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Sharrots Beach Cleanup
By Don Recklies, Naturalist
Protectors’
171st Forest Restoration, Sept. 25, 2010
Saturday, September 25th Protectors took part in the Ocean
Conservancy’s annual International Coastal Cleanup. Chuck Perry recorded that eleven volunteers
combed the Sharrots Avenue beach by the fishing pier to bag and itemize 245
lbs. of debris in a three hour work session.
Picking and bagging wasn’t so bad, but itemizing the trash as always
was a chore. We had to separate the
trash into categories such as plastic bags and wrappers (which some marine
turtles and seabirds mistakenly consume as food), bottle caps, fishing
debris, sanitary items, etcetera, and count and record the number in each group. This task isn’t an ordinary part of most
clean-ups, but is done on this particular occasion so that the Ocean
Conservancy can continue to build a database that can be used to monitor the
health of our shorelines and indicate where more attention is needed. Two hundred and forty-five pounds might
seem like a lot of trash for such a small area - especially when much of it
was small items like bottle caps - but in the past we have collected many
times that much from this same beach.
To my mind the beach was extraordinarily clean on this particular
Saturday, and as a bonus, there were very few Sandbur seeds with needle-like
spines to stab through our gloves or socks when our attention wandered!
We missed the participation of several of our regulars who
were obliged to take part in a road cleanup along Manor Road as part of the
campaign to save Pouch Camp, and they in turn missed a the sunny but increasingly warm morning
on the beach. Chuck had been
under the weather and unable to pick up the bags and gloves provided by
the American Littoral Society, but rallied to show up with the paperwork,
just enough gloves from last year’s cleanup to go around, and contractor bags
he purchased along the way. These had
no drawstrings and were heavier and more difficult to tie than our normal
bags, but on the other hand we didn’t have to worry about trash cutting
through them as we carried them back and forth along the beach. Dom Durso returned from Manor Road at noon
to help us finish our accounting and bagging.
We noted the items of special concern or interest and by 12:30 had
lugged the bags to a pick-up point by the dolphin at the corner of the
parking lot. Last year the item of
concern was a large quantity of hypodermic needles found under the pier, but
this year there were only a few that had washed up along the beach. This year’s item of special interest was a
large bag of unwrapped fireworks that for some reason had been abandoned
above the high tide line.
As usual, Protectors provided refreshments, although the
choice of chocolate fudge covered cookies was a rather poor choice for
noontime temperatures (mea culpa). The
tide was low about 9:00 a.m. and without getting wet we could easily cross
the small inlet between the pier area and the navigation beacon to the east
to collect further along the beach.
The high bluff there has been much eroded by recent storms, and small
trees and shrubs cling to the sharp edge above as if their life depends on
it...occasional tangles of bare roots and branches lying on the beach below
are witness to those that lost their grip.
New swaths of red sand have been exposed, and on these new bared
slopes patches of Trailing Wild Bean (Strophostyles helvula) have
taken advantage of the lack of competition to gain a foothold. From a distance they looked like some kind
of Ivy had tried to colonize the slope, but up close one saw a few small pink
pea blossoms clinging tight to the vines and everywhere slender curving pods
of pea seeds. Here and there a few
clumps of Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans), usually found a bit
higher on the slope, have ridden down with the eroding soil and for now are
making a precarious existence just above the high tide line. I doubt they can live that close to the
saltwater for very long.
After the cleanup several of us look a turn around the
grounds of the Mt. Loretto Unique Area and the trails of North Mount Loretto
State Forest, parts of the former Catholic Orphanage at Mt. Loretto that are
now state property and managed by the New York State DEC. One of the most enjoyable things about Mt.
Loretto is the change of vista from maritime views of the Raritan Bay looking
south from the bluffs above the shore to views of the woods to the north
beyond the grasslands that slope down
to Hylan Boulevard. Up on the bluff
there have been a significant changes this summer: the storms of the past few
years have eroded the bluff to such a degree that the state found it
necessary to add a new section of road inland of the road along the
bluff. Close to the bluff some of the
viewpoints now are lined with caution tape and more “Area Closed” signs have
appeared. I’ve been told the existing
- and now precarious - road was itself a replacement for an earlier road
taken by the encroaching bay.
