Diario del proyecto Casual Woodland Garden

Haven't been too active on iNat lately. I've been working on some more projects in the woods.

My daughter and some other kids helped me build a small footbridge for access to a small corner at the back of our lot. The main supports are black locust. We used lag bolts to attach a "ground contact" 2x4 along the length of each main support. Each slat in the bridge deck is anchored to the gc 2x4s rather than the locust beams. I threw a couple flat rocks under the main supports at the four corners where they would otherwise rest on soil. I have no idea how long this will last before one corner starts to sag, but I like the way it turned out. It certainly wasn't over-engineered and didn't take long to throw together. My favorite kind of project.

I'm secretly excited about the prospect of it beginning to sag. I bought a vintage railroad car jack at a sale several years ago that I've been using as a plant stand. If one corner of the bridge starts to sag, I'll try using the railroad jack to lift the sagging corner just enough to slide another rock under the end of the beam at that corner.

The beams were dragged into place with a hand-powered come-along. One of my rules for the wooded garden is... absolutely no heavy equipment. The neat thing about using a come-along is that some of my 50lb helpers were able to drag 1000lb logs using only the winch and their own physical strength. The other upside is that you can pick up a cheap come-along at Harbor Freight for the princely sum of $20.00. Hire a landscaping company and they'll insist on dragging the logs with a bobcat at much greater cost and the 50lb kid will sit idly by staring at his phone.

Results from area 3:
Sugar Maple………………: 06 (Acer sacharum)
Box Elder……………………: 75 (Acer negundo)
Ash……………………………………: 08 (Fraxinus)
Black Cherry……………: 30 (Prunus serotina)
Hackberry……………………: 15 (Celtis occidentalis)
Tulip Poplar……………: 04 (Liriodendron tulipifera)
Eastern Redbud………: 01 (Cercis canadensis)
Elm……………………………………: 28 (Ulmus)
Oak……………………………………: 02 (Quercus)
Hickory…………………………: 02 (Carya)
Callery Pear……………: 13 (Pyrus calleryana)

Total Area 3……………: 184

Running Total…………: 419

** Where possible, trees were identified to the species level. In some cases (ash, hickory, elm, oak) volunteers were only capable of identification down to the genus.

The most prolific tree in this survey area is the Box Elder (with 75 occurrences). I don't really wish to have a Box Elder mono-culture forest. I'll need to decide what to do when these get a little taller and threaten to shade out some of the less common species like oak. For now, I just need the Box Elder to throw some shade. The entire under-story had been lost to honeysuckle when I started. Box Elder saplings can temporarily fill in for this missing under-story as I continue trying to mimic the composition of a more healthy forest. I'll probably try planting some additional spicebush in this area since it would otherwise fill in with mainly Box Elder. The Callery Pears have already been violently removed.

This image gives an idea of how many Box Elders germinated after honeysuckle removal. There are four naturally occurring box elder that have sprouted in this small area. Box Elder is a fast growing species with a dense canopy. Too many Box Elders is a decent problem to have. It means I'm slowly getting past the problem of too much honeysuckle and garlic mustard. The problem is... I'm trying to accelerate regeneration of a healthy mature forest. A healthy mature forest wouldn't have this many Box Elder. It only makes sense to protect and encourage the small numbers of oaks and hickories I get and to prevent the explosion of Box Elder from shading them all out.

Results from area 4:
Dogwood…………………………: 02 (Cornus florida)
Buckeye…………………………: 02 (Aesculus)
Sugar Maple………………: 19 (Acer sacharum)
Box Elder……………………: 23 (Acer negundo)
Ash……………………………………: 82 (Fraxinus)
Black Cherry……………: 22 (Prunus serotina)
Hackberry……………………: 30 (Celtis occidentalis)
PawPaw……………………………: 01 (Asimina triloba)
American Beech………: 01 (Fagus grandifolia)
Eastern Redbud………: 02 (Cercis canadensis)
Elm……………………………………: 14 (Ulmus)
Oak……………………………………: 01 (Quercus)
Hickory…………………………: 04 (Carya)
Callery Pear……………: 08 (Pyrus calleryana)

Total Area 4……………: 211

Running Total…………: 630

** Where possible, trees were identified to the species level. In some cases (ash, hickory, elm, oak) volunteers were only capable of identification down to the genus.

The most prolific tree in this survey area is the Ash (with 82 occurrences). I was excited to see one Blue Ash among the 82. Blue Ash are said to have some resistance to the Emerald Ash Borer. The remaining 81 Ash trees are mostly (and probably all) white ash. I'm not able to distinguish between white and green but white are much more common here. This area also includes the lone American Beech tree that exists on our lot. There are some beech trees in the woods on the other side of the road. I'm guessing this seedling traveled from over there.

The stars of the show were two Dogwoods (Cornus florida). When we moved here there were a couple mature Dogwoods in the woods at the bottom of our lot. One of them is now gone, the result of the top falling out of a Black Locust directly onto the Dogwood. It's nice to see a couple naturally occurring Dogwoods regenerating in the study area.

Results from area 5:
Dogwood…………………………: 001 (Cornus florida)
Sugar Maple………………: 019 (Acer sacharum)
Box Elder……………………: 007 (Acer negundo)
Ash……………………………………: 184 (Fraxinus)
Black Cherry……………: 004 (Prunus serotina)
Hackberry……………………: 005 (Celtis occidentalis)
PawPaw……………………………: 001 (Celtis occidentalis)
American Beech………: 001 (Celtis occidentalis)
Elm……………………………………: 010 (Ulmus)
Hickory…………………………: 004 (Carya)
Callery Pear……………: 007 (Pyrus calleryana)

Total Area 4……………: 243

Running Total…………: 873

** Where possible, trees were identified to the species level. In some cases (ash, hickory, elm, oak) volunteers were only capable of identification down to the genus.

