One of my favorite woods walks is the Chestnut Hill section of the Joe English Reservation in Amherst. A unique feature of the area are the piles of stones that are scattered randomly across the hillside. These piles are identical to the cairns one sees above tree line in the White Mountains. But where did these piles of stones come from, and why are they in the middle of the forest?
In his book Reading the Forested Landscape, ecologist Tom Wessels writes that if you find a stand of red pines in New England that is not in its natural setting (dry, rocky slopes), then the trees were almost surely planted. Take the red pines at PLC’s Jon Brooks conservation easement in New Boston. If you walk northwest along the trail that runs through the property, at the top of the hill you’ll find numerous red pines on your right, but no red pines on your left.
If you walk in the woods in early spring you may see little green ‘trees’ breaking through the leaf litter and receding snow. Some are branched, their fan-like branches even resembling little pagodas, while others are unbranched, erect and spiky. These little trees are the other evergreens: mosses, ferns and clubmosses. As the snow melts away, and before the first leaves of Canada Mayflower, our earliest wildflower, are up extensive colonies of evergreen clubmosses will stand out in the forest.… Read More
Water lilies are so romantic, aren’t they? The objects of paintings and poems. But out among them on dreamy ponds there lurks a seamy side of the pond: bladderworts. Dressed in deceptively pretty yellow flowers these plants spell trouble – … Read More
Droughts happen. When they do, most of the talk is about how they impact the water supply for humans. But droughts also affect fish. In dry years and wet ones alike, the story of trout here in New Hampshire and … Read More