Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

12/05/09

Field Blog #9: Past and Present

Today, when I visited my site, the area looked drastically different from the way it looked on September 13^th when I conducted my first visit to the Mission Park grove. It was 3:30, cloudy and chilly, but not cold, with a cool breeze blowing through.

While the temperature and overcast sky may have had an influence on how I perceived the site, it definitely felt, looked, and even smelled dormant. The vibrant summer energy of the area is absent, replaced by the sleepiness of winter. Simply looking at the site tells the same story: where in September the entire surrounding area exploded in every hue of bright green, brown now dominates the site. Brown crusty leaves cover large percentages of the site, which gives the appearance that the ground has completely left its productive period. While it may seem as if under the leaves would be some greenery, this is not the case. Two plants represent the green that is left on the ground: the tall grass in the sunny areas of the site and wild garlic mustard. The grass, while it still seems well enough alive, is growing increasingly thin, low, and pale, with some of it having already turned brown. Garlic mustard also still has all of its color and is the only ground plant that remains dark green.

The other ground plants that had inhabited the site have long since gone into their dormant stages. The flowering plants were the first to go, though their parents in some cases remained for a time hiding among the other ground cover. The sensitive fern was gone after the very first frost on October 18^th, and the bracken fern lasted two weeks longer. About the same time, the large amount of Virginia creeper sprouts on the ground also disappeared, as did the white wood aster. While goutweed has the ability to survive the winter and live perennially, it also, seemingly, has the unfortunate disadvantage of being tasty to deer. Today’s inspection saw the last significant patch of the before very populous plant completely grazed. Interestingly, thick carpets of garlic mustard, which remained completely untouched, surrounded this grazed patch almost completely. It seems that though the exotic was imported for its culinary properties, it is not much appreciated by the local fauna.

The deciduous trees have all been completely devoid of leaves for some time now, though the evergreens still appear as they did when I first saw them. Unfortunately, their foliage does not compensate for the deciduous leaves, whose absence makes the site feel open, and almost empty. As a side note, the conifers that I believed to be all one species when I first gave them a cursory glance in fact include the species white pine, eastern hemlock, white spruce, and northern white cedar, in addition to a small Japanese umbrella tree.

The brown patches where at the beginning of the semester I was able to see some dirt used to be confined underneath the branches of the biggest white pines, but are now spread throughout much of the interior of the site. While pine cones and needles still litter the area, they do not blanket it as they did even last week, allowing dirt to be seen easily in reasonably sized expanses.

Today, the fauna was also different from what I had become used to seeing during my visits to the site. Not at any point in the 45 minutes that I spent on the site did I see or hear any of the now very obese gray squirrels or chipmunks that had been out in force even last week. Of course, this is reasonable, as cooler temperatures that have slowly been coming in may have triggered the squirrels’ hibernation behavior, though some of the days (like today) remain comparatively warm. It is also possible that the gray squirrel’s hibernation behavior is based on day length (photoperiod) rather than temperature, and that even on a hot but short day, they will not be active.  Furthermore, I heard no birdcalls other than crows.

To mention my site’s future, it is likely to remain the same. As a historical park, groundskeepers have been maintaining the site in its current (or very close to its current) set up for years, and will likely continue to do so for

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

11/17/09

Field Blog 8: Land Use History for Mission Park

The area that is now known as Mission Park has undergone several changes since colonial settlers first laid eyes on it.

The area that would be my site at Mission Park occupies an area at the north end of housing lots as shown on the original colonial plan for Williamstown that was drawn in 1749. To be more specific, I believe it occupies space touching on housing lots 48, 50 and 52.

For a long period of time between this 1749 map and 1806, it is believed that the area was a hay meadow that may have also been used for grazing animals. The flatness and smoothness of the topography of the current Mission Park also indicates that it was plowed for crops at some point as well during this period, though when is again uncertain.