This survey area is larger than the other four areas. It's also the area with the most shade. This could partially explain the amazing number of Ash seedlings (184!) that have germinated in this area. It could just as easily be the result of large Ash trees that existed in this area prior to the onslaught of the Emerald Ash Borer. I'm going to let these go for now. The reality is... I need the shade of an under-story to make up for the loss of the honeysuckle. I might as well let these Ash trees be the under-story for now. As they grow and threaten species like the lone American Beech in this area, I'll strategically thin them out. I also noted a few Northern Spicebush starting to emerge in this area. A couple years ago I collected a bunch of spicebush seeds and pushed them down into the ground with my thumb. I believe some of those seeds are beginning to germinate. I was excited to see another American Beech in this survey area.

Northern Spicebush seedling.

Speaking as an amateur... Part of the problem getting people to enter "observation field" annotations might be self-awareness among iNat users about their own limitations.   It might be humility driving their apprehension.  I know this is true for me.  

When I see an insect on a plant, I wonder... is the insect just resting there?  Is it nectaring?  If it's nectaring, shouldn't I use the "nectaring" field rather than the "host plant" field?  Or maybe I should use the "Host" field?  Or "Host Id"?  If it's nectaring, shouldn't there be a proboscis involved?  Where is the proboscis?  Am I even sure what a proboscis is for?  Maybe the insect is just resting there.  If the plant is a host, shouldn't the insect be laying eggs or maybe eating?  My only hope in answering all the questions I have is to take various classes on various subjects because I have general interest in the natural world.  This means that even if I fill out the questions correctly for the botanists, the marine biologists get mad at me whenever I observe an echinoderm.  Have you ever been trapped in line at the BMV next to an angry echinoderm expert?  

Luckily, we can all agree that our problems would be solved if the computer scientists would come up with a static list of relationships between every organism across the entire natural world and then require each to be filled out for every observation.  I once told this to a computer scientist while standing in line at the BMV.  A short time later most scientists began advocating for public transportation.  Coincidence?

The computer scientists at iNaturalist seem to have thought carefully about the humility of the casual and completely untrained user coupled with the presence of highly trained subject matter experts.  Highly trained subject matter experts are allowed to assign new observation fields to existing observations made by other users.  This allows the angry echinoderm expert to assign whatever appropriate observation annotations he would like to my starfish observation.  This is important because that starfish was really cute. In the event that the enraged echinoderm expert can't locate an appropriate observation field for a relationship he knows to exist... the computer scientists at iNat have allowed for that too.  The expert can just create a new observation field.  I'd never do this.  I don't have the time.  I'm too busy looking at the pretty starfish.

What I should probably do in the future is use the "Plant that the organism was found on" annotation.  I'm passionate enough about wooded areas to know the plants that are growing there.  But my knowledge of plants hasn't blossomed into knowledge about insects.   I'm never sure what the insect's intentions are with the plants even when it might be obvious to an entomologist.  Thankfully, I haven't run into one at the BMV.  She takes the bus.

Somewhere out there, among the army of children with phones, is a single instance of the species.  An individual instance of "child with phone".  This particular "child with phone" can be observed taking a blurry picture of a natural organism.  The child has no idea what the organism is, and has no annotations to offer.  This child has a depth of knowledge about phones, not organisms.  So they upload the image to iNaturalist.  What should happen?

This is a picture of where I get some of my transplanted plants. Generally I avoid removing wild plants from locations where they are occurring naturally. I'm choosing to move (rescue?) some of these for the following reasons...

1) I own the ditch. Er... strictly speaking my wife owns the ditch. I've been a stay-at-home Dad the past 15 years and she earned the money to buy the ditch along with a small bit of acreage attached.

2) Several colonies of plants growing in the ditch chase the sun out to the very edge of the ditch where new gravel is laid on the berm next to the road. I can't see the sense in letting dwarf larkspur or bloodroot be repetitively mowed and occasionally buried in gravel. I leave plenty of plants existing in the ditch since the road happens to be part of the Buckeye trail and the hikers and bikers probably enjoy seeing larkspur, bloodroot, and some of the other goodies in the ditch.

3) The plants are transported from this location less than 100 miles to the Cincinnati area. This is similar to the designated radius that Shaker Trace uses when collecting seed. I feel like I'm at least mimicking the approach of experts. The only difference being that I'm bringing home plants and not seed.

4) I usually install the plants in a "detox" bed inside my larger woodland garden at home. The detox bed allows me to watch the transplants more carefully to see if any stowaways came along with them in the soil. I'm somewhat fearful of inadvertently transporting something like Japanese Stiltgrass along with the plants from the ditch. Generally speaking Hamilton County has all the invasives that Brown County has. There would be more risk if the plants were moving in the other direction (this is rationalization but it's also largely true).

** I have no formal training in any of this stuff so it's entirely possible that I'm doin' it wrong. If so, let me hear about it. I'm not opposed to buying local, regional, or national genotypes from native plant sales but woodland ephemerals are generally not available there. Worse, these sales occasionally list non-native, ecologically questionable plants as native and by extension ecologically desirable. I view Shaker Trace as the gold standard in this type of work. Hopefully in the future they'll be able to make some seed available to the public. Local genotypes, collected with the most rigid standards and inclusive of woodland ephemerals for those working on at-home restorations.

*** Lately we've been talking about using our vegetable garden beds in winter to try to get some seeds like larkspur and bloodroot to germinate at home. People talk about being successful at this online... might as well give it a shot.