Something New Every Time….           By: Claudia Corona     10/02/09

Twenty-five days. That’s the difference between my first journal entry and my present one. A month hasn’t even passed since I first came to Hopkins Forest, but I’m already starting to see things that my eyes had ignored before. I think back to my first encounter with this forest and I marvel at how the forest shows me something new every time I come back.

In my first entry I proclaimed that there were few different plant and wildflower species in Hopkins Forest, but as I walk down the trail and towards the brook, my eyes show me differently. I identified over 20 different plant species in my site along the Ford Glen Brook (with the help of my peers and professor).

One of the first things that caught my eye was a Jack In The Pulpit, a plant with an onion-like stout shooting up from the ground with a cluster of berries all around the top. I could see why birds were so attracted to this plant, the berries were bright red, as if to say, “Eat Me!”, and I would have, had I not been previously told it wasn’t tasty to humans and when I squeezed the berries, they didn’t have an edible smell to them.

However the Northern Bedstraw I had seen earlier, recognized by their long plant stems with clustered white flowers in a ball-shaped form, had a sweet smell to them and apparently are edible (good for survival purposes).

Continuing on the trail, I felt like I was in a game of hide-n-seek with the plants, since I was trying to discern what they were. I looked closer at the plants cluttered about the sides of the trail, and I immediately spotted some Northern Lady Fern, with its fronds (fern leaves) tripinate (feather-like leaves) still dark green. This is not to be confused with the Christmas Fern, another plant I saw, known by its stout stalks and evergreen lanced-shaped toothed fronds.

Next to the fern was a Striped Maple, spotted because of its huge leaves (of 6 inches). The leaves were crown-shaped with 3 pointy elf-like ear lobes. On the left side of the path, I spotted (gotcha!) some white wildflowers. But upon closer observation, they were two different plants of the Aster Family. One was White-snake root; white rayless, toothed flowers, clustered together on firm smooth branches. The other was White-wood aster, with many white rays around a yellowish disk, there were few flowers per branch.

Ahead there were some other white flowers but with a purplish center and heart-shaped leaves known as Heart-leaved aster. Next to it was the dreaded shrub honeysuckle (an invasive species) with its simple oval evergreen leaves. I was not able to discern much more about it as the shrubs no longer had their infamous bell-shaped flowers. Opposite that, on the left side of the road were various shrubs of Japanese Barberry, known for their long tree stems that grow very small leaves (about 1-2 cm) as with bright red egg-shaped berries hanging from the stem.

At the beginning of my journaling, I was under the impression that there weren’t rocks here, but boy was I wrong!  As the trail slopes down at the beginning there is a tough patch of dirt, tougher than the dirt farther into the forest. I decided to check it out and removed the dirt from one small site. To my surprise, I found a rock-solid floor! Apparently, the fact that this was on a slope eroded most of the soil and leaves here, which left a thin layer of dirt on solid rock. I wasn’t able to take a sample from the rock, but later on, down by the brook, I found two types of rocks. One could easily be scratched by my pocket knife, this was phyllite, known for being shiny, with crinkly brittle rocks layers. The other almost broke my knife’s edge, leading me to believe it was quartzite; light, hard, and knife-proof.

I noticed that the ground was still damp from the recent rain. The air smelled of moist wood bark and wet soil. It smelled of dead plants and rotten leaves. The rain must have kicked up dust from the ground because there was definitely a stronger earthly smell than usual. But it no longer smelled of summer flowers, but of autumn fresh, a scent I’ve never familiarized being from a downtown urban city, but now find comforting, crisp, and calming.

Stephen Maier

It is Thursday, October 1, 2009, and the summer-like weather is waning away. Autumn is but a week old yet it feels as though summer left us months ago. My focus this afternoon is on scents in the woods. However, Diane Ackerman notes in her book, Smell, that human dependence on the sense of smell diminished when humans emerged from the water and grew upright, and when “vision and hearing became more important for survival.” Smell is no longer as vital a function for us to survive, so I approach my assignment somewhat skeptically. The cold is going to hinder my capability of smelling, but I will sniff through it. It is about 50°F and overcast with a firm breeze.

