SUMMER ’13

A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THE FOREST

Saving the New England Cottontail Maine’s Pre-settlement Forest Alpine Wildflowers: Life at the Top Growing Trees from Seed Forest Forensics, Cooking with Cattails, The Ways of the Woodchuck, and much more

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15813_WOOD_SUM13_COVERS.indd 3 5/15/13 4:52:30 PM 15813_WOOD_SUM13_COVERS.indd 4 5/15/13 4:52:38 PM on the web WWW.NORTHERNWOODLANDS.ORG

THE OUTSIDE STORY Each week we publish a new nature story on topics ranging from birds that break the sound barrier to sinkholes in New England.

EDITOR’S BLOG A well-dressed stranger stopped by the yard the other day and asked: “Now that you’ve logged off that land, want to sell it?” I winced as I imagined him thinking that we were high-grading the woods and cashing out.

WHAT IN THE WOODS IS THAT? We show you a photo; if you guess what it is, you’ll be eligible to win a prize. This recent photo showed an old syrup filter designed by Colonel Fairfax Ayers in the 1940s.

Cover Photo by Ben Hudson Sign up on the website to get our bi-weekly Forester Ben Hudson captured this image of a friend fishing on a remote pond, “somewhere in newsletter delivered free to your inbox. the Northern forest.” “I wanted to capture a moment of solitude that one can only find in nature,” For daily news and information, said Hudson. FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK

VOLUME 20 I NUMBER 2 REGULAR CONTRIBUTORS CENTER FOR NORTHERN WOODLANDS EDUCATION, INC. SUMMER 2013 Virginia Barlow Copyright 2013 Jim Block Northern Woodlands Magazine (ISSN 1525-7932) is published Elise Tillinghast Madeline Bodin quarterly by the Center for Northern Woodlands Education, Inc., magazine Executive Director/Publisher Marian Cawley Tovar Cerulli 1776 Center Road, P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 Dave Mance III, Editor Andrew Crosier Tel (802) 439-6292 Meghan Oliver Carl Demrow Fax (802) 368-1053 Assistant Editor Steve Faccio [email protected] Giom www.northernwoodlands.org Amy Peberdy, Operations Manager Bernd Heinrich Subscription rates are $21.50 for one year and $39 for two years. Canadian Emily Rowe Robert Kimber and foreign subscriptions by surface mail are $26.50 US for one year. Operations Coordinator/ Stephen Long POSTMASTER: Send address corrections to Northern Woodlands Magazine, Web Manager Todd McLeish P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039-0471 or to [email protected]. Periodical postage paid at Corinth, Vermont, and at additional mailing offices. Jim Schley, Poetry Editor Susan C. Morse Bryan Pfeiffer Published on the first day of March, June, September, and December. Joe Rankin All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the written Michael Snyder consent of the publisher is prohibited. The editors assume no responsibility Adelaide Tyrol for unsolicited manuscripts or photographs. Return postage should accompany all submissions. Printed in USA. Chuck Wooster For subscription information call (800) 290-5232. DESIGN Northern Woodlands is printed on paper with 10 percent post-consumer Liquid Studio / Lisa Cadieux recycled content.

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Center for Northern from the enter Woodlands Education C

BOARD OF DIRECTORS President Recently, I have been hiking with my infant son. It’s hard to know what, if Julia Emlen anything, he takes from these forays. At two months, it’s a safe bet he’s not Julia S. Emlen Associates Seekonk, MA counting the chickadees, but he seems to enjoy being outdoors. Vice President As for me, I find this time together deeply satisfying. As a typical self- referential human, I cherish the landscape around my home not just for its Marcia McKeague Katahdin Timberlands own sake, but as a place made special by personal associations. Walking old Millinocket, ME trails with my still astonishingly new child, I have the sense of re-reading a Treasurer/Secretary favorite story and finding fresh meaning tucked in the pages. Tom Ciardelli There is a bald patch in the old sheep pasture above our house where each summer the Biochemist, Outdoorsman turkey hens de-bug their feathers by rinsing in plumes of dust. On this same spot, our daugh- Hanover, NH ter embarked on her very first sled ride and, four years ago, a bobcat thrilled us all by posing Si Balch for a moment before slipping back into the tree line. Now the site has taken on yet another Consulting Forester distinction, as the place where I first saw my son smile. Brooklin, ME Northern Woodlands is also a home territory of sorts. Since this spring, I’ve made a proj- Sarah R. Bogdanovitch ect of reading our full magazine archive, starting all the way back with the first issue in 1994. Paul Smith’s College Then, as now, there were articles focused on tracking tips, habitat enhancements, timber Paul Smiths, NY harvests. Also consistently across the years, each issue offered new learning and unexpected Esther Cowles perspectives. Fernwood Consulting, LLC In all of our educational efforts, the Center for Northern Woodlands Education encour- Hopkinton, NH ages people to find “new ways of looking at the forest,” and in doing so, to deepen their own Dicken Crane intimacy with the land. Through this sense of belonging comes an understanding of our Holiday Brook Farm shared responsibility for the future of the Northeast’s wooded landscapes. Dalton, MA We could not do this work without your help. Subscriptions do not cover the cost of this Timothy Fritzinger magazine, nor do they pay for materials we provide to schools and other educational groups. Alta Advisors As you read this, our nonprofit is just rounding the corner into the last quarter of our fiscal London, UK year. If you haven’t supported us yet, would you please consider a donation? Sydney Lea Now is a great time to contribute. Thanks to a generous supporter, between now and June Writer, Vermont Poet Laureate 30th, donors will have a chance to win a Helios2 Orvis Fly Rod Outfit. You can also buy Newbury, VT extra tickets on our website (see page 47 for details), a great way to start the summer while Bob Saul helping a good cause. Wood Creek Capital Management Amherst, MA Elise Tillinghast, Executive Director, Publisher Peter Silberfarb Dartmouth Medical School Lebanon, NH Ed Wright W.J. Cox Associates Clarence, NY

The Center for Northern Woodlands Education, Inc., is a 501(c)(3) public benefit educational organization. The mission of the Center for Northern Programs include Northern Woodlands Woodlands Education is to advance magazine, Northern Woodlands Goes a culture of forest stewardship in the Northeast and to increase understanding to School, The Outside Story, The of and appreciation for the natural Place You Call Home series, and wonders, economic productivity, and www.northernwoodlands.org. ecological integrity of the region’s forests.

2 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 2 5/15/13 4:43:50 PM in this ISSUE

features 20 Saving a New England Native CHARLES FERGUS 32 Top Flowers: Adaptations for Living on the Alpine Edge MEGHAN OLIVER 40 Reconstructing the Past: Maine Forests Then & Now ANDREW M. BARTON, ALAN S. WHITE, & CHARLES V. COGBILL 48 Lessons in Planting Tree Seeds TAMMIS COFFIN

departments

2 From the Center 4 Calendar

20 5 Editor’s Note 32 6 Letters to the Editors 7 1,000 Words 9 Birds in Focus: Sex and the Single Bird BRYAN PFEIFFER 11 Woods Whys: Self-Grafting Trees MICHAEL SNYDER 13 Tracking Tips: The Intriguing Woodchuck SUSAN C. MORSE 14 Knots and Bolts 28 Field Work: At Work Solving Crimes with Wood Sleuth Richard Jagels JOE RANKIN 13 54 The Overstory: Black Locust VIRGINIA BARLOW 58 Discoveries TODD MC LEISH 61 Tricks of the Trade CARL DEMROW 63 Upcountry ROBERT KIMBER 48 40 64 WoodLit 67 Mill Prices 71 Outdoor Palette ADELAIDE TYROL 72 A Place in Mind LAURA WATERMAN

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 3 5/15/13 4:43:53 PM CALENDAR

A Look at the Season’s Main Events

By Virginia Barlow June July August FIRST WEEK Eastern tent caterpillars are feeding on Canada lilies are in flower; these glorious Mashed up jewelweed plants applied pin cherry leaves / Gray treefrogs return tall plants are found in rich, moist field to poison ivy and other rashes will relieve to the woods after breeding to hide in edges and marshes / Harvester butterfly the inflammation and itching / Ruffed knotholes and tree cavities for the rest larvae rely on alder blight aphids for food. grouse chicks are eating more vegetable of the year. Listen near vernal pools for a The orange and brown caterpillars are now matter and fewer invertebrates. High- cross between a loud trill and an air raid gobbling up aphids – they’re the only truly protein insect food is the norm only siren / Young cattail shoots can be peeled carnivorous butterfly in the country / The during their first few weeks of life / and sautéed. Adding a little soy sauce and full complement of summery flowers is Groups of whirligig beetles often swim in ginger doesn’t hurt / The eight-spotted blooming: daisy, black-eyed Susan, sweet circles on the surface of the water. Each of forester is a moth that flies in the day and white clover, and red clover are a few that their two eyes is divided in two: one half is as pretty as a butterfly seem to go especially well together looks up, and the other looks down, below the waterline

SECOND WEEK White pines are releasing a lot of pollen, Woodcock chicks have been foraging with August 12 & 13: Perseids meteor shower. often visible in the air and on cars / their mothers for about a month, but now A good year, because the crescent moon Female hummingbirds are each laying that they can fly, they’ll leave the family will set just as the shower is gearing two oval, pea-sized eggs. Busy chasing unit / The most important summer bear up / Monarch adults are not only found other males and females, the males take foods are wild lettuce (three species), on milkweed. They will visit red clover, no part in caring for the nestlings / The jack-in-the-pulpit, and jewelweed / The thistles, and sunflowers, too / Red-backed snapping turtles now laying eggs have nectarless flowers of jack-in-the-pulpit salamander eggs hatch over the next been around for 200 million years. They smell like fungus and are pollinated by couple of months. They are entirely ter- pre-date dinosaurs, plenty long enough to fungus gnats / The white, root-eating restrial and the larval stage is completed develop a crusty disposition / Poison ivy grubs of Japanese beetles can make within the egg / Green frogs stay near flowers are producing abundant nectar. It lawns look ratty. Adults are emerging and water and will jump in with a splash and a makes good honey heading for the roses yelp if startled

THIRD WEEK June 21: The summer solstice, when the Piles of night crawler castings stand The active little winter wren will search sun is at its northernmost position in the out on closely clipped lawns. Flashlight for food by turning over leaves and pieces sky, directly over the Tropic of Cancer at beams on warm, rainy nights indicate of debris, probing under loose bark, and 23.44°N. It’s the first day of summer in that the neighborhood kids noticed, too / unearthing food items from root wads / the northern hemisphere and the first day Trout prefer feeding when the water Listen for the dull whistle-like call of the of winter in the other half / In years past, temperature is low, primarily at night or snowy tree cricket. Count the number of whippoorwills were heard on warm June early in the morning / Look for anglewings. “throbs” in 13 seconds, add 40, and you nights, but this is not so common anymore Most of these butterflies, in the genus will have the temperature within a few / The male black-throated blue warbler also Polygonia, live in the forest and look degrees (F) / A fringe of stiff hairs on the has a black face and black sides. He sings like dead leaves / Tiny spring peepers, hind feet of northern water shrews allows a lot, continuing late into the summer recently metamorphosed, are leaving their them to run across the water’s surface nursery pools

FOURTH WEEK Loon chicks – either one or two – leave the The sulfur shelf mushroom (Polyporous The appeal of wasp larvae is stronger than nest within a few hours of hatching and sulphureus), a choice edible, grows on dead a bear’s dislike of being stung. They’ll use head for water. They nestle into the feathers wood and is found from July to October. their teeth to tear apart logs in search of on the back of a parent to rest and keep It is bright orange on top and a rich sulfur wasp nests / Woodchucks are fattening up warm / Young great blue herons are large, yellow on the underside / Periodical cicadas and will consume up to one and a half walking around on branches, and appear are out and calling. They lay eggs in slits in pounds of green vegetation a day / Whitetail very near fledging / Serviceberry, aka tree bark. After hatching, the larvae fall and bucks are tearing away the velvet on their juneberry, provides summer fruits for wood- burrow into the ground. They’ll spend 13-17 antlers and polishing them by thrashing peckers, eastern kingbirds, thrushes, wax- years feeding on roots, before emerging as them against branches / Now ravens are wings, orioles, grosbeaks, red-eyed vireos, adults / Joe Pye weed is blooming, a large eating corn, blackberries, and other fruits. and cardinals / Wild leeks are blooming plant of wet meadows In winter, they eat mostly carrion

These listings are from observations and reports in our home territory at about 1,000 feet in elevation in central Vermont and are approximate. Events may occur earlier or later, depending on your latitude, elevation – and the weather.

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 4 5/15/13 4:43:54 PM EDITOR’S note

By Dave Mance III

On the first 70 degree day of the year we took a UTV ride up to the top of the ridge behind camp, G and I. She’s originally from Wyoming, so she sees the forests around here with fresh eyes. Fresh wonder at the hepatica growing amidst the exposed roots of a monarch red oak, at a sentinel barred owl on a trail-side snag watching somberly as we drove by. We stopped when we could drive no farther and made the final ascent on foot – about a quarter mile up the last knob to the top. The shelves beneath the summit were a mixture of beech and yellow birch – this is southwestern Vermont so the whole mountain is hardwood and white pine – but at the very top there was a smattering of mature red spruce; we could probably count the spruce trees on our 20 fingers. From the valley floor the towering trees look like a little spruce fez perched atop the mountain’s head. “Where did they come from?” she asked, running her fingers along the fissured bark. “On the wind? Birds?” We hadn’t seen another spruce all day. And while I didn’t really know the answer to her question, having recently read Drew, Alan, and Charlie’s story on forest paleoecology (page 40), and Meghan Oliver’s piece on Alpine Plants (page 32), I ventured a guess that maybe they’d always been there. That after the last glacier retreated, and the land warmed, it was the spruce that first colonized the mountain, and that all the other trees were the interlopers that had spent the last 10,000 years chipping away at their turf. Whatever the real answer, this idea of seeing a forest as a logical system, and not just a collection of random, individual trees, is the foundation of contemporary ecological thinking and pretty much everything we write about. And it’s not just plants – it’s all of nature. You can look at the New England cottontail as a relic of the past in the same way you look at a copse of conifers on a mountaintop. Three hundred years ago, the settlers set the stage for New England cottontail proliferation by cutting down the forest; 100 years ago, they abandoned their farms and the resulting perfect habitat caused rabbit populations to explode. Trees grew back, habitat declined, the rabbits disappeared. As you’ll read in Charles Fergus’s story on New England cottontails on page 20, it’s quite a bit more complicated than this, but this notion of cause and effect, the sweep of history, and an element of impermanence is at the root of everything we see out there. I’m pointing out the obvious to this audience. Everything we do in our woods this summer – the trees we cut (or don’t) for firewood or sawlogs; the trout we keep for dinner (or release) – will be done with a system in mind. But this is not so obvious to people outside our tribe. Hence the protectionist philosophies that focus on the individual rights of a trout or a tree versus the population as a whole; or the nursery tag on a Norway Maple pointing out the tree’s individual strengths (shade tolerant!), oblivious to the fact that it has no place in our native forest. Because many people don’t see the systems in nature, because it’s easier to see individuals, making the New England cottontail the face of young forest habitat is a brilliant PR move. It’s not unprecedented – Audubon’s doing a similar thing with their Birder’s Dozen campaign, which links declining young forest habitat to recognizable songbirds – but it’s another good example of how the conservation community has begun to anticipate epistemological, as well as ecological, realities. If you propose an overstory removal as part of an early successional habitat improvement project, you’re speaking to no one but wonks. If you say nothing and just show up with a feller-buncher to do the angels’ work, you’re leaving yourself open to all kinds of misinterpretation. But if you say, Let’s go save this rabbit, well now you’re getting somewhere. Now you’re opening the door wide enough for others to fit in. Some will point out that putting energy into reviving a practically extinct rabbit species that’ll probably never have ideal habitat again is a misallocation of resources, akin to the hard reality that in the big picture a chervil-picking party is not going to fix a town’s invasive plant problems. And this is probably true. But it overlooks an even bigger picture: that it’s crucial to engage as many people as possible in conservation efforts. Recognizing how humans organize their thoughts and motivations, how they learn and interact with the world around them. That’s a system, too. NW

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 5 5/15/13 4:43:54 PM letters to the EDITORS

At Your Service The Neighborly Beaver than usual. We had two parents and two kits To the Editors: To the Editors: during the summer. There are five ponds and six As I have stated many times in previous letters, I loved Robert Kimber’s article about co-existing dams – they wintered in the lowest pond. The main I always enjoy and learn from Virginia Barlow’s with beavers. We are active tree farmers and relish pond was too shallow for them and they didn’t repair regular column, The Overstory, which spotlights a our life on Moose Mountain, where there is a huge that dam. It is fascinating watching them make these tree or shrub species. Her last one on serviceberry old mill pond on our land. We have lived here for major decisions. They are currently living in a hastily with its many common names was another of 38 years. There have been three beaver colonies built bank dam with a meager food supply. The water these gems. I often have some additional informa- since we have lived here, with the last one having level has not been consistent this winter. In the past tion or, hopefully, illuminating remark to send in been more or less successful for nine years. I think few days, I have seen fresh tracks and cutting of the response, and this time is no exception. they will be moving on this spring. They have really few beech trees that are left. I’m sure it’s not a first As Barlow wrote, Amalenchier has several eaten just about everything they can find within a choice for food. I was able to make it to a new poplar common names. Serviceberry is an apt one that reasonable range from the pond. supply in the deep snow yesterday and brought them I have heard (and believe) is based on the story Over the years some of them have become back a pile of treats. I have thousands of pictures of that pioneer women/homemakers welcomed the quite tame. I have never hand fed them, but I bring them and am enclosing a few from last March. June fruiting of this tree/shrub because it was them apples, and in the past few years poplar Kay Shumway, Etna, NH the first fruit they could obtain for jams, jellies, branches that I have gleaned from all over the and pies. While the fruit was smallish, and not Upper Valley. I often fear arrest for my pilfering. as tasty as other edible fruit, it would “serve.” I know that when they move on they will be in Stay Sharp Another story (that I do not give much credence extreme danger from cars, people who don’t want To the Editors: to) was that it flowered at the time the frost was them around, and the many predators that exist As an arborist of some 35 years, I’d like to add a few out of the ground, and so bodies of those who here. But we are encroaching on them, not the tips of my own to Carl Demrow’s Tricks of the Trade had died during the winter and stored in the ice- other way around. Our pond will diminish and the column on sharpening chainsaws (Spring 2013). house could then be formally interred. Bouquets of moose and deer will return for the lush grasses As you can imagine, I am frequently asked (usually serviceberry were part of the funeral “service.” that will grow as the moist, fertile soil dries out. by a homeowner) about sharpening saw chains. Larry Hamilton, Charlotte, VT Last spring, the adolescent beavers left earlier The first thing I tell them is, “It’s not rocket science.” Carl’s assertion that if your file is off by even a hundredth of an inch you will decrease the effec- tiveness of your chain may be true, but not enough that you would notice in the field. When we get into dirty wood or a buried piece of barbed wire, we’re more concerned about getting the job done than we are about that hundredth of an inch. As long as the angles are reasonably close and the leading edge of the tooth is sharp, the chain should cut well enough. The height of the rakers (depth gauges) is probably more crucial than those angles. Even new chains don’t cut as well as they should. How can you tell if a chain needs to be sharp- ened? Look at the leading edge of the teeth. If the edge is dull, the tooth is sharp. If the edge is shiny, the tooth is dull. But you’ve got to look sharp because the shine can be subtle. File until the edge is dull and now it’s sharp. Got it? As for those new chains, I always find that the rakers are too high. Filing rakers to the proper height can be tricky, so use a gauge. The best talk I ever went to for chainsaw safety and maintenance was given by Dan Tilton of Tilton Equipment in Rye, New Hampshire. It should be KAY SHUMWAY required of anyone buying a chainsaw for the first time. Kurt Woltersdorf, Sanford, ME

6 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 6 5/15/13 4:43:59 PM 1,000 words

Photographer John Timmis captured this image on Wilson Pond in Greenville, Maine. “She would disappear underwater going after aquatic vegetation,” he remembered, “causing the flies to leave her body – but they would be circling around waiting for her to rise back up. Seeing all of those flies on and around the moose (and the leeches attached to her legs) gave me a new appreciation for the things animals have to endure in their daily quest for survival.”

