A Northwoods Almanac for 9/17-30, 2021  

            

Sylvania Old-Growth

            Last week, Mary, Callie, our friend Licia, and I spent three and a half days camping in the Sylvania tract of the Ottawa National Forest, taking long walks through the 15,000 acres or more of remnant old-growth still presiding over the area. We walked slowly, looking for mushrooms, slime molds, and anything unusual of note, while measuring the biggest sugar maples, hemlocks, yellow birches, white pines, and basswoods that we came across. And there were many. Our biggest diameter tree was a fire-hollowed yellow birch, 52 inches in diameter, and still living despite being hollow for its first 15 feet or more. 

yellow birch hollowed by fire

Close behind in size was a 51-inch diameter white pine, and then a 45-inch diameter grandmother sugar maple. One basswood topped 42-inches in diameter, while numerous hemlocks were three feet or more in diameter. 

white pine 50" dbh

            The question always arises of how old these trees might be, and the only thing one can say in these shade-dominated woods is that size doesn’t equal age. Some eastern hemlock and sugar maple saplings less than 2 inches in diameter have been aged over 100 years old. As small seedlings and saplings, both species possess extraordinary capabilities to wait a century or more in the forest shade for a windstorm to topple the tree above them and open up the canopy. The young trees live in a steady state of metabolic balance, gathering just enough light to survive photosynthetically, but not enough to grow upward or outward. A one-foot diameter, 30–foot-tall hemlock can easily be over 200 years old, having endured, suppressed by shade, until its moment arrives to shine in the sun. 

            To give you a recent example of this, good friend Rod Sharka recently carefully counted the rings of a large yellow birch that was blown down in the Guido Rahr Sr. Tenderfoot Forest Reserve, not far from Sylvania. Here’s how he described it: “I finally sanded down that yellow birch cookie I cut from the big yellow birch that came down on the Tenderfoot Reserve this past June, oiled it to accentuate the rings, and counted them the best I could. I'm reasonably certain that my count is accurate. Would you believe 373 years? And that was from a cookie that was cut about 20 feet above the base and measured about 25" in diameter. The first 15 feet or so were mangled, twisted, and dry rotted. That tree could possibly be over 400 years old. Note in the photo [see the attached picture] that I started counting from the cambium layer to the center pith. The first three straight pins are marking 100-year intervals with the last section to the center being 73 years. The rings in the first 100-year section counted were extremely tiny and required the 10X magnifier to even see, suggesting that this tree was basically loitering during the last century of its life.”

tree cookie photo by Rod Sharka

             When I talk about tree seedling waiting in the shade, I’m talking about a lot of trees waiting in the shade, sugar maples being the best example. Besides their ability to live in shade for decades, sugar maples also produce enormous quantities of seeds, varying in one 12-year study from 40,000 per acre to over 5 million per acre on the same site (an acre is 208 feet on a side, or about 2/3 the length of a football field). The result is huge numbers of young seedlings occupying the forest floor, commonly 20,000 less than 12" tall per acre. One researcher estimated that 4,000 young seedlings spring up every year under one mature sugar maple, totaling over one million seedlings in the life of a 350 year old tree. Out of those only about 5% (about 50,000) last into the second year; maybe 1,400 live to 10 years; perhaps 35 grow over 20' tall; two may reach 150 years old; and one may be lucky enough to reach maturity.

sugar maple sea

            One other factor to consider in what trees will ultimately make it into the canopy is the impact of deer browse. Deer eat on average about 5 pounds of woody browse per day in the winter. Hemlock really struggles to survive deer browse, but sugar maples can withstand being browsed for many years. Thus sugar maple is almost certain to dominate forests like Sylvania when the current old-growth declines.

 

Cedar Waxwing Gluttony on Mountain Ash Berries

            We’ve planted a dozen mountain ash trees on our property, two of which are large enough now to be producing a good crop of berries. One of the trees was absolutely loaded with berries, that is until a flock of at least 20 cedar waxwings descended on it on 9/11 and ate every last berry. A few robins joined in the merriment, as did some yellow-rumped warblers and purple finches, but they were far outnumbered by the waxwings. 

            Now, I love cedar waxwings. They and their cousins, bohemian waxwings, are the most nattily dressed of our songbirds, elegant in their plumage in the manner of someone wearing a  tuxedo to a ball. And we planted the mountain ashes specifically to feed birds – the berries aren’t edible for humans. But we planted the trees to support birds visiting us in the winter, like pine grosbeaks and the aforementioned bohemian waxwings, not to feed birds in the autumn on their migration.

