and environmental studies in 1900 and owns parcels of land all over New England. Alumni donated the land in some cases and in others the University bought or traded other land for it, and in time good sized pieces of forest were put together. This particular parcel is 1,930 acres in size. Since logging vehicles occasionally come through here the pavement is slowly being broken up and nature is taking it back.

Beech trees were beautiful along the old road but even they are starting to change.

Even so it was a beautiful time to walk through here.

Even deer tongue grass wore its fall colors. Deer tongue grass (Dichanthelium clandestinum) gets its common name from the way its leaves resemble a deer’s tongue. It’s one of the earliest denizens of the forest floor to start showing its fall colors. Purples, yellows, oranges, and other colors can often be found in its leaves.

I also saw a beautifully colored puffball far beyond “puffing.” It had split wide open and was full of grayish spores. When raindrops hit these spores they are splashed out, and I’m guessing there will be a fine crop of puffballs here next year.

A lot of maple leaves had fallen but a few trees held on, and they were beautiful.

I saw a few maple dust lichens (Lecanora thysanophora.) Plain and undressed without the fussiness of other lichens, it is beautiful in its simplicity. But how does it reproduce? I’ve never seen any reproductive structures of any kind on it so I had to look it up. The answer is that it does have apothecia, but very rarely. It also has “a thin patchy layer of soredia,” though I’ve never noticed it. The white fringe around the outside is called the prothallus and using it is a great way to identify this lichen, because from what I’ve read there isn’t another that has it.

Yale University did some logging in this part of the forest a few years ago so it’s thin in places but there are plenty of young tree coming along.

A large pile of logs was left behind from the logging. I’m not sure why.

One of the most noticeable things about this walk were all of the fallen trees. I must have seen at least a dozen of them, including this maple.

In two places huge old pine trees had fallen. We had strong winds just a while ago and it looked like these trees had been blown over. Trees like these are bad news when they fall across a trail because you can’t go over or under them due to all the branches.

The rootball on this fallen pine was taller than I was and it left quite a crater in the forest floor when it was torn up. There were many fallen trees right in this area and I was forced to go quite far into the forest to get around them.

I noticed a lot of pine bark beetle activity on the branches of these trees. Not only do the beetles transmit disease from tree to tree, if they chew one of their channels completely around a branch it will die from being girdled. These beetles are small and range in size from about 1/10 to 1/4 of an inch in length, but they can do a lot of damage when enough of them are in a forest. Dead branches mean no photosynthesizing which will weaken the tree and eventually it will die. For those who have never head the term; girdling of a branch or tree happens when the phloem and bark has been cut around its diameter in a complete circle. Native Americans and then early settlers used girdling to remove trees from fields and pastures and it is still used by some today.

Fungi of any type on a standing tree is a sign that something is wrong, and these branches had a lot of jelly fungi on them.

But in spite of the blowdowns the forest is recovering well from the logging. There are lots of new hardwood shoots coming along and they will make excellent browse for deer and moose.

When you’re close to where the old road meets the new Route 10 a stream cuts its way through the forest.

On this day I was once again able to step / hop across the stream but I’ve seen it when I couldn’t.

Once you’ve hopped the stream the road becomes a closed in trail. I could hear cars going by on the nearby highway.

Moments after crossing the stream you come to what was once a beaver pond on the left side of the road, but it was abandoned quite a while ago by the looks. This place is unusual because when the beavers were active there were ponds on both sides of the road, or one large pond with a road running through it. It seems kind of an odd place for them to have built in.

Beavers, from what I’ve read, will work an area in what averages thirty year cycles. The first stage is damming a stream and creating a pond. The flooding kills the trees that now stand in water and the beavers will eat these and the other trees that surround the pond. Eventually the pond fills with silt or the beavers move away and the dam fails. Once the land drains it will eventually revert back to forest with a stream running through it and the long cycle will repeat itself. Many other animals, birds, fish, amphibians, waterfowl and even we humans benefit from beaver ponds. I’ve seen mallards here in the past but there were none on this day.