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 7 5/15/13 4:44:04 PM No Clear-Cut Answer those hunting camp leases? What hunter is going I didn’t realize how much she was picking up To the Editors: to want to lease land with little wildlife and where until she handed me her poem. I’m not sure if Recently, I’ve seen a number of photos and refer- the camp sits in a field of stumps? Hunters go it’s just the bias of a proud grampy, but I thought ences to clearcutting and even-aged management to the Adirondacks as much for the scenery as for the poem was really good for someone her age. in the magazine. Lately there have been increasing the hunting. reports of heavy cutting (clearcutting?) coming Don Wharton, South Glens Falls, NY Sap from the Adirondacks, all since the change of I love sap it comes from trees! timberland ownership a few years ago. Foresters, Bravo for publishing The Cree and the Crown I feel the breeze. hunters, loggers, and fishermen have expressed (Winter 2012), the best piece of journalism – I feel like I can fly, concern to me, especially regarding impacts on environmental or otherwise – that I’ve read in I can see the sky. wildlife. We know what happens to the deer years. I look forward to reading many more pieces I hear the sap pop, herd when yarding areas are clearcut, but there by the article’s author, Naomi Heindel. And please It goes drip drop. are negative consequences for other wildlife, keep us updated on the future of the northern It is fun! too. Those hollow trees are shelter or nesting Northern Forest. I can feel the sun! areas for fishers, raccoons, owls, squirrels, Ken Goldsmith, Woodstock, CT I feel like I have a crown. bears, wood ducks, and honey bees, to name The sun goes down, just a few. In a fire one time, I saw 12 flying I don’t hear a sound. squirrels sail out of a burning yellow birch. The Sugarbush Shakespeare I feel surrounded by trees. wildlife is in there, you just don’t see it. In a clear- To the Editors: Dana Deering, Buxton, ME cut those hollow trees are on the ground. Even- I am enclosing a poem by my seven-year-old aged management results in the regeneration granddaughter, Elizabeth Donahue, or Ellie, as we of thousands of seedlings and sprouts per acre, call her. Ellie and her younger brother have been Floor It which eventually grow into a dense stand blocking helping me with my little maple syrup operation To the Editors: the sun and inhibiting the growth of vegetation on (25 taps and growing) since they were big enough The story From Forest to Floor (Spring 2013) the ground that wildlife use as food and cover. The to ride in the sled I use to haul my old milk cans about the use of local woods to build a gym floor extreme example would be a pine plantation with for collecting sap. I am trying to expose them by the community reminds me of a similar effort nothing on the ground but pine needles. Wildlife to the wonders of my woodlot in the hope that in Berlin, Vermont. The dance floor installed in avoid such places like the plague. Adirondack one day one or both of them will take it over and 1953 in the Capital City Grange Hall #469 had hunters are still dealing with such conditions on continue to work if for syrup, firewood, lumber, finally worn out. It was replaced with a beautiful some New York State Forest Preserve lands that and wildlife habitat. Ellie has been a good helper, new floor made of Vermont maple – harvested, were clearcut years ago. And what happens to very observant and thoughtful for her age, but milled, and installed by local craftspeople. The old floor was removed by community volunteers and recyled/upcycled into other floors, a mandolin, frames, pens, jewelry, and, of course, stove wood. Check it all out at capitalcitygrange.org. Merry “Flora” Kay Shernock, Northfield, VT

To the Editors: From Forest to Floor (Spring 2013) was an enjoyable article, but could be misleading. If a sawmill does not have a metal detector, it most likely would require a logger to cut off the butt log above where any metal taps or nails to support the cover might be grown over. This would mean cutting off about five feet from the base of a butt log. A landowner planning on selling tapped sugar maples should check with the sawmill to determine the mill’s policy regarding acceptance of tapped sugar maple butt logs. Ted Cady, Warwick, MA

We love to hear from our readers. Letters intended DANA DEERING for publication in the Autumn 2013 issue should be sent in by July 1. Please limit letters to 400 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 8 5/15/13 4:44:05 PM BIRDS in focus

Story and photo by Bryan Pfeiffer Sex and the Single Bird

Blackbirds do it. Chickadees do it. Even educated emus do it. Some birds are cheaters. Their trysts, dalliances, one-morning stands, and other infidelities would constitute a racy script for a wildlife soap opera. But first, the faithful: In the vast majority of bird species, one male and one female unite for the purpose of raising young. In this classic form of monogamy, or “single marriage,” the pair stays together either for a single breeding season (the case among most songbirds) or for as long as they both shall live (in geese, gulls, and swans, for example). Among the rest (or the restless, as the case may be), polygamy, or “many mar- riages,” ranges from casual to calculating. A male red-winged blackbird may mate with as many as 15 females in a breeding season. A male red-winged blackbird mates with a number of females, and each tends her own nest. This Paternal care of young is rare in birds, but those devoted dads most common form of infidelity is called polygyny, “many may have been customary earlier in avian evolution. One pale- women.” The general hypothesis is that females prefer to mate ontologist studying fossilized dinosaurs positioned over eggs with the male that can defend the best territory (size and quality concluded that incubating adults were predominantly male. matters) or exhibits some other evidence of having better genes. And the eggs in their care seemed too numerous for the lone The superior redwing’s harem averages five females, but he may adult, suggesting that dad was tending to a collection of eggs mate with as many as 15. from more than one female. It might seem that a female and her hungry young would suffer We still have dinosaurs exhibiting this behavior: the emu and if the male in her life was preoccupied with a dozen or more some other ground-dwelling birds. (Remember, only non-avian partners. But polygyny sometimes occurs with conditions favor- dinosaurs went extinct.) A male emu is often the lone parent able to a neglected mother: an abundance of food, for example, to an oversized brood from several females. Also noteworthy is or precocial young more able to fend for themselves, which is that the emu is among our most primitive birds, relatively close the case for the occasionally polygynous ruffed grouse. in lineage to its therapod dinosaur ancestors. The point here is that polygyny doesn’t only benefit males. Much further along from emu evolution is the cheating Out in the marsh, as male redwings call honk-a-REE, the female chickadee. Male and female black-capped chickadees usually is calculating. She figures that joining the harem of a male with pair up as their winter flocks begin to disperse in early spring. upscale territory is better than monogamy on inferior turf. Her They are monogamous. Well, almost. offspring prosper if she chooses a king’s palace over a loser’s Even as she’s laying eggs fertilized by her mate, a female hovel. chickadee sometimes sneaks off for copulations with another But in matters of avian romance, turnabout is fair play. male, only to return to her nest to lay extramarital eggs. So, in Spotted sandpipers display classic polyandry, or “many men” our inventory of mating strategies – monogamy, polygamy, poly- – a single female mating with multiple males. Oh, sure, she finds andry – it turns out that chickadees are simply promiscuous. a mate. She might even help him incubate eggs and raise their In all these examples of feathered infidelity, the research young. But while the male does most of the parenting, she’s on varies, and I advise readers to be wary of complete or conve- the prowl. nient explanations. Avian affairs are no different than our own. A female spotted sandpiper often leaves her first mate to In other words, when it comes to relationships, as you might breed with a second. She might help rear young from both nests expect, “it’s complicated.” at the same time (simultaneous polyandry). But sometimes she abandons her first family and devotes her parental energies only Bryan Pfeiffer is an author, wildlife photographer, guide, and consulting naturalist who to her second (serial polyandry). specializes in birds and insects. He lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 9

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10 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 10 5/15/13 4:44:25 PM woods WHYS

By Michael Snyder

This tree seems to have had a branch or a second tree growing from it, then it died, but then it seemed to have grafted itself back. Would appreciate learning more about this. Jackie Lyman, NH

When two tree branches or stems grow in close proximity to each other, it is possible that they’ll eventually grow large enough to touch. If the bark becomes abraded, say through rubbing caused by swaying in the breeze, it is possible for them to become physiologically – or functionally – connected. This is the basis for grafting. People have been grafting plants for thousands of years, most commonly to propagate desirable traits such as flower color, fruiting, size, or shape by intentionally joining together two different plants. But both shoot and root grafting occur naturally in trees, without human assistance. In fact, some scholars have suggested that horticultural grafting practices first emerged as early humans attempted to mimic the natural grafting they observed in the wild. The result of grafting, either natural or horticultural, is a genetically composite organism functioning as one plant. That is, grafting results in the creation of a compound genetic system by uniting two or more distinct genotypes, each of which main- tains its own genetic identity throughout the life of the grafted plant. This is why, for example, a branch of a red-flowering rose grafted onto a white rose stock will continue to produce red Other requirements for this amazing bit of tree magic are roses rather than white or pink hybrid roses. that the tree parts be in direct, prolonged contact; be under Here’s how grafting works. Just under the bark of all woody pressure; have sufficient moisture and protection from the plants is a layer of living cells called the cambium. These cells elements, insects, and pathogens; and have those cambial cells divide and multiply to create bark tissues to the outside of the properly aligned. Okay, it’s biology and not actually magic – but cambium, and wood tissues to the inside. This is how tree roots, it might as well be considering how many things have to go right stems, and branches grow larger in girth. And it is the most for it to work. Among northeastern tree species, natural shoot recently created of these cells on each side of the cambium that grafting is known to occur in sugar maple, black cherry, red perform the vital functions of transporting water and minerals and white oak, sycamore, willows, beech, eastern hemlock, and gathered by the roots from the soil up into the tree, and the white pine (as pictured). carbohydrates made in the leaves down into the rest of the tree. It should be noted that there are many occurrences of Think of the cambium layer as the tree’s plumbing. branches or stems growing very closely together, even touching When the plumbing system of one tree successfully fuses in what would appear to be a graft union, but that turn out to with that of another, a graft union is formed. But this can only be separated by layers of bark. These are not true graft unions, happen under specific conditions. First, the tree parts have to because they lack physiological connectivity. The one in question be biologically compatible. That’s why such fusions are more here would appear to be a true graft because the lower portion common among the branches, stems, or roots of one tree or of the one stem appears dead, while its upper part appears to between two individual trees of the same species. But it can be alive and well, suggesting a physiological reconnection has happen between two trees of closely related species. The more occurred. Ah, the near-magic of tree biology. different the species are taxonomically, the less likely a graft can occur between their parts. Indeed, no such grafts have ever been Michael Snyder, a forester, is Commissioner of the Vermont Department of Forests, documented between tree species in differing families. Parks and Recreation.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 11

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12 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 12 5/15/13 4:44:31 PM TRACKING tips

Story and photos by Susan C. Morse

The Intriguing Woodchuck

Consider the ubiquitous woodchuck (also known as the ground- hog); an animal found from Labrador to Alabama; through- out all of the eastern U.S., west to Kansas, Nebraska, and the northern tip of Idaho; from eastern Alaska all the way across the southern half of Canada. We’ve all heard that Punxsutawney Phil will emerge from hibernation on February 2, look for his shadow, and predict the weather for the next six weeks. While this is legend, of course, male woodchucks will interrupt their hibernation in late winter and make forays across the snow to search for female burrows or to establish breeding territories. Such activity elevates the body temperature to a level necessary for spermatogenesis to occur, guaranteeing that males will be ready when it’s time to mate. While the males are working on their sper- matogenesis, prospective female mates are sleeping in. This saves vital energy for the rigors of repro- duction and raising the family. Woodchucks breed immediately after the females emerge in March, and, following a month-long gestation, their young are born just in time for the green-up of succulent vegetation. Everyone knows about the woodchuck’s penchant for peas, carrots, young corn, and other vegetable garden and farm crops, but the incredible diversity of foods that woodchucks consume can still come as a surprise. I remember being dumb- At right: woodchuck front foot founded as I watched an odd beaver-like animal swimming to shore with a pond lily stem in its mouth. Upon landing, its identification was clear. I watched in fascination as the ground- that protrude from the fleshy base of the feet. The tiered arrange- hog sat upright, grasped the stem in its paws, and consumed it ment of three and two pads on the front feet, and a semi-circle of before reentering the water to do it all over again. four pads behind the long toes of the hind feet, help differentiate In our region, common foods include sedges, grasses, wild a woodchuck track from that of a raccoon or beaver. strawberries, plantain, clover, alfalfa, goldenrod, trout lilies, We’ll often see a woodchuck near its burrow. Fresh dirt pushed dandelions, daisies, vetch, and the fine stems and fruit of apples, out of the entrance reveals that a groundhog is actively using and serviceberries, and blackberries. In early spring – before the retrofitting its subterranean refuge. Fecal matter is rarely found, green-up of herbaceous plants – the buds, bark, and tender because it is deposited within the burrow. When exclusively in twigs of sumac, dogwood, and black cherry are also consumed. use by a groundhog (and not enlarged to accommodate other Woodchucks eat occasional invertebrates, including crickets, occupants, including foxes, coyotes, and raccoons), burrow grasshoppers, snails, and June bugs. entrances measure between five and six-and-a-half inches in Like most rodents, woodchucks’ hind feet are larger than their diameter. Evidence of teeth marks on tree roots near a burrow’s front feet. Five toes will show on hind feet tracks and the stout- entrance can sometimes be found. clawed forefeet register only four toes. The pollex (or thumb toe) I once watched a woodchuck gnawing on a root, followed does not register in tracks because it is reduced to a small stump by cheek-rubbing the fresh bite marks. I am convinced that the tipped with a tiny blunt nail (see photo). The most distinctive woodchuck was scent-marking, using its saliva and secretions from features to look for in woodchuck tracks are the one-three-one sudoriferous (sweat) facial glands to communicate its presence. toe arrangement of the hind feet and the pock-marked appear- ance of the track impression, which is created by knobby pads Susan C. Morse is founder and program director of Keeping Track in Huntington, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 13

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 13 5/15/13 4:44:33 PM KNOTS & BOLTS

[ FORAGING ]

Swamp Gold: Edible Cattail Pollen

It can be difficult for beginning foragers to make the leap beyond the most familiar wild foods. For those who want to expand their repertoires beyond ramps, fiddleheads, and blueberries, I cannot think of a better food than the edible pollen of the common cattail (Typha latifolia). It is unmistakable, fun to gather, easy to process, and tastes delicious. The greatest challenge in harvesting this unusual food is catching it during its brief season. During the late spring and early summer, the cattail’s flowers start to form, looking like two green hot dogs impaled on a stick, one on top of the other. The one on the bottom is the female flower that will produce the familiar fuzzy puffs of seeds in the autumn. The one on top is the male flower, which generates great quantities of wind-blown pollen. The problem is that this pollen disperses quickly once it forms. (The season for cattail pollen can be as short as a week!) If you have access to a large cattail marsh, Cattail Pollen Pancakes start watching it carefully in mid-June. When a gentle tap to the cattail stalk releases a cloud of yellow ½ cup all-purpose flour dust, it is time to gather. Do not delay, especially if there is rain or wind in the forecast. They will wash ½ cup sifted cattail pollen and blow your harvest away. ½ teaspoon salt To gather the pollen, I prefer to use a clean, dry, milk jug. I bend the pollen-covered spike into the jug 2 tablespoons sugar and shake. A fine yellow dust will settle into the container along with fibers from the flower itself. Over 2 teaspoons baking powder the course of an hour, I have gathered two to three cups of pollen from the small riverside marshes near 1 egg my home. Those that live near large lakeside marshes can expect to gather up to a quart per hour in 2 tablespoons melted butter good conditions. I sift the inevitable mass of fibers, insects, and spiders from the pollen by suspending the 1 cup milk mixture in a jelly bag or cheesecloth in a half-gallon glass jar. This keeps me from losing the fine pollen dust to the air as I shake it. Mix the dry ingredients and add the liquid The pollen itself is beautiful, and if it didn’t taste so good, I would be tempted to keep it on my kitchen ingredients into the dry. Mix minimally. Pour windowsill. Supposedly, it can keep for quite some time. I wouldn’t know. My family usually scarfs down ¼-cup dollops of batter onto a pre-heated all of our cattail pollen baked goods on the day we gather. We use it to replace about 50 percent of the griddle. Turn pancakes when bubbles burst flour in the goodies we prepare. Try something simple first, like the pancake recipe here. Whatever you and edges are dry. Makes about 8 pancakes. choose, I doubt you’ll be disappointed by the golden color, the mild flavor, or the adventure. Benjamin Lord

Below: Pollen makes the batter a sunflower yellow. Right: A jar of collected cattail pollen.

14 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 14 5/15/13 4:44:36 PM [ SENESCENCE ] Northern parula.

