Winter Survey

In my first few blog posts, I talked a bit about what I do, and in this blog I'm actually going to do what I've been talking about.  This will be a brief walk-through of a recent short outing to the woods behind our house.  I've probably done this a hundred times but this time I'm going to document it.

At the time of this writing, it's early January, and the ground is pretty much frozen up and snow is on it's way in a couple days.  I thought, this is a good time to take a look at the forest floor and see what's looking green while the big trees are asleep at the moment.  If you're looking for something to do in the winter, this is a fun activity, and all you need is a camera and a field guide or two to help with plant identification.  Optionally, you can also bring a notebook to log your findings.

For reference, I'm conducting this activity in Eastern Connecticut, in what's known as a "dry-mesic oak forest."  The area was lightly logged about 22 years ago and while there are many older trees between 50 and 75 years old, many are younger, between 5 and 25 years old, along with saplins and seedlings.  The area is not old growth by any means.  Many acres of former farmland reforested in the last 125 years or so.  The evidence of stone walls through the woods suggest this space was once cleared, perhaps for animal pasture.

Four low-growing evergreen plants

The first group of plants I found were small and low to the ground.  Most of these are familiar to me, but I actually don't know the names of all of them.  I consulted three different field guides to narrow in on what these are called.  Two of them with round-ish leaves were a little too close to call, so I used a plant identification app and later confirmed their findings with Google to get an ID on one of these.  It turns out that they're ALL wintergreens.  Going clockwise from the upper left, we have what I believe to be American Wintergreen, Teaberry, Spotted Wintergreen, and what I believe to be Shinleaf.  I'll probably need to look at the two on the left again in the spring to see how similar or different their flowers are, to make sure I'm not looking at two of the same species.

The teaberry (upper right) has small leaves, and they grow along the ground.  In the summer and fall, you can usually see their bright red berries.  They are definitely edible, and you can make a tea out of them, but please don't eat any wild berries until you are 100% sure of what you're looking at.

One Google image and three field guide photos to help ID these plants

Moving on, I spotted three different non-flowering plants.  You might remember this category of plants from high-school biology class, but if you don't, don't worry about it for now.  For the sake of this discussion, we're going to say that out behind our house are evergreen ferns, one very tiny baby fir tree, and plenty of moss-covered rocks.  I know the fern to be a Christmas fern.  I don't know my mosses, and that tiny tree may very well be a hemlock, but time will tell.

Some non-flowering plants from the forest floor

We can talk about the larger trees another time.

So just like that, I've identified most of the plants in our little forest that are still green during the winter.  I'm sure there are a few I missed, but these help give an idea of what's common in our area.  Other naturalists can use this to see how their area is similar or different.  If they live in our same ecoregion, this information will be useful for them.

As for me, I could spend hours poking around in the woods.  Many of these plants are like old friends to me.  I take a great deal of joy in knowing what's around me.  As I like to say, "the floor of the forest never disappoints."

I'm a big fan of field guides.  Since this exercise was done on our own property, I left the books inside and consulted them later.  When I go on an expedition away from home, I'll throw a couple in my bag.  Why use an analog book when you've got the whole internet in your pocket?  I suppose it's a personal preference.  Time spent in a book is time not spent on a screen.  They're unplugged and help life pass a little more slowly.  And they are particularly useful in conserving your phone battery (I've been known to run my phone down just from taking too many photos!).  Personally, I can never have enough of these little books.  Here are the three I used in this exercise:

In the next post, I'll talk a bit about the mature trees and as an added bonus, I'll talk about signs of animal life that I found on this exursion.  Until next time... 

Results May Vary By Location

 As they say in real estate, location is everything.

Repeat after me: location, location, LOCATION.

In terms of the study of nature, everything you see will depend on where you are, and also WHEN you are.  Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that what you will see will vary from what I will see.  

I figure I first started picking up rocks and pebbles when I was about four years old, which means I've got roughly a fifty year history of studying nature in my home state of Connecticut.  Despite this, I've lived in several places across the state, and each of them have had variations in the trees and plants from one end of the state to the other.  For example, the northwest corner of the state may take on more of a northern hardwood appearance (sugar maple, beech, hemlock) versus a more oak-dominated forest here at home in the northeast corner (with a variety of oak trees and shagbark hickories).  Having said this, I know I can go right down the road and find some damp gullies loaded with hemlock and white pine that will start to feel like some of my favorite places in northwest Connecticut.  While a wider ecoregion will carry with it its own commonalities, many microclimates in a local region will make for different obervations.  Heck, even the north side of a hill in my home town will look a lot different from a wetland just down the road from here.  This is what makes being a naturalist fun.  There's no shortage of fun places to explore.

Northeastern Coastal Forest near our home

Many of the forthcoming posts in this blog will be from the context of where I live.  The takeaways for you will be methods that you can adopt for yourself, up to and including ways to observe and share your own local observations.  With any luck, our observations together will be of benefit to anyone out there looking to learn more about where each of us lives.  Right there, that's the best part about being a naturalist: someone can always learn from what we are doing.

And for the record, I wasn't entirely sure what an ecoregion was until I sat down to write this post, so yes, I learned something today.  Wikipedia has a great list of North American ecoregions.  Use it to learn more about where you live.  Cheers and happy hunting!  

Ecoregions of North America