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.