Deaf in the Woods

Do you remember your answer to that youthful question: if you had to be one or the other, would you rather be deaf or blind? Most of us believed we’d never have to be either, though my answer – blindness – never put me in the majority. To lose sight felt scarier to most because we rely so much on our eyes to navigate the world. But to lose hearing, I believed, was to live in silence, and that felt terrifying. Deafness would mean losing music and bird- song. They go together. One of the earliest musical instruments is a 4,000-year-old flute made out of vulture bone, found in southern Germany. Anthropologists believe that some of the first human songs were imitations of avian singing. Composers from Maurice Ravel to Philip Glass listened to birds. And poets – think Robert Frost’s evening thrush and Emily Dickinson’s sparrows in the garden – are avid translators. To lose birdsong is to lose a woodland language. As I’ve gotten older, my understanding of what it means to be deaf has changed and I’ve lost LANG ELLIOTT my fear. I’ve watched deaf friends communicate with American Sign Language, and read what I could put my hands on, including When the Mind Hears, A History of the Deaf, by Harlan Lane. Sign language is a manual language as expressive as disease (Greek presbys for elder and akousis for lowers them. You hear the lost songs only when verbal language, if not more so. It’s metaphorical hearing). It occurs when stereocilia – hair cells they sound lower – like a record playing at a speech linked to the physical world and beauti- inside the middle ear that turn fluid pressure slower speed. Another product is a mobile app that fully spare in ways hard to imagine for those who into electrical stimuli – begin to die. Birders are picks up songs via the mic on your smartphone don’t speak it. To say a deaf person can hear with sensitive to lost hearing because the enterprise and converts them to graphic sonograms – the their eyes may seem naïve, but it is close to the depends on it. Average birdsong frequencies lie in sheet music of birdsong. truth. The entire body and mind becomes an ear: the 4,000-Hz range. But many go up to 8,000-Hz There are behavioral changes that can help music comes through the subtle vibrations of (human speech is 3,000 Hz and lower). High- age-related deafness, too. While moving out of the air on skin. Perhaps the deaf hear birdsong frequency hearing loss tends to kick in at 3,000 the loud cities we tend to live in is one option, through voices in the mind we can’t hear. Hz. Song may represent well over 75 percent of that’s often impractical. I’m going to try to rely I’d been in denial about my own hearing loss what a bird watcher sees in the woods. more on sighting songbirds. I’ll try to learn to pick for a few years, but one summer morning in the So, it’s a bugaboo. For example, I no longer hear up the lower-frequency pieces of lost songs I can White Mountains, my son asked me what bird Louisiana waterthrush, a harbinger of spring on still hear. I’ll focus on learning the call notes of was singing. I couldn’t hear it. I got exasperated our brook. At first, I thought they weren’t nesting. certain birds. I’m going to spend more time with and kept asking where the sound was coming Other birds have fallen out of earshot: winter ducks and shorebirds. I’m going to learn to lean from. “Right there,” he said, pointing at a rock. wren, brown creeper, golden-crowned kinglet, into the quiet, too: my small corner of the deaf The blackpoll warbler was singing about four feet and northern parula, to name a few. It’s like losing world I will relish. That means learning some sign away. Losing that song sent my head reeling. friends, only they’re still around. language and communicating with deaf friends to It felt like an erasure of a small but important Fortunately, there are workarounds. Conventional learn how their minds hear by translating sounds piece of my experience of that place. Sound is an hearing aids can be modified to amplify sound from vision, thought, and feeling. Finally, I’m going unexpectedly large component of the visual world. at only the higher frequencies, thus avoiding to prevail upon my wife, children, and friends to What other aural pieces were missing? the problem of sensory overload. SongFinder learn some of these songs, bird along with me, Presbycusis – the name for age-related hearing by Nature Sound Electronics converts high and tell me what’s coming through. loss – has the unfortunate ring of a religious frequencies to digital signals, then divides and Tim Traver

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 15

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 15 5/15/13 4:44:38 PM KNOTS & BOLTS

[ WORK HARD, PLAY HARD ]

Take a Bike! And Feel the Flow

While the difference between a deer trail and a and how to bridge wet spots and streams and hiking trail may be obvious, what makes a trail how to connect various high spots along the good for feet is not always what makes a trail route. At just about every step, Avery uses a cli- great for tires. Whereas hikers (and deer) tend to nometer – the goal is to keep the slope under 10 be destination oriented, mountain bikers look for percent. This information is essential in designing trails that allow them to experience the woods a trail that flows across the terrain. above, around, and below them. As Avery gets to know the woods he’s work- Hardy Avery of Sustainable Trailworks in ing in, he determines where the control points Morrisville, Vermont, has been building mountain are, both negative and positive. Negative control rough flags the route, he can estimate the cost bike trails for much of his life. When hired to points are things he wants his riders to avoid, like of the proposed trail (on average about $5 a foot). design and build a trail, Avery begins by talking swamps and cliffs, and positive control points Once the trail builder and the landowner agree on to the landowner about management plans they are the naturally beautiful features – like vistas the price, wire-pin flags are placed in the ground may already have in place. This collaboration is or waterfalls – that he wants his riders to see. and the building can begin. key to planning and designing a trail that respects GPS coordinates are taken and a map begins to Trail builders rely on a variety of tools to con- other land users, protects vulnerable ecosystems, emerge. At this point, Avery begins to hang flags struct trails, including a McCloud (a flat, square and (when on public land) follows guidelines set at eye level along the envisioned trail corridor, shaped blade with a cutting edge on one side and by the Agency of Natural Resources. looking both forward and backward and con- a rake on the other that’s used to remove berm) The next step is to assess the terrain. During stantly checking his clinometer. The speed of the and a Pulaski (half axe, half hoe). Trail builders also this stage, Avery gathers information about soil rider is of constant concern. A seasoned mountain use a sledge hammer, wheelbarrow, and basic types, drainage, and slope, and then begins to bike rider himself, Avery knows that riders like landscaping tools like pruners and rock bars. On conceptualize possible routes. He decides where rolling terrain and kinesthetic diversity. Once he larger jobs, Avery uses a 1.5-ton mini-excavator. When natural building materials are unavailable, Above: Tools of the trade. Below: Berms at Burke Mountain, Vermont.

16 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 16 5/15/13 4:44:41 PM ADELAIDE TYROL 17 5/15/13 4:44:42 PM Summer 2013 Northern Woodlands Woodlands Northern / ] THE OUTSIDE STORY STORY THE OUTSIDE Lilian Shen Lilian [ See in the Dark Night Vision: How Animals some I was taking a shortcut through I’ll always remember the time I ran into a wire fence at dusk. I could barely discern the thin when I looked carefully, Even and the impact sent me tumbling. woods, strands of wire in the gloomy evening light. a pupil that dilatesto control how or constricts All vertebrates share the same basic eye structure: nerves and that a lens to focus the image relay onto a light-sensitive retina, much light enters the eye, while many animals humans flounder with the departure of daylight, Yet the information to the brain. are able to forage and hunt by night. hunters like owls Nocturnal and cats they have big eyes. one, How see in the dark? For do animals which have to be So do tree frogs, the entire front of the eye. cover when open wide, have pupils that, occupy over their eyes eye size approaches the extreme: In owls, able to jump from branch to branch. half the volume of their skulls. Owls’ and diurnal animals. There are also physiological differences between the eyes of nocturnal This structure to the retina. a very with large lens positioned close eyes are tubular rather than spherical, Owls are thought to be but at the expense of flexible focusing. allows a lot of light to register on the retina, so eyes cannot rotate the spherical eyes you and I have, in their sockets like Tubular somewhat far-sighted. owls compensate necks that with incredibly flexible allow them to turn their heads 270 degrees. which helps behind the retina, called the tapetum, layer, Many nocturnal animals have a mirror-like Light that passes through the retina is reflected off the them make the most of small amounts of light. This makes some animals’ eyes shine in chance to sense it. giving the retinal cells a second tapetum, see is the pigment on the inner layer of the retina. The color you the glare of car headlights. rods and cones. which contains two types of light-sensing cells: of all vision is the retina, At the heart whereas rods can sense very dim, focused light, Cones account for color vision but require bright, multiple While each cone has its own brain connection, but don’t produce a color image. scattered light, This pools the information collected from the rods and creates rods are wired to a single brain connector. but the image is less defined. a stronger signal, the retinas of nocturnal animals are packed with rods and have few cones. As you might expect, they capture because their large eyes create some a big image that is focused on a big retina, However, detail despite the shortage of cones. which signals to the brain, “dark” or “light” the cones connect to circuits that send either In our eyes, Nocturnal animals possess a pathway increases sensitivity to movement and the edges of objects. which allows them better per- circuits used by cones, “dark” through which rods connect to the same and silhouettes in dim light. movement, ception of edges, the chromosomes in In diurnal animals, the rod cells are adapted of for night vision. Even the nuclei which means that any absorbed light is scattered around the are densest around the edges, the nucleus effectively focusing all the densest material is in the center of the nucleus, In nocturnal animals, edges. of the available light in one area. sensitive to movement to be shades of gray, likely It’s One can only guess at what nocturnal animals see. touch animals also have Most nocturnal a highly developed sense of hearing, but maybe lacking fine detail. One should not get the impression that an animal’s or smell to complement their vision. whiskers), (e.g., night. night vision is perfect – even nocturnal animals aren’t active in the darkest hours of a moonless

Story and Photos by Dale and Darcy Cahill and Darcy by Dale and Photos Story he has to carry in drainage stone and lumber. he has to carry in drainage stone and lumber. for trail two hard and fast rules There are building: never fill without retaining, and always retaining, never fill without building: channel water the surface of the trail. off to support turning Retaining walls are used platforms on switchbacks and to shore up trail prefer to make these walls builders Trail edges. they don’t rot and their as with large rocks, The top of a in the wall. weight provides strength lowerretaining wall must be than the trail tread so that water will sheet across rather than gather Strategically placed grade reversals, on the trail. (shaved down sections of a trail that are “nicks” all canted to the outside) and rolling grade dips signage Good is help to shed water from the trail. If riders cut essential to keep riders on the trail. they can slowlyand make widen trails corners, them vulnerable to water erosion. A good flow is everything. mountain bikers, For trail hangs together as a well-connected whole, well balanced with perfectly placed corners, and an overall unity that ascents and descents, On a well-built trail, helps to pull the rider along. in riders can relax and fully immerse themselves a In the end, the experience of mountain biking. memorable mountain bike trail is a work of art. 15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 17 new england wood pellet —by the numbers:

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18 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 18 5/15/13 4:44:45 PM Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 19

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 19 5/15/13 4:44:48 PM 20 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 20 5/15/13 4:44:55 PM By Charles Fergus

“I’ve got some pellets here.” “Here’s a run!”

he run was a path in the snow made by rabbits – specifically, rare and imperiled New England cottontails. The pellets? New Hampshire Fish and Game biologist Heidi Holman was referring to small, rounded, brownish rabbit droppings. Those telltale signs of habitation brought smiles to the faces of Holman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service endangered species biologist Anthony Tur, and Jenna Bourne, an employee of Stonyfield Yogurt, in Londonderry, New Hampshire, on whose land the group was walking on a sunny late-February day. The searchers tramped through a foot of snow. They picked their way past clumps of six- and eight-foot-tall alder, aspen, birch, and maple while judiciously avoiding concertina tangles of multiflora rose. This was thicket habitat – a blend of shrubs and young trees that provides the dense cover New England cottontails need. Three years earlier, a timber harvest had spurred the growth of that vegetation, and the local cottontails responded by moving in. Wilderness it wasn’t: the 11-acre patch wrapped around three sides of Stonyfield’s Yogurt Works, a low gray building; planes roared overhead, headed for landings at nearby Manchester Airport; and trucks beeped while backing up at other light-industry plants nearby. These days, biologists are happy to confirm the presence of New England cottontails anywhere they can. Since the 1960s, the species has lost an estimated 86 percent of its habitat, and its range has contracted to five subpopulations separated from one another by miles of mature forests, highways, shopping malls, and housing developments. Its numbers have fallen so low that this once-abundant regional rabbit is now being considered for endangered or threatened status under the federal Endangered Species Act. In New Hampshire (where it’s been on the state endangered list since 2008), as few as three dozen New England cottontails may remain. Next door in Vermont, New England cottontails have vanished – conservationists consider them extirpated, though they once ranged across the state’s southern tier and north through the Champlain and Connecticut River valleys. Maine has 250 to 400 rabbits (state endangered since 2007), all in the coastal southwest. A few New England cottontails may be left in Rhode Island – or perhaps none. The Massachusetts population numbers in the hundreds, mainly on Upper Cape Cod and in the Berkshires. Connecticut may have a couple thousand New England cottontails in its eastern and northwestern sections, and a similar number may live in New York state, east of the Hudson River and in the Taconics. USFWS

Eastern Cottontail. Note diagnostic black dot on forehead.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 21

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 21 5/15/13 4:44:57 PM But wait – aren’t cottontails seen with fair frequency in comes from research conducted by John Litvaitis, a professor southern New England? Yes, but the rabbits hopping across golf of wildlife at the University of New Hampshire. Beginning in courses and nibbling suburban lawns are not New England’s the 1990s, Litvaitis and his graduate students went looking own. They’re eastern cottontails, as alien to the region as the for rabbits and their habitat all over southern New England. autumn olive, Asian honeysuckle, and multiflora rose that Their field work galvanized conservationists and helped put the have quietly taken over much of the shrubland that remains. New England cottontail on the shortlist for potential federal In times past, only New England cottontails existed in New endangered status. The researchers also developed a protocol England. Folks called them coneys, brush rabbits, and woods for extracting DNA from rabbit pellets, revealing whether the rabbits. They lived on abandoned farms that were reverting to droppings come from New England or eastern cottontails, which forest, and in areas where wildfires, windstorms, beaver dams, lets biologists chart where the former remain. (For example, springtime flooding and ice scouring, and heavy logging had ongoing pellet studies have revealed that all of the cottontails temporarily toppled, killed, or otherwise removed older trees so around the Stonyfield Yogurt plant are New Englands.) that young trees and shrubs could come crowding back in. The researchers also studied how the two kinds of cotton- All of those factors, except storms, have been blunted. Yester- tails interact. After putting both types of rabbits in a thicket year’s farms are now mature woods stitched with stone walls. enclosed by wire fencing, they concluded that the larger eastern Dams by the hundreds limit ice scouring and floods. We humans cottontail does not dominate or displace the smaller New England have suppressed wildfires and beaver activities to protect lives and cottontail from its habitat. “The only detectable difference property and have covered much of the land with development. between them,” Litvaitis wrote in a 2002 article in New Heavy logging is almost nonexistent in southern New England, Hampshire Wildlife Journal, “was that eastern cottontails were much of which is cloaked with closed-canopy middle-aged and often observed in areas with little understory cover.” older forest – a type of habitat that, although natural and needed The scientists built another pen and installed feeders with by some kinds of wildlife, does not offer enough low-growing electronic sensors, which allowed them to monitor when a rabbit vegetation for New England cottontails or around 60 other was present. They found that eastern cottontails traveled farther young-forest-dependent creatures, including woodcock, brown from protective cover to get food. “Our farthest feeder was thrashers, towhees, chestnut-sided and blue-winged warblers, about 60 feet from cover,” wrote Litvaitis, “a long distance for

and box and wood turtles. USFWS The populations of all these animals BRIAN TEFFT – identified by the states as “species of greatest conservation need” – have been falling over the past 50 years as the amount of thicket and young-forest acreage has steadily dwindled.

Two different rabbits

For the New England cottontail, there’s an extra odd twist: During the first half of the twentieth century, state wildlife agen- cies and private hunting clubs released thousands of eastern cottontails (most of them from Kansas, Missouri, and Texas) to boost hunting opportunities. Eastern cottontails don’t pop down holes as readily as New England cottontails do, which let hunters enjoy longer chases with their rabbit hounds and upped their chances of bagging a bunny. Those imported eastern cot- tontails caught on, and today they greatly outnumber the native rabbits across most of southern New England. The New England cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis) and the eastern cottontail (S. floridanus) do not interbreed, or if they do, offspring apparently don’t survive. An adult eastern cotton- tail is a bit larger than a New England, weighing three pounds versus about 2.2 pounds. Otherwise they look similar, with a mottled brown-and-black pelt and a white powder-puff tail. Most New England cottontails have a small black spot on the forehead, whereas about half of all easterns have a white spot in the same place. The New England’s ears are slightly shorter than the eastern’s and have a thin line of black fur along the outer edge. Skull shape differs between the species as well. Most of what we know about cottontails in New England

22 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 22 5/15/13 4:44:59 PM a rabbit trying to avoid a hungry fox or owl.” Although eastern summer, and on woody vegetation in late fall, winter, and early cottontails would chow down at those feeders, “New England spring – and are better able to dash back to cover if a predator cottontails were very reluctant to visit [them] unless they started threatens. “Because staying close to cover is probably the best to lose weight and were clearly very hungry.” strategy in forest habitats,” Litvaitis concluded, “New England When the researchers sent a life-sized owl decoy gliding along cottontails suffer disproportionately when cover shrinks.” a wire suspended over caged rabbits, eastern cottontails spotted In the wild, the fate of almost every rabbit is to be killed the approaching decoy when it was 70 feet away. New England and eaten by a predator. The researchers identified red foxes cottontails didn’t see the owl until it was only 30 feet away. and coyotes as the most common causes of death among 75 Why, the scientists wondered, could an eastern cottontail spy radio-collared free-ranging New England cottontails that they a predator so much farther off than could its Yankee cousin? The monitored in southern New Hampshire. Cottontails are also answer turned out to be fairly simple: the eyes of Eastern cotton- preyed on by fishers, mink, weasels, hawks, owls, large snakes, tails are 50 percent larger than those of New England cottontails, bobcats, domestic cats and dogs, and humans. Skunks and rac- giving them better long-range vision. Likely, this more-acute coons raid the natal nests – made from grasses and from fur that vision developed because the eastern cottontail evolved in open the mother-to-be plucks from her own coat. Another Litvaitis plains habitats, where it needed to detect danger at a distance. In study showed that the variety and number of predators goes up contrast, the New England cottontail evolved in shrublands, such in fragmented, human-modified landscapes such as those of as mountain laurel and scrub oak thickets, and in young forests southern New England. created by fires, floods, hurricanes, and beaver work; in such dense Based on years of study, Litvaitis suggested that for New settings, a woods rabbit didn’t need to spot far-off predators. England cottontails to occupy a given site indefinitely, they need Today, their long-range vision lets eastern cottontails use the a minimum of 20 interconnected acres of good-quality thicket. small patches of thicket habitat that remain in southern New Winter is a tough time for rabbits: Instead of feeding on (and England: an acre of invasive shrubs behind a strip mall, a briar staying hidden in) the abundant greenery of summer, they skulk patch bordering a gravel pit, a hedge in somebody’s backyard. in thick shrubs or underground burrows by day, then venture From such tatters of cover, eastern cottontails creep out to feed out at night to nibble on the bark, twigs, and buds of woody on grasses, clover, plantain, and other low herbaceous plants in plants, food that is much less nourishing than summer fare. In USFWS Opposite page, top: New England cottontail in Rhode Island. Bottom: New England cottontail burrow. This page: Volunteers and staff plant native shrubs at Libby Field in the Spurwink River Division of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge, Maine, to help restore habitat for New England cottontail.

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 23 5/15/13 4:45:02 PM winter, the protective cover is at its thinnest, and if snow blan- kets the ground for long periods, the rabbits stand out sharply against the white background. (Unlike the larger snowshoe hare, another New England native, neither the New England cottontail nor the eastern cottontail takes on a protective white coat in winter.) Litvaitis found that in habitat patches 12 acres and larger, about 7 out of 10 New England cottontails will make it through winter. But once a patch gets smaller than about six acres, winter mortality can soar to 66 percent. And if the habitat continues to shrink, its resident population will wink out.

