On the Blog

Underfoot: Ramps AKA Wild Leeks

By Susan Sprout

Ramping up for spring? It could mean preparing for spring OR going out to dig up this pungent delicacy for a spring feast OR the time for making a required spring tonic from roots! The name – Ramps – is an interesting one that may have made its way here with colonists because it was their name for the wild garlic plants back in England. I’ll bet they were happy to find our native Wild Leeks growing here in the colonies, stretching from Canada to Georgia, for them to use.

Wild Leeks in April snow

I went hunting Ramps last week, hoping to find them back in their regular spots. O boy, did I!  By the hundreds! They like the rich woods and moist slopes of Loyalsock State Forest and surrounding areas. These plants are not your local grocery store variety of leeks (Allium porrum) but a wild and, to some, odiferous one (Allium tricoccum). 

Bulb and leaves with reddish lower stem

From a cluster of two to six white bulbs, they put up glossy, eight to ten inch-long, bright green leaves that photosynthesize like crazy in order to store energy. These flat, basal leaves are reddish on their lower stems, an important characteristic for correct identification. Their leaves begin to die back before flowering occurs. Soon after, a single round cluster, about 1 1/2 inches wide, and made up of white flowers, will appear on a smooth, leafless scape or stem. Each flower in the cluster will have six tepals (petals and sepals) and six stamens with creamy-yellow tips and a green ovary in the center. After fertilization, the three-lobed ovary will grow, then dry and split open, allowing small, black seeds to fall. The species name tricoccum comes from Latin for “three-seeded”. For a long time, I couldn’t put a name to this plant because first the leaves were there by themselves, and then the flowers were there by themselves. Finally, I figured it out!

Remains of last year’s flower among this year’s new leaves

There appears to be a difference of opinion about the family of Wild Leeks. I found them listed in three separate families! Using a reference updated in 2022, ITIS.gov,  the winner is Amaryllidaceae, which also contains the Daffodils I wrote about last week.  There also seems to be a difference of opinion on the taste and smell of Ramps – skunk smell, mild onion taste, strong garlic odor, pronounced onion flavor. There’s no accounting for taste, right? Anyway, perhaps the mineral content in the various soils where they grow affects their sensory output!  At least, people have come together on their opinions about sustainable harvesting techniques for Wild Leeks. Leaving the bulbs in the ground and cutting one or two leaves is best to ensure continuing populations for these perennials. For centuries these plants have been used beneficially for medicine and for food. People who used them were very knowledgeable and taught their children which plants to use and which to let alone. There are plants growing in similar environments as Wild Leeks that are not beneficial…they are poisonous. One in particular has harmed folks I know. It is named False Hellebore (Veratrum viride). Its large, ribbed leaves and rootstock contain extremely toxic alkaloids that cause nausea, vomiting, drops in respiration and blood pressure. Let this one alone.

Taken in July 2021…leaves all gone  and blossoms are here!
Thank you to McCormick Law Firm for their support!
On the Blog, Uncategorized

Underfoot: Daffodil Connections

By, Susan Sprout

English poet William Wordsworth (1770 to 1850) made his home in the Lake District of northwestern England for sixty of his eighty years.  A lover of nature, he wrote, “Come forth into the light of things, and let nature be your teacher.” In 1807, he made Lake Windermere’s “host of golden daffodils” famous in his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”. As a sixth-grade student, I was required to memorize his poem. I think of him, and my teacher, fondly each and every spring as the local daffodil population blooms.  

In 1905, artist and writer Beatrix Potter bought property in the Lake District, an area where she had spent childhood holidays with her family. She set many of her Peter Rabbit books there and used money from the sales of them and her paintings to support a movement to prevent development on Windermere’s lakeshore. She also helped a group who protested against widening a road that passed through Wordsworth’s daffodil field! She wrote,”This little corner of the country should be kept unchanged for people who appreciate its beauty”. An old friend of hers was one of the founders of England’s National Trust, created in 1895. Beatrix supported the Trust by willing 4,000 acres of land and fourteen farms to it. In 1951, the Lake District was made a national park. In 2017, it became a World Heritage Site. Small beginnings can lead to great outcomes!