Until this walk I knew of only one place to find field milkwort (Polygala sanguinea) so I was shocked (and happy) to see them blooming here so late. On field milkwort flowers what look like petals arranged on a central stem are actually individual flowers packed into a raceme no bigger than the end of an average index finger. Each tiny overlapping flower has two large sepals, three small sepals, and three small petals that form a narrow tube. Its flowers can be white, purple, pink, or green and I’ve noticed that the color can vary considerably from plant to plant. They were a perfect ending to a beautiful forest walk.
He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it, since it is trackless and unexplored. ~Heraclitus of Ephesus
Thanks for stopping in.
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Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes, Things I've Seen | Tagged Beaver Ponds, Beech Leaf Fall Color, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Deer Tongue Grass, Fall Hikes, Fallen Trees, Field Milkwort, Lichens, Maple Dust Lichen, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Orange Jelly Fungi, Pine Bark Beetle Damage, Puffball, Summer Wildflowers, Swanzey New Hampshire, Yale Forest | 34 Comments
That field milkwort is a very pretty wildflower – I have never seen it before. You’ve still got a lot of nice color, especially the beeches.
We had a lot of color but not now!
Milkworts would be an easy garden flower. They like dry, sandy soil.
What a great find, Field Milkwort! Your photos of autumn leaves are beautiful. We still have not had a freeze, most leaves are still on the trees, yet plenty on the ground. Thanks for posting, your posts are always something to look forward to!
Thanks Chris! We’ve had a freeze now but a few leaves still hang on.
I’m glad you still have plenty on the trees!
How fortunate to find Field Milkwort on this lovely walk! I am sorry you are having such strong winds and that so many trees are getting blown over. We are also getting much stronger winds than we used to and many more storms. I love the Maple Dust Lichen!
Thank you Clare. I like those little flowers that I was thought were rare.
The only thing good about all the fallen trees is that they didn’t fall on houses or cars. At least these didn’t; there has been damage done here and there. I hope you don’t see the same!
We had very high winds in the UK at the weekend, though where I live wasn’t too bad fortunately. I know that there were injuries and one woman killed when a tree fell on her car.
I’m sorry to hear that. The weather seems to be extreme no matter where we are these days. They say we might see 6 inches of snow Thursday, which is close to unheard of this early in November.
My goodness! That is so early! Take care, Allen.
Thank you. I’m hoping they have the forecast wrong!
Yes!
What a beautiful walk, Allen…thank you.
You’re welcome Scott, I’m glad you liked it.
I had a relentless autumn olive shrub that the birds must have planted. I kept cutting it back, but it kept regrowing. Then one spring it mysteriously died. When I took a closer look, I saw that mice or voles or somebody had completely girdled the base of it — probably under the snow. Project completed!
Your beautiful photographs always, always brighten my day. I am grateful for your time and trouble.
Thank you Ben, I’m very happy that I can bring them to you.
🙂
A beautiful place for a walk despite the fallen trees. I wonder what made some trees fall but not others. Sometimes in our commercial woods the wind will blow down a whole section at the same time.
I think their roots become weak due to insects or fungi or both. The weak fall first. You can often find small areas that have been blown down while the rest of the forest is fine.
Where do you access this part of the forest and where did you find the milkworts ? I love those flowers. You should take a picture of milkworts from above. That’s where the coolest patterns are.
You take Sawyers Crossing Road from Route 10, just across from the old Monadnock Regional Humane Society building. Just a mile or two on the left you see a pull in spot that is paved. You park there and walk the trail, which will eventually lead you right back to Route 10. Just after you hop the stream and just before the beaver pond is where the milkworts grow. Allen R. knows right where this road is.
I’ll have to try the milkworts from above!
A beautiful autumn walk, Allen, I enjoyed the photos and education, as always. Seems to me that out here at least, the windstorms are getting more intense. I don’t know if you are seeing this in your area.
Thank you Lavinia. Yes, we are getting some terrible windstorms here and just had another yesterday. It was tearing doors right out of my hands when I opened them.
I very much enjoy your posts, even though I rarely comment.
Is your “one other place to find field milkwort” by any chance on the south side of Route 101 in Dublin just east of 137 by the parking area for Mud Pond? Because I happened upon the largest patch of it I had ever seen when I stopped there in August. Beautiful.
