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Cleanup at Latourette Blue Trail
By Don Recklies, Naturalist
Forest Restoration Workshop #185
Nov. 19, 2011
Photo of
Participants
Once again Protectors was
fortunate in the weather for its 185th Forest Restoration workshop. The temperature climbed through the 50's as
we assembled beside old St. Andrew’s Church at LaTourette and the sky was
bright and clear. We were a larger
group than usual with the addition of Girl Scout Troop 5365. All told, including the moms and regular
Protectors’ participants, we numbered 20, and made a long procession down the
bike trail to our work area where the Blue Trail ascends to the Golf
Course. We passed out gloves and
clippers before we started out so that everyone would be prepared to hack
away at Japanese Honeysuckle and Oriental Bittersweet on saplings beside the
trail, and as soon as we got to the work area the girls set to despite
suffering encounters with the thorns of unfriendly Multiflora
Rose. I had to admire how self sufficient and co-operative they were, especially
when confronted with large bittersweet vines.
Where necessary they just ganged up together, and the vines didn’t
stand a chance. Jeanne at High Rock
had loaned us several of their small hand loppers which proved especially
useful on the larger bittersweet vines.
Our practice is to cut the vines as close to the ground as we can and
then again as high on the trees as we can reach, unwrapping the vines
wherever possible. Our own big loppers
would have been difficult for some of the girls to heft at arms length, but these smaller loppers were just right
for everyone. We’ll have to get some
of our own for our workshops.
This was a day for
raptors; I counted six on our walk along the bike path (I know; it’s really a
muti-use trail, but we’re accustomed to calling it
the bike path, so I’ll continue to do so), seven if you count a Turkey
Vulture, the black V of its underwings wobbling
overhead as it searched for its day’s meal.
The first bird of prey overflew us close to where the Hessian Spring
flows under the bike path, and was obscured by overarching but leafless tree
branches. None-the-less I ID’d it confidently by calling out “big hawk!” The bike path hasn’t been repaired where
this year’s heavy rains have eroded the crushed stone as far down as the
underlying layer of landscaping cloth, and now that section of the path is
somewhat like the Old Mill Road used to be, where the Hessian Spring created
pools and ruts passing across the road to the marsh below. Given the current budget crisis in all city
agencies, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for a speedy repair. Repair will probably require truckloads of
crushed stone and compaction by a construction roller, and a permanent repair
might even require excavating and enlarging the drains that are supposed to
conduct the waters of the spring under the path. The majority of the path is in good shape,
however, and throughout the day several joggers passed by us, untroubled by
the ruts. When we left to return our
tools to High Rock, there was even a pair of unicyclists entering the
path.
The second raptor we
encountered was a Cooper’s Hawk with long, narrow tail, which dove down the
hill from the golf course, flew low across the path, threaded through and
disappeared behind a screen of trees close to the marsh. Later, close to the grove of pines between
the bike path and the marsh, a male Harrier (formerly called the Marsh Hawk,
a much more descriptive name given its habitat) circled a few times and
disappeared low over the marsh. I’m
abashed to say that, poor birder that I am, I didn’t ID it until I got home
and consulted a field guide, despite lately having attended Peter Dorosh’s raptor workshop at the Brooklyn Bird Club. Workshops are all well and good, but they
don’t help much if you don’t get out and do the fieldwork. Most of our adult hawks show little
variation in appearance of males and females, but with harriers the
appearance and size difference is exaggerated; the adult female is larger and
from below shows grey, banded wings, whereas the underside of the smaller
male is whitish, with black wing tips.
Later in the day we saw a pair of Red-tailed Hawks circling and
calling to each other above Richmond Hill Road; probably these two were still
part of a family group whose youngsters hadn’t yet been driven off by the
adults. The scream of the Red-tail, as
far as I’m concerned, is our iconic hawk call and the only call of local
hawks worthy of comment. Despite their
presence in urban parks and growing propensity to nest on city buildings, their call evokes a hair-raising
sense of wilderness - the wolf howl of birds - and the calls of other hawks
are wimpy by comparison.
After the Restoration and a break for
Elaine’s cookies and bananas, the troop, leader and moms as well, took a
short walk in through part of LaTourette.
( I think I should mention that Dom has been supplying the water and
Elaine has been bringing refreshments to our restorations at their own
expense, so when you see the phrase “Protectors will supply refreshments,”
think of thanking Dom and, especially, Elaine.) We ascended a hill overlooking the marsh by
following a former loop of the Blue Trail.
We stopped at the top for a view over the marsh that would have been
totally obscured earlier in the season, and then crunched back down to the bike
path through drifts of red and brown oak leaves. I had hoped that we might enjoy a little
bit of fall color, but courtesy of the October snow 90% of the leaves had
already fallen and their crunchy drifts obscured the old trail, covering
stones and fallen branches and making it necessary to shuffle our feet lest
we be tripped up by hidden debris.
