Grasses Wear Robes

learning a new grass

We never get very far when we go on a Pennsylvania Native Plant Society field trip.  But we always learn and see more than we bargained for.  Take the grass field trip to Rothrock State Forest in central Pennsylvania that my son Dave and I joined last July.  Let by Sarah Miller of the Penn State Cooperative Wetlands Center, who is an expert on wetland plants and ecology, fourteen people from as far away as Lewisburg rendezvoused with her along Pine Swamp Road deep in the heart of the forest.  When Miller handed us the draft of a key she had devised entitled “Do I Have a Grass, Sedge or Rush,” we realized that we would be identifying not only the grasses but also the sedges and rushes along the trail.

A quick glance at the intricately-designed five sheets of paper, and I knew that my dependence on the old jingle, “Sedges have edges and rushes are round and grasses are hollow and move all around,” would not suffice.  In truth, I always forget what grasses are in that jingle so later I googled it on the Internet.  Apparently, I’m not the only one who can’t remember the exact wording of the grasses part because I found several versions of it including “grasses have nodes from the top to the ground,” “grasses are hollow right up from the ground,” and “grasses wear robes all the way to the ground.”

Despite the multiple versions of the grass line in the jingle, it turns out that they are the easiest to sort out.  If the stems are round, hollow, and jointed, with its leaves 2-ranked or 2-dimensional when viewed from above, it is a member of Poaceae — the Grass family.

three-way sedge

Sedges and rushes, on the other hand, are not as simple as the jingle implies and, in fact, took up the remainder of Miller’s key. For instance, the three-way sedge – Dulichium arundinaceum – which is common in bogs, swamps, marshes, lake margins and ditches, shares all the same characteristics as a grass except that its leaves are 3-ranked or 3-dimensional.

Still, there were several botanical terms I had to absorb as Miller launched into her identification of a couple grasses growing beside the road.  “Node,” it turns out, is another word for the joints on a grass stem, which is called a “culm.”  Those 2-ranked, alternate, parallel-veined leaves of grasses have two parts, the “sheath,” which surrounds the culm, and the “blade” which sticks out from the culm. Where the blade joins the sheath at the culm, on the inside usually is a papery structure or ring of hairs called a “ligule.”

I should have identified the first grass Miller showed us, but I was so intent on grasping the botanical terms that I didn’t even recognize the notorious Japanese stiltgrass until Miller named it.  Also known as “Nepalese browntop,” “Mary’s grass,” “Nepal grass,” and “Japanese grass,” Japanese stiltgrass, Microstegium vimineum, was accidentally introduced into the United States in Tennessee, probably because the dried grass was used as packing material for porcelain.  Since then, this invasive has spread to eastern states from New York to Florida.

Japanese stiltgrass in late September, Plummer's Hollow

Japanese stiltgrass thrives in disturbed areas.  In the last several years, it has invaded the poorly-logged portion of our property that we purchased after it was cut 18 years ago.  It spreads both by rooting at its nodes and by its seeds.  Each plant produces between 100 and 1000 seeds that remain viable in the soil for at least three years.  A native of not only Japan, but also Korea, China, Malaysia, and India, it seems to thrive in eastern North America almost everywhere from forests to fields, wetlands to roadside ditches, gas and powerline corridors to lawns and gardens.

Japanese stiltgrass doesn’t flower until late summer or early fall, but it was easy enough to identify the silvery stripe of reflective hairs down the middle of the upper surface of its alternately-arranged, asymmetrical, lance-shaped leaves.

To identify the next grass, the terminology was even more complex for my aging brain to grasp, and I never did sort it out until much later when I sat down with Agnes Chase’s excellent First Book of Grasses. First published in 1922, the Smithsonian Institution printed a third edition in 1959 in honor of Chase’s ninetieth birthday. My own 1977 hardcover copy was the second reprint of that edition. Despite nearly 60 years engaged in productive scientific work that resulted in more than 70 scientific papers, she is best know for this little gem of a book.

Chase was a self-taught botanist, but she became the dean of agrostology (grasses) after many years at the United States Department of Agriculture working for Albert Spear Hitchcock. She helped him compile the Manual of the Grasses of the United States, which she illustrated lavishly with her drawings, and then she revised all 1040 pages of the book after his death.

