December 9, 2009 at 7:07 am (botany, history (human), mammals)
Tags: common cattail, marsh, Mayslake, muskrat, orchard, raccoon, Salix babylonica, Typha latifolia, weeping willow
by Carl Strang
There are several small marsh areas at Mayslake Forest Preserve. One of them was dug to provide fill for constructing the parking lot. Last year the vegetation was relatively sparse, but this year the parking lot marsh has a dense growth of tall common cattails.
That marsh contains two large mounds, the dens of muskrats. Muskrats last winter lived in tunnel dens they dug in the bank. The difference has me thinking that perhaps the mound nests, constructed from cattails, are a preference. The muskrats did not need to go to the trouble to build the mounds, but did so anyway. An alternate possibility is that the density of muskrats has increased there, so more dens are needed.
Another marsh, near the stream, also was dug originally to provide fill, this time to elevate a foundation for the chapel when the site still was a Franciscan retreat center.
There is one likely muskrat mound in this marsh as well, but I will need to see it closely after the water freezes to be certain. The area recently was highlighted by the beautiful yellow color of the weeping willows.
The orchard is on the mansion grounds not far from that marsh. In a recent post I mentioned how deer have been dining on apples there. I failed to comment on a raccoon trail that also leads to these fruit trees.
While other animals also use trails of this size, the masked mammals’ big flat feet and routine travel pattern produce this distinctive sign of their presence.
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December 2, 2009 at 6:58 am (botany, mammals, restoration)
Tags: aster, bottlebrush grass, bur oak, Conrad Fialkowski, fox squirrel, Hystrix patula, Jacqui Gleason, Mayslake, Quercus macrocarpa, savanna, sumac
by Carl Strang
I have enjoyed watching Autumn’s transition in the savannas at Mayslake Forest Preserve. Early in the season I found an aster growing, and blooming, in an unlikely spot: a crevice a few feet off the ground between forks of a bur oak.
Here it is close up.
Squirrels continued to take advantage of the oaks’ mast year. Here is the synchronized eating team.
Colors peaked, then faded. The sumacs provided a final burst.
Meanwhile, assisted by other volunteers, stewards Conrad Fialkowski and Jacqui Gleason continued removing buckthorn bushes from the edges of the savanna. They augmented the brush piles by piling on leaves.
They had raked the leaves to clear space for spreading bottlebrush grass seeds.
That grass is their workhorse for initially reclaiming restored ground in open woodlands.
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November 24, 2009 at 6:51 am (botany, ecology, restoration)
Tags: Euonymus obovatus, trailing strawberry bush, Meacham Grove, Maple Grove, controlled burn
by Carl Strang
Recently I described this year’s results in my ongoing study of the trailing strawberry bush, Euonymus obovatus, at Meacham Grove Forest Preserve. There was notable growth in the median size of patches or colonies of the plant in 2009, which may have benefited from a controlled burn that took place there in 2007.
The graph shows that Euonymus patch size dropped in 2008, apparently from burn damage. The jump in 2009 I suspect was the result of the fire’s harming Euonymus competitors and giving the trailing strawberry bush an opening. Trailing strawberry bush colonies approached sizes they had not achieved since the 1980’s. I returned to Meacham Grove, as well as Maple Grove, on November 11 to collect data on leaf miners in maple trees. I found that both study areas had received controlled burns.
At least some of the Euonymus twigs were severely scorched.
Burned stems like the one in the photo represent a setback for the species, but the previous burn helped by reducing the competition. Now I am interested in seeing how this trailing shrub will respond over the coming season.
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November 6, 2009 at 7:12 am (birds, botany, dragonflies and damselflies, insects (other), mammals, reptiles and amphibians, singing insects)
Tags: Asclepias, aster, Baltimore oriole, black-capped chickadee, blue jay, blue-gray gnatcatcher, brown-headed cowbird, chimney swift, chipping sparrow, common grackle, downy woodpecker, eastern bluebird, eastern kingbird, eastern phoebe, Erigeron, Eupatorium, European starling, house wren, mallard, Mayslake, northern flicker, Polygonum, Ranunculus, red-bellied woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, robin, Solidago, song sparrow, tree swallow, white-breasted nuthatch
by Carl Strang
Earlier this week I completed my first year of observations at Mayslake Forest Preserve. Many of the posts in this blog, which also is approaching its first birthday, have shared pieces of Mayslake’s ongoing natural history. It’s appropriate to look back at what I have learned there so far. Today I’ll simply share some numbers, the counts of species I have observed on the preserve to date.
