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Underfoot: Tearthumb

By Susan Sprout

In the 1800’s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American poet and philosopher, wrote that weeds are just plants whose virtues haven’t been discovered yet. I do try to be thorough as I learn about various plants, but researching Tearthumb did not turn up many virtues. It is edible, cooked or raw; berries, too. Birds and ants like the seeds and disperse them; chipmunks, squirrels, and deer eat it. However, since its accidental introduction in northeast US in the 1930’s, Asiatic Tearthumb has thrived so well that it’s been designated as a noxious, aggressive, highly invasive weed in many states, including ours. 

Mile-a-Minute’s slender, reddish stems can grow up to thirty feet a year. Its triangular green leaves have barbed mid-ribs that along with its prickly stems, help hold it while climbing towards the light, shading out, and killing other plants as it goes. Do not grab onto Devil’s Tail with your bare hands as it will live up to its other name and tear your thumbs. Better double glove! 

Look for Giant Climbing Tearthumb along roads, crawling and sprawling in thickets, and uncultivated open fields resulting from both natural and human causes. This member of the Buckwheat Family (Polygonaceae) loves the things we do to the soil – the digging, the clearing, the farming, the dumping – and will move right in. Another identifying feature of Asiatic Smartweed are its fruits which can be all different colors – green, blue, red – hanging together on the stem ends like tiny bunches of grapes. Since Persicaria perfoliata likes moist soils, too, you can find it frequently hanging over waterways where it will persist until after the first frost. Its pretty fruits are buoyant, able to float for up to nine days, providing another seed dispersal method.

Did you find all of the common and scientific names of Tearthumb in the text!  If you did, Bravo! Maybe its virtue is to show that plants can have many names!

Here are the common names of Persicaria perfoliate:
*Tearthumb
*Mile-a-Minute
*Devil’s Tail
*Giant Climbing Tearthumb
*Asiatic Smartweed

Thank you to Pennsylvania American Water for sponsoring the NPC blog during October!
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PA Trails Month – Susquehanna River Water Trail – Middle Section

When PPL built an electric generating station at Shamokin Dam in the 1920s/1930s it acquired an archipelago of six islands in the Susquehanna River. PPL needed the islands to anchor a dam designed to provide cooling water for its power plant. Many years later, PPL decided to divest itself of the islands and donate them to NPC.

Scott, a volunteer witht he Susquehanna River Trail Association, visits Byers Island several times a year to check on the campsite’s condition.

NPC transferred ownership of the islands to DCNR’s Bureau of Forestry. The Bureau of Forestry is managing the islands as part of the Susquehanna River Water Trail.

There are 3 primitive camping areas for canoeists using the River. On the Susquehanna River Water Trail – Middle Section map they’re sites 121, 120a and 120b. The Susquehanna River Trail Association’s volunteers maintain this section of the Trail, including the campsites. The photo in this post is by one of those volunteers, Scott, at site 120b.

The islands are also part of a study area Susquehanna University’s researchers are examining to understand the River’s chemistry and how the West Branch Susquehanna mixes with the main stem of the River. Public ownership of the islands is allowing this research to continue and canoeists to enjoy some “island time.”

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Underfoot: Nodding Ladies’ Tresses

By Susan Sprout

When I find Nodding Ladies’ Tresses, it makes me want to twist and shout!  In thanks for the plant being there, growing  –  AND –  in honor of a very special movement each little white flower on the stem has to make in order to bloom.

The labellum or lip which is attached above, actually twists down and around so that it is now below the other petals as it opens! This action provides a landing place for visiting insects and may also allow the lip to get more sunlight, showing patterns and nectar guides better.

Orchid flowers that do the twist are called “resupinate”. Yes, this plant is an orchid, native to Eastern North America. While it is not an uncommon plant, it is picky about where it lives and with whom. I found these in partial shade, along a dirt road where  the soil was wet and acidic.

Nodding Ladies’ Tresses will spread slowly by underground rhizomes to form colonies. They can reproduce by seed, too, but their seeds lack the store of starch and nutrients necessary for successful germination. Therefore, they require the help of mycorrhizal fungi to provide fixed carbon and mineral nutrients for the growth of seedlings…a specific species of fungus. Picky!

Look for them. They will keep blooming until the first frost. The single stem, about sixteen inches tall, holds a six-inch flower spike with a coiled spiral of white or ivory flowers, each one being held by a bulbous bract that is green and covered with minute hairs that spread about halfway down the stem. You may find two or three really thin leaves tightly clasping the lower stem. A basal rosette of leaves will be gone by the time the plant blooms. The tongue-shaped lower lips of the flowers are thin and lacy.