Helping nature along

The recently improved habitat patch at Stonyfield Yogurt cov- ers 11 acres, which implied that the “dozen” rabbits thought to inhabit the tract might have dwindled to eight by that February day when Tur, Holman, and their colleagues went looking for cottontail sign. Those theoretical eight bunnies would likely repopulate the patch during the year to come. Offsetting the fact that cottontails are food to so many predators is their great reproductive capacity: A female can have three to four lit- ters per year, with an average of three to four young per litter. Cottontails are born blind, but they develop quickly. A rabbit’s conception through its birth, weaning, and independence takes only 60 days. Females born early in the year may produce a litter of their own that same summer. The previous autumn, Holman had live-trapped and removed two New England cottontails from the Stonyfield patch. The improved habitat had helped boost bunny numbers during the breeding season, so the biologists felt they could safely take a couple of individual rabbits without harming the local popu- lation. The two rabbits went to Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, to become part of a captive breeding program that, coupled with habitat-creation efforts gearing up all over the species’ range, aims to save Sylvilagus transitionalis

SW USFWS USFWS from extinction. Since 2010, captive-breeding specialists at the zoo have been perfecting housing, feeding, and breeding protocols. Their goal Top: Prescribed burning refreshes grasslands and produces more food and cover is to produce the maximum number of healthy brush rabbits for species like the cottontail. Bottom: One-day-old New England cottontails. that can go back into the wild, both to boost the numbers and genetic diversity of existing populations and to start new popu- lations in places where conservationists are making habitat. As of March 2013, 17 female and 10 male New England cot- tontails were housed at the zoo, with the year’s breeding just get- ting underway. So far, 15 captive-bred rabbits have been released on brush-covered Patience Island, a 210-acre uninhabited island in Narragansett Bay. This year biologists hope to confirm natu- ral reproduction there; if the island population thrives, it could become a source for restocking other areas. Conservationists have also built two hardening pens, at Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge in Rhode Island and Great Bay National Wildlife Refuge in New Hampshire. Young captive-bred rabbits will spend a month in those one-acre, predator-proof enclosures learning how to hide in cover and feed on native vegetation; then it’s off

24 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 24 5/15/13 4:45:04 PM to the real world, red in tooth and claw. because shrubland and young forest generally remain good rab- “We’d like to have a hundred or more animals come out of bit habitat for only about 20 years. After that, their leafy crowns the zoo in 2013,” Tur said. “The effectiveness of captive breeding knit back together and exclude sunlight, and groundcover once will be measured by whether or not captive-bred individuals can again gets sparse. go back into the wild, reproduce, and bear young.” A major component in a New England cottontail comeback is Captive breeding will likely be a key aspect of restoring the the NRCS’s Wildlife Habitat Incentive Program (WHIP). WHIP New England cottontail. But if there isn’t enough habitat out funding has helped more than 20 private landowners make over there, the overall effort will fail. 350 acres of potential cottontail habitat in New Hampshire, and this year another 10 landowners will begin projects on an additional 150 to 200 acres. WHIP is also enabling private-land Habitat is the key projects in the other New England cottontail states, particularly in areas next to habitats, such as scrub wetlands, that support Making rabbit habitat is the goal of a partnership formed existing cottontail populations. Recently the NRCS began a in 2007 between the five states that still have New England nationwide Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) initiative that cottontails, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. features the New England cottontail as one of seven wild ani- Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation mals for which the agency will help farmers and forest landown- Service (NRCS). A Conservation Strategy for the New England ers make critically important habitat. In 2012, WLFW issued Cottontail, written by Tur and Steven Fuller, a scientist who contracts pledging to pay 44 landowners $1.5 million to make coordinates the rangewide New England Cottontail Initiative, New England cottontail habitat on more than 1,300 acres. States, came out in November 2012. (It can be downloaded at www. other federal agencies, and organizations such as the National newenglandcottontail.org.) Developed with input from state Fish and Wildlife Foundation have committed several million wildlife biologists, the document maps 47 focus areas where, dollars to New England cottontail recovery as well. between 2012 and 2030, conservationists plan to create more Another New Hampshire project illustrates what can be done than 50,000 acres of habitat to support 28,100 New England cot- on public land – in this case, the 428-acre Bellamy River Wildlife tontails – enough, scientists believe, to save the species. Management Area near Dover. In 2011, loggers harvested low- How to make that habitat? Potential management techniques quality white pines and hardwoods with a 30-acre clearcut. The include even-aged timber harvests (both clearcuts and shelter- following spring, saplings began spring- wood cuts); noncommercial timber harvesting (cutting down ing up from the root systems and trees that are not large enough to provide a financial return); stumps of the logged-off hardwoods. mowing or mulching old, straggling shrubs; and conducting Over the next several growing sea- controlled burns. All of those methods mimic the kinds of cata- sons the clearcut should metamor- strophic natural events that once operated freely to make early phose into a jungle of dense trees -successional habitat. All remove the forest or shrub canopy and and shrubs. The clearcut is next let sunlight reach the ground, which spurs the growth of low, to cover where New England cot- thick vegetation. Such management practices must be ongoing, tontails live, so the rabbits ought to

USFWS jump right in. Conservationists have also been planting native shrubs such MAINE

VERMONT

Locations of New England Cottontail Populations NEW HAMPSHIRE Historic Range

NEW YORK Extant Populations MASSACHUSETTS RHODE ISLAND CONNECTICUT

Lou Perrotti of the Roger Williams Park Zoo releases the first rabbit into the hardening pen at Ninigret National Wildlife Refuge.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 25

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 25 5/15/13 4:45:06 PM as dogwood, hazelnut, and arrowwood. “We estimate there are Mashpee Native American Tribe, and the Trustees of Reservations, about 200 acres of potential New England cottontail habitat on along with the state of Massachusetts and the U.S. Fish and the wildlife management area,” said Jim Oehler, a biologist with Wildlife Service’s Eastern Massachusetts Refuge Complex. Many New Hampshire Fish and Game. “Over time, we hope to keep 75 of the tracts abut or lie close to each other. And only a mile down percent of that acreage in suitably dense bunny habitat.” the road is the Massachusetts Military Reserve at Camp Edwards, Other conservation efforts in the Granite State include agree- where wildlife biologists have conducted controlled burns on ments with utility companies to lessen the frequency with which more than 1,500 acres of coastal scrub since the 1990s and where they mow power-line and gas-line corridors; the companies a robust New England cottontail population remains. The use of will simply remove trees as they get too big. “The idea is to fire in this sandy coastal environment removes dead vegetation continuously maintain thicket cover,” Holman said. Biologists and makes it less likely that large, out-of-control wildfires will flare hope New England cottontails will use the brushy corridors up in the future. Prescribed burning also renews scrub oak, a low- to disperse from one population to another, occupying habitat growing, fire-evolved oak that’s more of a shrub than a tree and, patches as they are renewed or created, and maintaining genetic when young and dense, offers great rabbit habitat. flow within the species. So while the situation looks bleak in some parts of its range, In Connecticut, biologists and foresters with the state’s conservationists are optimistic that they can reverse the popula- Department of Energy and Environmental Protection have cre- tion drop the New England cottontail has taken over the last ated sizable habitat patches on four state properties and plan work half-century. According to the Conservation Strategy for the on six more state-owned tracts. Clustered around those sites are New England Cottontail, around 145,000 acres of public land are projects on private lands, like the one on aptly named Cottontail highly suitable for turning into woods-rabbit habitat. Focusing Farm near the town of Scotland. There, landowner Tom McAvoy management on public tracts would make for substantial cost is improving shrub habitat in five fields by rooting out older savings compared to creating habitat on private parcels and invasive shrubs, such as autumn olive, and replanting with native would reduce the number of management actions needed, along shrubs that offer better food and cover. A 10-acre timber harvest with their accompanying planning and oversight. It would also took place in February 2013; soon, regrowing oaks, maples, and increase the opportunity to use cost-effective controlled burn- hickories, along with a dense blueberry understory, will add to ing as a management tool, plus generate income – and jobs the habitat mix. “I look at this as a legacy project, one that my – from timber products. sons will be part of in the future,” said McAvoy. To make the habitat that the New England cottontail needs, In addition to WHIP funding, McAvoy received help through conservationists will have to change the public’s perception the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Partners for Fish and Wildlife of management activities such as burning brush thickets or program. Ted Kendziora, a biologist working out of the Service’s clearcutting generous-sized forest tracts – not an easy task in New England field office, supplied planning, technical advice, heavily wooded southern New England, where many people and funding, then supervised the private contractors who did shudder at the idea of cutting down even a single tree and the actual habitat-enhancement work. where state and local regulations often severely limit the extent Kendziora is helping landowners make habitat in every state and siting of logging jobs. across the New England cottontail’s range. One area with a good As an endangered species biologist, Anthony Tur works with population of New England cottontails is Upper Cape Cod, where many animals, from the American burying beetle to Blanding’s more than 400 acres of fresh rabbit habitat have been created by the turtle to the mountaintop-dwelling Bicknell’s thrush. “The New Town of Mashpee, Orenda Wildlife Land Trust, the Wampanoag England cottontail is an important part of the wildlife legacy and biodiversity of our region,” he said. “All species have an Biologist Ted Kendziora and landowner Tom McAvoy inherent value, and all of them have a place on the landscape. If humans are the reason for an animal being in trouble – and clearly we’re part of the problem the New England cottontail is facing today – then we have a moral responsibility to work hard to keep that animal around. “In particular, the New England cottontail is a good barom- eter of the health of a certain kind of habitat: dense thicket veg- etation. When we make habitat for New England cottontails, we help out many other kinds of wildlife. I think we’ll be successful in this effort. Cottontails are prolific animals. If we supply the habitat, the rabbits will do the rest.”

CHARLES FERGUS Charles Fergus is the author of Trees of New England: A Natural History and numerous other nature books. A wildlife communications consultant, he handles three websites for the Wildlife Management Institute: www.newenglandcottontail.org, www.youngforest.org, and www.timberdoodle.org.

26 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 27 5/15/13 4:45:12 PM FIELD work

Story and photos by Joe Rankin

At Work Solving Crimes with Wood Sleuth Richard Jagels If Richard Jagels had a casebook like Sherlock Holmes, the titles might be: “The Case of the Twig in the Mirror”, “The Case of the Killer Ship Mast”, “The Case of the Doubtful Dowels”. Jagels is a wood forensics consultant – a wood sleuth. He can take tiny samples of wood, ancient or recently cut, put them under a microscope, and, using his vast knowledge of wood anatomy and the resources of his impressive library, tell you whether the sample is Philippine mahogany or California madrone, red spruce or red pine, eucalyptus or elm. Jagels would be the first to tell you his investigations don’t have the glamour of a CSI episode and that he’s not Sherlock Holmes. But, like the enduring fictional detective, he still gets a thrill when the game’s afoot. “I enjoy doing the analysis, trying to figure out the species,” he said, confessing that, “I don’t enjoy sitting in court testifying.” Balding, glasses, mustache, worn jeans … Jagels looks the picture of a retired forestry professor, which is what he is. He built a side career as a wood forensics consultant while working at his full-time job in the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources, where for three decades he taught courses in the functional structure of woody plants, wood identification, and plant microtechnique (a lab course on the ways to prepare plant tissue for microscopic analysis). As a scientist, he researched the biomechanics of tree stems and how trees react to stress, such as the effects of acid fog on coastal conifers. While he retired from teaching a couple of years ago, he still does forensics and other consulting work. Today, Jagels leans back in the chair in his office, a cozy upstairs space overlooking the brown and swollen Penobscot River as it muscles past the historic town of Winterport, Maine. Two flat-panel computer screens perch on the desk. Another desk holds a microscope, razor blades, and other paraphernalia A piece of ancient metasequoia. for preparing specimens. Bookshelves cradle seemingly every book ever written on wood and wood identification. Jagels leans dialed up WoodenBoat magazine to pitch an article about an over and pulls out the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet to reveal Adirondack guide boat he was restoring and ended up landing neatly labeled folders, more than 30 years worth of cases. a gig to write a column on wood technology. He’s been doing Jagels grew up in White Plains, New York, and went to it ever since. And it’s that column that brings him a lot of his SUNY-ESF Syracuse, where he majored in wood anatomy, pri- forensic cases. marily, he admits, because “there were more electives available.” “It just sort of built itself as a sideline,” Jagels said. “I’ve never He went on to earn a master’s degree in forest pathology, then a advertised. It’s all been word of mouth. I’ve never pushed it. doctorate in botany from the University of Illinois. After all, I already had a full-time job.” Still, he’s worked for the Following school, he bounced around for a while – with Maine State Police, engineering firms, museums, private parties, stints at various jobs at the University of Alberta, the University and lawyers. About a third of the 100 or so cases he’s worked on of Vermont, Dartmouth College, Louisiana State, and the qualified as forensics work. He’s working on one now, but he’s Winterthur Museum in Delaware, where he worked on wood not at liberty to divulge any details. Still, he can talk about the identification projects – before landing at UMaine in 1979. finished ones. Between the University of Vermont and Dartmouth, he made To really understand how Jagels does what he does, you’d ends meet doing construction and some freelance writing. He probably have to take a course in wood anatomy. The way he

28 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

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explains it, identifying a piece of wood involves looking at Shaving a piece of spruce. how its cells are organized, understanding how the cell walls are sculpted, and considering whether there are any inclusions present. “Occasionally one or a few features define a species, In The Case of the but more often a combination of features is needed to separate Doubtful Dowels, Jagels woods,” he said. For example, if there is spiral thickening of the was contacted by a west- longitudinal tracheids, the water-carrying cells that run up and ern Maine dowel mill down through the stem of a tree, it’s probably a Douglas fir. to see if he could fig- But it’s a trait shared with the yew family. “Always exceptions,” ure out a way to deter- said Jagels. “A more complicated scenario would be whether a mine whether dowels conifer has ray tracheids or not, and if so, are the tracheids den- had been sanded. There tate, and if so, are the dentations short or do they extend across was money riding on the cell, and if so, what kind of ray crossing pits are present, et the question: Canadian cetera, et cetera,” Jagels added. (Now you see why that course in customs officers claimed wood anatomy might come in handy.) the company’s dowels In a 1988 case, he identified pieces of a twig and leaf material were sanded and thus found in the side-view mirror of a murder suspect’s car as bal- were a finished product sam fir and linked the wood to a damaged tree at the site where subject to higher tariffs. After trying various stains and dyes, the victim’s partially clad body was found, dumped off a tote Jagels hit upon the perfect method: rubbing a pencil over it. road in Hermon. In 1990, he matched a white pine chip found “After rubbing along the axis of the dowel with a No. 2 pencil, if with a young rape and murder victim’s body to similar chips darker rings show up that encircle the dowel, this means it has found in the car of the prime suspect – a woodworker. Both not been sanded; in other words, you can see the traces of the suspects were convicted, based partly on his evidence. cutters used to shape the dowel. Sanded dowels will show only Criminal cases involving wood are few and far between. the pencil marks that run parallel to the grain,” said Jagels. “A More often Jagels’ expertise is sought by lawyers in civil cases, customs officer can do it in a few seconds.” like The Case of the Victory Chimes. The professor was hired Not all of Jagels’ forensic work has been in the interest of jus- by a firm pursuing a wrongful-death lawsuit against the owner tice or commerce. Some of it has been in the interest of science. of the Victory Chimes, the iconic three-masted schooner later About ten years ago, he was one of a team of scientists who immortalized on the Maine state quarter. A rigger had died trekked to the Arctic Ocean’s Axel Heiberg Island to examine when a mast snapped off. The mast had been deteriorating, but the remains of a huge fossilized forest. Many of the trees turned rather than replacing it, the owners had it repaired using a metal out to be dawn redwoods (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), an collar and epoxy, said Jagels. He showed that the repairs made ancient species that grew when the dinosaurs roamed and was a serious problem worse by trapping moisture and accelerating thought to be extinct until a small grove was found growing in a the rot’s movement from the heart of the mast to the outside. remote area in China in the 1940s. The trees in the Axel Heiberg forest lived 35 to 40 million years ago. Jagels still has the speci- mens, looking dark and very, very old. Jagels keeps on with the forensic work, getting a couple of cases a year, but fewer criminal cases come his way now – DNA evidence is more definitive these days, he explained. He sees the entire realm of wood science and wood anatomy slowly disappearing. These days, most forestry schools don’t even have wood science programs, he said. Not enough students want to take it, a result, Jagels believes, of our changing rela- tionship with wood. Though we continue to use wood – huge volumes of it – we tend not to use it as lumber. What’s most furniture made of these days? Composites. Young people aren’t even interested in antique furniture, he said. These days, Jagels devotes more of his time and talents to conservation. He is a founding member and board director of GreenWood, a nonprofit that trains artisans in developing countries to make and market wood products and to manage their forests sustainably.

Joe Rankin is a writer, beekeeper, market gardener, and orchardist. He lives in central Jagels at work. Maine.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 29

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Meadowsend Timberlands Ltd R. Kirby Ellis Kenneth L. Williams Jeremy G. Turner, NHLPF #318 Ellis’ Professional Forester Services Consulting Foresters, LLC serving NH & VT P.O. Box 71, Hudson, ME 04630 959 Co. Hwy. 33, Cooperstown, NY 13326 P.O. Box 966, New London, NH 03257 (207) 327-4674 (607) 547-2386 (603) 526-8686 ellisforestry.com Fax: (607) 547-7497 [email protected] www.mtlforests.com Charlie Hancock North Woods Forestry P.O. Box 405, Montgomery Center, VT 05471 New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts require foresters (802) 326-2093 to be licensed, and Connecticut requires they be certified. Note that not all consulting foresters are licensed in each [email protected] state. If you have a question about a forester’s licensure or certification status, contact your state’s Board of Licensure.

30 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 31 5/15/13 4:45:20 PM To p Flowers Adaptations for living on the alpine edge

Story by Meghan Oliver / Photos by Doug Weihrauch

nyone who’s made his or her way up a mountain is familiar with the some- times startling transformation of the landscape, from leafy hardwood stands to thick and prickly green cathedrals of red spruce and balsam fir. Above 3,000 feet, the soil thins and the trees – called krummholz in mountaineering parlance – become noticeably shorter, bent over, and stunted by endless winds. It’s hard to believe anything can live in such an unforgiving environment, but if you’re lucky, as you Alpine bluet (Houstonia caerulea faxonorum) crest the mountain’s peak, you may observe a low-lying sweep of colors amid the rocky cover, courtesy of flowering alpine plants. In the Northeast, alpine plants grow in a specialized habitat of dry and rocky soil, constant winds, and cold temperatures, explained Doug Weihrauch, staff ecologist for the Appalachian Mountain Club. Alpine zones only comprise about 35 square kilometers total in the Northeast, making them just a tiny part of the region’s mountainous landscape. But despite their relatively small presence, alpine wildflowers and other plants put on a remarkable (though short-lived) show each spring and summer. “When you’re hiking above treeline, you’re hiking into New England’s vegetation past,” Weihrauch said, referring to the tundra vegetation – the lichen, mosses, and low-growing plants – that were the first to creep in as glaciers receded. Alpine flowers bloom in waves, with the first flowers occurring as early as May; look then for blooms of diapensia, alpine azalea, and Lapland rosebay. June brings – among others – the rare dwarf cinquefoil, the white blooms of moss plant, alpine bluets, and Labrador tea, the flowers of small cranberry, and the purple alpine marsh violet. In July, Mountain cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) in fruit. keep your eyes peeled for the Boott’s rattlesnake-root, arnica, alpine speedwell, harebell, and the miniscule flowers of eyebright. In August, while alpine aster and alpine gold- Arnica (Arnica lanceolata) enrod are in blossom, look for the fruits of alpine plants in the heath family, including mountain cranberry, small cranberry, bilberry, bearberry, and others. We invite readers to give alpine flowers a good look this summer – an appreciative look. From a distance, diapensia might just look like a few splotches of white around some gray rocks. But take a closer look at its waxy leaves and miniature size; marvel at the fact that these delicate-looking blooms can survive in the most punishing wind- exposed sites. There’s a whole new world of plants awaiting your admiration (and respect) up in the alpine zone.