Resident vertebrates include 14 species of mammals, 4 reptiles and 3 amphibians (though additional frogs have been observed at Mayslake by others in recent years). The bird species count is 130, many of which were migrants passing through. I saw evidence for successful nests, fledging at least 1 young, in the following 21 species: eastern bluebird, chimney swift, song sparrow, house wren, eastern kingbird, robin, northern flicker, blue jay, eastern phoebe (cowbird produced), chipping sparrow (cowbird produced), downy woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, red-bellied woodpecker, common grackle, black-capped chickadee, tree swallow, European starling, blue-gray gnatcatcher, Baltimore oriole, white-breasted nuthatch, mallard.
The insect species count is only 97 so far, but most of these belong to 4 groups to which I have directed most of my attention: 26 species of singing insects, 29 dragonflies and damselflies, 24 butterflies and moths, and 6 bumblebees.
Likewise my attention to Mayslake’s vegetation has been limited to certain groups of vascular plants. These include 49 trees (including those planted by landowners prior to forest preserve acquisition), 23 vines and shrubs, and 184 forbs. I’ll elaborate the last a little by mentioning genera represented by 4 or more species: so far I know of 4 Asclepias (milkweeds), 6 Aster, 4 Erigeron (fleabanes), 5 Eupatorium (a diverse genus including Joe Pye weeds, bonesets, and white snakeroot), 4 Polygonum (knotweeds), 5 Ranunculus (buttercups), and 7 Solidago (goldenrods).
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November 4, 2009 at 6:53 am (botany)
Tags: common privet, Culver, Ligustrum vulgare, skunk cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus
by Carl Strang
One thread of investigation from earlier this year followed the early growth of a mysterious seedling that appeared in the middle of winter in a swampy spot at Culver, Indiana. The seedling proved to be a common privet. It soon was overtopped by the large leaves of surrounding skunk cabbages, and I was curious as to whether it would survive. I returned in the last week of October, and after digging carefully through the leaf litter found the seedling.
It was alive, and like nearby mature shrubs of its species still had green leaves that late in the season. I was interested to find that the surrounding skunk cabbages already had prepared their flowering structures.
These will complete their development and begin blooming in late winter, an early sign of that season’s doom.
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October 27, 2009 at 5:38 pm (botany, restoration)
Tags: Alliaria petiolata, experiment, garlic mustard, invasive plants, seedling survival
by Carl Strang
In the spring I began a study of how garlic mustard, a harmful exotic biennial, might best be controlled by manual means. In small areas where the plant is just beginning to invade, and where use of herbicides is undesirable, it is possible to uproot or clip the second-year plants. Results so far indicate that pulling is more effective than clipping, but there is a timing variable to investigate, and I need also to determine whether pulling stimulates an increased germination of seedlings in the following year.
Last week I returned to my study plots to count seedlings at the end of their first season. As the above photo shows, some tree and shrub leaves had fallen, so I carefully removed these to make sure my seedling counts were complete.
I had expected some attrition through competition, but was surprised at the numbers of seedlings that had died. Every single one of the 27 square meters in the study plots showed big drops in numbers of seedlings, even in cases where there were so few that competition between them would seem to be negligible. Where in May seedling counts ranged from 12 to 345 in the square meter areas, in October the counts were 0 to 55. Especially dramatic were the control squares, in which second-year plants had been allowed to proceed to fruiting before I clipped them. There, seedlings had looked weak, but plenty still remained in May. However, the total of 214 seedlings in May had dropped to only 3 seedlings in the 9 square meters of the control treatment by October. Apparently their inhibition by the second year plants had been too great for them to overcome. Attrition in pulled treatment squares had been from 747 to 236 between May and October, and the corresponding numbers for clipped treatment squares were 1002 and 107. Statistical computations supported the difference between controls and both treatments in October counts, but indicated no statistical significance between the two treatments.
Now I wait for spring. I plan to set up new study plots next year, but will apply the same treatments a month later, to see what difference timing makes. I also will return to this year’s plots. I want to follow this year’s seedlings through to their fruiting times, and to see if the numbers of new seedlings in those squares support or reject the notion that pulling increases seed bank germination.