She also made two exploring trips to Brazil and another to Venezuela in the 1920s and 30s when she was in her fifties and sixties.  Botanical collector Ynes Mexia, who spent a couple days collecting with her in Brazil, described her as “almost a human grass, who lives, sleeps, dreams nothing but grasses…”

Chase’s clear drawings and explanatory material finally made sense of Miller’s insistence that we must look carefully at a grass flower in order to identify it.  A grass spikelet is the equivalent of a leafy flowering branch and consists of the flowers themselves or “florets,” which are held in the axils of small green bracts called “lemmas.”  They, in turn, are enclosed in a second bract — the “palea.” The equivalent of a stem is called a “rachilla.”  Below the grass flowers are two bracts without flowers — the “glumes.” All of these terms are important because often a grass can only be identified by its spikelets and their arrangements, for example, the shape of the glumes and the lemmas.

As we worked our way through the next grass, examining the spikelets in detail, Miller eventually identified it as Poa trivialis or rough bluegrass, a native of Europe but often cultivated here and found in wet meadows, swamps, and wet forests.

Rattlesnake Manna Grass, by Petroglyph on Flickr (CC BY-NC license)

Another spikelet she showed us was that of poverty grass, Danthonia spicata, in which a long hair emerged from between a pair of stiff hairs or teeth at the tip of each floret.  And we admired the wavy branches of rattlesnake mannagrass, Glyceria canadensis — an easy way to identify this distinctive wetland grass.

We shuffled onward as folks stopped to look at every grass, sedge, and rush.  Rushes (Family Juncaceae), Miller told us, have miniature flowers with three petals and three sepals, an arrangement called “tepals” that enclose a capsule containing three or more seeds.  As an example, she showed us soft rush, Juncus effusus. This perennial native has densely-clustered stems and clumps of flowers that grow from the side of the stem.

Because the flowers of the soft rush “are individual, they are prophyllate, if they are in heads, they are eprophyllate,” according to Miller’s key, and that’s where the botanical terminology defeated me.  I knew I would need many more hours to sort out and memorize words I had always avoided.

I had never had a botany course and tended to rely on pictorial field guides to identify wildflowers as well as the more common grasses, sedges, and rushes with the help of Ernest Knobel’s Field Guide to the Grasses, Sedges and Rushes of the United States and Lauren Brown’s Grasses, which also includes sedges and rushes.  For an amateur like me these guides are invaluable. Still, they do take some work and occasional glances at botanical glossaries.

The rest of the plants we looked at were sedges (Family Cyperaceae), which usually have triangular solid stems, small flowers, and 1-seeded fruits or nutlets that are often called “achenes.” There are 15 genera of sedges in Pennsylvania, 160 species of which are in the genus Carex.  This is, by far, the largest genus of flowering plants in the state.  A couple that we saw with Miller was Carex folliculata and Carex torta, both common, native, wetland perennials and both known commonly as “sedge.”

We also looked at Scirpus cyperinus, another sedge with the common name “wool-grass,” which should explain why botanists prefer to use the scientific names.  Other members of the Scirpus genus also have variations on the name “bulrush,” even though they are neither grasses nor rushes.

Botanizing at the Beaver Dam in Rothrock State Forest

After more than an hour, we reached the Beaver Dam as the wetland is known by the locals.  Miller called our attention to another grass, Calamagrostis canadensis or Canada bluejoint, a denizen of bogs and swamps, as some of us deftly moved from sphagnum hummock to sphagnum hummock over the former impoundment and tried to avoid the places where knee-deep water flowed swiftly.

But one elderly man, in an attempt to catch a praying mantis, fell into the water.

“Bob’s down,” son Dave said.  “Are you okay?”

As if in answer, he scrambled to his feet and showed us the mantis he held between forefinger and thumb.  This was, after all, a group of amateur naturalists interested in every aspect of the natural world.

Next, a younger woman plunged in up to her knees and emerged muddy but cheerful.  After that, we were even more careful.

Then Miller showed us another grass.

“It’s a Panicum,” she said.

“What is the species?” I asked.