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 32 5/15/13 4:45:24 PM Bearberry willow (Salix uva-ursi) False hellebore (Veratrum viride)

A diapensia and Lapland rosebay cushion community.

Lapland rosebay (Rhododendron lapponicum)

Alpine bilberry (Vaccinium caespitosum)

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 33 5/15/13 4:45:29 PM Diapensia (Diapensia lapponica)

Lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium)

Pale painted cup (Castilleja septentrionalis)

Alpine goldenrod (Solidago cutleri)

Alpine marsh violet (Viola palustris)

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 34 5/15/13 4:45:36 PM Adaptations for Surviving Above the Timberline Low to the ground Most alpine plants are only 1 or 2 inches tall, and being low to the ground has a number of advantages. The plants’ diminutive size allows them to stay out of the wind, and in winter, being small means protection under a thick snowpack. In summer, the soil temperature in alpine areas may be as much as 15 degrees higher than air temperature just centimeters above the surface. Cushions and mats Some alpine plants, such as diapensia and alpine azalea, grow into a cushion or thick mat. A rounded cushion shape allows wind to fly smoothly over the plants without tussling delicate leaves. A thick mat will absorb and retain heat. Evergreen foliage Evergreen leaves help alpine plants get a jumpstart on the growing season; they can start photosynthesizing as soon as the temperature rises above freezing. Red leaves The leaves of some plants, such as diapensia, turn a deep reddish- purple in the non-growing season. The color is caused by anthocyanin, which absorbs ultraviolet rays and converts them into heat energy, Alpine aster (Aster alpinus) which warms the plant earlier in the growing season. m) Krummholz and Lapland Rosebay Thick, waxy leaves Thick foliage helps alpine plants deal with excessively well-drained soil in summer and the ever-present drying winds. “Plants need to keep stomates open to allow photosynthesis and respiration, but this also lets out moisture, especially in windy conditions,” Weihrauch explained. Thick leaves help in two ways. “They are less likely to be torn or damaged by high winds, which are frequent above treeline, and [their thickness] reduces the surface area exposed to desiccating winds.” Many of the leaves, such as those of mountain cranberry, produce a waxy cuticle to aid in water retention. Fuzzy, curled leaves Even for alpine plants that grow in areas with adequate soil moisture, desiccation can be a battle for at least part of the year. Fuzzy leaves can help retain moisture by “combing moisture out of clouds,” Weihrauch said, and retaining that moisture near the leaf surface when the air dries out. For a plant like Labrador tea, hairs on the undersides of the leaves protect the stomates, which, when open for gas exchange, lose water. Moisture loss through the leaves increases under high winds and when there is a big differential between moisture levels within the leaf and the surrounding air. A barrier of moist hairs on the underside lessens that differential. Labrador tea also has leaf margins that curl under as another way to lessen wind exposure and the moisture loss that would occur in a more exposed leaf surface. Slow growth Slow growth keeps these plants from growing unnecessarily high, which is dangerous in the alpine zone. Extra height means more exposure to winds and the risk of becoming taller than the snowpack. “In a good year, they’re lucky to put on a few inches of growth,” Weihrauch said. He noted that some plants the size of a quarter may be 25-50 years old.

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 35 5/15/13 4:45:39 PM Moss bell heather (Harrimanella hypnoides)

Mountain heath (Phyllodoce caerulea)

Where to Find Them Lace up your boots and pack an extra layer: it’s time to ascend the great alpine peaks of the Northeast in search of alpine flora. Weihrauch noted that any hiker in the alpine zone should stick to trails or step or skip from rock to rock to avoid walking on the plants, which can die from being trampled. “They haven’t evolved to have a bunch of people hiking all over them,” Weihrauch said with a laugh. New Hampshire: The Presidential Range, particularly Mount Washington’s Alpine Garden, Franconia Ridge (Mount Lafayette and Mount Lincoln), Mount Cardigan, Mount Monadnock, South Twin, Mount Chocorua, Mount Moosilauke, Mount Hight, South Baldface. Vermont: Camel’s Hump, Mount Mansfield, Mount Abraham. Maine: Katahdin Range, Saddleback Mountain, Bigelow Range, Mahoosuc Range (straddling the New Hampshire-Maine border), The Baldpates, Sugarloaf Mountain, Mount Abraham, Mount Desert. New York: Mount Abraham, Whiteface, Mount Marcy, Algonquin

36 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 36 5/15/13 4:45:45 PM Alpine speedwell (Veronica wormskjoldii)

Alpine azalea (Loiseleuria procumbens)

Labrador tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum)

Alpine harebell (Campanula rotundifolia) Eyebright (Euphrasia oakesii) Boott’s rattlesnake-root (Prenanthes boottii)

Mountain avens (Geum peckii)

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 37

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 38 5/15/13 4:45:54 PM Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 39

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 39 5/15/13 4:45:57 PM Reconstructing the Past: Maine Forests Then and Now

By Andrew M. Barton, Alan S. White, and Charles V. Cogbill ROB LESSER, ©2009 PATHS OF HISTORY ART PUBLISHERS DOWNEAST LAKES LAND TRUST

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 40 5/15/13 4:46:08 PM The New England settlement story is a familiar narrative. We all know the tale: farms hacked out of daunting woods in the eighteenth century, rolling Agricultural lands in the nineteenth century, and abandoned fields reverting to forest in the twentieth century. There’s only one problem: That’s not what happened in Maine.

Euro-Americans colonized the Maine coast in the 1600s and early 1700s, but much of this occupation was repulsed by Abenaki tribes. After the Revolutionary War, a larger wave of settlers pushed inland, quilting southern and central Maine with farms and in the process clearing more than three million acres of forest. But after the Civil War, immigration into the state slowed to a trickle, and many people left their Maine farms for better land in the Midwest, or the industrializing cities of the Northeast. As a result, settlers never reached most of the northern half of the state, leaving about 14-15 million acres of forest intact. In short, the business plan to settle the state never materialized. There is no state like Maine in the eastern U.S. where such a large chunk of contiguous land has remained continu- ously forested since pre-settlement times. It’s tempting to look for similarities with the western U.S., where vast forests were never cleared. Most of those lands, how- ever, are managed by the federal govern- ment. Most of the Maine Woods are pri- vately owned, and that has led to a very different kind of relationship between people and forests. Maine, in other words, This article is adapted from the authors’ 2012 book, The Changing Nature of the Maine Woods, has carried out its own unique, long-term which explores the following topics in greater depth. Sources for the article can be found there. experiment in land use.

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 41 5/15/13 4:46:13 PM What are the consequences of this 400-year experiment? embedded detritus was preserved, layer upon layer. Does today’s forest look like the forest before European settle- Using radiocarbon dating on these bog cores (see sidebar, ment? Have the characters in the story – the plants and animals page 43), we’ve been able to reconstruct a pollen chronology and other species – changed in any appreciable way? that records more than 14,000 years of forest changes in Maine – from tundra to spruce-fir to a drier pine-birch-oak forest to Uncovering the past mixed hardwoods and, finally, to the mixed hardwoods and softwoods the explorers found. Historical ecologists have spent decades reconstructing what Historical records and 14,000-year-old sediment samples are pre-settlement forests were like in Maine. It’s challenging work, intriguing, but we can’t forget to simply go out into the woods as we’re talking about ecosystems that existed 200 to 600 years and see what’s there. Presumably, old growth forests resemble ago, differed widely across the state, and were never static. No presettlement forests and contain clues about forest composi- single approach or type of data will suffice; we must rely on tion, structure, and the roles of various disturbances in shaping multiple lines of evidence that operate at different geographic them. Maine has scarcely any old growth remaining – mostly scales and combine history, biogeography, archaeology, survey- tiny stands (or stunted vegetation on high mountains) that ing, natural history, and ecology. have survived because of an idiosyncratic history of ownership, Our first clues come from early explorers who wrote about condition, or location. Fortunately, The Nature Conservancy’s coastal forests. The earliest of these observations, in the 1500s, are Big Reed Forest Reserve protects a singular Maine old growth not especially revelatory, such as this description from Giovanni landscape of 5,000 acres. da Verrazano in 1524: “nothing extraordinary except vast forests.” By analyzing cores from 6,909 trees (63 dating from before When the early settlers did get specific, their tree naming was 1750, the oldest prior to 1555), Alan White and his graduate stu- often rudimentary and flexible. The early usage of “fir,” “spruce,” or dents were able to reconstruct a record of how much the Big Reed “cypress,” for example, could have referred to any conifer. forest has been naturally disturbed by fire, wind, ice, and other But by the 1600s, some explorer journals record detailed natural phenomena. They found that the average stand distur- observations, such as the following description of the Camden bance rate is only about 9 to 12 percent per decade and projected Hills from the 1605 Waymouth voyage: that a major disturbance (over 50 percent disturbed) would occur passed over very good ground, pleasant and fertile, fit for only once every 1,100 years. Big Reed Forest Reserve also provides pasture, for the space of some three miles having but little a glimpse of the rich species diversity (26 different tree species!) wood, that Oke like stands left in our pastures in England, that the unmanaged presettlement forest would have supported. good and great, fit timber for any use. Some small birch, No one line of evidence is sufficient to reconstruct the Hazle and Brake . . . Upon the hills grow notable high presettlement Maine Woods, as each has advantages but also timber trees, masts for ships of 400 tun. weaknesses: only the witness tree data provide a nearly com- A second source of clues comes from land surveys, from prehensive geographic view; only the paleoecology studies which one can tease data related to topography, water drain- reveal changes over relatively long time periods; only Big Reed’s age, forests, natural disturbance, and specific trees. Surveyors old-growth landscape offers details about forest dynamics and used witness trees to mark boundaries, and the frequency of allows us to see and measure a forest that resembles those of these trees in survey records provides a reliable estimate of the presettlement times. Taken together, however, the lines of evi- species composition of the forest at that time. Charles Cogbill dence reveal a picture of what the presettlement forest looked has collated presettlement land survey records and recorded like, how it operated, and how it varied across the landscape. 23,490 witness trees in what is now Maine. This includes some 36 species (or closely related groups of species) in 180 towns. Maine forests then and now For example, a 1789 survey by Ephraim Ballard in west-central Maine noted eastern hemlock, American beech, northern white So what do we find when we compare the forest of today with cedar, birches, maples, northern red oak, and American bass- the forest first encountered by settlers in the seventeenth cen- wood. A survey in the far northern tip of Maine in Aroostook tury? Remarkably, Maine’s forest area today is about the same Township in 1845 describes a very different forest: lots of fir and as it was four centuries ago. Maine is 21.3 million acres (19.8 spruce, some hardwoods, and balm of Gilead (balsam poplar). million is land). In 1600, 18.2 million acres were forest; today’s But the human record is only part of the story. Paleoecologists forest covers 17.7 million acres. use preserved pollen, macrofossils, charcoal, and insect remains The major forest regions have also been largely stable since to reconstruct environments of the past. As the glaciers receded, presettlement times. Cogbill’s analysis of witness trees reveals Maine was dotted with lakes and ponds onto which all manner four major forest zones before European settlement: a south- of wind-blown flotsam – pollen, seeds, cones, leaves of plants, western oak-pine district (with some outliers eastward along the even bits of charcoal from fires – blew and sank to the bot- coast); a west-central province of northern hardwood forest, with tom. Lakes slowly filled with organic matter, some remaining beech as the most abundant species; a northern zone of spruces, as bodies of water, others developing into bogs or fens. Low fir, northern white cedar, yellow birch, and lesser amounts of oxygen levels slowed decomposition in these sediments, and the other northern hardwoods; and a coastal area east of Casco Bay,

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 42 5/15/13 4:46:15 PM 50%

40%

30%

20% This graph shows the age-class difference between pre-settlement forest estimates and data from 1995. The majority of the trees in 10% the Maine Woods today are between 10 and 75 years old; 400 years ago, most were between 150 and 300 years old, and almost ■ Presettlement 30 percent were older than 300 years. ■ 1995 Years 0-10 10-75 75-150 150-300 300+

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 43

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 43 5/15/13 4:46:20 PM largely of spruce and hemlock. These zones are widely recogniz- reports. Many of these migrations appear to be connected to the able in modern forests and are the basis of most forested land warming climate of the Northeast. classifications in the state. Despite considerable change in cli- Given that Maine is already a warmer place than it was a mate, land use, and many other environmental factors, the forest half-century ago, why haven’t tree species responded in some regions and transition zones have been remarkably stable. conspicuous way? Part of the explanation is obvious: they don’t This is not to say that the distributions of all species have have feet or wings with which to get up and go; their migration been static. The Carolina wren, northern cardinal, Virginia depends on an annual march of seeds in whatever direction is opossum, and less welcome species such as ticks and invasive favorable. But trees differ from many other types of organisms plants have all migrated north over the past century. If we widen in another important way. Once established, trees tend to be the focus to all of New England, the list of northward traveling tolerant of all manner of assaults from the environment. They species is large and taxonomically diverse, with frequent new also live for a long time, and so have an intrinsic inertia that may well slow their response to climate change. Despite the similarities in forest cover and geography, the modern Maine Woods do differ from presettlement forest in Past Worlds in a Grain of Pollen fundamental ways. A visitor from the seventeenth century would find many familiar organisms, but key species, such as the gray A few years back I found myself standing in the middle of a black spruce bog wolf, mountain lion, and caribou, are missing. The loss of two on the Phippsburg peninsula with Andrea Nurse, from the University of Maine’s top predators has likely profoundly altered food webs in Maine Climate Change Institute, and three research assistants. We were there to col- forests, although the extent of these impacts is poorly known. lect a time capsule from the wet earth. Many species of fauna and flora have immigrated to Maine, Andrea and student researcher Tommy Hannington stood a long, metal peat and they predominate in some sites. A recent assessment of corer on its pointy end, attached a T-bar handle, and began pushing it into the Maine’s biodiversity found that about one-third of the 2,107 sediment. The top few inches corresponded to recent decades of secondary wild plant species in the state are exotics. Some of these will forest; the next few feet brought us through a couple centuries of farmland be very familiar: purple loosestrife, Japanese knotweed, com- now long abandoned, back to the mixed oak and spruce forest at the begin- mon buckthorn, Oriental bittersweet. But others – lupine, black ning of European settlement. When we’d filled the borer’s three-foot chamber locust, and apple trees, for example – have become such an inte- we gave it a heave-ho and it rose with a great sucking sound. We emptied gral part of the Maine landscape that most people would be sur- the four-inch-diameter cylinder of organic material, added an extension, and prised to learn of their nonnative status. This goes for animals, resumed our process. as well, especially birds. European starlings, pigeons, and house sparrows – all abundant in Maine – are European species. Four, five, six feet into the past: hemlock and spruce, then hemlock is gone, There is circumstantial evidence that some forest-dependent replaced by oak, beech, and birch, then hemlock again before it disappears herbs, mosses, and lichens have become rare as a result of cen- for good, replaced by white pine and oak. Twelve feet down it’s just spruce turies of land clearing and harvesting. Modern Maine forests and tundra plants, at which point the sediment resists. “We’ve hit bottom,” also tend to be lacking in large-diameter classes of dead organic says Andrea, breathlessly. We extract the borer and lay out this bottom core. It matter, such as snags, cavity trees, and logs, which provide habi- looks different from previous ones – more solid, with little identifiable organic tat for vertebrates, invertebrates, bryophytes, lichens, and fungi, matter. At the top is a dark smooth substance, plant matter that has been and supply nutrients to plants and other organisms. Whether transformed by compaction and the downward oozing of humic acid. Below other presettlement species, especially inconspicuous ones, have that is grayish clay, and finally seashells. As we’d expected, Phippsburg was been extirpated by land use changes is an open question. Our under the ocean just after the ice melted, but the 14,000-year-old ocean life knowledge even of Maine’s current biota is far from complete, is still wondrous to see. — ANDREW BARTON especially for the small, the inconspicuous, the economically unimportant, and those with too many legs. Our research shows that the relative abundance of tree species in Maine has also changed since presettlement times. The largest declines have been for beech, yellow birch, hemlock, oaks, and spruces; the largest increases have been for red maple, poplars, balsam fir, and white pine. These transformations were caused, ANDREW BARTON

A peat core sample

44 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 44 5/15/13 4:46:23 PM albeit through complex and often indirect means, by the people TABLE 1: TREE SPECIES COMPOSITION IN PRESETTLEMENT who settled and have lived in Maine for these last few centuries. VERSUS MODERN FORESTS IN MAINE Increased fire incidence during settlement favored birches and TREE SPECIES PRESETTLEMENT 2003 CHANGE white pine and acted against fire-sensitive species such as red SPRUCES 20.2 17.4 -2.8 spruce, hemlock, and beech. Accidentally introduced beech bark AMERICAN BEECH 12.2 4.8 -7.4 disease has decimated beech. Frequent harvesting has favored BALSAM FIR 10.5 15.2 +4.7 species that respond well to disturbance, such as poplars (aspens), paper and gray birch, black and pin cherries, and red maple. In the YELLOW BIRCH 9.3 4.7 -4.6 north, 150 years of spruce harvesting has benefitted balsam fir. EASTERN HEMLOCK 8.9 5.8 -3.1 The physical structure of Maine’s forests has changed, too. NORTHERN WHITE CEDAR 8.0 10.3 +2.3 Maine never did support giant trees, with the exception of some SUGAR MAPLE 5.6 5.3 -0.3 white pines, which were not as abundant as one might think PAPER BIRCH 4.9 6.1 +2.2 (Table 1). But because of high harvest levels, trees in Maine today OAKS 4.6 2.4 -2.4 are much smaller and younger than in presettlement times. The Maine Forest Service’s most recent statewide inventory found EASTERN WHITE PINE 4.5 5.2 +0.7 that of trees over 5 inches in diameter, only 7.2 percent are in the RED MAPLE 3.6 13.4 +9.8 13- to 21-inch diameter range, and only 0.5 percent are larger ASHES 2.0 1.6 -0.4 than 21 inches. For comparison, of trees in the old growth at Big POPLARS 1.4 4.0 +2.6 Reed Forest Reserve larger than 4 inches in diameter, 20 percent Note: Percentages are from statewide numbers of survey witness trees for presettlement and for are greater than 14 inches and 5 percent are greater than 20 live trees greater than 5” in diameter inches. Land survey records suggest that about 60 percent of the presettlement forest of Maine was older than 150 years, a value that had declined to about 1 percent by 1995. Of the original old- forest gave these woods a different texture beyond just diameter growth forests, only about 0.05 percent remain today. and height, for large specimens of some species simply look After examining the old growth at Big Reed Forest Reserve, different from the smaller versions we’re used to. The typical we also suspect that the larger, older trees of the presettlement shiny yellow, somewhat stringy bark of yellow birch trees, for example, is replaced by large, grayish, platy blocks on large Andrea Nurse and Tommy Hannington extract a peat core. trunks of this species. The Maine Woods remain a vast territory that supports a wide range of species. The last four centuries of land use, however, have altered the original forest, favoring generalist and disturbance- associated species, reducing tree size and age, and decreasing structural complexity. The southern Maine forest has changed from an old-growth mixed-hardwood forest to a network of suburban and rural forests, much established on formerly cleared land. The northern forest has changed from a structurally het- erogeneous spruce-hardwood forest to a more homogeneous, younger fir-spruce forest. Although vast and complex, the modern Maine forest is very much a product of human culture. What might this mean for the future of Maine forests? Returning to the presettlement forest is not possible, given the scale of forest and environmental change. On the other hand, we can support elements of that landscape – mature forest, coarse organic matter, structural complexity – that are essential for the maintenance of biological diversity. Past land use matters, as it clearly constrains what is possible for future forests. But Maine’s forest history tells us that there are many potential paths within those ecological boundaries.