Planted for naturalization

It’s daffodil time right now in Pennsylvania. Perhaps you have planted their bulbs to grow and spread on your property. They, at ground level, along with the taller Forsythia bushes, certainly brighten our landscape. Daffodils are not native plants. They could have been brought here from many parts of Europe, North Africa, the Mediterranean region, or Western Asia where they grow naturally. They are good plants for woods’ clearings, grasslands, rocky ground. I’ve found them in patches along creeks where they probably washed in from upstream.

Roadside daffodils

Daffodils are in the genus Narcissus. Folks seem to use both names interchangeably. Botanists who studied them have changed their family name and identified a whole bunch of species and cultivars based on frilly-edged or smooth, center coronas like bowls or trumpets, with the same or contrasting colors, having multiple flower stems. Yikes, our daff-o-down-dillies are pretty complicated!  And pretty looking, but definitely not for eating. Even deer don’t like them. They contain lycorine, a bad-tasting alkaloid, but good for medical science that has found promising uses for its anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-cancer and anti-inflammatory properties.

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Little Pine Creek Project a Step Closer

The Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy is partnering with Little Pine State Park (DCNR Bureau of State Parks), the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, and Lycoming County Conservation District on a project to address eroding streambanks along Little Pine Creek within Little Pine State Park. Using log and rock structures approximately 1,600 feet of the streambank will be stabilized and some floodplain access restored.

Thanks to the Coldwater Heritage Partnership the project took one step closer to implementation. The Coldwater Heritage Partnership recently announced their spring grants and the project at Little Pine was awarded!!

If you’re familiar with the Park we’re looking at the stream stretch starting around the shooting range going downstream. Little Pine Creek is a Cold Water Fishery that is attaining for aquatic resources. The project site is in a stretch of the stream that also has naturally reproducing trout and is a Keystone Select trout stream.

Little Pine Creek’s streambanks are eroding, creating bank heights of 8 to 10 feet from water’s edge to the top of bank. The sediment from the eroding stream banks is entering the stream system and depositing in the area of this proposed project and down stream.

To give you some idea of the amount of sediment coming into the system we can use the location of the swimming buoys at Little Pine State Park’s lake which is downstream. The buoys are placed where there is 4.5 feet of water depth. In 2020 the buoys were placed approximately 75-feet from shore, in 2021 they were placed approximately 125 feet from shore. The buoys had to move further out because of the sediment filling in the lake.

As you will see in the aerial photos (below) comparing the site from 1995 (on left) to 2015 (on right) sediment is filling in the lake at Little Pine State Park. The sediment is from the eroding stream banks.

By working to eliminate sources of sediment and restore access to the floodplains the hope is Little Pine Creek can remain a Cold Water Fishery and continue to be attaining for aquatic resources as well as meet these other designations.

Jason Detar is a fisheries biologist for the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and serves on the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture. He conducted a habitat analysis of Little Pine Creek. When asked by email his thoughts on this project he responded with:

“Substantial streambank erosion is occurring throughout the proposed project reach on Little Pine Creek. This has resulted in significant sediment transport downstream in the greater Pine Creek/West Branch Susquehanna/Susquehanna River watersheds impacting water quality and habitat. The Little Pine Creek stream channel is becoming overly wide and shallow from the bank erosion.  Little Pine Creek is unique in that it is a large stream that supports a wild Brook Trout population throughout the project reach. Brook Trout are intolerant of sediment and elevated water temperature. Completion of the project will improve water quality by reducing erosion and sediment deposition and improve habitat for wild Brook Trout.”

Thank you to the following organizations for their help with the application!