“I have no idea.  I have trouble with Panicum,” she answered.  With that honest reply from an expert, I felt better about procrastinating trying to learn all the grasses, sedges, and rushes even on our mostly dry, mountaintop property.  The least I could do, I resolved, was identify those plants.

ebony jewelwing damselfly at the Beaver Dam

The Beaver Dam wetland is a lovely place.  Masses of purple steeplebush bloomed in the middle of it, and we knelt in the mud to examine the delicate flowers of blooming sundews with our hand lens. Ebony jewelwing damselflies flitted over the water, a wide expanse of cotton grass grew on the far side of the wetland, and large white pines towered over its edges.

But I was distressed to see the telltale tire marks of an all-terrain vehicle imprinted in the mud.  It had been driven heedlessly through the sedges and rushes.  Such incursions, especially in wetlands and along streambeds, continue to destroy habitat and frustrate those of us who value such places.

At last, we were marshaled back to our cars, and off we went.  But the adventure was not over.  The lead car suddenly braked to avoid a tiny porcupette crossing the road.  Everyone stopped their cars and rushed to get a better look at it as it scurried into the underbrush.  Son Dave scared it up a tree, which it looked as if it was climbing for the first time. At the first branch, barely six feet from the ground, it paused to rest, and eager naturalists and photographers gathered around to admire and take its picture. Only Dave had ever seen one before and that was on our property several years ago.

Then, farther along, at the side of the road, Dave spotted a wood lily (Lilium philadelphicum) in bloom.  By that time, our car was on its own.  All four of us got out to photograph that gorgeous, deep orange, purple-spotted wildflower standing erect on a stem above whorled leaves.  This last, unexpected floral gift from Rothrock State Forest ended our grass field trip on a high note.

Lilium philadelphicum

All photos were taken by Dave on the day of the outing, except where noted otherwise.

Return of the Shrubs

The good news is that our shrub layer is making a comeback in some places.  The bad news is that most of the shrubs are growing in places inaccessible or inconvenient to deer.

Take common elder.  When we first moved here, 36 years ago, a line of common elder shrubs grew behind a barberry hedge that stretched sixty feet from our chicken shed to the guesthouse.  Several more common elder shrubs thrived at the bottom, wet edge of First Field.  Every year I had more than enough clusters of purple-black berries to make several batches of elderberry jelly.  But without my noticing, those shrubs gradually disappeared.  No doubt they had reached the end of their lifespan, or so I thought.

I missed their lovely flowers “foamed over with blossoms white as spray,” as poet James Russell Lowell once described them.  Also known as “sweet elder” and “American elder,” few of our native shrubs are as widespread, abundant, and well-known,” Pennsylvania author William Carey Grimm wrote in The Book of Shrubs, back in 1957.  Because this native shrub grows from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, its species name is canadensis (of Canada), but it also ranges as far south as Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.

Common elder was once called the “medicine of the common people,” and elderberry juice was used for treating a wide range of problems including arthritis, gout, diarrhea, coughs, and colic.  More recently, scientists discovered that common elder is extremely high in Vitamin C.

The late Pennsylvania writer Euell Gibbons, in his classic Stalking the Wild Asparagus, gives instructions for making cough medicine from elderberry juice and face cream from elder flowers.  He, like I, tried to use elderberries in pies and discovered that they tasted “pretty nauseous.”  Gibbons recommends drying the berries, which, he says, “eliminates the rank elder taste.”

I never did experiment with drying the berries, but maybe I will now that we once again have a line of elderberry shrubs bearing fruit.  Unfortunately, every one of those shrubs germinated inside our three acre deer exclosure.  Only when I saw them thriving there did I realize what had happened to our original, unfenced common elder hedges.

The common elder genus name Sambucus comes from the Greek “sambuca,” which is purported to be a stringed instrument made from Sambucus racemosa–the red-berried elder.  That too is a common shrub in Pennsylvania and, unlike the common elder that blooms in late June and July, the red-berried elder displays pyramid-shaped clusters of white flowers in late April or early May.  The red-berried elder, also a European species, is labeled with the variety name pubens in North America, and is found from Alaska to Newfoundland and south through the Appalachians to Georgia.