Raised in the mountains of North Carolina, Andrew Barton is a forest ecologist and conservation biologist at the University of Maine at Farmington. Alan White, a forest ANDREW BARTON ecology professor at the University of Maine, grew up in the small western Maine town of Kingfield, surrounded by the forests that shaped his teaching, research, and recre- ational interests. Charles Cogbill, who has spent decades working in Maine forests, is a historical ecologist from Plainfield, Vermont.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 45

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 46 5/15/13 4:46:30 PM Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 47

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 47 5/15/13 4:46:34 PM Lessons in Planting Tree

By Tammis Coffin

f you’ve ever tried to grow a tree from a single seed, and failed, you’ll probably want to know how the New Hampshire State Forest Nursery manages to grow about a quarter of a million trees this way each year. The nursery, part of the New Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands, has been growing seedlings in Boscawen, just north of Concord, for over 100 years. It is a point of pride that their seedlings are grown from locally collected seeds in order to be well adapted to New Hampshire’s climate and soils. All 50 varieties of shrubs and trees leave the nursery when they are between one and four years old and less than one foot tall. On the day of my visit, highbush cranberry berries are spinning in a washing- machine-like drum. As the pulp collects on the edges of the drum, the pink lentil-shaped seeds are funneled down a chute to a waiting bucket. Scotch pine cones are tumbling and shaking in antique machines designed to shred the cones and clean the seeds. Bagged conifer seeds wait in the freezer. I follow Howard (Howie) Lewis, nursery forester at the New Hampshire State Forest Nursery, past trays of acorns, cones, and hazelnuts to his office, where I begin my education on growing trees from seed.

48 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 48 5/15/13 4:46:48 PM LESSON1 Seeds You need lots of seeds. “We don’t collect handfuls, we collect pailfuls,” explained Lewis. “If we can fill a pickup truck, we do.” Red and silver maple seeds mature in June, and crews have to be there the day they come down. “If they’re ripening and we know a big storm is coming, we’ve got to jump in the truck with our tubs and our rakes,” said Lewis. Some of the best collection locations for maples turn out to be cemeteries. “They’re clean – and trees growing in the open tend to produce more seed.”

In a good seed year, nursery workers gather three or more bushels of maple seeds, called samaras. “We try to collect one or two years ahead,” explained seed specialist Nancy Connors. She is still planting balsam fir seeds collected in 1988, but some seeds have to be collected every year. (The shelf life of bayberry, for example, is only six to eight months.) Germination rates vary widely from species to species and year to year; Nancy Connors’ germination tests on each seed batch determine the numbers planted and their spacing in the nursery fields. PHOTOS BY TAMMIS COFFIN

Left: Balsam fir seedlings at one year. Top: Lewis dumps conifer seeds into the drill seeder. Bottom: The drill seeder in action.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 49

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 49 5/15/13 4:46:53 PM LESSON 2 LESSON 3 You can’t grow a pine tree Good acorns and bad acorns from a pine cone. look just the same.

“Conifers are a unique thing,” said Lewis, tapping a Scotch pine cone and hand- In a good year, you’ll find piles of acorns on the ground by early fall. They all look ing me a seed. It’s just a wisp in my palm, a weightless black speck attached to perfectly sound, and quite a few people gather acorns beneath their favorite trees a translucent wing. “Most conifers have a seed that looks like this,” he explained. and bring them to the nursery. Lewis is happy to receive these gifts, but he always “They use the wing to fly away from the mother tree.” tests the acorns for viability. Without fail, the donated acorns float in water, mean- ing they are no good. Turns out that squirrels, who are such helpful gatherers of The seeds of most native conifers are released while the cones are still hanging in conifer seeds, are no help for oak. Instead of collecting ripe acorns and placing the tree. By the time the cones fall, they are fully open and empty of seeds – unless them in convenient caches, squirrels spirit good acorns away immediately, leav- they’ve been cut and dropped by squirrels. Squirrel stacks are highly convenient ing the bad ones behind. for nursery staff when they go out collecting. Lewis pulls up a few photos on his computer showing Norway spruce cones in piles in the woods. “That’s a five- High winds, heavy rain, or an early hard frost bring the acorns down. “That’s one bushel cache. We like those,” he said, explaining that the squirrels collect more you have to watch by the day,” Lewis said. “You keep an eye on the roadsides on than they need and that generations of squirrels use the same caching locations. your way to work.” At the first cue, the seed collectors go out and quickly shovel up newly fallen acorns before the squirrels get them. The nursery might plant The cones of white pines ripen in August when the weather is still warm and the 20,000 acorns in a year, but only one out of three acorns will make it. sap is sticky. Nursery staff will take a welcome break from weeding fifteen miles worth of seedling beds to go collecting. Old clothes are a must for this job. After a few days of collecting white pine cones, your pants stand up by themselves. After a week, you have to throw them away.

In late October, the crew heads to the top of Mount Kearsarge to harvest red spruce cones. “They’re all squirrel cuts,” Lewis said. But squirrels won’t cache red spruce. “They put two or three cones here and two or three cones there. You can’t tell the difference between this year’s cones and last year’s because both are brown, but this year’s have pitch on them. We crawl around on our hands and knees all day and end up with a bushel or two.” At 5,000 cones a bushel, 50 good seeds per cone, it’s still a good haul.

If timber is being harvested on state lands when the cones are ready for harvest, Lewis is right there with his crew as soon as the trees come down. “We are opportunists,” he said, “And we can always use more seeds.” After the cones are collected, they are air dried for a few weeks until they open. Then the seeds are extracted using antique machines with names like the squirrel cage (a tumbler), clipper cleaner, de-winger, and shaker. The resulting handful of clean seed is quite valuable. “Pure gold,” said Lewis, holding up a one-pound bag of eastern larch seeds worth close to $400.

Clockwise from above left: Scotch pine in the squirrel cage. Cleaning Scotch pine on the clipper. The de-winger’s output of seed, chaff, needles, and cone scales before final cleaning. Lewis at the de-winger. Opposite page: In September, Virginia rose hips are stripped from thorny branches of nursery hedgerows. New Hampshire State Forest Nursery worker Jim Viar jokingly points out, “You need gloves for this job.”

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 50 5/15/13 4:46:56 PM LESSON 4 LESSON 5 Guard your seeds. Improvise.

Lewis is standing by a newly planted stretch of eight thousand hazelnuts. Each time the nursery adds a new tree or shrub to the catalog, Nancy Connors Stamped neatly across the 300-foot length of black protective fabric are the researches methods of seed extraction and germination. At first, winterberry holly muddy tracks of wild turkeys that came running to investigate. “If we didn’t cover did not germinate well. The seeds foamed like soap lather when she rinsed them them, they would be gone in one night,” Lewis said. “The next morning, it would and, through trial and error, she discovered that they had to be rinsed until all the look like a rototiller had gone through here.” As quickly as a walnut is planted, a lather subsides. In other words, “When you are sick of rinsing it, rinse it again.” squirrel will take it away – unless it’s securely covered. This is part of nature’s plan. As Lewis explained, “A lot of fleshy seeds have to run through a bird’s stomach and have to be super-clean. If they germinate easily, The nursery grows about 5,000 walnut seedlings each year, planted in the middle they would compete with the parent plant.” of the field to keep them as far as possible from the mice and squirrels. “They have a pretty good nose and can sniff them out,” Lewis said. “Someone planting them in When Connors arrived, a slim book from the US Forest Service held all the their backyard would have to cover them with a screen because nine times out of instructions she could find. The current edition of The Woody Plant Seed Manual, 10 the squirrels will find them. Acorns, you have a chance. Walnuts, you don’t.” weighing nine pounds and covering 1,300 taxa, still does not contain the detail she needs. This book recommends floating wild rose seeds in water and keeping As more customers seek plantings that will serve as food for wildlife, the nursery those that sink. After none of her wetland rose and Rosa rugosa seeds germi- is growing more varieties of shrubs with persistent fruits. Wildlife are drawn to nated, she took a look at the floaters and the sinkers under the microscope. “I the planted seeds, young seedlings, and ripening fruits on hedgerows, and this was throwing the good ones away,” she confessed with a laugh, noting the logic becomes a double-edged sword. On the bright side, the nursery and the adjoining that when roses grow near water, their seeds will need to float away to come in trails of the state forest are a great place for bird watching; on the down side, contact with soil. seed harvests are diminished and sometimes eaten entirely. Occasional moose tracks cross the seed beds, and nursery staff go to great lengths to protect young Lewis compares notes with people at the New York State Nursery, only to find fir seedlings from becoming the winter browse of deer. regional differences. In New York, they have to do root cuttings of red osier dog- wood; they can’t get it to germinate. In New Hampshire, they just plant the seed. “The books don’t talk about that,” he said

When the nursery opened in 1910, they sold white pine, red pine, and white ash, primarily for reforestation. Now seedlings are purchased for songbird and other wildlife habitat, wetland restoration, stream bank control, and Christmas tree farms.

“Native shrubs have been a major part of what we’ve added in the past 15 years,” Lewis said. “We are always on the lookout for new species we can add – for example, wetland shrubs that can fill a niche for songbirds.” Maple-leaf viburnum will soon be added to the catalog, and they’re working on obtaining seed for spicebush and summersweet.

By the end of my day at the nursery I’ve heard about ridge tops, treetops, and squirrel caches that provide bushels and truckloads of cones and seeds. I’ve seen drying trays of scrub oak, hazelnut, red osier, wild raisin – entire habitats distilled into their concentrated parts. But one image sticks in my mind – a freezer packed with half a ton of conifer seeds. With a thousand pine seeds, or a million white spruce seeds, in each four-pound bag, this translates to thousands and thousands of acres of forest.

“What we do is unique,” said Lewis. “Here we have what you find in the wild – New Hampshire grown.”

Tammis Coffin leads programs combining nature exploration with creative arts. She writes about natural, cultural, and literary landscapes in a blog for the John Hay Ecology Center at www.thefells.org.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 51

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 51 5/15/13 4:46:57 PM Forest information. Professional assistance. And practical advice for your Woodlands. from the Maine Forest Service 1-800-367-0223 toll-free in ME or 207-287-2791 www.maineforestservice.gov

52 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 52 5/15/13 4:47:02 PM Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 53

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 53 5/15/13 4:47:05 PM THE OVERSTORY

Story by Virginia Barlow Illustrations by Adelaide Tyrol

Black Locust Robinia pseudoacacia

You’ll not often find me singing the praises of a nonnative tree, but there are just too many good things about black locust for me to want to cut them down and throw them on the buckthorn pile. It would be like get- ting rid of apples or honeybees – and they’re both imported from much farther away, from a different continent. Still, some people hate black locust and, indeed, it is only in the Northeast now because, starting in early colonial times, farmers carted it in from its native range in the southern Appalachians and on the Ozark Plateau. In its defense, however, the species was found in our area before the last glacier chased it south. It just failed to find its way back home when the glacier retreated. During the winter, full-sized locusts have a wild, disheveled look: twisted, stark, with deeply ridged black bark, but still, in my opinion, strikingly beautiful. But when the blue-green leaves unfurl from their buds the skeletal structure is hidden and the trees undergo a complete transformation. The large compound leaves are made up of 7 to 19 little egg-shaped leaflets, and somehow the crown looks both dense and delicate. When the showy, fragrant, milk-white flowers come out, locust-lined roadsides are temporarily gorgeous. And temporary it is; the show lasts only about 10 days. The intense orange-blossom scent of the flowers brings in droves of insects: a mix of honeybees, wild bees, wasps, flies, and who-knows-what other insect orders, all fighting to get into the pea-shaped flowers. Locust honey is famous, both for its flavor and color – well, really, its lack of color, for pure locust honey is as clear as water and so high in fructose that it can be stored for a long time without crystallizing. We never get honey like that in the Northeast because locusts bloom in the second half of May, at the same time that many other species are also producing nectar. Farmers brought black locust to the Northeast because the wood makes superb, rot- resistant fence posts, a product so essential in the pre-pentachlorophenol days that, as word spread, most every farmyard soon had a grove of locusts used for that purpose. Flavonoids in the heartwood allow the wood to last over 100 years in soil. Admittedly, black locust does have some dislike of being fenced in itself and it sends up root sprouts in every direction; the clonal clumps can walk, step by step, across the land. This can be a desirable trait in some situations, such as when it is used to reclaim mining sites or other treeless wastes. Like many other legumes, black locust fixes nitrogen, an ability that is rare among trees of temperate regions. It tolerates severe frosts, drought, air pollution, and high light intensities, and grows rapidly under the most adverse circumstances. On the flip side, it is disliked because of these very same traits: this sun- lover is capable of spreading into any and all openings and one tree planted in the yard can quickly send up enough root sprouts to create an impenetrable thicket. Also, the twigs and bark are poisonous to livestock. In addition to its decay resistance, the wood neither shrinks nor swells very much.

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 54 5/15/13 4:47:10 PM These traits made it the wood of choice for treenails, known as “trunnels,” the pegs that were used to attach a ship’s planks to her ribs. This might seem like a trivial application, but for the wooden boat builders of yore these little things made all the difference. Metal fasteners corrode, and oak – used before locust was discovered in the New World – shrinks more and is more susceptible to decay. Abraham Lincoln is said to have split rails and fence posts from black locust logs in his early years. When telephone and power lines were stretched across the country a century later, the species found another niche: it was used to make the wooden pins that held the insulators to the cross arms. Black locust is still appreciated in much of the world. First imported to France in about 1636, it has since been planted widely in many European countries and in China. Eighteen percent of the forest trees in Hungary are black locusts, mostly in plantations where they are cultivars, selected for straight (instead of the usual wobbly) stems. One of these selections, called shipmast locust, was first noticed in Virginia. It was propagated on Long Island in the 1700s, using sections of the roots that are even more intent on sprouting than those of normal black locust. Interestingly, this selection – apparently it’s not different enough to be called a variety – is also more rot resistant than a normal locust and is less susceptible to the tree’s greatest foe: the locust borer (Megacyllene robiniae). This borer can wreck the timber potential of black locust, especially when the trees are grown on substandard sites. Good growing conditions, as well as good genes, help reduce borer damage. A much more obvious and widespread pest is the locust leaf miner; these insects turn lovely locust leaflets to a dingy gray-brown over the course of the summer. The pretty adult beetles emerge from the leaf litter just as locust leaves begin to unfurl in the spring, and the female beetles do a little chewing as they lay eggs in groups of three to five on the undersides of new leaves. It’s the tiny larvae, imprisoned between the upper and lower layers of a leaf, that do the real damage. Relentlessly, they chew their way around and around in a leaf’s interior until there’s no more green to be found. It’s a tribute to the locust that it can survive total defoliation, year after year. Most trees can survive this for only a couple of years. Here and in several European countries, locally grown black locust is promoted as a sustainable substitute for decay-resistant tropical hardwoods and pressure-treated lumber. After the EPA restricted use of the highly toxic pentachlorophenol to prevent wood decay in the early 1980s, chromated copper arsenate (CCA) was used in just about every outdoor application, before people realized that arsenic was leaching from the wood wherever it was used – especially worrying in playgrounds. The EPA gave that one a thumbs down in 2003 and now ACQ, a less toxic (and less effective) mix of copper oxide and a quaternary ammonia is used just as widely. However, it, too, is corrosive as well as toxic. Nowadays, the need for telephone insulator pins, treenails, and fence posts isn’t what it used to be and black locust has continued to flourish, making it widely available. Consequently, the timber value is low. Not only is it well suited for outdoor applications, at present it’s also inexpensive – assuming there’s a local source or that you can find someone to mill it out for you. The wood, which is stronger and harder than white cedar, provides a local, safe alternative to the southern yellow pine, pressure treated with toxic chemicals, that is now so common. If black locust can make lawn furniture and playground equipment safer, this may diminish its bad reputation.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 55

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 55 5/15/13 4:47:15 PM Thanks for supporting Northern Woodlands through:

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56 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 57 5/15/13 4:47:24 PM DISCOVERIES

By Todd McLeish

Butterflies Take Note Before Taking Flight Climate change is affecting a wide range of wildlife, from plants and bees to birds and trees. A new study led by biologists at Boston University adds butterflies to the list, finding that butterflies emerge earlier in warmer years. The researchers focused on the flight periods of 10 species of butterflies in the elfin and hairstreak families, using museum records and 23 years of data col- lected by members of the Massachusetts Butterfly Club. “We picked those species because they’re common and relatively easy to identify by local experts,” said Caroline Polgar, a postdoctoral research- CAROLINE POLGAR er at BU. “They’re also short-lived species who only fly for two or three weeks. We felt we would be better able to detect a shift in emergence times with species that Butterflies, such as the banded hairstreak, emerge earlier when temperatures are warmer. have a short flight window.” They found that when average tem- perature at a rate similar to that of plants. same for more than 100 million years. peratures were higher than normal, the Because of the close relationship between This stability explains why today’s coni- butterflies came out earlier. Elfins, which them, if one responded differently there fers look like fossil conifers dating to fly in late spring, emerged 4.8 days earlier could be “a catastrophic timing differ- before the age of the dinosaurs. for each degree Celsius, while the summer- ence,” meaning that the leaves or flowers According to Jean Bousquet, a profes- flying hairstreaks emerged 2.6 days earlier. may not be available when the butterflies sor of forestry at the University of Laval Polgar explained the difference or their larvae need them. in Quebec, conifers were the first plants between the spring and summer species. That is a concern the researchers raise to evolve after ferns, and fossil records “Spring temperature changes are usually with birds. Studies have shown that bird of conifer needles date back 300 mil- more dramatic, sometimes going from arrival times in spring are much less lion years. That’s about when flowering very cold to warm, whereas in summer responsive to local temperatures than plants diverged from the conifers. Since it’s already warm so the temperature dif- plant and insect populations. Some bird then, the flowering plants have under- ferences aren’t so dramatic. We see the species, especially those that migrate rela- gone major changes, evolving into about same thing with plants. Spring flower- tively short distances, have been arriving 400,000 species, while today there are ing species respond more to temperature earlier in the spring, but others have not just 600 species of conifers. The stability changes than summer flowering species.” – perhaps because they take cues for their of the conifer genome goes hand in hand The temperature period the research- longer migration routes from photoperiod with its low speciation rate. ers examined was the two months before (the number of hours of light in a 24-hour “Flowering plants have totally changed the butterflies were due to emerge. If it period) as well as temperature. That could their morphology through the years – they was warmer than average in March and raise the specter of ecological mismatches include the grasses, shrubs, hardwood April, for instance, the elfins were likely to as migratory birds arrive after the peak trees, vegetables, all kinds of flowers,” emerge early. Polgar said that the change abundance of their insect food. Bousquet said. “It’s evolution at a large over time was significant for some species scale, and we see that in their genome. and less so for others, “but should temper- They have had a lot of reshuffling in atures continue to warm, it is extremely A Rugged Pair of Genes their genome, but the conifer genome has likely there will be a significant change in remained stable.” emergence times for all species.” A project to map the genes of spruce and Bousquet speculates that one reason The good news, she added, is that but- pine trees has revealed that the genome for this stability is that the conifer genome terflies appear to be responding to tem- of conifers has remained pretty much the is very large.

