By: Susan Sprout

While walking or riding along hillsides, cliffs, or ledges, set your mind to scan for red. Our native Wild Columbine is blooming now! It is a thick-tubered perennial plant whose roots snuggle down in shale crevices holding it tight to slippery slopes. A basal rosette of leaves developed last summer has stayed green during the winter and thus provided the energy for early blooming.

Columbine’s scientific name of Aquilegia canadensis is based on Latin for “eagle” because of the talon-like shapes of the red spurs holding nectar and enticing long-tongued insects and hummingbirds to visit and pollinate its blossoms. Each petal with its long, narrow spur at the back has also been likened to pigeons, their heads together and drinking from a bowl…that’s where the common name Columbine comes from.

After being pollinated, the bell-shaped, drooping flower tilts upward and forms a brown, oval pod that will slowly release seeds into the wind. Its leaves alternate and are made up of three lobed or cleft leaflets. They seem to have a bluish tinge, perhaps created by light shining off the lightly fuzzy leaves. Once you have found the plant, check the bright spurs for holes, chewed there by insects, maybe bumblebees, seeking a short cut to the nectar.

Catch up on past issues of Underfoot!

By: Susan Sprout

What a bouquet of Violets I discovered on my Mothers’ Day rambles! They weren’t my common backyard and garden blues. They were white and yellow and purple! Members of the Violet Family, VIOLACEAE, there are more than seventy-seven species throughout North America. My PA plant resource lists forty living in this state.

Violets are grouped together based on whether they have their flowers and leaves on the same stalk (stemmed species) or on different stalks with leaves and flowers growing singly from their underground rhizomes (stemless species). All blooms have five petals, but size, shape, color, nectar guides, length of beards on side petals that bees have to squeeze through…all separate them further into species. And the leaves…shapes from heart to birdfoot to lance and halbert, with varying degrees of smooth and hairy.

Seed capsules and the seeds themselves have their own special colors and attitudes of growth, pointing upward when ripening and ejecting seeds several feet where they may be gathered by ants for their fats and used to feed their larvae.

Trying to identify violets is difficult because they also hybridize! Three species I am relatively sure of are all natives and like rich woods and openings along roadways. Sweet White Violet: white stemless flowers, bent-back top petals, smooth reddish stems. Long-spurred Violet: pale lavender stemmed flowers, leaf tip very pointed with a smattering of hairs, quite a long spur containing nectar. Downy Yellow Violet: yellow stemmed flower and leaves with hairy stems, long tapering point on leaves.

The great thing about violets is no matter which ones you find or where they are growing, you will know they all have high wildlife value – caterpillars, butterflies, moths, bees, small wasps, ants, chewing insects – they all love ’em. Yeah! I do, too!

Catch up on past issues of Underfoot!

By: Susan Sprout

Box Elder (or Ash-leafed Maple)
While birdwatching at the Robert Porter Allen Natural Area and looking up for a change, I was happy to discover this deciduous, native tree growing by the trail in a low, moist area near the wetland. Surprise!

It isn’t a Boxwood, though it has whitish wood. Neither is it an Elderberry, though it sports elder-like pinnately compound leaves resembling one. Ash-leafed Maple is probably the better name for this tree because it is a species of maple and has opposite branching like them. Its leaves, unlike the the well-known, single, palm-shaped maple leaves, are made up of multiple leaflets ranging from three to nine opposite each other on its rachis or leaf stem. Flowers, long gone by April or May, are replaced on the female tree by double samaras or seeds, which give its identity away!

Box Elders range from Canada to central Florida. When you find this tree, look around for grosbeaks and finches who may be feeding on the samaras, which stay on the tree until early fall. Native Americans used the sap to make maple syrup, although it wasn’t as sweet as that from Sugar maples.

Catch up on past issues of Underfoot!

Over the past few months, former NPC Land Steward, Tamara Wagner, has been training Sara Street to take over her role at NPC.  Tamara is embarking on a career change, but helped to get Sara up-and-running before her departure.  Together, they’ve visited several conservation easement sites and prepared for the year ahead!  We wish Tamara the best of luck, and welcome, Sara!

Get to know Sara

Hello everyone, I am the newest Land Steward Specialist at Northcentral Pennsylvania Conservancy! I look forward to visiting and learning about all of the conserved easements. I thoroughly enjoy walking through forests and meadows looking at plants and noticing what is blooming or experiencing change. I am enjoying this long drawn out spring with the yellow-green sugar maple samaras (baby winged seeds), red-orange red maple samaras, pink cherry blossoms, and white petals on the serviceberries.