Though Samuel Sloan was not the original owner of lots 48, 50 or 52, it is known that he acquired the property containing Mission Park sometime before 1806. This is clear because the area, before it was renamed, was known as “Sloan’s Meadow.”

In 1806, there was a fierce thunderstorm raging over Williamstown, and five students, including Samuel John Mills (class of 1809) were caught in the storm on their way back from a religious congregation. These young men took shelter under a haystack in Sloan’s Meadow, and while they were waiting out the storm, began to talk of the word of God. The course of their conversation led them to decide that they would start spreading the “Gospel on a global basis.” And in this way, the American Foreign Mission was born.

Almost 50 years later in 1854 the College Society of Alumni and the Board of Trustees decided to purchase 10 acres of the land surrounding the original haystack, and renamed the area “Mission Park or Grounds” as a historical park. In 1867, the marble Haystack Monument commemorating the 1806 event was raised in the park.

Since this time, there has been relatively little change to the overall land use of the area. Williams College has maintained the area as a historical park, which seems to have involved groundskeepers maintaining the surrounding area. Trees were grown and trimmed, and based on their diversity, it would not surprise me if at least some of them had been planted purposefully for aesthetic reasons. In addition, the area seems to have been kept for the most part clear of bushes, though it is uncertain how long this clearing has been taking place.

There also have been several building projects completed in Mission Park. In 1895/6, Williams Hall Annex was built in the area that currently contains the Mission Park dormitory. This building was used as an infirmary until 1911 when Thomson Infirmary was built to the north. It was converted into a dormitory by 1919, and was used as freshmen housing starting from 1922.

In 1926, the Theta Delta Chi fraternity house was moved next to Williams Hall Annex, and was renamed Sage Hall Annex. In consecutive years, the two buildings served a variety of purposes: football training housing, dining halls, housing for returning veterans and their families after World War II, and others. Eventually, Williams Annex was torn down in 1968, and it is believed that Sage Annex was moved off of Mission Park.

In the late 1960s through 1971, the current Mission Dormitory was constructed. Mitchell-Giurgola and associates designed the building, and in 1970 the clever architectural design of the building earned its builders a Progressive Architecture design award. The building was opened in 1971, and had cost the college $5,400,000.

As can be seen, the land of Mission Park has been for the most part unchanged since it was made into a historical park: it has not been cleared or plowed, but neither has it been allowed to develop and have succession as would a natural setting due to those who maintain its grounds.

This is a drawing that appeared in Durfee’s Biographical Annals in 1871. As can be seen, the surrounding area is for the most part empty of trees. Keep in mind, however, that this is an artist’s interpretation of the site, and that the monument is actually much smaller than it is portrayed here.

Sage and WIlliams Annexes are the two houses below Williams and Sage Halls where Mission Dormitory now stands. My site (between the annexes and the halls) seems similarly forested then to how it is now.

Mission Dormitory when it was under construction in 1971. The trees in my site look nearly identical to the present.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

11/13/09

Field Blog #7: Update and Video

When I visited my site on Monday (the 9^th of November) this week, it was about 2:30 pm. The weather was partly cloudy with a slight breeze, and was extremely warm: about 70 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the video that I recorded, I stood in a spot very close to the center of my field site. While standing there, I turned in a circle starting and ending north, turning counter-clockwise. Visible in the panorama that was recorded are several aspects of my field site that may not have been clear in the written field reports. The first is the quite obvious and loud whirring noise that is going on in the background. This noise was coming from construction machinery currently employed on the Lehman building directly to the south of my site. Another important feature of my site is the amount of human traffic within a short proximity. Though only two students were filmed walking on the nearby paths during this video, during peak class changing hours, there are many more. There is also a car visible in the recording, which is another frequent occurrence.