It has a bevy of common names, a few of which are “red elder,” “scarlet elder,” “mountain elder,” “red elderberry,” and “stinking elder.”  Red-berried elder grows in cool, moist, rocky woods and ravines.  When it is fruiting, in late June and July, its showy, scarlet berries are a favorite food of birds such as rose-breasted grosbeaks, eastern bluebirds, gray catbirds, and American robins as well as chipmunks, woodchucks, foxes, squirrels, and rabbits.  Somehow, they can withstand the cyanogenetic glycoside and an alkaloid in the berries that make us nauseous or can cause vomiting, diarrhea or gastrointestinal pain.  But dyes have been concocted from the fruit, bark and stems and an insecticide from dried leaves.Last spring I found several red-berried elders growing on the tip-up mounds of uprooted tulip trees, on the steep slope below Ten Springs Trail, and on the Far Field road bank, where they are protected by piles of ice-storm broken branches.  All those places are inaccessible to deer. On the other hand, below the forks on a flat area beside our stream, which is accessible to deer, I found many small red-berried elder shrubs plus spicebushes and witch hazel trees last April.

Both elder species are members of the Honeysuckle Family.  So too are three other native shrubs struggling to survive on our mountain.  Two are viburnums.  The viburnum genus, as a whole, is favored by deer, but I found a couple black hawks (Viburnum prunifolium) in bloom at the edge of the Far Field a couple years ago.  Also known as “stagbush,” “nannyberry,” “sheepberry,” and “sweet haw,” its species name means “plum leaf,” which describes the appearance of its leaves.  It has flat-topped clusters of white flowers that appear in May or June, and birds and mammals eat its dark, bluish-black, oval-shaped fruits that ripen in early fall.

We also have maple-leaved viburnum (V. acerifolium) growing sparsely on our road bank and abundantly in our deer exclosure.  It used to be a frequent understory shrub in Pennsylvania’s deciduous forests.  Named for its maple-shaped leaves, its flat-topped, white or pink-tinged clusters of flowers bloom from mid-May until mid-June, and its bluish-black fruit ripens in September.  But the fruits are not particularly palatable, and only a few birds bother with them.  Other names for maple-leaved viburnum include “flowering maple,” “squashberry,” “dockmackie,” “guelder-rose,” and “possumhaw,” so perhaps the latter name implies that opossums eat the fruits.

The last shrub member of the Honeysuckle Family on our property is bush-honeysuckle (Diervilla lonicera), which I found blooming on the road bank on June 24.  Because it is popular summer browse for deer, I was delighted to discover several shrubs with terminal clusters of funnel-shaped, pale yellow flowers.  Also called “dwarf bush honeysuckle” and “yellow flowered upright honeysuckle,” it is not a true honeysuckle at all even though its species name lonicera, which is Latin for “honeysuckle-like” appearance, is the genus name for true honeysuckles.  It ranges from Newfoundland to Saskatchewan, south to Iowa and the Great Lakes, east to Delaware and, in the mountains, as far south as North Carolina.

For years our rocky road bank has also provided refuge for wild hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens), a member of the Saxifrage Family.  Slowly it has moved up the hollow, providing plentiful flat-topped clusters of creamy-white flowers that light up our forest roadside in June and July.  Occasionally, we find a few larger, sterile flowers, which usually blossom on cultivated hydrangea called “Hills of Snow.”"Hydrangea” means “water vessel” in Greek because of the cup-like shape of its dried fruits.  Supposedly it is poisonous to livestock, but the deer don’t seem to mind nipping it.  Its species name arborescens means “becoming tree-like,” a reference to its becoming woody with age, hence its alternate name “tree hydrangea.”  Another name is “seven barks” because its stem bark peels off in several layers of thin, different-colored barks.

One sad shrub loss that has nothing to do with deer-grazing is that of our abundant mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), a member of the Heath Family.  Ed and Maureen Levri, both in the Biology Department at Penn State Altoona, are studying mountain laurels inside and outside our deer exclosure.  They suspect that its spotted leaves and, in many cases, subsequent death are due to a leaf fungus.  Many mountain laurel shrubs still survive, especially on the powerline right-of-way, but in the depths of the forest I can find almost as many dead shrubs as live ones and even those look unhealthy.  No longer do they provide the dense deer cover they used to, and their lavish display of blossoms every June is only a memory.