  • Lloyd Wilson Chapter of TU
  • Lycoming County Conservation District
  • Pine Creek Preservation Association
  • Pine Creek Watershed Council

We’ll be posting project updates here and on NPC’s social media account!

Thank you to C&N Bank for supporting conservation!
On the Blog

Triggers for Tree Response to Spring-like Weather

Written by Allyson Muth, Director, Center for Private Forests at Penn State

University Park, PA – April 18, 2022 – In the middle of April, we’re experiencing one of the (hopefully) last gasps of winter for the season. While nature can still surprise us – after all, for much of Pennsylvania, the “safe to plant your garden” timing occurs throughout the month of May – the near-term forecast looks like we might get more seasonal weather. We’ve had several surprisingly warm days throughout the winter months. It causes intrigue as to when the trees are going to break bud and when they wait.

Some level of green-up is occurring across the state. Here in central PA we had several of the street tree maples send out their flowers a few weeks ago, and subsequently get burned by frost. The serviceberry in the backyard is all but ready to put its flowers out. In some parts of the southern half of the state, people are talking about seeing leaves on trees. But as the street tree red maples show, there is risk to early bud break, flower set, and leaf break. Later season frosts can kill back those young structures. So how do trees know?

Turns out it is a mix of chilling requirements, growing degree days, and photoperiod. Each species uses some combination of these three to trigger growth.

For all trees that lose their leaves for the cooler months and experience a period of dormancy, there is a minimum temperature that must be experienced for the spring warmth to trigger bud break. This chilling requirement varies according to species, but essentially is a minimum temperature requirement for a set amount of time for the species of trees native to a place. “Native to place” is an important concept as, for example, red maples in the southern US have adapted to a higher minimum winter temperature and earlier spring than their cousins in the northern US. This variation within species and to site is called “plasticity.”

Warm spring temperatures can be an overriding driver of bud break, to an extent. Growing degree days are the days above a certain minimum temperature threshold. Each species requires a certain number of degree days above their temperature threshold to trigger growth. For those who track when trees break bud and, in comparison to historical records, bud break is occurring earlier than it used to in response to warmer spring conditions. Interestingly, there have been studies done in Concord, Massachusetts using the writings of Henry David Thoreau as a record for bud break to compare to today.

Day length, or photoperiod, is a check on the bud break system. Unseasonable warmth, but during the shorter days of early spring, may not trigger growth for those species with strong photoperiod requirements – helping to ensure they don’t get burned by late frosts. The air may be warm, but it’s not quite right, and our native species are regulated somewhat by daylength.

Species that have weak chilling requirements and minimal photoperiod requirements leaf out early, increasing their resources for growth, increasing their distribution and abundance. This is the strategy of many of our successful invasive plant species. The “early green” in Pennsylvania’s forests is triggered by day length and early warmth, giving these invasive plants a competitive strategy against our native species, which have stronger chilling and longer photoperiod requirements.

Bud break, flowers, and leaf out for trees and plants (and events like migration, emergence from hibernation, breeding, dispersal for animals) are part of the science of phenology. Phenology is the study of the annual timing of developmental events. Tracking timing events in your neck of the woods can enhance your understanding of your woods and contribute to larger scientific efforts about the changing natural world.

If you too are intrigued by the cues of nature, consider contributing to the National Phenology Network’s Nature’s Notebook or Project Budburst, and add your nature observations to the larger citizen science efforts.

Every spring, I remind myself to be patient with the trees. While we love to see the flowers and new growth of our native trees, they are more attuned to their site and less responsive to the warmth than we humans seem to be. And that understanding is an important part of our connection with the woods.

Columbine is a native wildflower. The plants started to grow a couple weeks ago. This morning (4/19/2022) the plants are covered in snow.
Thank you to C&N Bank for supporting conservation!
Uncategorized

How Did the Cow Cross the Stream?