At least ten species in the genus Spiranthes can be found in Pennsylvania in various forms and locations.

When you find some, twist and shout!

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Underfoot: White Snakeroot

By Susan Sprout

White Snakeroot is blooming now through October, depending on the weather. The heavy rain and hail last week may have taken a toll on their white, fuzzy-looking flower heads.

A close-up of the blossoms

Members of the Aster Family, they are unlike many of their relatives such as daisies with composite or compound flower heads, because they do not have any ray florets or petals surrounding the middle of the bloom. Instead, the whole flat-topped flower head is composed of white disk flowers that on closer inspection look like little tubes with five lobes at their tops. The male part of the flower is white and Y-shaped and sticks out beyond the tubes. That is what makes the flowers look fluffier. After pollination, the disk flowers will be replaced by tiny black seeds, about one-tenth of an inch long, with five ridges on their sides. A small tuft of white hair on each one helps with distribution by the wind. 

White Snakeroot is a native perennial plant with thin green to brown round stems. Their opposite leaves are oval-shaped and can be coarsely to sharply toothed. They flourish in deep shade to full sun and are common in woods, meadows, and along roads. The whole plant has a rather angular look to it with the flower heads jutting straight off above the leaf pairs!

Every part of this plant, living or dried, can be fatal to humans and domestic livestock if they have drunk the milk of animals that have eaten it. In the early 19th century, “milk sickness” claimed the lives of thousands of people unfamiliar with White Snakeroot and had used it as forage for their livestock. Abraham Lincoln’s mother is said to have died after using this toxic plant. Do look this up and read more about who discovered White Snakeroot was actually the cause of this horrible sickness!

White Snakeroot

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PA Trails Month – Loyalsock Trail

Affectionately referred to at the LT, the Loyalsock Trail was laid out and built by volunteers. Over the years the Alpine Club of Williamsport extended the Trail, has relocated sections, and has taken on maintenance.

The Trail is on footpaths, old logging roads, and abandoned railroad grades as it travels 59.2 miles from Route 87 north of Montoursville to Mead Road off US Route 220 near Laporte. While there are moderate sections, there are also difficult sections, so do some research before you head out on the LT.

One of the priorities for NPC in acquiring the Flynn property in the early 1990s was concern about needing to re-route the LT. When NPC acquired the property at auction and then conveyed it to the Bureau of Forestry it allowed the LT to stay on the route it was on. No re-routing was necessary.

The acquisition also allowed for some trails to be added. This photo shows the Loyalsock Trail at its intersection with the Flynn Trail. Yep, the same Flynn as in Flynn property. The yellow discs with the red “LT” are the markers for the LT, and the yellow blazes (rectangles) are the Flynn Trail.

For more information on the Loyalsock Trail visit the Alpine Club’s website: https://alpineclubofwilliamsport.com

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September is Trails Month!

PA Trails Month – Butternut Trail

Butternut Vista at Worlds End State Park is on the Butternut Trail. The rocks, roots, and elevation change make this trail a little more difficult than “moderate.”

The trail traverses a property NPC purchased at an auction in the early 1990s. The property being sold adjoined Worlds End and the then Wyoming State Forest (now Loyalsock State Forest). A portion of the Loyalsock Trail (LT) is on the parcel.

This view from the Vista was taken in late April. Chilly, overcast spring days are great hiking weather!

One of the driving factors in NPC acquiring the property was concern about needing to re-route the LT.By acquiring the Flynn property, the LT could stay where it was, and additional hiking opportunities were opened up!

For more information on the Butternut Trail (and other trails at Worlds End) use the following link!https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/…/WorldsEndSt…/Pages/Hiking.aspx

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Underfoot: Teasel

By Susan Sprout

During the Colonial Era, many people brought with them the plants and animals they needed to be successful when beginning a new life in a foreign land. Teasel is one such immigrant whose presence, although required for producing cloth at that time, is not required now, thanks to technological advances made in the wool manufacturing factories since then.

Check the prickles on the flower heads and stems!

Teasels are well-armed plants with bristles and spines on leaves, stems, and flower heads, even on the long pointed bracts that surround them. Their prickliness is what made them so valuable in the production of wool cloth. The flower heads were carefully cut and put into frames that allowed the cloth makers to hold onto them and scratch the flat surface of newly-woven cloth, raising the nap to make it softer and furrier. The raised nap was then closely trimmed for an even texture before the cloth was dyed and tented, or placed on tenterhooks, to shrink and dry.

