A Northwoods Almanac for August 19 – September 1, 2022
Old Growth Hikes
Over the last two weeks, Mary and I led hikes in six different regional old-growth forests: Scott Lake-Shelp Lake State Natural Area (SNA)/Research Natural Area (RNA), Giant White Pine SNA, Doering Woods SNA, Memorial Grove SNA/RNA, Van Vliet Hemlocks SNA, and Tucker Lake SNA/RNA. What a pleasure it was to share these beautiful woods with like-minded folks who were eager to learn all they could!
All of the sites are categorized as “northern mesic” forests – “mesic” meaning moderately moist. They’re also termed “hemlock-hardwoods,” with eastern hemlock, sugar maple, and yellow birch dominating the canopies, with varying much smaller numbers of “supercanopy” eastern white pines.
Scott Lake-Shelp Lake, Giant White Pine, and Doering Woods support some large white pines with diameters from 36 to 47 inches, but they are scarce overall. The best statistics that I can find show that in Wisconsin, we only have 1,044 acres of white pines over 150 years old. That’s not particularly old for white pines, which can live to be as much as 400 years old.
Recall that a square mile is 640 acres. Thus, in a state with 16 million acres of forests (25,000 square miles), or around 46% of the state, old white only pines comprise a very tiny portion, 1.6 square miles.
Regarding their size, while impressive and beautiful to my eyes, these trees are relatively small compared to those trees what were here prior to settlement. John Curtis in his seminal book Vegetation of Wisconsin (1959) wrote, “Prior to 1900, the big demand was for white pine. Hardwood stands with only 2 or 3 [white pine] trees per acre were highly profitable, since these few trees were likely to be forest giants from 3 to 6 feet or more in diameter. Such an amazingly thorough ‘high-grading’ took place that it is exceedingly difficult today to find a mesic forest with the original pines still intact . . . Most of the big pines cut in the heyday of the lumbering business were about 400 years old and stemmed from widespread catastrophes in the 1400’s. The occasional giants of 7 to 10 feet d.b.h. [diameter breast height] reported by the surveyors must have been still older. Results from modern studies, therefore, cannot give a true picture of the actual magnitude and majesty of a mature pine forest at its optimum and this should be kept in mind in the interpretation of contemporary findings.”
In that last line, Curtis is referring to what’s called a “sliding baseline” where we no longer have a good sense of “normal” in the natural world. Over time, the perception of change is lost as new generations redefine what is natural. If each generation assumes what they see represents the normal, then the overall picture will be misrepresented, and long-term declines in ecosystems or species become masked.
The participants on our hikes highly valued what today represent our last remnants of old-growth. However, walk with different people in an old-growth forest and ask them what they see as the value of old-growth, and the answers are as varied as the individuals. Some see the utilitarian value – boards and cords, firewood, or an immense array of manufactured goods from cradles to coffins, to paper for this article and pencils to write it with. These values equate with the price of the material goods extracted from the trees, and the monetary value can be very large indeed. Having worked as a carpenter, remodeled several of our own homes, and burned firewood for decades, I have a strong appreciation for the utility of wood.
The utilitarian value promises to increase, too. The value of saw timber from a mature forest landscape will continue to grow dramatically higher with rising population demands. Old-growth silviculture using the Menominee Forest model, for example, is not only ecologically sustainable, it’s economically sustainable and smart.
But the economic value goes well beyond the wood itself. Some see the value of old- growth as storehouses of genetic diversity. What if the few old-growth white pines left were the only ones able to withstand the changes that are here, and are yet to come, through climate change? Old-growth is a genetic reservoir for the fittest trees – those that have survived the vicissitudes of change over centuries. These trees may hold the adaptive keys to the host of environmental changes now upon us, as well as those poised on the horizon from invasive diseases, insects, and exotic species. We will need this insurance of maintaining all the parts. Others see the value of old-growth in the biodiversity it maintains. These elegant old systems offer a biocomplexity far beyond the more simplistic stages of early forest succession. The remarkable diversity of species, the diversity of habitats, and the diversity of processes and interactions command our appreciation, and ultimately demand our protection. The species list goes beyond the megafauna; it includes thousands of soil microorganisms which are little known, and less understood, but appear essential to the health of forest ecosystems. After all, herbicided and pesticided soils are a far cry from natural soils.