I enter the West Clark Woods at 2:20 p.m. at the same spot as my last visit here nearly two weeks ago, September 19^th. It has become a familiar exit from the fast-paced college life and an entry to a pacifying, carefree, natural world. Upon first glance, it appears not much has changed. So I walk down the hill to the water to investigate. During my descent I notice something different. I crouch down to determine if my instincts are correct, and judging by the smell emitted from this substance, I believe it is feces, just as I had suspected. It looks much nicer in a clump on the forest floor than smeared beneath the soles of my sneakers, so in this moment I am happy. I continue down to the water’s edge and find that the water level has risen significantly over the past two weeks. The New England Asters near the banks are no longer growing, but the multitude of asters about ten feet offshore is still very colorful. The yellow birch living on the island is no longer colorful like it had been before, for its leaves have all “fall-en.” I look up above me to see if anything else has fully shed its leaves, but it appears that this particular birch is the only tree totally naked. Nearly all of the yellow birches around me, which were green two weeks ago, are half green-half yellow conjuring up a comparison to lemon-lime Gatorade. There is one mussel wood, the only non-hemlock or birch in the vicinity, with tough, gray bark and its green leaves have mostly changed to orange.

There are two large beds of rocks at the site. One sits in a shallow pool of water slightly uphill and northeast of the wetland. It is full of quartzite rocks, all similar to the next, with three phyillite rocks mixed in. It appears that these rocks were moved together by some weather, or they were dumped at this particular location in this odd but unique formation. The other patch of rocks forms an outline to what looks to be a downhill stream or outlet of running water. These rocks, also quartzite, align linearly and lead me to believe that water from the grazing land outside of the woods runs downhill looking for a place to settle and uses this line as its path to the wetland at the bottom of the hill. The wetland must be sourced by precipitation running from higher elevation, such as the top of Stone Hill. I find a path cut through the brush and follow it in search of an outlet for this water. It leads to a different bank of the wetland, this time looking from the north. However, I can’t find an escape route for the water so I surmise this must be its final resting place. The most curious feature of this idle water is it’s surprising lack of odor. All other standing water I have ever seen also smelled.

The cold air has the scent of autumn. It brings along that crisp, fresh smell that always comes with the fall season. I break a branch off a yellow birch tree and inhale the scent emitted from its interior. It is a smell that brings me back to my childhood, sitting at an Italian restaurant with my family and washing down a piece of my father’s chicken parmesan with a mouthful of birch beer. There isn’t much else permeating the air. The smells of the wild are more for the animals than for humans. Humans emit pheromones for humans and I am alone in the woods, so I smell the crisp air and the birch, but not much else. I exit the woods at 3:25 p.m. with a final breath of fresh forest air.

Nathaniel Basch-Gould – Blog Entry #2 – Wall’s Pond – 10/2/09 – 10:15 am

It’s quite crisp this morning; autumn seems to be settling steadily in, one day at time. I’m sitting on the now-familiar west side of the pond, on a picnic table in order to avoid the dewy ground. The air is about 45 degrees F and there’s a slight breeze out of the north, about 1-5 mph. There is a tinge of cold in the breeze last week, and it’s certainly there right now. The difference is a general dryness, the beginning of the bite that New Englanders know is the mark of an autumn wind. The sun is just emerging through the pines at the south end of the pond, breaking the steely and uniform cloud cover and warming me as I sit.
The mallards are out in force! I count twelve and they seem more active than they have in the past two weeks. It’s as though they’ve finally shaken off the summer laziness that the college students are likewise trying to kick as the colder weather settles in. They dive occasionally and move among the dwindling lily pads on the east side of the pond.
Since my last visit, the water lilies have certainly diminished a bit. A few proud survivors are sticking it out, petals open, and it may simply be that today there is less sun than when last I was here, but the water lilies, which bloomed on the water’s surface last week are now mostly closed up or gone completely.
I see some new fauna today as well – namely two chipmunks at the base of the closest red maple on the southwest corner of the pond. I first notice them scurrying about the foot of the tree, diving in and out of several small holes thereabouts and nibbling on something white and fluffy. This gets me interested. Upon closer inspection, I discover twenty or thirty hunks of white bread scattered on the pond side of the maple’s base, left there, it looks like, by a human for the express purpose of feeding the local wildlife. This seems strange – the bread looks fresh and doesn’t feel stale. It certainly wasn’t there last week. I leave it, not knowing the impact it might have on animal at the site, but hoping it might attract some interesting visitors. Something will come by and eat it, I’m sure, and probably nothing that doesn’t already have business at the water’s edge. In addition to the chipmunks I catch a fleeting glimpse of a pair of small, black birds that swoop low across the pond one time and then disappear. I will keep and eye out for them next time, and will bring binoculars so as to hopefully record an identification.
The large maple at the north end of the pond wins the foliage prize this morning and gives away its true identity. In the week since my last visit 70% of its leaves have turned a fiery shade of red-orange (after double checking a leaf description online, I have at last identified this tree and those by the SW entrance as red maples). Only the lower branches on the western side remain green and not for long. It show, however, very few bare limbs so it must have another week or so before the mass exodus. The first-runner up in foliage is the smaller mountain maple by the water’s edge, just east of the red. Its leaves are a light orange and very few of them have fallen off as well. The rest are still green and well populated with leaves. I look forward to the coming weeks and the prospect of seeing them all go through their individual chromatic chaos.
It’s truly unfortunate that this week I happen to be sick and that my sickness is mainly a nasty nasal congestion because I would really have liked to smell Wall’s Pond this morning. The best I could get after many a labored sniff was the faint scent of woodsmoke from somewhere in town and a hint of mowed grass. For just two smells, though, these seem to be right for the kind of day it is; while the former pulls me irresistibly into the season of warm hearths and bundling up, the latter taunts me with memories of high summer and reminds me that the days when I can see green lawns and fields are indeed numbered.