The video also shows the general state of the site. Though I did not focus the camera at the treetops above, they are all completely stripped of leaves, and had been like that since last Thursday (the 5^th). For this reason as well, the ground itself seems much less green and vibrant, as most of the plant life that remains on the ground is covered by brown fallen leaves. These leaves have created a very dry and crackly bed under which, at least in the middle of the site, there is very little growing. The plants that still seem to be thriving are the grasses on the west edge of the site, the wild mustard garlic and the small amount of goutweed that has not been grazed by passing deer.

This is not to say that the site seemed dormant already. I counted more than five different squirrels happily enjoying the warm weather to get out and about in the leaves, and I also heard several birdcalls over the machinery, though I could not identify them or even describe their calls over the noise. Unfortunately, these creatures seemed to have disappeared by the time that I began filming.

Furthermore, the video shows (around the 28^th second) that the patch of ferns that was first sensitive fern and then was replaced by bracken ferns is now completely dead and brown.

I also found several very interesting plants that seem to have gone into dormancy already. Poking out between the brown leaves was the plant that is pictured below.

The plant consisted of a dry, brittle stem tipped with a small cluster of what used to be red berries. Now, these red bulbs seem to merely be the dried outer casings of where the berries used to be. Though not all of them were burst in a way that would suggest a bird having eaten them, the complete ones still crumpled dryly when I put slight pressure on them. This almost makes me want to believe that the contents of the berries had been reabsorbed through the stem because the berries were not eaten, but this does not seem logical evolutionarily to me. I would think that a better survival strategy would be to sacrifice yourself so that your 7 or 8 seeds could be spread. Of course, it is also possible that some insect ate them from the inside, taking the nutrients and leaving the tough outer casing. This plant did have one half grown green shoot at its base, which unfortunately I did not see until I had plucked the plant out of the ground. I only saw one other example of this plant during my inspection of my site, which I left in the ground.

Another interesting find was on the lone Northern White Cedar tree in the southwest corner of my site. At the bottom, the bark seems to have been peeled off, revealing a zigzag, maze-like pattern on the tree of some insect. The tracks seemed to be reasonably thick and wide, thus I would hazard the guess of some sort of beetle. In any case, it does not live there any longer.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/30/09

Field Journal #6: Taste

When I went to my site on Thursday at about 4:30 pm, the weather was sunny, surprisingly warm with an ever so slight breeze, and the sky was cloudless.

Though I am always reluctant to taste plants I haven’t been expressly told are edible as well as tasty, I did sample a few plants while my courage was up. I chewed on the stem of a sugar maple leaf, hoping for a little bit of sweetness as per the tree’s name. This I did get briefly, but after a few seconds, the taste turned bitter and unpleasant, causing me to spit out the fibrous mass. Again hoping for a pleasant taste, I tried a white pine needle or two, and while they were nice flavor-wise, the texture soon defeated my gag reflex with the small splintery pieces that resulted from my chewing. After this, I tried one last plant, the wild mustard garlic. This tasted halfway between a blade of grass and a blade of chive, but was not pleasant. I considered sampling goutweed, but its name deterred me.

Another tour around the site led to several interesting observations and showed many large changes in the site. First and foremost, the white birches are all completely bare, as are the American beech, silver maple, chestnut and sugar maples. The large oak tree has turned completely brown, but as of yet the leaves have not fallen. The evergreens still look healthy, as does the goldenrod and the goutweed.

There seems to have been a reasonable large amount of animal activity recently. While at the site, I saw many more chipmunks than I had before, though this may have simply been timing. There was also plenty of evidence of the squirrels’ and chipmunks’ feeding. The number of fully eaten and stripped pinecones has increased drastically since last I visited. This most likely means that other sources of food are running low, and that now the pine cones are valuable for their seeds as they were not when other food was available. In the warm weather, the rodents were out in force, and I saw plenty of play going on. I also found, by the base of a white pine tree, a half eaten nut. As the picture below shows, the large chestnut is mostly eaten, and bears the marks of many small teeth, either from one rodent many times or from multiple rodents.