Eventually all of this bluff may succumb to the sea, nibbled away bit
by bit.
High on the grassland extensive, bright yellow patches of
goldenrod, probably the most common wildflower of the season were most
striking. There are estimated to be as
many as 100 species of this fall flower, and my Peterson field guide lists 29
in the Northeast alone. The total
number is little agreed upon; many are thought to hybridize readily and the
taxonomist “lumpers“ suggest that a good number of these species are hybrids
or merely variants of a much smaller number of core species than the “splitters”
suggest exist. Along the shore
Sea-side Goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) with its thick, waxy leaves and large - at
least for a goldenrod - blossoms was in bloom, while in the upland fields
there was Rough-stemmed Goldenrod (Solidago rugosa) and several
others. In this season goldenrod seems
to be both the most numerous flower and the most numerous species, with the
possible exception of the various asters.
Goldenrod may also harbor the most numerous insects. If the weather is the least bit warm casual
passers-by can’t help but notice the flies, wasps and bees attracted to the
nectar and pollen of the flowers. A
look at a goldenrod blossom with a hand lens reveals that they are actually composite
flowers like those of the aster and New York Ironweed. Each large seemingly single flower is
actually a bouquet of much smaller ones.
A lens reveals that what at first seems to a single tiny flower petal
is actually a minute individual flower itself. Goldenrod is said to produce relatively
little nectar but much pollen and therefore is attractive to pollen
collecting bees and pollen consuming beetles, but because the individual
flowers are so concentrated it is profitable for nectar sippers like
migrating Monarch butterflies to feed as well. A visit on the following Saturday
discovered numerous, large, Mexico bound, migrating Monarchs flitting about
the upland flowers where they seemed to prefer the yellow-centered,
purple-rayed New England Asters (what is now known as Symphyotrichum
novae-angliae) to the goldenrods.
There were also numerous migrating Common Buckeyes (Junonia coenia)
each with a row of stunning blue-centered, orange-tinged eyespots along the
margin of their upper wings, nectaring to fuel their journey to our southern
states. The eyespots are said to help
deter predators. These butterflies
were wary, flitting away each time I crept close with my camera, and when
they landed and folded their wings so only the plainer lower surfaces were
visible, they almost disappeared.
These are in family of “brush footed” butterflies whose 1st
pair of six legs have been reduced in size to small, hairy, tactile feelers
so that when they walk they must use only the other four, but this I couldn’t
get close enough to see. When I looked
back to the Monarchs, they had put the
lie to my observation that they preferred the asters: each and every one was
now feeding on goldenrod.
Among these pollen and nectar consuming vegetarians there
are insectivores as well; predatory
beetles, crab spiders, and ambush bugs among others lurk on the
underside of flower stems.
Amber-colored ambush bugs seemed to be numerous, tucked under the
blossoms where they wait to nab their unsuspecting prey with mantis-like forelegs
and suck the life out of them. That’s
not just a glib phrase, it is precisely what ambush bugs do. Ambush bugs are grouped in the hemiptera,
which include insects with forewings that are partly a hard shell toward the
front and membranous behind, and have mouthparts adapted to sucking rather
than scraping, biting or chewing. We
use the phrase “mouth parts” because insect mouths originate as combinations
of six highly modified “appendages” on their heads, and in the case of bugs
these parts are arranged to form a tube, rather like a hypodermic
needle. Once the bugs have grasped
their prey, they puncture it with this tube-lie beak and inject a saliva
which quickly kills and begins to liquify the flesh. After the saliva has done its work, the
bugs suck out the now liquified contents, leaving behind a dry husk. This is often called “external digestion”,
and spiders feed the same way.