Old-growth also offers an array of “ecosystem services” as wildlife habitat, as a water filtering and air filtering system, as a landscape-scale water storage tank, as shade for streams and the forest floor, as carbon storage, as a nutrient recycler, as watershed protection from erosion, with the list going on and on. Author Kathleen Dean Moore calls it a “broad life-sustaining list.”
Then there’s the scientific and educational value of old-growth as the reference or benchmark – the gold standard – by which everything else can be measured, or at least compared. How do we know how to manage our forests if we don’t have a model of what nature intended?
The cultural values offered through recreational and scenic opportunities, from fishing, birding, hunting, hiking, camping, and simple beauty, are also exceptional. Good luck finding a camping spot in the middle of the summer in Michigan’s Sylvania Wilderness old-growth, or in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area. Old-growth stands, particularly when coupled with water, draw people – sometimes too many!
Some also argue for old-growths’ simple intrinsic value – it should be conserved for its own sake as an ancient community of life representing an achievement that goes beyond anything we humans could dream of creating.
Yet others experience a profound historical linkage in old-growth. They feel the deep history and continuity of a place that is unlike any other forest community. Old-growth furnishes a model for how over centuries we can live linked lives in deep relationships with one another.
Finally, there is the spiritual value inherent in ancient forests. As Kathleen Dean Moore describes it: the “power to make a person fall silent with wonder and gratitude, to deepen a person’s connection to life and death and mystery.” The uninterrupted peace, the sanctity of a place that breathes a quiet, powerful wildness, inspires a sense of reverence, even sacredness, in many people. It’s a world apart from what most of us know, and yet it has a feeling of coming home.
What Other Species Were Notable in the Old-growth Stands?
Well, there’s a long list, but I’ll just share a few. Ghost plant, previously known as Indian pipe, had been pollinated and was now turning upward and changing to black. It’s a parasitic flowering plant, stealing food from surrounding trees by tapping into the mycorrhizal fungi attached to the roots of the trees. Emily Dickinson wrote of it, “I still cherish the clutch with which I bore it from the ground when a wondering child, and unearthly booty and maturity only enhances the mystery, never decreases it.”
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| Ghost plant, photo by John Bates |
Similarly, we found a patch of pinesap (Monotropa hypopitys) which also doesn’t carry on photosynthesis, but instead obtains its nourishment from fungi associated with the roots most often of oaks and pines.
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| pinesap photo by Licia Johnson |
Bunchberries were displaying their brilliant red berries near the forest floor. This smallest of our dogwoods produces a bouquet of berries, all of which are edible, but only if you like tasteless berries with a very large pit.
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| bunchberry photo by John Bates |
We found numerous patches of flowering lesser rattlesnake plantain orchids, a diminutive flower that is easily passed by, but which seldom gets past the amazingly perceptive eye of my wife Mary. The leaves are striped and cross-hatched in a manner that suggests the skin of a snake, thus the name.
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| leaves of rattlesnake plantain |
We also came across a few spotted coralroot orchids that had now gone to seed. Four species of coralroots grow in Wisconsin, and each have underground roots that are branched like ocean corals. Coralroots, the only Northwoods orchids that lack chlorophyll and don’t have green leaves, must obtain nutrients from dead organic matter in the soil, much like mushrooms. The erect stem of the spotted coralroot (Corallorhiza maculata) bears many dull purple flowers, each with a white lip spotted with red.
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| spotted coralroot in seed, photo by John Bates |
And we found numerous dwarf enchanter nightshades in flower, yet another tiny flowering plant that Mary somehow finds in the understory. Enchanter’s nightshade (genus Circaea) is a hitchhiker. Its seeds catch a lift by impaling others with its tiny hooks.
Celestial Events
As of 8/23, our days are now growing shorter by 3 minutes per day. We’re now less than a month from autumn equinox. The summer is flying by!
Look on 8/25 before dawn for Venus about four degree below the sliver of moon.
The new moon occurs on 8/27.
Thought for the Week
“Estimates of tree ages from their diameters are always subject to large error, but few species are as difficult to estimate as hemlock, in which deviations of several hundred years from the correct age are not unusual . . . The hemlock shows a remarkable ability to withstand [shade] suppression . . . Many so-called saplings have been observed which were less than 2 inches d.b.h. [diameter breast height], but which were more than one hundred years old.” – John Curtis, Vegetation of Wisconsin
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