It’s not “why did the chicken cross the road?” it’s “how did the cow cross the stream?”

This Northumberland County landowner had eroding stream banks. He tried fencing the cows out of the stream (good move on his part), but the erosion already had a good foot hold.

The Conservation District had the stream partners look at the site. A crossing design and streambank design were completed.

The stream crossing was the first step. The stream team went out and did this on a Friday, so the “typical” streambank work could begin the next Monday.

The photos are from the about halfway point. The far bank is the before and hasn’t been worked on yet. The near bank is almost after (still a little work to be done).

Now, the cows will be crossing the stream using a stabilized stream crossing. Having a stable surface will not only reduce sediment and improve water quality, but it’s also safer for the cows.

Thank you to NPC’s members for their help in making these projects and cleaner water possible.

On the Blog

Underfoot: Earth Day 2022 – Happy Day…happy us!

By Susan Sprout

The introductory article I created for UNDERFOOT two years ago was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. In it, I wrote that we would not be here without the planet and its components under our feet. I cited the number of different species in this world with us – over 87 billion – hinting that in just a handful of dirt there may be billions of single organisms. Now I would like to expand on that information.

In working to save the earth and its occupants, people come at it from many different directions. Conservation efforts support animals, plants, trees, land, air, water, soil. We only need to use our physical senses, as well as our common sense, to recognize the damage ecocidal practices and greed (corporate and personal) have done to the natural world.
 
The Age of Reason, during the 16th and 17th centuries, was a time when groups of people began to value ideas, ideals, and knowledge by using their powers of reasoning and the evidence gathered by their senses. Some of the true enlightenment that occurred then was based on the study of how things work in the natural world. I, personally, seem to be “plant-centric” as I search out what grows on top of the soil – pointing out flowering plants and trees and their lifestyles – in hopes that interested folks will take care of them. After all, plants and trees make up 80% of the total mass of all life on earth and are the base of vegetal support for all animals, including us. However, it is what is unseen, underground, that keeps the entire above-ground systems held together and working. The “rhizosphere microbiome” down there in healthy soils holds amazing amounts of fungi, bacteria, protists, insects, and arthropods – more than the number of humans who have ever lived on earth (Sheldrake, 2020).
 
Underground fungi grow as tiny, tube-shaped cells called hyphae that plow their way between soil particles. They group in masses called mycelium and create networks, fusing with or entering inside the roots of about 90% of all land plants and trees. And, there are so many, they make up 1/3 to 1/2 of the living mass of soil. Mycorrhizal (fungus root) associations have been around for over 400 million years, benefiting both partners and us.  Very large amounts of carbon, as well as nutrients, minerals, and water are absorbed, reabsorbed, stored, and shared back and forth between and among partners in the networks which can extend for miles. Findings of research done in Amsterdam to investigate how plants and fungi maintain their “balance of power” in so complex and entangled a relationship showed neither plant nor fungus was in complete control. They were able to strike compromises, resolve trade-offs, and deploy sophisticated trading strategies. Something that not all species everywhere can do!
 
On this Earth Day – to all individuals, organizations, trusts, agencies, conservancies – evolved and involved  – who can and do create networks by working together, by making beneficial compromises, using trade-offs and sophisticated strategies in order to help heal what’s wrong and harmful in the world and by continuing to support what works – for the earth and all of its inhabitants, seen and unseen – THANK YOU!
 
 
Learn more about fungi in “Entangled Life” by Merlin Sheldrake, Random House, 2020.