Sometimes one will find motionless flies and bees perched upon flowers
as if they were asleep, and frequently these are shells of those who have
been sucked dry. As far as we large
animals are concerned, ambush bugs are relatively harmless, but some bugs,
especially some water bugs, can inflict a painful bite, and the depredations
of bedbugs are now well known in New York City. Some serious diseases are born by bugs,
although this is mostly a problem toward the tropics. (Chagas’ disease, for instance, a
debilitating ailment caused by a parasitic micro-organism, is transmitted by
Conenose bugs, also known as “kissing bugs”,
in Latin America, and has been occasionally encountered in Texas.)
Rain has been light and infrequent this summer, and the
woods show the effect; isolated, shallow pools that are usually wet for most
of the year have become mud holes bordered by grasses and opportunistic
herbs; trees have lost many of their leaves as if autumn was well under way
and some trees (especially noticeable throughout the city in younger street
trees) display bare crowns. What would
usually still be moist green woods are littered with dry, brown fallen
leaves, and our feet kicked up dust from dry, parched trails. Many of the normally water filled pools in
the woods closer to Amboy Road have become meadow-like and carpeted with smart
weed, whose seeds will later benefit our winter birds, or are being invaded
by grasses, including the unwanted Japanese Stilt Grass. I don’t know that our area has “officially”
suffered drought, but the woods this summer clearly display a lack of
water. The perched pool below the
former Bishop’s residence, where there must be an underlying lens of
impervious clay or cemented sand that retain water, was dry and patterned
with cracked mud. There was nothing
much there for herons to hunt this season.
Even a good sealed bottom doesn’t help when no rains fall.
What does happen to our trees and other plants when things
go dry? Water is a necessity for all
living things. In plants nutrients are
carried in water solution between roots and leaves, and all their life
process cannot go on without it. It is
fundamental to the green plant process of photosynthesis in which the energy
of sunlight is used to synthesize carbohydrate foodstuffs from carbon dioxide
and water. Most plants, even the
larger woody plants, to some degree maintain their shape by water pressure,
what we term turgor, and by controlling evaporation from their leaves
help regulate their temperature. When
dry conditions lower the water table and the water supply begins to peter
out, all kinds of things begin to go wrong.
When the tiny root hairs of trees - the business end of
the roots - cannot absorb enough of the water trapped in the minute pores of
surrounding soil particles, the amount of water that can be delivered to the
leaves through the conductive tissue in the trees’ woody parts is
reduced. The trees respond by closing
the minute pores called stoma
that are usually found on the lower side of their leaves. The stomata are the openings through which
carbon dioxide and other gasses (including water vapor) enter and depart the
leaves, a process called transpiration. Under a microscope these pores may be seen
surrounded by two curved, sausage-shaped guard cells which contract and
expand to control the size of opening.
These work automatically depending upon the humidity; their cell walls
are thinner on the sides opposite the opening of the pore and when humidity
is high they absorb water bowing apart and increasing the size of the
opening. This is a rather neat
mechanism - it wouldn’t be a very useful thing if they needed water so that
they could respond to a lack of water!
Closing the stomata reduces transpiration from the leaves and helps
maintain water pressure within the tree.
So long as the dark hours are a little humid and some water still reaches the leaves, the stomata
may open toward evening so that life functions can go on. The metabolism of the plant can go on at
night, although in the absence of light photosynthesis doesn’t occur and the
plant functions using oxygen, just as we do.
If the dry period continues and becomes a drought,
closing the stomata cannot totally prevent water loss and the plants begin to
wilt; herbaceous plants begin to collapse to the ground and the leaves of
trees become thin and begin to curl. (Drought seems to be ill-defined, the National
Weather Service employs a formula called the Palmer Drought Index which uses
temperature and rainfall to calculate soil moisture and the severity of
drought. The State of New York
estimates drought conditions by employing that index and measuring stream
flows, reservoir storage and groundwater levels, then compares the results
with historic data. The lowest level
of warning is a “drought watch”, and our neighbors in New Jersey have been in
that condition since early September, but I am not aware that the condition
has been declared in New York.) The
woody plants - trees, shrubs and certain tough vines - maintain their outward
shape because of their woody structure, and to some degree their leaves do
the same, although the leaves of some trees have more woody structure than
others and tend to maintain their shape even when turgor within the leaf is
reduced. The American Holly, for
instance, has very hard, waxy leaves, and although they curl, they don’t
collapse as do some others, such as the leaves of the Tulip tree. The leaves of most trees, however, depend
on water pressure to help maintain their shape and orientation to the
sun. Depending on the species and
environment, a tree normally consumes a surprising amount of water each day,
50 gallons a day being a commonly cited figure. The USGS says that a large oak in the
mid-Atlantic states can transpire 40,000 gallons of water a year - that works
out to be over 100 gallons a day!