Half Eaten Chestnut

What was curious was that there was so much left. Scattered around the nut were small pieces of white nutmeat, and they almost appeared to have been chewed and spat out. There were not enough of these fragments to complete the nut, so it seemed that some was eaten, and the rest was left. I believe the strewn fragments and remaining half of a nut were the result of a very rapid feeding that was interrupted. But even if the feeding was interrupted, why leave the nut? In any case, an interesting find.

For a few nights recently, I have seen deer from my window in the Mission Park area. Though there weren’t any while I was there, traces were all over the site. Near the center of the grove is a large patch of goutweed, but when I arrived there I found many green shoots that appeared to be new growth. After investigating their tips and stems, I realized that they were simply goutweed (I think) stems that had been chewed off by deer. When deer graze, they usually also leave behind scat, which I also found in the grazed area. Judging by the concentrated organization of the dark pellets, I would guess a female left the scat, as males generally walk as they defecate, leaving a trail of pellets.

On the other side of my site, however, was another small pile of feces. While at first I thought it was again deer, I saw some distinct differences. The second pile had much less distinct boundaries between pellets; it almost seemed that the pellets had been softer and pressed together. They were smooth in texture, and the insides were green. This led me to believe it was a deer with some sort of intestinal issue that prevented full digestion of its meal and full uptake of water.

These signs also show me that deer have a much more active role in my site than I believed.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/23/09

Field Journal #5

I entered my site at around 8:45 pm on Wednesday, by which time the sky was fully dark. Unfortunately, due to the location of my site relative to buildings and frequently used pathways, a fully dark sky does not mean a fully dark site because of the ambient light cast by the Mission dormitory as well as the lamps lining the pathways on either side of the site. While I still required a flashlight to maneuver around the site and see anything other than large tree shapes when I was in the center of my site, the edges were illuminated to some extent.

I sat for a while at the base of a large white pine, hoping to hear something worthy of recording, but the longer I sat the more I realized that the only sounds that I would record were human sounds, and that the site itself would remain unheard. There were plenty of cars passing on Mission park road, Park Street and Route 2; plenty of doors opening and closing; numerous people talking as they walked past; and in the background the whirring of a large generator coming from Mission.

The recording I made contained only very few noises above the rustle of leaves in the breeze other than the shifting of my feet in the leaves below and the movement of my hand on the recorder. These were people talking, and church bells tolling faintly, and a door closing, which seems to have been swallowed by electrical crackles. There were no birdcalls of any kind to be heard, no chattering of squirrels or the crackle of leaves as they scampered around, and no chirp of insects of any kind. Of course, this could be explained away by the fact that the birds and squirrels are sleeping and that the loud insects are long gone after the first frost, but still I expected at least some natural noise.

I did, however, see a few small insects in my search. First was a caterpillar that was bright translucent green. It was similar to the caterpillar I described in my fourth site observation (Field Blog 3), except it was slightly larger and green in color. It was residing in a pinecone, and judging by the white silky mat it was resting on, it was in the process of creating a cocoon for itself. It was also very inactive: it did not move as I picked up the pinecone nor did it budge when I poked it with my pencil. At this point I left it to its rest as I had seen a small spider by my foot. It was small (about 7 millimeters long in my estimation), brown, with very thin legs. Its back had an almost stripped pattern with lighter circles in the center of darker stripes. What I soon found interesting about it was that it did not move when I shone my headlamp at it. When I covered the light for a few seconds, it would begin to move again, but would stop about a second after the light was uncovered.

A third critter I encountered was a daddy long-legs, but of a kind I had not before seen. It was brown and had six thin brown legs. The front leg on the right was about twice as long as the others, and seemed to be used almost as a feeler to probe ahead of the insect. On either side of its tiny mandibles it also had two much smaller tan appendages that retracted into the insects body most of the time, but came out to poke the page of my journal as it walked. A fascinating thing about the daddy long-legs was that when I tilted my journal, its legs curved around the lips of the book to hold it in place. It almost seemed like the limbs were prehensile, the way they curved and flexed as the creature required.