On the other hand, we are seeing the recovery of another member of the Heath Family, the rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum), also known as “great laurel” or “rose bay.”  High on Laurel Ridge, several hundred feet above our stream, Rhododendron Trail winds through dozens of large (eight to ten feet tall) rhododendrons.  All have grown beyond the reach of deer browsing, just as those few have that overhang our stream and road bank.

A few more large rhododendrons grow beside Guesthouse and Black Gum trails.  Other, small ones have struggled for years to get above deer height and have been grazed down to the nubbin in most cases.  Then, a couple years ago, I noticed new shrubs sprouting and thriving along Laurel Ridge Trail and only occasionally being nibbled by deer.  At the same time, what had been a bare slope above Rhododendron Trail was green with newly-germinated rhododendrons.  So far not one has been grazed.

Although deer continue to eat rhododendron, particularly in the winter, it is not a favorite food.  But Grimm did write in The Book of Shrubs that “in many sections of the state, where deer are entirely too numerous, the shrub is often browsed to excess,” so we believe that our recovering rhododendron may be a sign that our hunters’ diligent harvesting of more than 40 deer every year on our square mile of mountain land is having a positive effect on our shrub recovery.

Our mountain azalea (Rhododendron prinophyllum), also known locally as “wild honeysuckle,” is another member of the Heath Family that ranges throughout the rocky woods of Laurel Ridge.  Its bright pink flowers perfume the forest in May.  Usually I smell it before I see it, so intense is its clove-like fragrance. Both inside and outside our deer exclosure, new shrubs have sprung up, and I am hopeful that it too will make a comeback.

Still, the problem with most shrub species is that they “never outgrow the reach of deer, and so remain vulnerable to browsing throughout their lifespan,” as botanist Ann F. Rhoads wrote in her Game News article, “Something is Missing” back in August 1996.  She especially mentions the loss of witch-hobble (Viburnum alnifolium), American yew (Taxus canadensis), and red-berried elder as “just a few of the shrubs that have disappeared from areas where they used to be abundant in the forest understory.”

Many studies show that in order for our shrub layer to recover, we must have less than ten deer per square mile.  Without the large predators our forests once had to keep the deer numbers down, as we did during Colonial times when it is estimated that we had between eight and eleven deer per square mile, we must depend on good hunters to do the job.  Only then will our forests have all the components they need to grow and thrive and produce both food and cover for an abundance of songbirds and mammals.

What’s in a Name?

After a brief walk on a cold and dreary January day, I curled up in my study and tried to update Bioplum, a natural inventory of our property. Last spring I had finally identified a nondescript-looking wildflower spreading along our roadbank as Pennsylvania bittercress (Cardamine pensylvanica), and I wanted to add it to our list of wildflowers along with several other new species. But I was sidetracked by what I thought was a simple question. How many other plants and animals have “Pennsylvania” in their common and/or scientific names?

An exhaustive search in my books and on the Internet stretched into several afternoons. But I found 18 plants, including four tree species, nine insects, a mammal, bird and mollusk. Of those, two species have never lived in Pennsylvania and two have been re-named in some sources. According to Bioplum, at least 13 of the species live on our mountain.

As usual, the plant classifications caused me the most headaches, especially the wildflowers. With the help of The Plants of Pennsylvania by Ann Fowler Rhoads and Timothy A. Block, in addition to Pennsylvania bittercress, I found Polygonum pensylvanicum (Pennsylvania smartweed or pinkweed) that blankets our cut trails in summer, Parietaria pensylvanica (pellitory), Ranunculus pensylvanicus (bristly crowfoot), and Saxifraga pensylvanica (swamp or Pennsylvania saxifrage), none of which grow on our mountain.

But where was Viola pensylvanica or smooth yellow violet that grows along our stream and around our exclosure? While some botanical sites on the Internet still listed it as Viola pensylvanica, Rhoads and Block consider it a variety of V. pubescens, the downy yellow violet. They call it V.pubescens var. scabriuscula. No doubt that is probably the now acceptable classification for V. pensylvanica because scientific names are usually changed only if taxonomists determine a mistake has been made in the original classification of a plant. But since I’ve always had a great fondness for V. pensylvanica and have considered its common name pedestrian, I prefer “Pennsylvania violet.” After all, common names often depend on local tradition and back in 1796, when our property was constantly changing hands, it was called “Violet Hill,” a more evocative name than today’s “Brush Mountain.” To celebrate the original name of our mountain, I decided that from now on, at least on our property, smooth yellow violet will be called Pennsylvania violet.