Evaporating water extracts considerable heat energy as it turns to a gas,
and all that evaporating water helps the tree maintain a survivable leaf
temperature during very hot weather.
(Water evaporation is nature’s air-conditioning. A check of heat of evaporation tables shoes
that each pound of water extracts 970 BTUs of heat energy when it changes
from a liquid to a vapor - that makes for a decent natural
air-conditioner.) When water is not
available for cooling, wilting leaves droop and escape more direct exposure
to the rays of the sun; this helps compensate somewhat for the increasing
heat.
Plants can’t foretell - as far as we know - the severity
of a dry period, so most respond to dryness in stages. Their first step is the closing of stomata
during the heat of the day; the second wilting. However, at some point continued lack of
water becomes severe enough that plants must resort to more desperate
measures; growth ceases in favor of simple survival. (Many observations of plant responses to
dry conditions are a result of studies for agricultural crops such as
soybeans, and one assumes that the response of wild relatives is the
same.) Trees may respond as if autumn
had arrived by dropping more and more leaves.
If the drought has not been too severe, trees form an abscission layer
where leaf stems were connected to their branchlets. This layer plugs up water vessels that once
connected to the veins of the leaf and forms a weak zone where the leaf stem
will separate from the branch. If the
drought is too sudden and severe, the tree may not have time to complete the
process properly so that dry leaves tend to remain on the tree and water
brought up from the roots will continue to evaporate away.
The immediate effects of a severe drought can be
obvious. We see wilting and dropping
leaves, leaves becoming thin, crisp and brown and curled on the margins, the
crowns of some trees becoming bare and dying - forest trails becomes dusty,
the unique scent of wet earth is lost, and pools normally water-filled year
round become wet meadows. Other
effects, however, are more subtle, and may be delayed. Just as stress makes us more susceptible to
injury and disease, the same occurs with plants. During a normal year, various plants have
a spectrum of techniques to cope with disease and herbivores; they produce
anti-biotic compounds that inhibit the growth of micro-organisms and fungi
and compounds that are distasteful or even poisonous to browsers such as the
tannins of Oaks (tannins must be very ancient countermeasures, however,
considering the great number of insects that have adapted to feeding on
oaks). Some plants grow “mechanical”
deterrents such as minute hairs called tricomes that discourage insect
climbers, and milkweeds produce an alkaloid sap that is both a chemical and
mechanical deterrent, poisoning and gumming up the mouthparts of insect
herbivores. (Goldenrod is also a latex
producer. In fact Thomas Edison tried
to grow goldenrod with a high latex content and experimented with processes
of converting it to usable rubber.
Although he produced some rubber items as a test, he never succeeded
in making the process commercially viable.)
Producing these defenses, however, requires the expenditure of much
energy, and the chemical process involved requires water. As the water supply diminishes the
defensive activities shut down and insects take advantage. Foresters are aware that wood boring
beetles become more of a problem in drought years, and that the wounds
created by emerging adults or egg-laying beetles make trees susceptible to
subsequent fungal infections. This is
especially true with conifers when drought causes the trees to produce less
pitch and beetles then find it easier to penetrate the bark.
A dry season can also affect the appearances of trees and
other plants in subtle ways. We are
aware that most of the leaves we see on trees this year grow from buds
produced during the previous growing season.
A dry period during the season of bud formation may result in fewer
buds and therefore fewer leaves and shoots the next year. Also, many trees and shrubs have a period
of rapid stem extension during the spring period of bud break. If dryness occurs at that time, the
resulting leafy twigs may appear to be bushy and compact. Much depends on just when in the season
dryness occurs.