58 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 58 5/15/13 4:47:26 PM “The spruce genome is 20 times the But according to a study by University of dioxide,” she explained. “The more effi- size of the human genome,” he said. “We New Hampshire Professor Serita Frey, as cient the organism is, the more of that food call it genome obesity. It has become global temperatures rise, additional car- source stays in the cell; the less efficient it progressively larger over time, and at the bon is released from soils into the atmo- is, the more is lost to the atmosphere.” same time it has experienced genome sphere – at least in the short term. What they found is that as tempera- paralysis. It is so big that it can’t move “While they’re low on the charisma tures in the soil increase, the soil micro- or change very quickly.” He considers scale, soil microorganisms are critically organisms become less efficient, releasing the large size and unchanging nature of important to the carbon balance of the more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. the conifer genome as a sign of genome atmosphere,” said Frey. “If we warm the That effect diminishes over time, how- aging, just like when people age they slow soil due to climate warming, are we going ever. The organisms appeared to become down and gain weight. He notes, how- to fundamentally alter the flux of carbon more efficient in the longer term, sug- ever, that genome aging is not a sign that into the atmosphere in a way that is going gesting that the microbial community the trees are likely to die out soon. to feed back to enhance climate change?” becomes acclimated to the warmer soils Details of the research by Bousquet Frey and colleagues at the University or the community somehow changes. and colleagues at the University of Laval of California-Davis and the Marine “The positive feedback response may and the Canadian Forest Service were Biological Laboratory simulated the not be as strong as we originally pre- published in the journal BMC Biology. effects of climate change on the soil by dicted,” Frey said. “It could be that differ- The study was conducted by compar- placing heating cables 10 centimeters ent species become more abundant and ing the genome macrostructure for 157 beneath the soil surface at study plots others less abundant over time. Perhaps gene families present in both conifers in the Harvard Forest in Petersham, there’s also a shift in physiology, an evo- and flowering plants. While they did find Massachusetts, to learn how a warming lutionary adaptation to those conditions. genetic mutations and other small-scale world would influence what takes place We just don’t know yet.” modifications in the conifer genome, the in the soil. The study plots, one heated for The next step will be to conduct a scientists said the macrostructure of the two years to simulate short-term warm- DNA analysis of all the organisms found genome has remained stable. ing and another heated for 18 years, were in the soil to identify the species and Bousquet thinks this stability occurred warmed to 5°C above ambient tempera- see if the community changes as the soil in part because the conifers adapted to ture. The project was designed to mea- warms. The researchers also plan to con- their environment very early on and sure the efficiency of the soil organisms. duct laboratory tests of the physiology of haven’t needed to change much. “They “If an organism takes one molecule the organisms to learn if their metabo- survived the glaciations, they survived the of glucose, for example, as a food source, lism adapts to the warmer conditions. dinosaurs, they appear to have achieved a some fraction of that goes to cell mainte- “Ultimately, we’d like to know how balance with their environment long ago,” nance and growth, and some portion of climate change is affecting all of these he said. that gets lost to the atmosphere as carbon organisms,” she said.

“These plants also have a lot of genet- UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE ic diversity – among the highest of all plants – which has enabled them to adapt to changing conditions. That’s why they have survived for so long . . . In contrast, flowering plants are under intense evolu- tionary pressure as they battle for survival and reproduction.” Soil: Can It Take the Heat?

Soils throughout the world store more car- bon, in the form of organic matter, than all of the vegetation and atmosphere combined. Microorganisms in the soil – bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, and other organisms – feed on that organic matter and release large quantities of car- bon dioxide. Historically, this release of CO2 has been balanced by the photosyn- thesis of plants, which absorb about the same amount of CO2 as the soils release. UNH professor Serita Frey and graduate student George Hamaoui collect soil samples.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 59

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60 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 60 5/15/13 4:47:31 PM TRICKS of the trade

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Building a Lumber Pile 8@I=CFN N<@>?K JK@:B

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Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 61

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62 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 62 5/15/13 4:47:38 PM up COUNTRY

By Robert Kimber

The Weather

Talking about the weather is supposedly the height of dopiness, a None of this should come as a surprise. All of Maine is right display of intellectual poverty so extreme that it evokes neither in the middle of the northern temperate zone, but our little pity nor contempt from those exposed to it, but only embarrass- region is even more middling than the rest of the state. We’re ment and a desire to escape. If you can’t think of anything better smack-dab on the 45th parallel, midway between the North Pole to talk about than the weather, the conventional wisdom says, and the equator. We’re 60 miles from the Canadian border and then hold your peace. Just shut up. 60 miles from the Atlantic coast. We do get occasional inklings I do not agree. I’ve always loved conversations about the of the Arctic in winter (-39°F) and of the tropics in summer weather – weather present, weather past, weather future. I’m (101°F), but most of the time we’re a model of moderation, as particularly fond of our upcountry Maine weather, so I like to middle of the weather road as you can get. brag about it any chance I get, even though I can’t take the least Our location does not, of course, make us immune to weath- bit of credit for it. er disasters – witness the hurricane of 1938, the April Fools’ What spectacular weather we had, for instance, on February Day flood of 1987 that swallowed houses and bridges in one 7, 2013, a brilliant, bracingly cool (12°F) but not bitterly cold gulp, and the ice storm of 1998 that may well hold the record for winter day, with the sunlight booming down out of a sky as blue property damage statewide. Still, events that devastate coastal as a sky can be and fading to a lighter, paler cornflower blue New England with hurricane-force winds and storm surges around the horizon. A couple of fat gray squirrels reveled in the often just sideswipe us as they pass by. So it was with Nemo; so warmth of the sun as they lunched on sunflower seeds the birds it was with Irene in 2011 and Sandy in 2012. had let fall from our feeder. In the Temple post office I found But getting off light is no cause for full-scale rejoicing if the general agreement that this was a nippy day, but one whose homes of your friends only 20 or 50 or 200 miles down the road nippiness in no way detracted from its beauty and the sense of are getting torn off their foundations. And when, in a span of wellbeing it inspired in humans and gray squirrels alike. two years, we’ve had two hurricanes, a record-setting blizzard, But then, Nemo, the Blizzard of 2013, moved in for the next and a fluky warm winter visit our region, even the most san- two days, just as the meteorologists told us it would, giving us guine weather observer has to sit up and take notice. about 72 hours of more blowing than snowing. The official Then, too, the animals have more and more to say about our snowfall, measured right next door to us in Farmington, was weather every year: the northward march of ticks, the squad- a mere 9.2 inches. Given the wind, however, those 9.2 inches rons of turkey vultures circling in our skies, the tufted titmice translated into only 4 in our driveway but 32 right outside our and the red-bellied woodpeckers at our bird feeders, the New kitchen door. On Sunday, February 10, we went right back Hampshire bears that have given up hibernating. As a Koyukon into another halcyon day as sunny, windstill, and sweet as the elder once said to anthropologist Richard Nelson, “Every animal Thursday before. knows way more than you do.” Now I know that halcyon days – if you chase “halcyon” back to its origin in Greek mythology – can apply only to Robert Kimber has written often for outdoor and environmental magazines. He lives those days in mid-winter when Aeolus, the god in charge of in Temple, Maine. the winds, reins them in and calms the waves so that his daughter, Alcyone, whom the gods transformed into a kingfisher, can safely build her nest and lay her eggs on the shore. But what I find so remarkable about our local weather is its ability to produce halcyon days year round: sunny Indian summer days when the air is crisp and clean, spring days when the hills first start greening up, even midsummer days when the humidity lifts and you think you could reach up and touch the top of the sky. Halcyon days – whether they come winter or summer, spring or fall – are days of calm; days when we may be busy but are unhurried, content and carefree; days when all feels right with the world.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 63

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 63 5/15/13 4:47:40 PM wood LIT

With the Grain: A Craftsman’s and the properties that determine the workability of Sudden Eden different tree species and the appearance finished Guide to Understanding Wood By Verandah Porche pieces will have. The second chapter, “Wood and Verdant Books, 2012 By Christian Becksvoort Tree Identification and Characteristics,” delivers Lost Art Press, 2013 on its title, describing not only the features needed Intensely personal poetry only works if readers to identify 30 North American trees, but also the can recognize something of themselves, or some For cabinetmakers, both professional and ama- properties – such as color and luster, density and universal truth, or something fun or beautiful in teur, the name Christian Becksvoort will have the specific gravity, grain and figure – that make each the prose. If it’s there, the poet and reader achieve same kind of resonance that Babe Ruth or Mickey one suitable for particular woodworking purposes. some sort of mental synthesis – sort of like a Mantle will have for a baseball fan. Becksvoort This chapter is illustrated with clear drawings of grafted white pine. has been building elegant, superbly crafted fur- tree profiles, twigs, leaves, nuts, and fruits, as well If you lived through the 1960s and ’70s in the niture inspired by Shaker designs for over 40 as with photographs of bark, grain, and end grain, rural Northeast, you’ll see yourself in Verandah years, and his list of articles in Fine Woodworking the latter enlarged 25 times to show the porosity of Porche’s new collection of poetry, Sudden Eden, magazine, where he is a contributing editor, different woods. at which point my guess is that the graft will is longer than both my arms put together. An Chapter Three, a concise yet comprehensive take. Porche, a city girl from Teaneck, New Jersey, Amazon customer who must have read a library account of woodlot management and tree har- moved to a ramshackle Vermont farm in 1968 and copy of Becksvoort’s 1983 book In Harmony with vesting, lays out the elements of a multiple-use went on to become a minorly famous figurehead of Wood and subsequently tried in 2003 to buy a strategy that will protect the wildlife habitat and the back-to-the-land movement. You’ll recognize copy on Amazon, mourned that the book was no recreational potential of the forest while encour- the tension between the play-farmer artists and the longer in print. He need mourn no longer because aging the growth of furniture-grade trees with granite locals in these poems. Not surprisingly, the Becksvoort has thoroughly revised In Harmony thinning and pruning. Chapter Four, on sawing book’s release has garnered a lot of nostalgic press with Wood and republished it with a new title, and drying wood to make it ready for the shop, in Vermont about that tumultuous time. Working with the Grain. is the logical penultimate step in Beckvoort’s But if you didn’t live through that era, there’s Both those titles and the book’s subtitle, A progression toward his final chapter, “Working still plenty that’s universal and beautiful in these Craftsman’s Guide to Understanding Wood, accu- with Solid Wood,” which describes in detail strate- poems. I was born seven years after her commune, rately reflect Becksvoort’s focus. Understanding gies he has either learned from past masters or which is to say I never knew rural Vermont (I could wood and working in harmony with it in every developed himself to compensate for the shrink- be speaking for any rural state here) without a stage from tree to tabletop is what this book is age and expansion that even optimally dried wood countercultural influence. Our role models growing all about: how wood grows, how it is sawn and undergoes in response to the changing seasons. up were sixth-generation dairy farmers who listened dried, how it responds to variations in humidity This whole book is a feast of knowledge, and to Paul Harvey and organic hippie farmers who and temperature, how the orientation of grain, as its final chapter tops it off with a chance to see a liked the Grateful Dead – they were all part of the well as methods of joinery, combine to produce a master craftsman putting his knowledge to work. same place. finished piece that will be stable under changing I won’t attempt to summarize. Suffice it to say For me, and I suspect for many of you, you’ll conditions, as well as pleasing to the eye. that for me, whose furniture building has never find that the poems in Sudden Eden work just fine A graduate of the University of Maine’s School of advanced much beyond the plant stand I made in as homages to rural life – and Porche is as good Forest Resources, Becksvoort draws on his exten- my seventh-grade industrial arts class, Working a chronicler of this as anyone I know. We collect sive background in forestry and wood technology to with the Grain – meticulously researched and chanterelles with her (“a trill of thrush made provide in concise, readable form what every furni- written and generously illustrated with drawings, edible”); split and haul bucks, and forests, with ture builder ought to know about wood. His book’s photographs, and charts throughout – has been local boys; marvel at the overlapping home ranges five chapters are organized in a progression that an eye opener on the kind of craftsmanship that of Arctic Cats and Firebirds. That she can write begins with the tree and ends in the woodworking aspires to, and achieves, the level of art. poems about the sticks with such authenticity is shop. Chapter One is about the structure of wood Robert Kimber not surprising, considering that when other back-

64 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 64 5/15/13 4:47:44 PM Yellow

Willows, their yellow indigestible haze almost first to billboard spring. Later, a yellow warbler, the butter-colored bloom of him chestnut-striped. Breast engorging, throat swelling he tips back his head, skies his voice from a thin branch not bending under song’s weight. He slings a rising streak of notes — so yellow and yellow and then yellow…

to-the-landers moved back to the city, Verandah In “Trouble Time” we’re shown a woman in bed SUSANNAH LAWRENCE stayed. Forty-four years later she still lives there. lying next to an unfaithful spouse. It’s winter and it’s Norfolk, CT Her life’s work has been to help kids in schools late and he’s sleeping. She’s awake and thinking, and factory workers and seniors and people in heartbreakingly, Let I be she. The poem’s last line: crisis centers tell their stories; to help them fall in entertaining, funny, and have a message to pass O soothe, sooth, soot. love with language. If there’s a touch of affection in on to the reader (assuming the reader is a soon-to Subtract me. that last line it’s because I was one of those people -be hapless fellow adventurer). – a fourth grader in Shaftsbury Elementary School Peak Experiences is organized around such Is soo Verandah. So playful and poignant at the enthralled with this strangely named lady and the topics as weather, rescues, treacherous places, same time. the dangers of water, and animal and avian wild words that fell off her tongue. Dave Mance III behavior. Each section includes a somewhat Verandah the writer can be a mad hatter, for oddball assortment of entertaining tales. Doug sure, in that distinctly late 1960s Trout Fishing in Mayer’s story of getting himself out of the woods America way. In one poem she uses the sound of with a broken leg, and Laura Waterman’s tale every letter in the alphabet to make words (CroK of nearly drowning in her sleep in the middle balls); in another she instructs a reader to fill a black Peak Experiences: Danger, Death, of winter both stand out, but my favorite was sky-speckled kettle with a rolling boil. Steam quart and Daring in the Mountains of Donna Brigley’s “Never Underestimate the Power jars. Can light. Seal and cool. But she can also be the Northeast of Pudding.” Brigley’s story is of a much longer simple and spare. “100 Years of Squares and Reels” Edited by Carol Stone White journey, framed by her time in the mountains evokes a wintertime dance in a hill-town grange University Press of New England, 2012 and filled with uncertainty, loss, and searching. hall, a milk maid in a pretty red dress. The lines in She manages to convey how necessary spending the poem are as sparkling clean as fresh snow. There’s something about wilderness rescues time in the mountains is to the health of her soul In “Blue Seal” she opens with the phrase: and mishaps that seems to bring out the voyeur in while contemplating the inherent risks. She writes Did you ever fall open many of us. Are we drawn to the cautionary tale, about why she needs the woods. She ties it up in Like a hundred-weight fascinated by the raw power of nature and the a bow. And I’m a sucker for pudding. Of Blue Seal Dairy Ration? arrogance of some people in the face of it? Maybe The stories are great, but Peak Experiences is we just want to think to ourselves, “I can’t believe also a helpful book. Advice and “Cliff Notes” of And could have ended the poem right there. they did that! I would never do something that backcountry travel wisdom are sprinkled through- The very best poems in Sudden Eden are stupid!” Or maybe it’s a bit like a train wreck – we out each chapter. And the appendices include a playful, challenging, odd, and disciplined, which I just can’t help but look. Whatever it is, tales of mis- list of clubs and organizations that can get you guess is another way of saying a mixture of the fortunes in the wilderness have long been popular started in adventures in the outdoors, safety 33-year-old woman pictured on the front cover and in fiction and nonfiction, and those who spend time guidelines, and suggestions for further reading. the 68-year-old woman on the back. “Stovepipe,” in the mountains love to trade in such tales. All of the stories show the rewards of back- which ran in the Autumn 2010 issue of Northern So what goes wrong? People go into the country travel and the risks involved – risks that Woodlands, paints a spare, gothic image of a fire woods, they make decisions (often influenced apply to all, no matter how well prepared you are being laid in an old farmhouse. Dusk (“the light by dehydration, hypothermia, bad map reading, or how impeccable your decision-making is. Those bent down as if to milk”); young tough country kids lousy communications, underestimating weather who venture into the woods need to be skilled, juxtaposed with an ominous image of a stovepipe conditions, overestimating fitness, and fear) and prepared, and fit, have good information and thinned to lace. In nine lines she paints an image Mother Nature just does what she always does. dependable partners, and make sound decisions. full of mystery and magic and foreboding. And In Peak Experiences, a few of the 54 stories are But they also need a bit of luck – for in the end, then on the third, or fourth, reading, you notice that recounted in standard accident-report form, but it may just be that tiny bit of luck that makes the it’s an acrostic – the first letter of each line spells most are told by the rescued and the folks who difference between a close call and a tragedy. STOVEPIPE. The mad hatter at work. had a close call. Many, like a good fishing tale, are Carl Demrow

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 65

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 65 5/15/13 4:47:45 PM THE A. JOHNSON CO. Bristol, VT (802) 453-4884

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66 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 66 5/15/13 4:47:48 PM MILL prices

hese prices are for #1 hardwood logs, at least 8 feet long, with NY VT NH ME three clear faces and a minimum 12-inch top diameter. In the DOLLARS PER THOUSAND BOARD FEET timber world, this is a log of average quality, not a prime sawlog T White Ash NA 381 361 350 and not a poor one. Landowners should remember that the dollar amount here White Birch 292 187 250 375 indicates what is being paid for logs that have been felled, limbed, Yellow Birch 356 517 463 550 skidded, bucked, and delivered to a mill or buyer. The costs of log- Black Cherry 550 612 450 475 ging and trucking need to be subtracted from these figures to arrive at the price paid to the landowner. Because every job is different, Sugar Maple 500 608 475 540 these costs vary widely. Red Maple 308 316 333 390 These data are compiled from interviews with suppliers and buyers Red Oak 425 443 443 375 and from the most recent print and online versions of the Sawlog Bulletin, and are used by permission. For more information on the Logs scaled with the International 1/4-inch Rule. Sawlog Bulletin, call (603) 444-2549 or go to sawlogbulletin.org. Please Prices compiled May 1, 2013. note that many of these prices were reported three months prior to our publication date, and current prices could be higher or lower.