Another wildflower that baffled me was Gnaphalium pensylvanicum or Gamochaeta pensylvanica, popularly called Pennsylvania cudweed, Pennsylvania everlasting or wandering cudweed according to a variety of Internet sources including a floristic database from Taiwan and another from western Australia. No wonder it’s called “wandering cudweed.” A native of the Americas, it has spread to eastern and southern Asia. Rhoads and Block list five cudwell species under the genus Gnaphalium, but none of them are pensylvanica or pensylvanicum, both of which mean “of Pennsylvania.”

Still another problem was Potentilla pensylvanica var. strigosa, known as Pennsylvania cinquefoil, which, according to Edward G. Voss in Michigan Flora, grows mostly west and north of the Great Lakes. Not satisfied with that explanation, I tracked it down on a USDA site with range maps where I discovered that Pennsylvania cinquefoil grows no farther south in the northeastern United States than Vermont and New Hampshire. Then it skips out to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, but not Wisconsin, and on through the Midwest and western United States. However, it is a threatened plant in Iowa.

Like many of our plants, P. pensylvanica was originally named by Swedish naturalist and taxonomist Carolus Linnaeus, who received thousands of plants throughout the world from field botanists in the eighteenth century. Perhaps P. pensylvanica had been part of a shipment of plants from Pennsylvania, not all of which had actually been collected here. For instance, John Bartram, a Quaker naturalist from Philadelphia and the King’s Botanist who Linnaeus called the “greatest natural botanist in the world,” had traveled as far north as Lake Ontario, as far south as Florida, and as far west as the Ohio River and had shipped thousands of plants abroad, both old and new discoveries. We also seem to have lost the only fern that had pensylvanica as its species’ name–the beautiful ostrich fern that grows down by the river. Still known as Struthiopteris pensylvanica in some sources and Matteuccia pensylvanica in John T. Mickel’s Ferns and Fern Allies, Rhoads and Block call it Matteuccia struthiopteris.

The Pennsylvania-named sedges, grasses, and rushes have all retained their names. Pennsylvania sedge, Penn sedge, or yellow sedge is Carex pensylvanica. Swamp-oats or swamp wedgescale has two apparently acceptable scientific names–Sphenopholis pensylvanica or Trisetum pensylvanicum. Pennsylvania sedge is a common species that grows in dry, open woods and wooded slopes, including ours, but swamp-oats prefers swamps, wet woods, or springy meadows in southeastern and southcentral Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania rush or Coville’s rush is Juncus gymnocarpus and is a rare species found “in sphagnous swamps, seeps, and springheads; mostly in or near Schuylkill County,” according to Rhoads and Block.

Of course, I was pleased to learn that one of my favorite fruits–the blackberry–has one species named Rubus pensilvanicus, although that name may eventually be lost because Rhoads and Block write that “the taxonomy of Rubus, especially the blackberries, is complicated…[and] more study is needed to resolve the status of the many species that have been described over the years.”

Well, at least the northern bayberry, Myrica pensylvanica, looks safe. But wait! Rhoads and Block have a parenthetical comment about this deciduous shrub. “[Wilbur (1994) places M. pensylvanica in the segregate Morella as M. caroliniensis....]” We can only hope that Wilbur’s name is not generally accepted, although admittedly the aromatic bayberry, beloved of candlemakers, is primarily a denizen of sandy shore dunes along the Atlantic Ocean. But it also grows along the Lake Erie shoreline and the borders of Pymatuning Swamp in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Thank goodness the Pennsylvania trees seem secure. Best known is Acer pensylvanicum, the striped maple, also called “moosewood” because moose like to browse on it. White-tailed deer are not supposed to, although during the winter here they do eat it. Striped maple is a personal favorite of mine because of its attractive white-striped greenish bark, beautiful yellow-green drooping flowers, and the bright gold its leaves turn in the autumn.