The site at night seemed almost the same as it is during the day except for the stillness. During a tour of the site, however, I did notice that the white wood asters have changed from a flowering state to a seed dispersing state with puffy seed dispersing clusters in place of petals.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/19/09

Field Journal #4

When I went to my site at about 2:30 pm last week on Thursday, the weather was partially cloudy, and reasonably chilly. While it was not threatening to snow while I was there, there had been a hard frost the previous night and there was a short period of snowfall the next morning. As such there were many changes in my site that I noticed while I investigated parts of my site though touch.

The first change that I noticed before I had even entered my site was that the sensitive ferns were completely gone. In their place were large clumps of brown, dry and brittle stalks that crumbled at a light touch. Interestingly, now that the sensitive ferns are no longer obscuring the view, some bracken ferns were visible in the patch where the sensitive ferns had been. While these brackens are dying, they are not as of yet dead, still retaining some moisture and pale green color.

Another plant that seems to have been a completely destroyed by the frost was the Virginia creeper. The vines on trees are now completely bare, and the leaves of the shoots on the ground are brown and shriveled. The leaves, though they seem dead, are surprisingly not dry and brittle in the way the sensitive ferns were, but still seem reasonably moist.

Among the ground vegetation that was still green, an interesting pattern became visible. The garlic mustard (which I had known would last the winter) and the goutweed both felt waxy to the touch. Additionally, another plant similar to goutweed had many small hairs on the surface of its leaves. I connect these attributes because I recognize them as strategies that low water area plants use to retain moisture. It struck me that they could also help in winter conditions: the waxy coating which in deserts limits transpiration could in winter help insulate and retain the limited amount of liquid water the plant receives. The hairs, which in deserts served the same purpose as the wax, could hold heat in their microenvironment in the same way that human hairs retain heat when stood on end.

Deeper into the grove I began to look at the trees. The Norway spruce trees are still quite healthy looking; their needles were still dark green and supple. Also, on the ground surrounding these trees I did not see any of the short flat needles, which led me to believe that either the Norway spruce does not shed needles (which I doubted), or it shed its needles earlier in the season, in which case the needles are now buried under a thick layer of white pine needles. Interestingly, 10 minutes of Internet research seemed to point to the first option that they do not shed needles under normal circumstances.

The white pine tree still looks quite healthy, and the ground in a large radius of the tree has thousands of brown and brittle needles covering it. These needles have been there for some time: the tree is quite large and therefore shed its needles early on in the season.

The maples in my site and around it are now all easily identifiable by color: all are sugar maples in various stages of leaf loss. One large sugar maple on the east edge of the site has lost nearly all its leaves, and those that remain are very yellow. The leaves on the ground, while dry, are not brittle. The silver maple, on the other hand, did not change color before its leaves shriveled up brown and dropped in large numbers. They, like the fern, crumble at a touch.

Near the end of my visit, a hawk flew in and landed on a tree not 5 feet from me. It had a curved black beak, a mostly white belly with some brown feathers mixed in, and a brown back. It looked at me casually as I slowly approached, and preened itself almost arrogantly as it ignored me. Unfortunately, some people on the path began to shout at each other and it flew off, but not before I had seen its red tail. At this point I assumed that it was a red tailed hawk, which I later confirmed.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

10/06/09

Field Blog #3: Mission Park

On Tuesday when I went to my field site between 4:30 and 5 pm, the weather was partly cloudy, and a slight breeze was blowing through. While I was there, I paid attention to two main aspects: the recent changes that were occurring in my site, and the faunal activity that was going on in the area.