On the Blog

Underfoot: Skunk Cabbage

By, Susan Sprout

To all warm-blooded mammals reading this article – You undergo a process called “thermogenesis” to create your own body heat. Did you know that Skunk Cabbage is one of the few plant species that does this as well? Tramping along streams in very early spring, especially while snow and frost are still noticeable, you can see the purple and green mottled blossoms of Skunk Cabbage emerging from the cold, hard ground. They are able to because they use some of the carbohydrates they made last year, and stored in their foot-long, six-inch wide central root, to produce the heat energy they use to melt their way upward through the snow and out into the cold air. Their internal furnace can reach up to 60 degrees inside their four to six inch spathe or hooded cover that surrounds the club-shaped flower cluster or spadix. You may remember seeing the word “spathe” in an earlier article describing Green Dragon which is, along with Jack-in-the-Pulpit and Skunk Cabbage, a member of the Arum Family. 

Emerging Skunk Cabbage

Skunk Cabbage is a wetland plant that grows near swamps, marshes, and in wet woodlands. It takes five to seven years before a young plant can blossom. In spring, it flowers before its bright green leaves come up and unfurl. Then these plants really become obvious because their big leaves can grow from fifteen to twenty-one inches long and twelve to fifteen inches wide! While walking along Big Run, I found about fifty blossoms starting to emerge. They were in all stages of growth, and some were beginning to leaf out. 

When I pulled the edges of the spathe apart to look inside at the flowers, bunches of gnats and flies came zooming out. They were pollinators attracted by the warm air and stinky, putrescent odor. The name “skunk” is well-deserved in a plant with chemicals like skatole and cadaverine in its tissues to attract pollinators. Not many animals eat the roots, leaves or flowers either except bears in spring (They’ll eat anything.) and snapping turtles – because of the intense burning caused by calcium oxylate crystals found in their tissues. Slugs and snails help break down the dead plant when it dies back and goes dormant in the late summer. 

Hooded spathe surrounding the flower cluster or spadix

This is not a “cabbage” you should eat, although people have eaten it in the past after boiling three times and drying. Its leaves have been used medicinally for skin problems – ulcers, wounds, blisters. Fresh leaves can also cause blisters, too.  I found one reference of root usage in 1708 for treating “suppurating tumors”. 

Leaves starting to grow

This is a pretty hardy plant. but it does not bounce back well from the deforestation and water level changes that accompany clear cutting, agriculture, and development. 

On the Blog

Underfoot – Hairy Bittercress

By Susan Sprout

Hairy bittercress, or Cardamine hirsuta, is flowering right now! Look for them along sidewalks and in lawn edges near shrubs and trees. Depending on the weather and growing conditions, they can be either an annual or a biennial, and may complete two generations in one year. The plants I have been monitoring stayed green and photosynthesizing all winter long, and only had a couple dead leaves showing down under their rosettes of new compound leaves. Growing from seeds that germinated in the fall really gave them a head start flowering in the spring. That’s why there are so many of their tiny, white flowers coming up in my lawn.

Basal rosette growth pattern of lower leaves

Thirteen different species of Cardamine have been found growing in Pennsylvania. Some are native. This one was introduced from Eurasia. They are all members of the Mustard Family, and all have four-petaled flowers shaped like a cross. The family’s name used to be Cruciferae for that reason. In the early 20th century, it was officially changed to Brassicaceae, based on the Latin word for cabbage. I have seen both names being used. Whatever the name, we love to eat them – cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, mustard greens and the condiment created from their seeds, Brussels sprouts, turnips…maybe not. Don’t be put off by the word “bitter” in Hairy bittercress’s name. There is a sharp taste, but it is not really bitter. In fact, its Germanic root word “cresso” means sharp and spicy. About the “hairy” part of its name – there are very few white hairs on the leaves growing up the flower stem. I had to use a magnifier in order to confirm their existence. This plant makes an excellent addition to a lettuce salad, sharp and not hairy.

Note the long, thin seed capsules and smaller leaves on the flower stalk

Another interesting thing I learned about Hairy bittercress is how it seeds. After pollination, the individual flowers will expand upward in thin toothpick- size seed capsules called “siliques”. When they are mature, the seed capsules will open from the bottom upward and forcefully eject their seeds, flinging them out and away from the parent plant. This maneuver is called ballochory. A new word for me. It comes from Greek “ballein” (to throw) and is also part of an old word I know – ballistics. 