You have probably seen a lot of teasel this year, growing along roads and in unused fields. This plant is a monocarpic perennial, meaning it needs to keep growing until it accumulates enough stored energy to bloom and set seed; then, it dies. So, younger teasel plants may have growing in those fields for two or more years before becoming unbelievably obvious – at up to eight feet in height! Their oval-shaped flower heads are unusual, as well, with flowers opening first in a belly band around the middle, and then moving up and down, forming two strips of flowers, top and bottom. Several species grow in PA – purple or white flowered, some with toothed leaves and others smooth-edged, except for the prickles!

Teasel is listed by the National Invasive Species Information Center. Once established, it is difficult to eradicate. A single plant can produce two thousand seeds. These plants create a mono-culture that crowds out native plant species.

Teasel growing wild in a field.
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Survey Work at Plunketts Creek

Some survey work was done last week at State Game Lands 134 (along Plunketts Creek in Lycoming County) to get information on the elevation at the site with the berm removed. As you may recall NPC partnered with the PA Game Commission, the 333rd US Army Reserve Engineering Unit, and numerous other groups to reconnect Plunketts Creek to its floodplain by removing an earthern berm along the Creek.

Mark and Trent with BluAcres found the control point from the survey work during the design phase and set up the equipment.

The yellow spot on the ground is a piece of rebar with a cap on it. This was set as a control point the first time they went out and will be used at every subsequent visit.

Trent found the previous survey points and collected data at those points.

Trent has a map of the previous points in his left hand and the survey unit in his right hand. Surveying is a lot different than it used to be.

Trent even humored me and held up the staff so the tip was “sitting” on what would have been the top of the berm.

The bottom of the staff is “sitting” on top of the berm. So basically, Trent would be up to his neck in dirt if the berm were still there. (Trent was so accomodating in part because he is a graduation of Lycoming College and worked summers for the Clean Water Institute at the College. Dr. Zimmerman generall has the CWI-ers spend at least a day on a project of the northcentral stream partnership.)

They’ll download the data. There will be some computer magic and then there will be a pretty new map. This work is to help the agencies who issued permits that the work resulted in the correct grade – the stream is reconnected to its floodplain.

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Underfoot: Turkey Tails

By Susan Sprout

Mr. Crabapple, a stump in our backyard, has grown a braid!

OK, that’s what I call it. Normal folks would probably call it shelf fungi.

Turkey Tails is their common name, reflecting the wonderful concentric color zones of tan, brown, gray and cinnamon that look like fanned turkey tails. These are one of the most frequent types of fungi found in our woods and throughout the world.

Turkey Tail Fungi

Until the 1960’s, fungi were categorized as plants. We now know, from biochemical and DNA studies, they are more closely related to animals than plants and are placed in a separate kingdom which includes yeasts, molds, mushrooms, and mildews.

Turkey Tails are saprobes, decomposers of dead hardwood logs and stumps. I see them all the time when I hike. Ah well, I actually can’t see the fungi’s main body, the mycelium, made up of microscopic thread-like hyphae, because they live deep inside what they are recycling – secreting digestive enzymes to break down the wood molecules and absorb them as building blocks in order to keep growing. What I do see are the fruit bodies formed to make and release their reproductive spores.

The white underside of the Turkey Tail is covered with very tiny holes from which the white spores are released, usually in fall or winter. The thin, flexible “shelves” can grow up to four inches in diameter and may overlap in layers as their fruit bodies grow.

I am always amazed by their soft, velvety exterior when I check them under a magnifier. Mr. Crabapple thinks they look cool! Little does he know…

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Cancelled – Celebrate 30+1 Years of Conservation!

2020 was NPC’s 30th anniversary, but we couldn’t celebrate in person. We re-grouped. Join in celebrating NPC’s 30+1 Anniversary!

September 15, 2021
5pm cash bar
6pm dinner
Herman & Luther’s
(787 State Route 87, Montoursville, PA)
Cocktail hour, live music, and a buffet style dinner.
Cost is $45 per person with reservations due by September 7, 2021

https://donorbox.org/npc-donation

Thank you to our sponsors:
Kase Law
Dwight Lewis Lumber Co., Inc.
Evergreen Wealth Solutions
McCormick Law Firm
PPL
C&N
Pennsylvania American Water
Wayne Township Landfill
Woodlands Bank