This is the season when one has to either know the trails or be
observant of trail blazes, since the fallen leaves
often make it impossible to discern the trail on the ground. A little later the leaves will have been
shredded and trampled by many feet, making the trails easy to follow again,
but for now everything is just a mottled carpet of brown.
Back at the bike path we
continued toward the model airplane field until we came to where a former branch
of the Yellow Trail - now relocated - crossed the stream toward the SI Mall
and Yukon Avenue. There we stopped
where the old remnants of one of the mill works stands in the stream. Since rides home would be waiting for the
scouts at 1:30, we went no further and turned back along the paved path,
pausing where we could see the remnants of the longest of the dams that once
stored water for the mills at LaTourette.
It appears as a leafy mound that stretches away toward Forest Hill
Road across the creek, but in a few places one can still see the stone
foundation where earth has fallen away from the sides. The last lap of our walk was back to St.
Andrews by the Blue Trail on the top of the ridge by the golf course. The older girls took the lead, and, thanks
to their sharp eyes - or perhaps to a recent re-blazing by the trail
maintainer - didn’t miss the turn downhill away from the green as do most
hikers on the trail (newcomers to the trail often miss the turn and find
themselves on a high green of the back nine to the puzzlement - and annoyance
- of the golfers). We stopped at the
Hessian Spring to allow the tail of the line to catch up, and found the edges
of the spring spotted with fresh, bright green, opposite leaves of Stinging
Nettles. In the late spring and summer
these nettles make crossing the Hessian Spring a challenge for those wearing
shorts and short sleeves, especially since in that damp, fertile area the
nettles can grow to more than 4 or 5 feet high. Our skin was covered, however, and these
nettles were only a few inches tall. A
look at the leaves and stems with a hand lens revealed almost transparent,
thin green stinging hairs filled with a irritating
cocktail of histamine and formic acid that make this plant so unpleasant to
encounter, but there seemed to be many fewer hairs than were on the summer
plants.
Having foraged for fresh
nettles in the spring, I was surprised to find them flourishing in November,
and wondered if there was always such a flush of growth in fall, or if these
nettles had been tricked by the season.
Last year we had an unusually long and warm fall, and I recalled
seeing mature, healthy Stinging Nettle at Reed’s Basket Willow Swamp in
December growing alongside frost blighted tips of Skunk Cabbage. Stinging Nettles are perennial plants,
dying back in Autumn and regrowing from their roots
in Spring, and I wondered if the nettles at the Hessian Spring had suffered
some trick and begun to throw up new shoots unseasonally.
A check of the more
reliable web sites found that our common stinging nettle, Urtica
dioica, is widely distributed and is not at all
frost tender, so it can persist as an adult plant late into the fall. USDA maps show it present in all but the
most northen Canadian province, and throughout the
continental United States except in Mississippi. (Well, that just can’t be right! When looking at the USDA maps we have to
remember that they only show where plants have been reported, and that a
plant’s absence on a state or county map may only indicate that none have yet
made it into a report. It’s pretty
unlikely that Mississippi would lack this plant that loves wet, rich soils,
while it is present in every surrounding state.)
This nettle is common in
Europe as well, and because it historically has had many medicinal uses we
can find numerous web sites that more or less accurately describe its
character. Kew Royal Botanic Gardens
is an old, large, and very respected Botanical Gardens just outside of
London, and the originator of the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership, a project
whose aim is to preserve a selection of wild plant seeds, especially of those
species that are in danger of becoming extinct, so that they may be available
for research and regrowth in the future when wild populations may have vanished. (At present they believe they have banked
seeds of over 10% of the world’s wild plant species, and are on track to have
banked 20% by 2020.) Since it is not
yet endangered and grows naturally in their gardens, Kew hasn’t banked seeds of the
common stinging nettle, but notes that the seeds do not have a dormancy
period, and can germinate just days after they have matured. This lack of a dormancy period would
explain the numerous young shoots at the Hessian Springs,
and since the plants are perennials, even if new seedlings are destroyed by
frost the parent plant will spring up from its roots in the next growing
season. As an aside, I should note
that the Native Plant Center of the New York City Department of Parks and
Recreation is one of a number of US organizations - and the only city public
park that I know of - that is partnering with Kew Gardens in the SOS (Seeds
of Success) project, which aim is to conserve native plant species to
rehabilitate native lands. There are
partners in the SOS project in Europe, Africa, and Asia as well, each
attempting to aid rehabilitation of their own native lands.
