Monthly Archives: June 2011

Old Trees in Oakham

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The Oakham Open Space Committee and the East Quabbin Land Trust had invited friends and supporters to join naturalists Caren Caljouw, Ron Wolanin, and Tom Rawinski on a guided tour along one of the Oakham Wildlife Management Area trails this morning, so with a vague notion of where I was going, I headed for the intersection of Gaffney and New Braintree Roads around 8:40.  Not surprisingly, though my destination was hardly 7 miles from my home, I got terribly lost and only by sheer luck did I meet up with the group of about 25 shortly after 9 am.   Thank goodness we have guides for the hike, I thought to myself.

The naturalists introduced us to a variety of species, both plant and animal, which inhabit this forested tract of land.  Here are some names I’m able to decipher from my scribbled notes:  Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis), Canada Mayflower (Maianthemum canadense), Solomon’s Seal (Polygonatum biflorum), False Solomon’s Seal (Smilacina racemosa), Burning Bush (Euonymus alatus), Woodland Milkweed (Asclepias), Indian Cucumber (Medeola virginiana), Cat Brier (Smilax rotundifolia), Hay-Scented Fern (Dennstaedtia punctilobula), Beechnut (Fagus grandifolia), Maple Leaf Viburnum (Viburnum acerifolium), Red Eft (Notophthalmus viridescens), Huckleberry (Vaccinium), Partridge Berry (Mitchella repens), Oak-Apple Gall Wasp (Amphibolips confluenta), Bracken Fern (Pteridium aquilinum), Shadbush (Amelanchier), Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia), Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana), Pink Lady’s Slipper (Cypripedium acaule), Mountain Laurel (Kalmia latifolia), Hobblebush (Viburnum alnifolium), Trailing Arbutus (Epigaea repens), Black Birch (Betula lenta), Yellow Birch (Betula lutea).  Woodland lore included these interesting tidbits:

  • Plants in the Lily family are often edible (commercially grown asparagus is a Lily)
  • Invasives are also found here but the area is not overgrown with them
  • A “Wolf Tree” is a large tree which stands by itself and is generally older than nearby trees
  • The Lady Slipper Orchid requires specific soil conditions; it is not a generalist
  • Bright red coloring in animals is often a warning coloration signifying “poisonous”
  • Native Americans made extensive use of woodland plants for food and medicine
  • The word “aspirin” is formed from “A” in acetyl chloride plus “Spir” from Spiraea ulmaria
  • Porcupines do not throw quills, which are in fact mildly antiseptic

For me, the highlight of our woodland walk was the sight of magnificent black gums (Nyssa sylvatica) clustered together in a swampy area off the main trail.  Cores taken from some of these trees by researchers from the Harvard Forest indicate that they may be 500 years old!  The tupelos are known as the longest-lived of the deciduous trees (conifers live to be much older).

We returned to our cars a bit before noon, feeling exhilarated by the sunshine and greenery.  Here are some of the photos I took to document these extraordinary sights.

This young chestnut tree will not survive the blight.

Ferns dominate the understory in this swampy area.

This Black Gum tree is . . . awesome!

Note the deeply fissured bark.

The oblong scales of the Black Gum are not uniformly-sized around the tree.

One common name for this plant with twin flowers is "Partridge Berry."

These showy flowers belong to the "Mountain Laurel."

Celebrate National Trails Day

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At 9 am this morning, I joined East Quabbin Land Trust Executive Director Cynthia Henshaw at the entrance to the trust’s Patrill Hollow Preserve in Hardwick. Today is National Trails Day and since I enjoy hiking, I had decided I ought to do something to “help out with trails.”  That’s how I found myself “Walking the Walls” on this beautiful June morning. Our task, however, was not to maintain trails but to mark the property boundaries, which for the most part are delineated by old stone walls and rusted barbed-wire fences. So armed with small square signs, aluminum nails, a hammer, a tree branch lopper, a surveyor’s map, and a set of instructions on how to do it, we set out.

We decided to walk clockwise around the property, verifying the land surveyor’s iron rod markers, and nailing outward-facing signs into large living trees every 100 feet or so along the property boundaries.  I turned out to be bad at hammering nails — I couldn’t hit them dead-on at a foot or so above my head and so bent a fair number beyond usability — but I was okay with the clippers.  There are blue-blazed trails running through the property, but we were walking along the perimeter and often had to trample through thick undergrowth.  What with the poison ivy running rampant, the alarming profusion of invasives, the buzzing insects, the sneeze-inducing fern pollen, the ankle-twisting loose rocks, the unexpected water-logged patch of mud, the thorny shrubs scratching at my face and pulling at my clothes, it wasn’t exactly a stroll in the park.

But when we had circled the entire property and returned to our cars at the pull-out on Patrill Hollow Road, I was surprised to note that it was almost 1 pm.  I had been so absorbed in what we were doing that I wasn’t aware of time passing.  After we actually accomplished our task, I felt satisfied that we had done a good job, and I was none the worse for wear.  Due to my previous encounter with ticks in this area, I had sprayed my clothes with Sawyer Insect Repellent last night, which I think worked fairly well.  Moreover, the day was sunny but not oppressively hot, and most of the time we worked in the shade of the trees — some of them outstanding specimens, like a magnificent beech and ancient oak.  I’d like to return to hike here soon!

As soon as I got back home, I hurried to Hannaford Supermarket to make a donation to the tornado victims in Brimfield and Monson; later in the afternoon, I slept for a bit (it seems that four hours of work simply exhausted me).  Around 4:30, I forced myself to get up and head for Worcester.  I’ve volunteered on and off for the Greater Worcester Land Trust and thus had been invited to a hike and cook-out at the God’s Acre conservation restriction, adjacent to Goddard Memorial Drive and now owned by the Worcester Airport Commission.

I had hiked in this area a long time ago and had with me an old schematic map I pulled out of my files, so I figured I knew where I was going.  Well, apparently new sub-divisions have sprung up over the past decade, and I drove in circles for a while before I decided to park on Paris Avenue, in what looked like a cul-de-sac.  No sooner had I emerged from my car than a homeowner approached me and said that neighbors would assume I’m a drug-dealer, call the cops, and have my car towed.  He advised me to leave the neighborhood immediately.  Okay then, I’ll be on my way.  (He did give me good instructions on where I could safely park.)

I ended up off Swan Avenue, a short walk to where the GWLT friends and supporters had gathered.  The famous, or infamous, Deed Rock was mere steps away:

In 1840, Solomon Parsons Jr, a follower of the Adventist preacher William Miller, bought ten acres in the wilds of western Worcester and deeded the parcel to God.  I took a close-up of the opening lines:

You can see the words “Know All Men” and “Worcester” and “Mass.” We were given a complete transcription of the deed, and of course, I looked for it on the web. Google sent me to this page, which provides quite a bit of detail about the fascinating history of these ten acres.

GWLT Executive Director Colin Novick welcomed the gathering:

By this time I was hungry and out of sorts, but there was plenty of food, and after I chowed down on a veggie burger, macaroni salad, and an oatmeal cookie for desert, I was feeling much better:

The moral of this story is “Follow Directions”:  if I had bothered to actually read the invitation to enjoy National Trails Day with GWLT, I would have realized that the Trust had arranged parking for us off Goddard Memorial Drive and also provided an up-to-date map of the site, which includes the East-West Trail terminating at Logan Field on Mill Street, and the Tetasset Hills Trail paralleling the talus rock slope and running through the heart of the property.