Yale Forest in the Fall

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.

Read Full Post »

Time for a Climb

Last weekend I planned to climb a mountain to see the foliage colors from above but the weather had other plans. On Saturday it rained until about 1:00 pm and on Sunday morning the fog was about as thick as it ever gets here. I stopped in at a local swamp to see what I could see.

I couldn’t see much of anything except the fuzzy outline of a beaver lodge off shore.

Once the rain stopped on Saturday I climbed Hewes Hill where Tippin Rock is. By the time I reached the top the sun was fully out and pointed directly at the camera, so none of the photos are worth showing. On Sunday once the fog lifted I was able to reach the top a little earlier in the day but once again the lighting was harsh.

 

On the way up I found a rock that was covered with greater whipwort liverworts (Bazzania trilobata,) which always remind me of centipedes. They are quite small and from a distance they look a lot like moss, so you have to look closely to see them. I was surprised to see them here because I’ve always found them near water before.

I also saw some wolf’s milk slime mold (Lycogala epidendrum.) The fruiting bodies of this slime mold look a lot like light colored, pinkish brown puffballs but the proof is in the squeezing. Immature examples will release a pink liquid like that shown in the photo. Some describe the liquid as having a toothpaste like consistency but examples I’ve seen have always been more like a thick liquid. Older examples will have powdery gray spores inside. I always find them growing on logs at about this time of year.

 

An eastern hemlock log had some orange jelly fungi (Dacrymyces palmatu.) growing on it. This fungus looks a lot like yellow witches butter (Tremella mesenterica) but witches butter grows on hardwood logs. This fungus is common and I see it at all times of year, even in winter. What you see here would fit on a quarter.

Something else found on eastern hemlocks is the hemlock varnish shelf mushroom (Ganoderma tsugae.) This mushroom’s common name comes from its shiny cap, which looks like it has been varnished. It is considered the most important of all the herbs and substances used in Chinese Herbal Medicine, including ginseng. In China it is called the Reishi mushroom and scientists around the world are researching its anti-cancer potential.

The trail was carpeted in leaves all the way up and the smells of fall were heavy in the damp air.

 

Whoever painted the blue blazes on the trees must have had some paint left over. They must have been having a good day too.  Actually, in a place like this it’s hard not to be happy.

Before long you see the sign for Tippin Rock.

As if you could miss a 40 ton glacial erratic perched on a hilltop! Tippin Rock gets its name from the way that it will rock if pushed in the right place. After my last post about the rock I got an email from a man who was at a dedication ceremony for the rock three years ago, and he told me that he watched some kids climb up on it. By all standing on one end of it they got it rocking back and forth. But we’re not here for the boulder this time.

This time we’re here for the foliage. Unfortunately I don’t have any great photos of it because of the way the rain and fog forced me to delay my climbs until the afternoon when the sun was almost directly ahead of me.

These photos will give you some idea of what I saw though. I’m surprised how many bare trees there are in this one.

It’s really too bad that the light made it so difficult for the camera to catch what I saw, because the foliage was beautiful from up here. I sat and admired it for a while, hoping a stray cloud might dim the sun, but it never happened.

This shot was taken with my cell phone and shows that it also had trouble with the bright sunshine. It also shows, in the lower left corner, the sheer cliff edges found here. This isn’t a place to be wandering around in the dark without a flashlight but it’s a great place to visit during the daytime.

I’ve never known anyone yet who doesn’t suffer a certain restlessness when autumn rolls around. . . . We’re all eight years old again and anything is possible. ~Sue Grafton

Thanks for stopping in.

 

Read Full Post »