Just like us, most
flowering plants must mature before they can reproduce, and a period of
vegetative growth is usually necessary before a plant is able to flower. Its time as a juvenile allows a plant to
build up the necessary resources to be able to successfully produce
seeds. It’s obvious, however, that
some plants are quick to sprout and flower in the spring, some are slow
growers or spring up much later and flower in the fall, and some grow and
flower throughout the whole growing season.
Plants with these different life styles must use different cues and
mechanisms to time their blossoming to the appropriate season, and these
mechanisms often involve photo-period and temperature. Plant response to photo-period is a matter
of plant chemistry; during the day - as long as temperatures are sufficiently
high - the leaves of the plant manufacture and accumulate various plant
hormones which decay during the dark, and the plant adjusts its life cycle to
the concentration of these hormones.
Photo-period is the ratio of night hours to daylight hours (lab
experiments have shown that it is the length of dark hours that is more
important). This ratio constantly
changes throughout the year, but for every day in spring there is a day in
fall with an equal ratio of daytime hours compared to night-time hours. Thus we sometimes find an occasional plant
that takes its cue from the photo-period to flower in the spring also
throwing up blossoms in the fall, even though these late blossoms are doomed
to wither in the coming cold. In our
woods one can occasionally find flower buds opening on viburnums in autumn. These buds will never mature, but there are
usually other buds on the same shrub that remain closed until spring.
When to begin growth is a
different issue, but has the much the same importance for plants in our
temperate zones. (In the tropics
different criteria apply. A plant
there might not have so much need to time itself to avoid cold weather, but
often must have a way to regulate its period of growth to alternations of wet
and dry seasons.) The timing of growth
may not have as much impact on perennials as it does on annual plants. Perennials such as the stinging nettle may
have enough vigor in their roots to survive premature sprouting by throwing
up a second flush of new shoots. The
annuals though, depend on survival of their seeds, and a whole population of
plants may be at risk if they mistime the production of seeds or if the seeds
themselves are tricked into sprouting out of season. Through the ages plant seeds have developed
many different safeguards to prevent premature sprouting, the methods differing
between species. The most common method
is often chemical; as the seed matures it stores foodstuffs that will later
nourish the new sprout until it has grown enough to be able to manufacture
its own food. Along with these
foodstuffs a growth inhibitor that gradually decays over time is also
stored. When enough time has passed,
insuring that winter has come and gone, the concentration of the inhibitor
becomes so low that the seed can to sprout in safety. Other plants use other methods, some of
them mechanical and not chemical. One
common mechanism is to provide the seed with a thick seed coat that must be
worn down over time by mechanical abrasion or by the action of bacteria or
fungi until the coat has become thin enough to allow passage of oxygen and
water. Without sufficient oxygen and
water the seeds cannot germinate, so they must wait until their coats have
worn thin. The thick-shelled seeds of
many peas and beans, for example, often require scarification by passage
through an animal’s digestive tract to enable sprouting. This likewise assures that their young
shoots will begin growth some distance from the parent plant.
In our latitude many
plants and seeds, but not all, have developed different mechanism of winter
dormancy to avoid exposing tender, growing tissue to winter freezes. The seeds of Sugar Maples, although few on
Staten Island, and the acorns of Black Oaks require a period of cold dormancy
before they will sprout, but White Oak acorns will sprout in fall almost as
soon as they fall and Red maple seeds mature early in the year and can begin
to grow almost as soon as they fall from the tree. The Kew Gardens web site suggests that
while not requiring a period of winter dormancy, the seeds of the Common
Nettle may at least require an exposure to cold before they can germinate; I
suppose that this might expain all of the new
growth at the Hessian Spring.
Departing the nettles and
the spring we continued along the Blue Trail past the “golfball
graveyard”, the spot below the driving range where errant balls find their
final resting place, and then, having missed the old informal trail down
hidden by fallen leaves, bushwacked down the
hillside to our meeting place in the parking lot beside the church. The hillside here is a bit steep, and the
old path down is often blocked by landscape debris from the church piled
where the trail exits at the road, but is a safer way to the parking area
than by following the legitimate trails and having to twice cross the heavily
trafficked Richmond Hill Road. Back at
the lot, the cookies were gone, the scouts soon departed, so we shared out
the last of the bananas and collected our tools to take back to High Rock
Park, all of which Jackie J. had carried in her backpack the entire way back
(Believe me, for that I was grateful.
Jackie likes to lurk behind with her camera, so lugging a pack full of
tools for 20 people must have been quite a hindrance!) We chatted, then packed our stuff in Judy’s
car, and left just as newcomers began to arrive for a tour of the old
graveyard. I didn’t think they’d be
interested in the golfball graveyard on the hill
above, so I didn’t let them in on the secret.
DfR 11-25-2011.
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