In dry times animals usually
have it easier than plants since most of them can follow the water. Some, however, don’t have that option,
either being too small or too slow to move a significant distance when things
go dry, or, like amphibians, often constrained from moving long distances
overland by the necessity to keep their skin moist. As the soil dries out many frogs and
salamanders crawl under rocks and logs or retreat to the edges of streams and
pools where, if the dry conditions persist, they burrow into the muddy banks
and become torpid in the hope that moisture trapped in the soil will
persist. They assume a state of
lowered metabolism similar to that of animals which hibernate in winter,
although this being summer we call it aestivation, not
hibernation. Turtles can do somewhat
the same, and are probably more successful with this strategy since they are
better equipped to dig in, although some can travel long distances overland
to find shelter. Painted Turtles (Chrysemys
picta), for instance, have been known to travel overland two miles and
more to find shelters for aestivation in woods and fields. One wonders whether the turtles in the
small Mt. Loretto pond perched just below the former Bishop’s residence have
dug themselves into what is now a cracking mud flat or if they made their way
downhill to the ponds below.
Then there are the even tinier
insects and other invertebrates that inhabit vernal pools. (A vernal pool is the name given to a
temporary water hole that fills in the spring rains and gradually dries out
through the subsequent season. Perhaps
ephemeral pool would be a better choice of words in this case since it
encompasses all temporary pools whether they fill in the spring or the
fall.) Many of these tiny creatures
prosper specifically because the pools are ephemeral and do not support
populations of fish which would quickly devour them. The invertebrate creatures that inhabit
ephemeral pools have evolved strategies to deal with dry conditions, and
their life cycles are usually timed to match the filling and drying of those
pools. The nymphs of early dragonflies, for instance, are timed
to metamorphose to winged adults before their pools dry in the heat of
summer. However, all seasons are not
the same, and to survive they must accommodate seasons of early drying. As pools dry prematurely, some can
accelerate their life cycles, and if they metamorphose to an adult state as
do frogs and most insects, they may simply mature more quickly to become
smaller than normal adults. Some
snails, aquatic worms and other invertebrates seal themselves off in cysts to
weather the dry period, and spring back to life later when re-hydrated. Fairy Shrimp, small crustaceans that are
regular inhabitants of most vernal pools produce eggs that can lie in dry
pool basins for long periods to await the next rainy season. Sometimes, however, the environment simply
dries too quickly or too soon, and the inhabitants of these pools are doomed. Limnologists (that is the name given to
scientists that study the ecology of these pools) are aware that often over a
period of years the species of invertebrates in a given pool may change
dramatically because of unexpected drought or flood conditions. Sometimes an entire species may disappear
only to be replaced by immigrants of a
closely related species in a process we call recruitment. New arrivals, too small and weak to get
from one pool to another, may be carried in on the feathers and feet of birds
or the fur of mammals, or washed in by flood waters. Bigger but still weak travelers such as
many amphibians may be recruited if there are other populations in nearby
pools, but this can’t happen if other populations or pools don’t exist
nearby. This may be one of the reasons
that so many frogs and salamanders that were here historically have
disappeared from Staten Island . We
may have paved and culverted over too many places from which new creatures
could have been recruited when those in a local pool died out.