My educational background is in Landscape Architecture and Ecological Restoration. I am a Certified Arborist and I have my own business, Susquehanna Ecology Collaborative. I work in forestry, park management, municipal, and residential properties. My main tasks include invasive plant management, tree planting, shrub and perennial plantings, landscape design, property consultations, and tree injections. I enjoy gardening, propagating plants, hiking, and swimming in the Susquehanna River. I live in Muncy with my husband, Chad, who is also a Certified Arborist, and my son, Rowan, a 10^th grade student at Muncy Jr/Sr High School.

Contact Sara Street at sstreet@npcweb.org.

By: Susan Sprout

 A huge bolder standing in a rather flat area of woods caught my eye on our Earth Day rambles. I knew it was a glacial erratic because there were no other big rocks nearby. Ripped out of its bed and plucked up by a moving ice sheet, it was unceremoniously dumped there as the glacier melted.

Thousands of years later, it has become a microcosm of lichens, mosses, grasses and trees. The non-living environment of the rock was a stable platform or substrate for lichens, typically the first organisms to colonize bare rock. Their physical and chemical processes dissolved minerals and built up soil as they lived and died. Mosses began living on the rock next when sufficient soil was available. Then came grasses and shrubs. Living and dying there, they provided more humus and soil to the rocky top.

OK, confession time…what really caught my attention as I passed by the rock… were the American Beech trees growing on top of it, like candles on a cake! Happy B-Earth Day! May all of the ecosystems on earth keep working for all of the organisms that share the planet and make it livable for each other! Humans, take note.

Catch up on past issues of Underfoot!

By: Susan Sprout

How do you personally mark the passage of time? By the day, week, or month? By the seasons? By special family projects, events, or birthdays? From one Earth Day to another? No matter how you measured, Spring 2020 to Spring 2021 was an unusual year. For me, the time this year swelled and compressed from periods of inactivity to hyperactivity as it passed, slowing down indoors and speeding up near a deadline. Besides making music with my friends, one thing that kept me functioning and moderately sane, were  plants…those super wonderful plants that grabbed my attention on walks and hikes and forest rambles…the ones I photographed, researched and shared with you weekly. Now, many of them are already popping forth from their winter quarters and beginning to bloom! Wow! That was a quick year!

OK, maybe looking backwards!

However, looking forward, please think about using native plants and trees in your yard and garden. Did you know that they have evolved over millions of years here and have specific habitat niches? Many have specific mycorrhizal partners in the soil that can more easily take minerals from underground and make them available to plants’ roots. They can then pass on the energy created in their leaves to the insects with which they share an evolutionary history. These insects are food for other native insects, spiders, birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals. Feed our native wildlife with food plants that they can metabolize. Recharge the food web in your yard! We will all be glad you did!

Find out what’s underfoot with NPC member and environmental educator, Susan Sprout!

Underfoot Directory
Introduction & Bloodroot, Trout Lily & Coltsfoot, Blue Cohosh & Dutchman’s Breeches, Ground Ivy & Forget-Me-Nots, Goldthread & Wild Ginger, Common Mullein & Sweet Woodruff, Aniseroot & Butterfly Weed, Myself , Jewelweed & Soapwort, American Pennyroyal & Great Lobelia, Boneset & Common Ragweed, Pokeweed & Blue Chicory, Prickly Cucumber & Wintergreen, Beech Drops & Partridge Berry, Pipsissewa & Nostoc, Witch Hazel, Plantsgiving, Black Jetbead & Decorating with Winterberry, Wild Bergamot & Bald Cypress Tree, Galls & Bittersweet, American Beech & Bagworm, Seedpods & American Chestnut, Northern Bayberry & Sweet Fern, Broom-sedge & Common Motherswort, Snow Drops.

Last year NPC had planned to lead a group hike on the Butternut Trail at Worlds End State Park to celebrate the 30th anniversary.  Portions of the Butternut Trail traverse NPC’s ‘Flynn’ partnered acquisition.  NPC purchased the ‘Flynn’ property, over 600 acres of prime forest land, in 1993 to form the northern and eastern boundaries of Worlds End State Park.  While planning the hike, we realized the Endless Mountains Heritage Region (EMHR) was planning a similar hike on the same weekend as part of their Sullivan County Hikes and Bikers series:  The Worlds End Challenge.  So, naturally, we teamed up! 

Of course, the event was postponed last year due to COVID-19. Recently, EMHR reached out and asked if we’d lead the hike this year as part of The Worlds End Challenge. Their two-day event, May 22 – May 23, challenges hikers to visit every Worlds End State Park vista/overlook over the course of the weekend. 

Due to COVID-19 guidelines and current restrictions on EMHR/DCNR events, the event is limited to 50 people, so sign up fast! All guidelines, including masks and social distancing, will be applied where necessary.

Registration is $10. For more information and how to register, please visit:  www.emheritage.org/events.

For more information and how to register, please visit:  www.emheritage.org/events.