A stroll around my site did not reveal too many drastic changes to the area’s flora. Some changes that I did notice were that one sugar maple on the east edge of the site was much more fully yellow now: I would estimate about three fourths of the leaves were no longer green. Additionally, the sensitive ferns seem much lighter in color than they were a week or two ago, and several patches of goldenrod flowers have mysteriously appeared on the western edge. I say mysterious because I had not before seen any plants even resembling the ones that are now growing happily. Most likely I simply missed them before they started flowering.

In my search for animal life, I first simply sat down by a tree quietly and watched. In a few minutes I had observed several mosquitoes and other flying insects in rays of light, taken note of some deer droppings close by, and seen a number of playful squirrels. These furry critters participated in a large number of different tasks as I continued to observe them. First they were just walking along the ground, traveling from tree to tree most likely for various purposes. At several intervals, I watched them dig in different spots looking for their stores, but none of the digging that I could see yielded any result. They soon tired of this, however, and began playing what seemed to be a game of one chasing the other, then the other turning around and chasing the first. This went on for several minutes before they disappeared into a tree.

At this point, curious that I had seen so few ground insects as I sat and with no large rocks to turn over, I picked up a stick and dug myself a small hole, hoping to see some interesting grubs. The first layer of the ground was about an inch of leaf litter and pine needles that was reasonably damp and stayed clumped together reasonably solidly. Under this layer was the dirt itself, which was dry and rocky. The rocks were small, about the size of gravel, and were of all sorts of different materials. There was also some broken brown bottle glass mixed in, which was interesting to see an inch below the surface, but not altogether too surprising given the college surroundings.

Overall, I dug down about 10 centimeters into the dirt itself, but still found no evidence of ground dwelling grubs or other insects; only roots, rocks, and dry dark brown dirt. At this point I gave up with my little hole, but luckily as I was filling it in, an interesting creature landed on my field journal. It was a sort of tiny, yellowish, translucent worm-like caterpillar type insect. It was about 4-5 millimeters long, and maybe 1 mm wide, and I think it had 10 pairs of feet (I forgot my hand lens, unfortunately). Interested, I played with this grub for a while. His basic reflex if something poked him was to let go of the leaf or whatever surface he was on, and to fall while holding onto the leaf with a strand of silk. This silk, interestingly, seemed to come from his mouth rather than from his tail, (as I would have guessed) assuming that it walks with its head forward. After it lands on some surface, it almost looks as if the caterpillar were eating the silk it used as a falling mechanism: its head moves in a way that makes me think as if it were pulling the string down into its mouth. If this letting go tactic fails to cause the caterpillar to fall, it simply curls up quickly, then immediately fully extends again and moves quickly away.

Eventually, I allowed the likely traumatized bug go on its way, and continued my general observation hoping for another such interesting encounter. Unfortunately, all I saw were a few tiny black ants.

Throughout this time, I had also been listening to the birds, but only two voices called during my entire visit.

Gordon Smith

Natural History of the Berkshires

9/13/09

0: Initial Site Description

For my site at Mission Park, the area I decided to investigate was the wedge-shaped section between the two paved paths leading south that has been let go to seed. This area has obviously been manipulated to certain extents by humans: there are beaten paths cutting though it, and it would be easy to suppose that at some point it has been mowed. There is not, however, evidence to suggest that animals are eating the plants in the area, which again would be true in the middle of the college campus.

As it stands now, the area in question contains a variety of plant species. There are approximately 20 trees, about half of which are deciduous, while the other half is coniferous. The conifers were all very similar, both in size and type, leading me to guess that they are all the same species of tree, though I do not know what species this is. The deciduous trees are a bit more varied. There is a large oak tree, several maples, including one whose leaf resembles that of a Canadian maple, and a few grey birches. Interestingly, it seemed that the coniferous trees were concentrated towards the center of the area in question, while the deciduous trees seemed to be on the edges. This may suggest that the deciduous trees are younger, growing up around the shaded edges of the conifers. This idea is supported by the fact that deciduous trees are more shade tolerant than conifers.