Talking Timber

When Northern Woodlands first started reporting sawmill prices in the But for now we’re left with this snapshot of 12 years, and the lessons we summer of 2001, right about the time the .com bubble was bursting in might tease out of it. It’s interesting how the lower-grade trees held their Silicon Valley, one could be forgiven for feeling a bit smug about the value value through the fall, how yellow birch has begun to outcompete oak and of their standing timber. Let the silly urban people invest in pets.com; we’ll even cherry in some areas. Probably an economist would tell you that the keep our money in tangible, traditional trees. Little did we know that the moral is to stay diversified, think total return, don’t try to time the market, 1995-2005 peaks in securities markets, housing construction, and wood cut lightly and frequently. Probably the more philosophical lesson is that a products were not normal. In fact, this was its own bubble waiting to burst. timberland investor should take her lessons from the trees. Grow slowly. Be patient. Weather the drought years and the insects and the Wall Street col- And burst it did for the big three hardwoods – sugar maple, black cherry, lapses and the fickle human fashions. People will always need hardwood and red oak. This graph shows the cliff face. If you were a forestland owner and, in the grand scheme of things, 12 years is no big chunk of time. counting on your maple sawlogs to fund your retirement, you’re probably still working. And, as one might WOOD VALUE AVERAGES (in constant 2001 dollars)

imagine, the collapse, coupled with competition from $800 imports and non wood substitutes, helped drive out the • Cherry mills that couldn’t adapt. This industry consolidation • Sugar Maple $700 • Red Oak has made collecting reliable data for this page difficult – • Yellow Birch to the point where we’re going to discontinue reporting $600 • Ash • Red Maple mill prices in each issue. • White Birch $500 • Beech It’s not all doom and gloom. Housing markets have begun to recover and the hardwood markets should, $400 too. In our fall issue, we’ll be starting a regular profile series on wood products companies that have perse- $300 vered and positioned themselves for success in this $200 new marketplace.

$100

per Mbf SUM01 WTR01 SUM02 WTR02 SUM03 WTR03 SUM04 WTR04 SUM05 WTR05 SUM06 WTR06 SUM07 WTR07 SUM08 WTR08 SUM09 WTR09 SUM10 WTR10 SUM11 WTR11 SUM12 WTR12

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 67

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 67 5/15/13 4:47:48 PM Complete your collection of Northern Woodlands Every issue provides a fascinating Issue 39: Winter 2003 Issue 57: Summer 2008 Issue 68: Spring 2011 array of stories about all aspects of The Cedar Family Tree Forest Relics The Hope Issue life in the forests of the Northeast. A New Look at Gifford Pinchot Marking a Timber Sale Bobcats on the Comeback The Fisher Diaspora Noel Perrin’s Rural Visa Rebuilding a Trout Stream When the Company Moves to China Identifying Woodland Grasses A Place for Wolf Trees Issues 1–18: Digital Download Only Issues 40 & 41: Issue 58: Autumn 2008 Issue 69: Summer 2011 Issue 19: Winter 1998 Digital Download Only Doing Battle with Invasive Species House Hunting with Honeybees Clearcutting and Habitat Management Circling Scavengers Mike Greason and the Gospel of Silviculture Reforesting Lyndon State Forest Issue 42: Autumn 2004 A Fall Feast for Wildlife Trends in Maine’s Log Prices Zero Cut Controversy Bear Hunting Referendum North Woods Hunting Camps Hemlock Tanneries in Old New York Long Trail Cleanup Wind Power Primer Favorite Places on Public Land Native Lumber Issue 59: Winter 2008 Issues 70 & 71: A Tale of 21 Tails Does Changing Climate Mean a Digital Download Only Issues 20–23: Digital Download Only Changing Forest? Issue 43: Digital Download Only Issue 72: Spring 2012 Issue 24: Spring 2000 The Deep, Dark Woods The Lowdown on Glyphosate Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest The Value of Biomass Issue 44: Spring 2005 Ghost Moose and Winter Ticks Learning to Love Lichens Winter Camping in the Maine Woods Investing in a Woodlot Clouds Up Close Tree Girdling Giant Silk Moths Issue 60: Spring 2009 Crop Tree Release Roadless Designation Spring Wildflowers Certification Comes to Family Forests Appalachian Trail in Canada Issue 73: Summer 2012 Tamarack and Ships’ Knees Growing Your Own Mushrooms Making Sense of Scientific Names Issue 25: Summer 2000 Springtime in the Turkey Woods Issue 45: Summer 2005 A Paper Mill Remembered Adirondack Guide-Boats Can the American Chestnut Come Back? Growing and Selling Veneer No Dry Matter: The Wood-Moisture Relationship Flying Squirrels Loons on the Rebound Issue 61: Summer 2009 Bioluminescent Fungi Tree Biologist Alex Shigo Medicinal Goldthread Wild Bees in Your Woodlot Balsam Fir Pillows Look Who’s Wearing the Chaps Canoeing from the Adirondacks to Maine Learning in the Landscape Issue 46: Autumn 2005 Issue 74: Autumn 2012 A Guide to Plants You Shouldn’t Touch Timber Theft Warming Up with Wood Pellets Issue 26: Autumn 2000 Natural Disturbances and Forestry Moose Rut A History of Fire Towers in the Northeast A Buck Sheds his Velvet Hunters for the Hungry Issue 62: Autumn 2009 Lessons from Last Year’s Foliage Maine’s Forestry Referendum Rare Plants Rediscovered Colorful Dyes from the Forest Trapping in the 21st Century Forestry at Paul Smith’s College Silviculture in Vermont’s National Park Forests, Carbon, and Climate Change Issue 47: Winter 2005 Issue 75: Winter 2012 Bucks and Bulls in Velvet Landowners Learn About Habitat Coexisting with Wolves Cree Tradition & Transition in Northern Canada The Beaver’s Felling Techniques Blue Jays Christmas on the Tree Farm Issues 27–32: Digital Download Only Excellent Forestry Issue 63: Winter 2009 The Man Who Freed a Giant Scouting Cameras Issue 33: Summer 2002 Which Bird Made That Nest? Beech Party on Your Woodlot Markets for Low Grade Wood Issue 48: Spring 2006 A Bygone Industry: Chemicals from Wood A Harlequin (Duck) Romance The Gifts of a Forest How to Make a Holiday Wreath Energy from Wood: Chips and Bioethanol Issue 76: Spring 2013 Fire and Granite Snow Fleas, Deer Yards, Scotch Pine Apple Ladders Where the Wild Things Go: How Animals Disperse Maine Teacher Tours Logging in a Heron Rookery Issue 64: Spring 2010 The Ballad of Amos Condon Return of the Trout? Issue 49: Digital Download Only Spring Flower Show in the Woods A Gym Floor from Local Trees Issue 34: Digital Download Only Why Trees Grow Where They Do Old Logging Films, Squirrel Sap Taps Issue 50: Autumn 2006 On the Job with a Biomass Buyer Chainsaw Sharpening Issue 35: Winter 2002 Maine’s Last Log Drive Forgotten Stump Fences The Forest at Quabbin Reservoir Booms and Busts in Grouse Populations Violins from Spruce and Maple NH Sawmill Uses Every Bit of Sawdust Issue 65: Summer 2010 Liquidation Harvesting in Maine Baffling Beavers Old-Fashioned Bee Lining Mapping Soils Tending a Woodlands Garden Issue 51: Digital Download Only Income Sources from Your Forestland Issue 36: Digital Download Only Which Caterpillar Becomes Which Issue 52: Spring 2007 Butterfly? Issue 37: Summer 2003 Discovering the Presettlement Forest New England Sawmill Bucks the Trend New Hampshire Homesteaders Issue 66: Autumn 2010 Eeek! 370 Species of Mice A Woodcock’s Spring Show Biomass Debate Heats Up The Northern Woodlands Story A Team of Draft Horses Native Invasives on Your Woodlot Secret Life of Soil Habitat for Woodcock Issues 53–55: Digital Download Only The Flow of Wood in the Region Making a Windsor Chair Issue 56: Spring 2008 Issue 38: Autumn 2003 Issue 67: Winter 2010 Lyme Disease Marches North Nature Conservancy’s New Direction Goodbye to an Elm Outdoor Wood Boilers Under Fire Adirondack Baseball Bats How Many White Tails? Visit a Water-Powered Sawmill Efficient Logging A Maine Logging Camp in 1912 Growing up Outdoors Owl Pellets Learning Lumberjack Skills A Different Kind of Diesel

68 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 68 5/15/13 4:47:50 PM Prints and posters of select photos are available for Check out our books! purchase. To order, call toll-free (866) 962-1191 or visit NEW: More Than a Woodlot, a Northern Woodlands publication, www.northernwoodlandsprints.org. a comprehensive guide to stewardship for the forest landowner in the Northeast. Includes information on successful timber harvests, wildlife management, consideration of your land’s future, and silvi- culture, demystified ...... PAPER $19.95

NORTHERN WOODLANDS’ BOOK The Outside Story: Local Writers Explore the Nature of New Hampshire and Vermont, gives readers the inside scoop on local ecology. Local writers, including Northern Woodlands’ staff and regular contributors, explore a broad range of topics, from acid rain to garter snake mating. While the subject is Vermont and New Hampshire, the book appeals to nature enthusiasts across the Northeast...... PAPER $19.95 We’ve got ALL of our archived content online in print format The Tree Identification Book, by George W. D. Symonds. Tree and/or digital downloads (as well as neat merchandise) at leaves, bark, buds, thorns, flowers, and fruit each have a separate our shop: www.northernwoodlands.org/shop section in this book. This book was first published in 1958 and has or use the mail-in order form below for print copies. stood the test of time. Over 1500 black-and-white photographs make the trees of the eastern U.S. easy to nail down. ..PAPER $20.00 Please use the order form from the most recent issue: The Shrub Identification Book, by George W. D. Symonds. The

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Mammal Tracks and Scat: Life-Size Tracking Guide, by Lynn STATE ZIP Levine & Martha Mitchell, is a handy waterproof field guide Method of payment (check one) designed to be carried through brush, bramble, and snow banks, and emerge unscathed. It uses a novel three-step process to QCheck QMasterCard QVisa identify tracks & scat of 29 different animals that are commonly encountered in the field...... PAPER $19.95 CREDIT CARD NUMBER

Trees of New England, by Charles Fergus. Trees are listed alphabet- EXPIRATION DATE 3 DIGIT SECURITY CODE ically by common name, and Fergus gives a description along with range and ecology facts for each one. Information on how wildlife SIGNATURE and people use every listed tree is also included...... PAPER $16.95 Back issues are $6.00 each

Reading the Forested Landscape, by Tom Wessels. Bill McKibben 19 Q 24 Q 25 Q 26 Q 33 Q 35 Q 37 Q wrote, “What a fascinating book. Equal parts Sherlock Holmes and 38 Q 39 Q 42 Q 44 Q 45 Q 46 Q 47 Q Aldo Leopold, it will help thousands of New Englanders answer the 48 Q 50 Q 52 Q 56 Q 57 Q 58 Q 59 Q questions that come to mind as they wander this landscape of stone 60Q 61Q 62Q 63 Q 64 Q 65 Q 66 Q walls, stunted apple trees, and towering hemlocks.” ...PAPER $18.95 67 Q 68 Q 69 Q 72 Q 73 Q 74 Q 75 Q Working with your Woodland: A Landowners’ Guide, by Mollie 76 Q Beattie, Lynn Levine, and Charles Thompson. Assessing your Total number of Issues woodland for various goals, creating a management plan, under- (Vermont residents add 6% sales tax) TOTAL $ standing management techniques, and harvesting – from deciding on a schedule to handling the proceeds – are all covered thoroughly, Please include $5.50 for each domestic shipment of books and merchandise, with an overall emphasis on carefully tending a forest for the very excluding back issues. Call our office for international shipping rates: (800) 290-5232

long term...... PAPER $23.50 Please send to: Northern Woodlands Back Issues, P.O. Box 471, Corinth, VT 05039 Order books by title, using the magazine’s insert, or check out these and many other books, including kids’ selections: www.northernwoodlands.org/shop.

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15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 70 5/15/13 4:47:58 PM the outdoor PALETTE

Craig Mooney, Valley Sunset, 48” x 48”, oil on canvas, 2008.

Craig Mooney is a master of atmospheric perspective. He manipulates his oil paints to reflect the effect that weather, atmosphere, and shifting light have on the appearance of a place. Mooney paints with a facility that is fresh and exciting. Through his deft use of value, hue, and saturation, he is able to convince us of receding distance and to play with what Leonardo da Vinci called “the perspective of disappearance.” There is very little site-specific detail in Valley Sunset, and as Mooney explains, this is not a specific locale; it is more an expression of how a dramatic sky interplays with the landscape in our region. This is a place born of memory, experience, and a love of the Northeast. Though his landscapes may not be found on a map, they are familiar and tenaciously rooted in the New England experience. We look at Valley Sunset and are reminded of Lake Champlain pushing north, of the Kennebec River snaking through farmland, or of the Connecticut River Valley flanked by fertile croplands. It is important to Mooney that when people look at his work, they are able to find their own experience of place. Valley Sunset is one moment as the sun breaks through the clouds and lights up a valley. We all know this moment to be beautiful and fleeting. Craig Mooney is represented by galleries nationwide. Regionally his work can be seen at West Branch Gallery in Stowe, Vermont, Jules Place in Boston, Massachusetts, and Gallery North Star in Grafton, Massachusetts. He will have shows this summer at the Field Gallery in West Tisbury, Massachusetts and Maine Art in Kennebunkport, Maine. Craig can be reached through his website, craigmooneystudio.com — Adelaide Tyrol

Call for entries: Send us your Outdoor Palette submissions. Contact Adelaide Tyrol at (802) 454-7841 or [email protected] for details.

Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013 71

15813_WOOD_SUM13.indd 71 5/15/13 4:48:00 PM A PLACE in mind

Laura Waterman

It was called a camp. A summer camp with a woods path leading talk, remained aloof. But when we came out after dinner to up from a sparsely traveled dirt road. We’d arrived by train, an inspect, the peanuts were gone. overnight trip, and we were met at the Brattleboro station by a When it was just us kids, a chipmunk would hop up the first family friend, my father’s colleague. They were working on a step, grab a nut, and retreat to a nearby rock. We’d be extra still. book together – the reason we had come to spend the summer The chipmunk would come back, hop up two steps, scarf a pea- in Vermont. We had no car. It was 1945, the last year of the war. nut, scamper to the same rock, and nibble rapidly, working the I was five, my brother two. nut between his paws. Our goal was to entice a chipmunk up to As we wound up from the Connecticut River into the forests the porch itself. There were six steps. One day this happened. near Wilmington, my father exclaimed, “Smell the air!” We The chipmunk took the nut from the porch floor, only a few all breathed in air that was so cool and sweet. My father knew feet away from where we crouched, motionless as any woodland Vermont air. He was born in Vermont. That was the other creature who doesn’t want to be seen. reason we were here. My father wanted his children to know One chipmunk became our friend. Not that exactly, but he Vermont, too. became identifiable when he lost his tail. In a battle with another The camp was on the lake. There was no telephone. “Your chipmunk? For several weeks it dragged behind him, until it ice will be brought weekly,” Mr. Barber, the real estate man who fell off. Then he became our Chippy. We were relieved to see opened the camp said to my mother. “There’s your icebox.” We Chippy could climb, scamper, and scurry as well as if he had his saw a shed through the window. A woodstove took up half the tail. Would Chippy be there, was the question our whole family kitchen floor. “Could roast a moose,” Mr. Barber said, patting asked as we drove up from New Jersey each summer. Chippy the stove’s cast iron flank. My mother blanched. “But you’ll cook always was, until suddenly he wasn’t. My brother and I roamed on this.” He gestured to a two-burner oil stove sitting on spidery our woods hoping to encounter him. We never did. legs. “Here’s your oven.” He picked up what looked like a bread In the evenings we walked along the road with our mother. box. “You set it on top.” He demonstrated to show my mother “That’s Indian paintbrush.” She pointed out the orange tuft on how easy it would be to prepare meals for her family of four. He an upright stalk. “And that’s black-eyed Susan. See the dark disk turned a knob at the sink. Water gushed out in a silvery stream. of her eye?” “It comes from the lake,” he said. “You’ll heat your hot water My father found our picnic spots: a field of ferns and steeple- on the stove.” “Don’t drink it,” he said, turning the water off. bush; an old woods road leading to a rushing stream. We’d bring “The well’s out back. Send the kids for the drinking water.” He our bathing suits. grinned at us. “Make sure you prime the pump, otherwise you’ll Our parents transplanted from the loamy woods a jack-in- wreck it.” My mother walked into the living area and sat on the the-pulpit and a pink lady’s slipper by the porch. “Be careful couch in front of the fieldstone fireplace. The couch swung back around them, children,” they said. We were because they were and forth. It squeaked. It was a swinging couch on springs. My so undefended and beautiful. Would they be blooming when we mother burst into tears. Our father saw Mr. Barber out. arrived in June? They always were. We spent the next eight summers there. We made balsam pillows under our mother’s direction, clip- The camp was in the woods. The air around it smelled of ping the boughs, stripping the needles, sewing little sacks to be balsam, fresh and tangy. There were other camps on the road filled. We took them to our winter home and tucked them in our but we couldn’t see them. The woods across the lake were drawers. On days when school bore down and summer seemed undisturbed by man. The camp had a porch across the front, far away I would open up a drawer and release that tangy balsam from which we could look deeply into the surrounding trees smell. Our Vermont summer would come again. The woods, the – thick, dark, and green. My brother and I scanned the woods chipmunks, the lake where we learned to swim – it was sleeping for movement. now and waiting. We became fascinated by chipmunks. When our parents had drinks on the porch with guests, who came because of my Laura Waterman writes about environmental issues and founded the Waterman Fund, father’s work, my brother and I would strew cocktail peanuts up which works to combine education and stewardship to preserve alpine areas. She the porch steps to entice chipmunks. Chipmunks, shy of adult lives in East Corinth.

72 Northern Woodlands / Summer 2013

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