Prunus pensylvanica, the pin or fire cherry, grows on our rockslides as a small tree and on the cliffs beside the railroad tracks where it reaches a respectable size. It too has distinctive bark–”smooth, reddish-brown with conspicuous horizontal, orange lenticels,” according to the sumptuous Trees of Pennsylvania by Rhoads and Block, the same botanical pair that gave us The Plants of Pennsylvania. A stunning book filled with closeup color photos of the bark, flowers, and seeds of almost every tree species, along with range maps, the Trees of Pennsylvania also contains an excellent glossary that defines “lenticel” as “a corky growth on the surface of a twig through which gas exchange occurs.” As tree-lovers, my husband, Bruce, son Dave and I have spent many happy hours browsing through this informative book.

Fraxinus pensylvanica, the green ash, does not grow on our mountain probably because it likes wet woods, lowland stream banks and moist fields. “Native Americans,” Rhoads and Block write, “used an infusion of the inner bark as a tonic to treat depression and fatigue.”

As far as we know, we also don’t have Crataegus pennsylvanica, the Pennsylvania hawthorn. But then hawthorns are notoriously difficult to identify, “even for professional botanists,” Rhoads and Block admit. It’s also comparatively rare, even globally, having been found only in southern Ontario, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia. But it does grow in several sites in southern Pennsylvania.

Our only “Pennsylvania” mammal, the meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus), is abundant throughout the state. Popularly known as the “field mouse,” its runways through long field grasses and weeds are especially noticeable in our First and Far fields during the winter. The most common vole species throughout North America, its plump body provides food for a wide variety of birds and animals from black bears to great blue herons.

Dendroica pensylvanica, the chestnut-sided warbler, sings “please please please ta meetcha,” and so we are pleased to meet this handsome bird named for the thick chestnut streak on each side of its breast. It likes early-successional forests for breeding and spends its summers throughout our state.

Strangely enough, Linnaeus also named a marine mollusk for our state, Lucina pensylvanica or the Pennsylvania lucine back in 1758.

Finally, the insects, one of which–Vespula pensylvanica, the western yellow jacket, is not found in the eastern United States. No one knows why it was named the Pennsylvania yellow jacket.

But we do have two other species of the Hymenoptera Order–the Pennsylvania wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus) and the Pennsylvania bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus). The latter appears to be, from photographs on the Web, the plump, yellow and black bumblebee that I see on our wild and domestic flowers.

The remaining five of the Pennsylvania-named insects are beetles, which is not surprising since beetles are among the most diverse and abundant life forms on earth. Its Order–Coleoptera–is also the largest insect order with 111 families. The Peterson Field Guide Beetles by Richard C. White identifies only to insect families, the classification above genus and species, because there are too many North American beetle species to identify in one field guide.

But he does mention some well-known species such as Colliurus pensylvanica the distinctive Pennsylvania long-necked ground beetle with its triangular-shaped black head and greatly-elongated prothorax (the first of three body segments that holds the wings and legs). Its thorax is black-spotted on an orange background. Steve, our eldest son and now resident amateur entomologist who specializes in beetles, has found this species, which occurs over much of North America, on our property.

Chlaenius pensylvanicus pensylvanicus and Pterostichus pensylvanicus are ground beetles and, like the Pennsylvania long-necked ground beetles are in the Carabidae family, whereas Chauliognathus pensylvanicus, a soldier beetle, is in the Cantharidae family and is the brilliant orange and black beetle that is abundant on our goldenrod in late summer.

Steve has also listed Photuris pensylvanicus, the Pennsylvania firefly, in Bioplum. A member of the Lampyridae family, it is one of 20 Photuris species in the eastern United States and is a beetle, not a fly. Watching fireflies on June and July is one of my favorite pastimes and a reason to be glad that I live in the eastern United States. The West, for all its grandeur, doesn’t have these charismatic insects.

Epicauta pensylvanica, the black blister beetle in the Meloidae family, also inhabits our goldenrod. Like all blister beetles, when it is disturbed, it emits “blood” from its knee joints and other body parts that can raise blisters on the skin and deters some predators such as birds and ground beetles.