Thanks for that information Sara. No, that isn’t the other place but I drive by it every day on my way to work so I’ll be sure to stop and have a look next year!
The other place I know of is on the flanks of Mount Caesar in Swanzey where plants are scattered here and there.
Pretty and interesting about the beaver cycle!
In far southern Chile, there are beavers that were brought in long ago. I’ve seen their dams and chewed trees. Now, they want to eradicate them because they are not native, but they don’t know how. Easy solution: Create a demand and market for their fur, and fur trappers will come in and solve the problem.
They almost exterminated the beaver in the American West in the 1820s and 30s. Buffalo too in the 1870s just for robes and rugs, which decimated the Plains Indians who depended on them for their living. Fortunately, the buffalo robes and rugs went out of style, as did beavers hats, which were replaced by silk hats.
Such a shame, the destructive fads of big city dwellers who are so disconnected from nature!
Some of those beautiful 150′ tall redwoods near Valdivia I mentioned before, which an entrepreneur brought from the PacNW as seedlings 50 years ago (I counted the tree rings on stumps), were cut down maybe 15 years ago, but just left there. Like you with your stack of big logs not hauled off to a lumber mill, I wonder why.
I look forward to your next post.
On Sat, Nov 2, 2019, 5:12 AM New Hampshire Garden Solutions New Hampshire Garden Solutions posted: ” Last weekend I decided to visit > Yale forest in Swanzey, and I chose the part of the forest with the old > paved road running through it. Yale University has owned this parcel of > land since the 1930s and allows public use. The road was once called > Dartmo” >
Thank you Ron. Beavers do a lot of good in nature, especially for other wildlife, so I’m not sure why anyone would want to be rid of them. I wonder why so many foriegn species were brought there in the first place.
Yes, when they started killing off buffaloes they at least used parts of them but I’ve always heard that near the end they were just slaughtering them for “fun.” I’m glad some of them survived.
I agree that many people are disconnected from nature and I hope this and other nature blogs are doing something about it. I hope if people come to love it they’ll be less likely to destroy it.
I don’t know why anyone would cut trees and leave the logs behind unless the trees posed some kind of danger. Maybe someone was afraid the redwoods would become an agressive invasive species.
Introduced beavers that change the native wildlife ecology is the reason environmental purists want to exterminate them.
I don’t know why they cut down a few of the redwood trees and left them there. I suspect a new landowner who appreciated the majesty of that forest and halted the logging of it, although milling for lumber was probably the original intent. Eucalyptus from Australia became the commercial tree of choice here and still is. In fact, I am sitting in my small eucalyptus grove right now.
ln the past, people brought from their home countries plants and animals to service their present needs and wants, not caring how invasive and troublesome they might soon become to everybody, including themselves. Feral hogs (Sus scrofa) and gorse (Ulex europaeus) are good examples. They got out of control in every country where they were introduced.
The hide hunters were slaughtering the buffalo just to satisfy the eastern big city demand for their hides, leaving the meat to rot on the Plains. Later, when the buffalo declined along with the demand for hides, they began collecting their bleached bones to satisfy the easterners’ demand for fertilizer.
Those making money off the buffalo
hides and bones never shot them for fun. Bullets and Sharp’s rifles cost them a lot of money and life was extremely rough on the Plains. It was only wealthy tourists and train travelers that did this, and the scope was pretty minimal compared to that of the hide and bone hunters.
The openly stated U.S. military policy through Sherman and Sheridan was to encourage white man’s extermination of the buffalo as a means of starving and subduing the Plains Indians who depended on them. It worked.
Pretty sad in retrospect.
I’m surprised to hear about the eucalyptus trees. but since I know virtually nothing about the trees or the climate there maybe I shouldn’t be.
I’ve heard that just about every country has its own invasives. Too bad, but there’s little we can do about it at this point. They’ve spent many millions of dollars just trying to be rid of Japanese knotweed in this and other countries and it still thrives.
The story of the buffalo and the Native Americans is extremely sad and when I think about all the knowledge we lost it just leaves me speechless.
Indeed.
Loved the colours you pictured though sorry about the fallen trees making life so difficult.
Thank you Susan. It was tough getting around all those trees. I hope someone will come and cut them up.
I wondered if that would happen, sooner rather than later I hope.
Me too!