There was also a large amount of variety among the low-lying plants. The first distinction is between the plants in direct sunlight and those in the shade cover of the grove.

In the non-shaded area, the majority of the plant life was a tall, thick grass. Interspersed with this grass were several types of flowers. There were buttercups, a yellow flower that resembles a dandelion (though it is growing at the wrong time of the year) and a plant with many small, tubular, purple petals.

Under the trees was far less grass, and far more leafy plants. These plans included ferns, clovers, and other types of low lying leafy vegetation. The majority of the ferns were a bright but pale green in color, with rounded ruffles and with the fronds towards the tip connected. This type of fern was mostly found in large, dense patches on the west side of the area, though there was a patch on the east side. The other type of fern was sharper in its ruffles, darker in color, and less densely situated.

The clovers were scattered throughout the site, but the largest concentration of them was in a patch on the south edge, where they were also larger. Types included simple three leaved clovers, clovers with three heart-shaped leaves (that taste like lemon), and large, single leaved clovers.

The other leafy plants were concentrated mostly in the center of the grove. The two main types were a single stemmed plant with five leaves sprouting in different directions and a three-branched plant, each branch of which had three small leaves. These two types were found in almost all parts of the grove, but again were larger in dense patches in the center of the grove.

There was also a species of white flower that grew only in the shade of the trees. It is a small flower with a yellow center and about 10 thin white petals. These flowers, however, seem to be about at the end of their growth period, as many of them are missing some or all of their petals and are drooping considerably. Interestingly, these seem to be the only plants in this condition: all of the deciduous trees and low-lying plants still hold their summer vibrancy and health.

The only bare earth in the area is around the bases of a few coniferous trees in the center of the grove. This space is piled high with the remnants of pinecones: the scales as well as the cores litter the area.

Gordon Smith

9/30/09

Natural History of the Berkshires

Field Journal Assignment #2: Mission Park Site

When I went to my site at 3:20 on Wednesday afternoon, the sky was overcast, and the first drips of rain were audible, if not visible. While I am in the group of people who is unfortunately not blessed with a strong sense of smell, there were several observations that I could still make with my nose. The air in my site smelled crisp, clear and fresh, there were no lingering smells of the nearby dining hall (though sometimes there are), nor the sweet smell of rotting leaves; just freshness with a hint of cut grass from a nearby lawn mixed with the slightest tinge of pine sap. Even the cliché earthiness of dirt and grass was not apparent to me: only a cold clearness.

The next topic that I would like to discuss is the changes that I am noticing in my site relative to the first time that I saw it. As I walked towards the center of the grove, the first difference I noticed was that the amount of ordinary grass has decreased and that the amount of broad-leaved low vegetation (mostly goutweed and some Virginia creeper) has increased to compensate. Other changes on the ground surface of the site were that the areas of brown with dirt and dead pine needles showing have grown larger, and that they are no longer solely confined in areas of denser tree cover. The ground is also littered with noticeably more dead branches than it was a few weeks ago, and the number of dead leaves has increased dramatically, though these leaves are likely from other nearby stands than from the site itself. I would say this because only very few of the deciduous trees in my site have even begun to turn, to say nothing of losing brown leaves.

As for the trees themselves, 2 sugar maples have begun to have their outward facing (facing away from the center of the site) leaves turn yellow. It is interesting to me that they have not turned, because many of the maple trees near to the site have already completely turned bright shades of red and yellow. This is most likely because they are different species of maple (red vs. sugar). Additionally, an American beech tree has begun also to turn yellow and brown, and one of the bigger paper birch trees is also in the process of turning yellow. The only red in my site comes from a quite a large amount of Virginia creeper vines that are both on the ground as standing broad leaved vegetation and on a few of the maple trees.

Also, to clarify a few points, my site is completely devoid of running or standing water. It is also flat in a way that is likely only possible with human manipulation. Human traffic in the area is quite high along the adjacent paths, but only rarely do people walk on the site itself, with the exception of the path that cuts through.