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UNDERFOOT AND IN THE AIR – PETRICHOR!

By Susan Sprout

You know that smell – digging in the soil, when rain is on the way or just over, that earthy, musty, spring-like scent coming your way on a breeze. It is petrichor, Greek for stone and blood of the gods, AND there is chemistry involved! A combination of geosmin, (C12 H22 O) an alcohol released by dead microbes, PLUS ozone, an ion of oxygen produced by lightning and other atmospheric gases, PLUS the aromatic oils of living and dried plants EQUALS petrichor! That wonderful, standing out on the porch and sniffing the air, “It’s sprinkling out” smell! I didn’t know it had a name. The word “petrichor” was just coined in 1964 by two chemists, although people have been smelling it forever. 

The major component of petrichor that we need to know more about is the geosmin, or earth smell, which provides the scent of dead soil bacteria. When raindrops fall on a porous surface like dirt, aerosols are released that carry the smell created by bacteria, like streptomyces, in those small bubbles, up, up and away on the wind. We humans appear to be extremely sensitive to geosmin, a trait we may have picked up and kept on our evolutionary journey to now. This may have come about due to our ancestors’ need to find water sources in order to survive. Certainly rain had a very important impact on their food sources as well.

We can smell and taste the geosmin molecule in other places besides the air. In fact, some folks don’t like where it occurs. For example, in community water supplies, especially those places that depend on surface water; the skin and dark muscle tissue of fish; the taste of mushrooms and root vegetables like beets and carrots. Researchers have found that using an acid in or on some of the above will decompose the geosmin molecules into odorless substances.  Can you make the connection…lemon slices in the water served by restaurants…lemon juice squirted on fish and other seafood…the use of vinegar to “pickle” beets and other root veggies…Got it?

Humans do seem to like the smell, however. Chemical companies actually create synthetic versions of geosmin that are used in perfumes, air fresheners, scented candles, and a lot of other places we may not know about. The bottom line is that odors can trigger both positive and negative emotions because they are associated with specific memories. What memories come to you in the rain or on a mushroom laden pizza?

Thanks to C&N for supporting conservation!!!
Uncategorized

Family Fishing Program Scheduled for May

Would you want to try fishing with the Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy?

The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission (PFBC) and the Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy (NPC) are hosting an afternoon of FREE fishing at Rose Valley Lake!

No license, equipment or bait is required. We’ll provide all the tackle, bait, and rods. Registering for the event (every participant adult, young adult, or child should be registered) is your license for the event.

After a quick overview of what fish eat, how to tie a basic knot, and some casting practice, we’ll get everyone tackle and bait and let you fish the afternoon away. Volunteers will be on hand to help and make sure there’s a photo of you with the trophy fish you catch.

The May 15, 2022 program begins at 12:30pm. You can fish as long as you want, but we will wrap up by 4:00pm. Please pre-register for the event .

You can register online at the PA Fish and Boat Commission’s website.

Please be sure to bring sunscreen, sunglasses, water, and snacks. The event will be held rain or shine, so bring an rain jacket or maybe an extra sweatshirt (May can be chilly at times).

The Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy is enrolled in PFBC’s Fishing Tackle Loaner Program. What is the Fishing Tackle Loaner Program?? Through the FTLP, the public can go to the locations identified and borrow rods, reels and a tackle box full of hooks and other terminal tackle. This equipment is borrowed in much the same way books are borrowed from a library. Those wanting to borrow gear complete a form and the loan is made. At the end of the loan period the equipment is returned to the site. The FTLP program is a partnership between the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, the American Sportfishing Association, and multiple other sponsors. The program is designed to make it easy for anyone to access fishing tackle. This equipment may also be loaned to groups conducting angler education programs in the community.

Thank you to C&N for their support of conservation!