            Well, no one told these cedar waxwings. First come, first served, I guess. We’ll not be an attractive restaurant to visiting birds from Canada this winter, but we’ll still have helped some birds on their transitioning into winter. I’ll fuss about it more in January, but for now, it was quite amazing to watch the gluttonous appetites of a large flock of cedar waxwings. 

 

Ironwood Seeds

            Over the last few weeks, Mary and I have seen many ironwood trees – or hop hornbeams – absolutely loaded with seeds. What’s unique about ironwood seeds is that they’re encased in what looks like little inflated papery bags, which some folks see as similar to hops, thus the alternative name. The small seeds are shed in winter and blow along the surface of hard packed snow, “snow skittering” being just another in a series of clever adaptations plants employ to distribute their seeds away from home.

Ironwood seed "pods"

            Why ironwoods are so successfully producing seeds this year is beyond my ken, but I’m pleased to see their abundance. Ironwoods are modest in all ways, from their lack of importance as a wildlife food (the literature says the tiny seeds feed deer, rabbits, ruffed grouse, red squirrels, purple finches, and perhaps others, but only to a minor extent at best), to their size in the forest understory (up to 30 feet), to their non-distinctive leaves that turn a subtle soft, gold in autumn. Donald Culross Peattie writes, “Everything about this little tree is at once serviceable and self-effacing. Such a member of any society is easily overlooked, but well worth knowing.”

            What ironwood does excel in is strength. At 51 lbs. per cubic foot (compare to hemlock at 20 lbs. per cu. ft.), ironwood is heavy and extremely hard, considered 30% stronger than white oak. In the pioneer times of wooden equipment, ironwood was the choice for tool handles and wheel axles and spokes. And as a firewood, it’s only real rival is shagbark hickory. If you want the firewood that gives off the most BTUs in our area, this is your baby. 

 

Sightings – Baby Snappers, Chestnuts, and Yellow-rumped Warblers

            On 9/2, Mark Westphal spotted a baby snapping turtle in an area of his yard. He sent a photo of it and noted, “In an effort to save the little snapper from our curious canines, I carefully picked up the turtle and placed it into an official turtle transportation device, better known as an empty ice cream container. I walked it down several hundred  yards to the edge of a nearby pond where I gently released it, hopefully giving it a slightly better chance of surviving. The photo of the turtle makes me smile and wonder. It brought to mind the William Shakespeare quote. ‘The eyes are the windows to your soul.’ The look in the baby snapping turtle's eyes is so ancient, so determined for such a tiny young creature.”

            Susan Aiken sent me photos of American chestnuts that are growing on a golf course in Bayfield, many, many hundreds of miles out of their range. She noted, “There are three locations, each with a couple of trees, separated by several hundred feet.” 

            In the 1800s, one in every four hardwood trees in North America's eastern forests was an American chestnut. Together, chestnuts and oaks dominated nearly 20 million acres of forest from Maine to Florida and west to the Ohio Valley. Every spring so many chestnut trees erupted in white blossom that, from a distance, the hills appeared white with snow. But none of this happened in Wisconsin, or Michigan, or Minnesota for that matter. The natural range of American chestnut barely reached the border of Ohio and Indiana, so seeing some chestnuts anywhere in Wisconsin is unusual and a sign that someone planted them.

            Lastly, yellow-rumped warblers were moving through our area in good numbers over the weekend and into the start of the week. Most warblers are insect-eaters and have left already, but yellow-rumps have a more diversified diet employing a variety of foraging techniques, from fly-catching to foliage-gleaning for insects, and they’re also able to expand their diet to include a substantial amount of fruit. So, they can stay a bit longer in the North Country before heading south. 

 

Logging Near Water

            A number of people have said to me that they feel the DNR has been logging too close to lake and river shorelines. Here’s an article looking at the issue: https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2021/09/07/a-hike-and-a-fight-northwoods-residents-say-dnr-is-violating-its-logging-rules/.

 

Celestial Events

            Tonight, 9/17, look in the southeast after dusk for Jupiter about 4° north of the waxing gibbous moon.

            The full moon, the “Harvest/Acorn/Leaves Changing Color” Moon, occurs on 9/20.

            The autumn equinox takes place on 9/22. The sun is now directly above the equator, and for us that means a brief moment when our days and nights are nearly equal to one another in length.

 

Thought for the Week

Beauty is not an extra luxury, an accidental experience that we happen to have if we are lucky. Beauty dwells at the heart of life . . . To recognize and celebrate beauty is to recognize the ultimate sacredness of experience, to glimpse the subtle embrace of belonging where we are wed to the divine. –  John O’Donohue

 

Please share your outdoor sightings and thoughts: e-mail me at manitowish@centurytel.net, call 715-476-2828, snail-mail at 4245N State Highway 47, Mercer, WI, or see my blog at www.manitowishriver.blogspot.com.