The last topic I would like to discuss is the overall nature of my site. Though I had seen evidence of gardening and grounds keeping near to my site, I had never truly though of it as a “garden” because the low-lying plants had been left alone for the most part. As I have begun to identify plants, however, it has become more and more obvious that there is very little natural and native about my site. The clover-like plant with one broad leaf that I have described in earlier journals is wild garlic mustard, an invasive exotic imported for its culinary properties.  While it does smell quite a lot like garlic, and is interesting in its ability to stay green over winter, it is in no natural occurrence here in the Berkshires. With two of the dominant low-lying plants confirmed as invasive exotics, it is likely that many more of the plants are as well. As such, I will keep in mind the fact that what I am observing is in a large part due to human intervention, though I will not stop looking for interactions nor viewing the area as a natural, if manipulated, whole.

Gordon Smith
Natural History of the Berkshires
9/22/09

Field Journal #1: Mapping and Placement

First in this entry, I will attempt to annotate the map I have created and further explain how the plant life is situated, as well as how the site itself is situated in the world around it. Then, I will supply some corrections and updates on my previous journal concerning for the most part plant species and land usage.

Below this entry are two maps: a detailed map of the site and a map of surrounding landmarks (in this case the Mission Park Dormitory and Mission Park Road) as well as the key for both maps. As the attached map will show, my field site is laid out in a more or less wedge shape, with the tip pointing towards the Mission dormitory (more or less north) and the wider, opposite side pointing towards Route 2 and south. The northerly point of the wedge is at a lower elevation from the south side, and though I do not possess adequate equipment to measure the height of the hill that is climbed as one follows the site north to south, I would estimate it at somewhere between 20 and 25 feet. There is also elevation gained when moving from the southeastern corner towards the southwestern, which I would estimate at about 10 feet.

The south edge of the site is split, with a mowed indentation that bulges around the Haystack Monument and a few benches. The largest trees are bunched around the center of the site, but the outlying trees are also of a reasonable size. As the map shows, there are more coniferous trees than there are deciduous trees: 29 to 14 to be exact. Furthermore, the deciduous trees seem to be for the most part along the western edge of the site, while the conifers occupy the center and eastern sides of the site. It is unclear whether or not this is due to a natural reason, or whether it is simply the planting pattern that was decided on for the area. This second possibility is more likely: a picture of the Haystack Memorial in 1906 does not contain a single tree. For this reason, it would be easier to assume that all of the plants had been placed for decoration reasonably recently.

In my first entry, there were many plants that I simply described due to the fact that I did not know their species names. Here I will identify a few of the species I did not know.

The pale green ferns with interconnected fronds are sensitive ferns. As can be seen on the map, they are concentrated in a patch on the west edge of the site. The purple flowers with tube-shaped petals are red clover. The small white flowers with the yellow centers are white wood asters, and are mainly found in the spaces indicated as showing dirt. As for the dandelion-like flowers, I cannot be sure, as they seem to have disappeared. It is likely, however, that they were a species of autumn dandelion that is late blooming. The most common leafy plant (with three branches of three leaves) is goutweed. Another correction is that the birch I called gray is in fact a white, or paper birch.

For some reason, I also neglected to investigate the animal life of the site. The area is in fact home to many squirrels, which are evident both in the trees and on the ground, eating and storing acorns and pinecones. I have also seen since the last time I wrote a family of deer running through the stand of trees, though I do not believe they stayed long to eat. These occasional visitors may, however, be the reason that there are no moderately sized bushes in the area, though it is more likely the result of the college groundskeepers.

The history of the site was also not taken into consideration; I was previously unsure how old the grove was, and was not aware of the fact that the Haystack monument celebrated the “Birthplace of American Foreign Missions” (-Haystack Monument).

It is obvious at this point that the site will soon change drastically from summer vegetation to fall vegetation, and further updates will track this change.