Up North: A City Doc's Cure for the 9 to 5: August 2011

I woke shortly before dawn. While I had been sleeping, the hot, humid evening had given way to a chilly night in the 50's. The stars, amazingly abundant, faded as the eastern horizon went from purple to orange by 5am. I couldn't sleep, so I slipped my boots on and spent 10 minutes lighting the wet wood to set my coffee pot on. When sunrise was near, and my body feeling warmed by a combination of the campfire and hot coffee, I set out to take some photos around the camp.

As the sun makes its way up from behind a rich canopy of Eastern Spruce, the night fog slumbers on in their shadow.

Daisies are actually a collection of several hundred flowers. The outer petals are large and white while the inner flowers are tiny and yellow giving it the appearance of a yellow central disc. Each tiny yellow flower is complete with a stigma and stamen and a single bee walking across it may provide adequate pollination.

The Adirondack Region, with its 6 million acres and stunning vistas, impresses with its grandeur. If you look closely, you'll find nature's grandeur on a smaller scale. A quick walk around the guest camp reveals an abundance of life and a wonderful view into a typical old-field ecosystem.

The sun alights the dew and creates a magnificent display. This field was allowed to go fallow several years ago. Pioneer and succession species like the Scotch Pine seen above have made a home here. They too will eventually be replaced by reforestation.

A cluster of dead trees,
A cluster of dead birch in the midst of viable trees indicate what is called a "disturbance". This may have been fire, insect, or chemical, but opens a niche for new life, such as fungi, lichens and ground cover.

The 10 or so acres that lie before the guest cabin is said by locals to have been a field not long ago. While the neighbors say nothing much was growing "just a few years ago", nature tells a different tale. Fields which lie dormant quickly change in a usually typical pattern. Very few virgin forests remain in the northeast, and even what are now deep forests were once cut for lumber at the turn of the century. When an ecosystem is suddenly changed by man, climate, or invasion of pest, a disturbance occurs. If the disturbance is temporary, such as a farmer clear cutting a field, re population occurs more or less systematically. By looking at what's growing, we can make an educated guess about how long ago the field was allowed to go fallow.

Seeds of hardy species lie dormant in the soil even in bare ground lots, sprouting easily without the competition of other ground cover. Among the first are the "weeds", crabgrasses and ragweeds. One to three years later, the field has added asters, such as daisies, and daisy fleabane, which can be seen below. Goldenrod and Bluestem, also seen in the photos below, typically join others in years 3 to 10. This succession from perennial to annuals continues as the annuals out-compete them and dominate the limited space for groundcover. It will take roughly 10 years for bare ground to feature shrubs of any appreciable size. Considering this field may not have been bare ground recently, but just cut to a grassy field, we could subtract a few years from that estimate. Nevertheless, the occasional shrubs seen around the camp are good indicators that the land has not been cultivated or disturbed in the last decade.

Although trees eventually enter the community, they are usually not seen before 15 years. Here at the camp, many Scotch Pine are thriving, none too large, but some reaching 20 feet nonetheless. Perhaps the neighbors remember looking at an "open field" a few years ago were actually looking at a field in at least 5 to 10 years of succession.

In contrast, there are only one or two species of predominant shrub seen here, and spaced quite widely. Scotch (or Scots) Pine are predominant, but they too have not become dense enough to shade the ground. A number of Choke Cherry are noted, bearing fruit in varying stages of ripeness. Other species of tree are rare until the edge of the field is reached. This relatively low species diversity means that the current ecosystem lacks vertical structural density seen in mature forest communities. Even the ground cover is comprised of roughly 5 to 10 species from what I observed. They are herbaceous, and provide limited habitat diversity for insects and animals. Over time, shrubs will increase in number as seeds of existant shrubs spead. The Scotch Pine will grow and increase in density until limited light is available at the new forest floor. This will mean that shade resistant shrubs and perennial grasses will take up in the newly created understory, pushing out asters, foxglove, goldenrod, and the like.

Eventually, growing under the dense Scotch Pine, shade resistant trees will eventually begin to take hold and push up through the pine canopy. The hardy Scotch Pine that we see all around will have their curtain call and be take over by Sugar Maple, American Beech, White and Red Pine with heights exceeding 100 ft. Ultimately a mature forest will exist with its rich diversity. A dense upper canopy, an understory with younger canopy trees, a shrub layer, and a groundcover layer, all home to the forest's inhabitants. Perhaps one day, a farmer will once again clear cut the forest and thus restart the never-ending cycle of destruction and rebirth that is occurring all around us.

Queen Anne's Lace, mature

Queen Anne's Lace "nest" about to blossom

Unknown species

goldenrod

perennial grasses

Daisy fleabane, one of hundreds of asters. It too is a compound flower, made of numerous tiny but complete flowers. Asters get their name from "astral", or star like. Flowers that have a central disc and rays extending outward.

Vetch

Red Clover, a delicious salad treat!

Familiar three leaf shamrock means this is clover. Without the white chevron on the leaf, this is probably a white clover.

Budding stage

Flowered and ready for pollinators

Goldenrod, infested with Gall Fly larvae. The fly lives only 2 weeks and its entire life revolves around this single plant. The male stays on a flower and dances to attract a female. After mating, she walks down the stem and injects her eggs into the goldenrod. The larvae eat the stem from the inside out but secrete a chemical to make the stem grow larger into a golf-ball sized lump. The larvae contain a chemical antifreeze and will survive the winter, emerging as flies in the spring and thus the cycle continues.

reindeer lichen, common here, and growing as far north as the tundras of northern Norway

The fruit look like small cherries. The leaf, oblong, with non-symmetrical rays and finely toothed border. This is clearly a cherry tree (Prunus sp.), either Choke Cherry or Pin Cherry. The Native Americans and Colonists survived on Choke Cherries. Only the flesh of the fruit is edible. All other parts, including seed contain hydrogen cyanide, giving them a bitter almond flavor. In larger quantities, will cause respiratory depression, coma, and death.