The fungi too seem to have
suffered in the drought. Long Pond
and Northern Mount Loretto have always displayed a good variety of mushrooms,
but this summer - except for a quick flush of boletes (the capped mushrooms
that have pores instead of gills beneath) that I managed to miss - walks
there have turned up only a few sorry specimens. The mycelia of the mushrooms that produce
caps are very dependent on moisture to pop their fruiting bodies out of the
ground. If conditions are ripe to
produce spores, they assemble tiny lumps called primordia in the
substrate they grow upon. These are
very much embryo mushrooms, and when the time is right, producing the cap is
mostly a process of enlargement by the absorption of water. This is the reason some mushrooms can
appear to pop up very quickly. They
don’t really have to grow a lot of new tissue, they just have to absorb water
and expand. When conditions are too
dry, the threadlike mycelia retreat deeper into the wood or soil, and won’t
attempt to produce what would probably be unsuccessful fruiting bodies; and
this may be what has happened with most of our mushrooms this summer. A few days before the beach cleanup there
was some rain, however, and the piles of woods chips mounded in the shade
beside the Cunningham Road entrance to northern Mount Loretto were
impressively dotted with two types of late season gilled mushrooms: the
Reddening Lepiota (Lepiota americana), and Onion Stalked Lepiota (Lepiota
cepaestipes). These are both white
spored mushrooms with a ring on their stalks that appear in clusters on wood
debris (the clustered habit mycologists call cespitose). The Reddening Lepiotas have rings of scales
on their caps that turn brown as the caps age, making them look somewhat like
fragmented bull-eyes on a stalk, and the Onion-stalked Lepiotas are covered
with powdery white scales. (As a
nemonic I liked to think of them as dusted with powdered onion, but that didn’t
prevent me from calling them “Onion-scaled” lepiotas.) Of more concern to mycophagists, we found
the first Hen-of-the-Woods (Grifola frondosa) on the base of a nearby
Beech, and this very edible, leafy brown fungus will probably be found at the
base of infected deciduous trees for several weeks. There were also, I thought, an unusual
number of Beech Drops (Epifagus virginiana) springing up around many
of the Beeches in the forest, and I wondered if perhaps drought stressed
Beeches were less able to cope with the assault of these parasitic,
chlorophyll-lacking root parasites than they would be in a wetter season. A web search revealed no useful
information; if I were a more competent observer and frequent visitor, I’d
mark a few of these spots to see what happens in subsequent years.
As I finish writing this we’ve
had a week with some heavy rains, and the woods are looking better, but it’s
late in the year and the rain is too late for most of the growing season, but
perhaps soon enough to allow the trees to revive and complete their fall
cycle. Whether we get any good fall
color, however, is still in question.
Foresters say that once a tree
has become dormant because of drought, it takes several days for the stomata
to fully open, and sometimes a week or more before the chemical machinery of
the leaf starts up again. Many trees
in our woods have already shed large numbers of leaves, and these are mostly
brown. Eastern Cottonwood (Populus
deltoides) seems to have been especially affected by the dry weather
having dropped what seems to be about half of its leaves and the remainder,
although green, hanging limp and wilted.
Because lately fall color seemed to be reaching its height later in
the season, we chose to push back Protectors’ fall 10 mile hike to the end of
October. Because of summer dryness
that may have been an error this year, but we’ll see.
Although I’ve concentrated on
dry conditions here, it would be well to mention a happier wet one. You may recall that about a year and a half
ago Protectors contributed $3500 to the New York State Department of Parks,
Recreation and Historic Preservation to help defray the expense of repairing
a broken overflow drain at Tappan’s Pond in Clay Pit Ponds State Park and
Preserve. On a visit to Clay Pits, we
discovered that Tappan’s Pond, normally wet year round, had become dry. An overflow pipe in the pond had broken at
the bottom where it connected to a culvert emptying into the park on the
opposite side of the horse trail overlooking the pond, and the pond had
drained. On inquiring, we found that
the state already had received donated funds for about half of the repair, so
we agreed to provide the balance. Work
began in the fall of last year with hope that the pond could be filled by the
fall rains, but some error in planning required that permits be reviewed, and
work halted with new culvert pipes lying alongside the closed horse trail and
the concrete case for the overflow drain waiting to be set in place in the
dry pond. Given the state budget
crisis we feared that the work might be delayed indefinitely. The Saturday following our restoration I
had occasion to visit the pond, and was pleasantly surprised to find it full
to the brim, and water from Monday’s heavy rain was flowing though the
overflow grate into the lower section of the park. We should all be pleased to have helped
bring that pond back to life.
Finally, a correction. In a “senior moment” when writing the
report following last month’s Forest Restoration I attributed the authorship
of the Nation Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms to
Gary Larson (the cartoonist) instead of Gary Lincoff, the noted New York
mycologist with whom I’ve had the pleasure of going on numerous forays. He has his own wry sense of humor and would
probably be amused at the transposition.
DfR October 9, 2010
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