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October 22, 2009 at 7:15 am (birds, botany, ecology)
Tags: Aesculus glabra, cedar waxwing, common buckthorn, European highbush cranberry, false Solomon's seal, food mimicry, mastodon, mutualism, Ohio buckeye, Rhamnus cathartica, robin, seed dispersal, Smilacina racemosa, Solomon's plume, Viburnum opulus
by Carl Strang
Earlier I featured several plants at Mayslake Forest Preserve that produce fruits timed to coincide with the fall migration of berry-eating birds. This mutualistic interaction for the most part benefits the birds, through nutritional provisioning, while the plants get their seeds dispersed. Today I want to feature some outliers to this pattern. Let’s start with Solomon’s plume, also known as false Solomon’s seal.
Like many fall fruits, these advertise themselves to birds with a bright red color. When analyzed, however, the berries proved to be junk food, or perhaps are more accurately described as food mimics (White and Stiles 1985, Ecology 66:303-307). The plants save their energy, investing no nutritional value in these fruits. The ruse works, apparently, by exploiting the naïve instinctive response of first-time autumn migrants, the young of the year. A little different from this is the offering of the European highbush cranberry.
Another study (Witmer 2001, Ecology 82:3120-3130) showed that the nutritional value of these berries becomes available only when they are consumed along with a significant protein source. I was impressed to learn that, like the waxwings native to the shrub’s European home, our North American cedar waxwings ignore these tempting berries until spring, when cottonwoods or other poplars are flowering. Then the birds consume the berries along with cottonwood catkins, protein in the pollen providing access to the berries’ nutritional value.
These black berries are common buckthorn fruits. They generally are ignored by birds until late winter when, apparently, the better quality foods have been depleted. Then, robins and waxwings consume them, unfortunately dispersing the seeds throughout our woodlands. Buckthorns leaf out early and lose their leaves late, casting a shade so dense that no other plants can grow beneath them. This is why these Eurasian shrubs must be removed at the beginning of woodland restoration projects. A final fruit is of no interest to birds.
Ohio buckeyes in fact are largely ignored by animals generally. This opens the possibility that, like other trees I discussed earlier, buckeyes may have been dispersed by now-extinct mastodons and other large herbivores.
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October 13, 2009 at 5:50 am (botany, ecology, history (human), methods)
Tags: Acer saccharum, beech, Carya, Culver, Culver Military Academy, dry forest, Fagus grandifolia, fish hatchery, hickory, Larix laricina, Marshall County Indiana, Maxinkuckee Moraine, mesic forest, Moore Lake, oak, original land survey, Quercus, savanna, soils map, sugar maple, swamp, tamarack, The Nature Conservancy, Union Township
by Carl Strang
Yesterday I began to recount my study of what my home township in Indiana was like in the 1830’s, before Americans began to transform it from wilderness to a predominantly agricultural landscape. Here is a more detailed line drawing of the final map.
The surveyors’ description provided enough information for me to rough out the map. Getting to the final version required another step. I acquired a soils map of Marshall County, and looked for correlations between soil types and vegetation categories as the surveyors described them. A specialist might have done it differently, but for my part I was satisfied that the correlations were good enough to draw the detailed boundaries of vegetation areas by combining the surveyors’ records with the finer-scale soils map.
Of the various communities defined by woody plants, swamps are the ones most absent from today’s Union Township. The characteristic swamp tree was the tamarack. Here is some foliage of that species, which is unusual in that it is a deciduous conifer.
I remember seeing a tamarack tree at the old state fish hatchery that was formed out of the south end of Moore Lake, but that tree died years ago and I know of none surviving in the township today. There are bits of shrub swamps here and there.
A relatively moist (mesic) forest occupied much of the east half of the township, on the rolling Maxinkuckee Moraine. Sugar maples and beeches were characteristic trees, though not necessarily the dominant ones. A remnant of this forest is preserved by the Culver Military Academy in its Bird Sanctuary.
Dry forests and savannas were dominated by oaks and hickories, which grew on more sandy soils. They represent a continuum, with the forests shading the ground fully in the summer and the savannas’ trees scattered enough that prairie-like vegetation grew between them. A forest of this type was the site of the town now known as Culver. Gradually over my lifetime I have noted the passing, one by one, of the town’s largest surviving old oaks that were part of that forest. Dry forests persist mainly in the many “wood lots” preserved by the township’s farmers.
I am grateful to all the individuals and organizations, from private landowners to The Nature Conservancy, who have made the commitment to preserve and restore these reminders of the wilderness that once was.