Kristen Sinicariello

Site Description #2 Syndicate Road Woods, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2009

9:45 A.M.

 It was obvious that it had rained the day before at the Syndicate Road Woods.  As I neared the site, I could hear the water in the stream trickling louder than before.  The weather was still a bit cool and cloudy, but began to clear up as the time passed.  Today I was concerned mostly in identifying the trees in my site, as I realized that I did not even know the species I had been looking at for three weeks.  I of course noticed many sugar maples, whose leaves had turned yellow/orange with black splotches and fallen to the ground.  There were a few red maple-leaves on the ground as well, though I doubt they had fallen from a red maple tree because their buds were pointy like those of a sugar maple.  Next I came across a large tree whose trunk had split off into practically two different trees about five feet off the ground.  The leaves were ovate and still green, so I identified the tree as a birch, though its wood did not smell like that of sweet birch.  One side of the tree was almost completely covered in moss and the bark was flakey.  Looking up, I saw that the tallest tree’s leaves were small, still green, and growing in an alternate pattern.  As they were constantly trembling in the wind, I assumed the tree to be a trembling/quaking aspen. 

At this point I crossed the stream by way of a tree that had fallen perfectly like a bridge.  It had many small holes in it where I assume termites had nested.  Now on the western bank of the stream I found an American elm tree with small greenish-yellow toothed leaves that felt like sand paper.  I also encountered one honeysuckle and many beech trees.  Looking up, I saw what seemed to be a Norway maple or a box elder tree.  I examined the lady ferns which were small and grew in an alternate pattern, as well as the sensitive fern which had a much longer stem and wider leaves growing in an opposite growth pattern. 

Next I turned to study the rocks in the stream basin.  Even a few inches of rain had made a difference in the stream.  Large puddles would form and then trickle slowly through a narrow opening of rocks into another pool of standing water.  The largest rock was smooth, circular and cream colored, which led me to believe it to be marble.  Another large rock, perhaps schist, had obvious but smooth layers with some luster among its brown and black coloring.  I collected some smaller rock samples, which appeared to be different types, but upon closer examination I found that they only fell into two categories: schistose phyllite, identifiable by its greenish luster, and quartzite, which had shimmering parts mixed in with other sediments.  Next time I come to visit the site I will be sure to bring a rock identifying kit with me in order to be sure of my speculations. 

As I began made my way back to the side walk to begin my journey home, I noticed that the southern edge of the woods was full of New York aster, which had grown in a bush-like formation.  I had never noticed the lavender blooms before, though they must have been there.  They added a nice contrast to the yellow and orange colors that were beginning to emerge in the Syndicate Road woods.  I now wonder how long it will be before the tree branches will be bare and all their colorful leaves will cover the ground.

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.