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October 12, 2009 at 6:24 am (botany, ecology, history (human), methods, restoration)
Tags: Culver, Houghton Lake, Lake Maxinkuckee, Lost Lake, marsh, Marshall County Indiana, Moore Lake, pitcher plant, prairie, presettlement vegetation map, sedge meadow, sundew
by Carl Strang
The places we live and work all were wilderness at one time. National parks, state parks, and nature preserves protect and restore areas intended to represent the landscape as it was before large scale agriculture began the sequence of alterations that have brought us to the present day. A number of studies have produced maps showing, in some detail, what the counties of northeast Illinois looked like 200 years ago. In the late 1980’s I decided to do the same for my home area, Union Township in Marshall County, Indiana. Here is a watercolor rendering of my results.
I was reminded of that project by Scott’s excellent recent post on Houghton Lake in his blog, Through Handlens and Binoculars. Houghton Lake is the small lake closest to the map’s upper left corner. Recently it was acquired by The Nature Conservancy, and is getting the attention needed to preserve the rare plants and vegetation communities that have persisted there.
My mapping study began with a visit to the County Surveyor’s office in Plymouth, the county seat, to copy the original survey notes. Two different surveyors explored the local wilderness in 1834 and 1836, marking out the land on behalf of the federal government for purchase by American farmers. The 1836 survey covered the Indian reservations east of Lake Maxinkuckee, the township’s largest lake. That land became available to eastern farmers after the forced removal of the Potawatomis via the Trail of Death in 1838.
The surveyors’ main job was to mark the section corners and quarter-section corners (a section is a square mile). They also described the land, so that potential buyers back east could make informed choices. For example, after passing through what is now the center of the town of Culver, on Maxinkuckee’s west shore, surveyor David Hillis wrote, “Land rolling. 3d rate. Hickory etc.” Usually the description was dispassionate, but sometimes a surveyor revealed the sweat and discomfort of the experience. After crossing an extensive marsh at the south end of Maxinkuckee, Jeremiah Smith allowed, “In Sec. 34, at 1.20 (an) inlet 80L. wide coming from S.E. A nasty place.”
One of the surveyor’s helpers blazed and inscribed two “witness trees” at each section corner. The surveyor wrote down the species of tree along with its distance and direction from the corner. The tree species suggests to us what kind of vegetation community occupied that corner, and the tree’s distance from the corner hints at how close together the trees grew in that spot.
The surveyors also were careful to map the edges of lakes and rivers. In Union Township only Lake Maxinkuckee and Lost Lake, off its west edge, still have their 1834 outlines. Houghton Lake, and Moore Lake beside it, today are remnants of the larger water bodies they were in the early 1800’s. Two other lakes in the west-central part of the township no longer exist. They were shallow and easily drained for agricultural purposes before 1900.
Plant communities described by the surveyors as “wet prairies” or “marshes” were extensive mixtures of cattail marshes, sedge meadows and wet to moist prairies. Some of these featured insect-eating plants, the pitcher plants and sundews. See Scott’s post for photographs of some of the botanical beauty preserved around Houghton Lake. I’ll continue this account tomorrow.
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October 9, 2009 at 6:16 am (botany, gardening)
Tags: garden, Solomon's seal, Polygonatum biflorum, gardening, kale, chard, zig-zag goldenrod, broad-leaved goldenrod, Solidago flexicaulis, Culver's root, Veronicastrum virginicum, Virginia creeper, Parthenocissus quinquefolia
by Carl Strang
In earlier posts I described the gardens around my home and this year’s experiments in which I am trying to improve them. In one experiment I trimmed patches of zigzag goldenrod and Culver’s root so as to get progressive increases in height front to back, hoping to produce little walls of flowers. The best result was in the sunnier patch of goldenrods behind the urn.
The effect is being enhanced day by day as the Virginia creepers on the nearby silver maples increase in color.
Earlier I mentioned how the Culver’s root did not respond well to the trimming. I still suspect that this year’s cool cloudy summer had an impact there. On the other hand, I’m convinced that such trimming will not work in the shadier part of the garden, so next year I will apply the same treatment only in the sunny area.
As shown above, the urn was a good addition. I also like how the variegated Solomon’s seals worked out.
Finally, in the vegetable garden, I got very poor results with Swiss chard, but the Tuscan kale grew well and I will expand its allotment next year.
Soon we enter the season when gardeners dream their plans for next year.
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