No doubt I have missed many other Pennsylvania-named insect species, but since I was bug-eyed (no pun intended) after hours on the Internet looking up the literally thousands of references to pensylvanica, pensylvanicus, and pensylvanicum, I left it at an even 30 species. Next time I’ll deal with all the Philadelphia species! Think Philadelphia vireo (Vireo philadelphicus), rock sea bass (Centropristis philadelphica), dogwood calligrapha (Calligraph philadelphica), and mourning warbler (Opornis philadelphia), among others. The possibilities are almost endless for whiling away the long winter hours.

A Natural Heritage

“I’m too old for this,” I think as I follow Jessica McPherson up and down the steep banks of Bob’s Creek on State Game Lands 26. I am also severely sleep-deprived and only sheer adrenalin keeps me going. But I am determined to keep up with McPherson, a woman four decades younger than me and in terrific shape from long-distance biking and fieldwork. After all, I had asked to go along.

McPherson is a County Natural Heritage Inventory Ecologist for the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. Her job is to look for and then document rare species, habitats, and natural communities on both public and private lands. When I learned that McPherson was conducting extensive fieldwork in my county (Blair), I was eager to accompany her.

On a cloudy, cool day in late September, we head downstream in search of American or mountain bugbane (Cimicifuga americana), a plant endemic to the Appalachians from Georgia to Pennsylvania. According to previous records, botanist John Kunsman had found it here back in 1986. Furthermore, Blair and nearby Cambria counties are the northernmost known sites for the wildflower. Found in rich, moist, forested slopes and coves in the mountains, American bugbane is listed as a Pennsylvania rare plant by the Pennsylvania Biological Survey.

McPherson is also on the lookout for any other interesting plants and plant communities, but she relies on the Game Commission for information on rare birds and mammals and the Fish and Boat Commission about rare fish, reptiles, and amphibians in her territory. Before setting out, she checks her laptop for previous plant location marks on maps based on Kunsman’s research. Then she hoists a pack on her back that holds water, a digital camera, maps, and a GPS unit, and we are off.

Slender, sure-footed, and lithe, the brown-haired young woman clambers up and down rhododendron-swathed stream banks, looking in vain for American bugbane. She also searches for floodplains, but most have disappeared under water. Hurricane Ivan roared through the area 11 days earlier and Hurricane Jeanne the previous day so the creek is high and its banks slippery.
Soon rock-hopping across the creek is the only way to move downstream without pushing our way through the thicket of rhododendron overhanging the steep bank. That is when I admit my age (to myself) and break off the end of a fallen branch to use as a walking stick. Along the creek McPherson makes note of the huge hemlocks, some mature yellow birches, and a few large American beech trees. She is also pleased to find several hobblebush shrubs tucked among the rhododendrons. The diversity of mosses is another indicator of good habitat.

Humming as she walks, she looks carefully at every unusual plant, painstakingly identifies it, and then lists its outstanding characteristics. Finally, she whips out the digital camera to further document her work. All in all she is impressed by the condition of the forest.

“A nice hollow,” she comments. “We are seeing signs of very mature forest in good condition.”

At last she pulls out her heavy, ten-year-old, GPS unit to see how far we have “stream whacked.” Do those fences and fierce signs ahead mark the property boundary? They do indeed, and so does the difference in habitat. On the state game lands we have seen what she calls “an exemplary forest community” with no sign of deer browse. On the other side, the forest is younger and heavily deer-browsed.

But we haven’t found any American bugbane. “Does that mean it is gone from this place,” I ask.

“It could be in the seed bank even if it’s not poking its head out this particular year,” she answers. “It takes a lot for us to write a population off.”

We head the half mile back to the road where we have left our cars and our lunches and eat a late lunch before proceeding upstream for the afternoon. There more floodplain is exposed and we discover a woodland of wildflowers–beechdrops, clintonia, Indian cucumberroot, foamflower, violets, Jack-in-the-pulpit–and several species of ground pine. A Canadian or American yew (Taxus canadensis) on one stream bank and a large American chestnut tree, the shells of its nuts beneath it, are other intriguing finds, our only native yew because it is declining statewide due to habitat loss and severe deer browsing and the chestnut because it seldom grows so large since the chestnut blight decimated the species.

“We try to go where the plants and animals are,” McPherson says, which is why we cross and re-cross the rushing stream and side tributaries and climb up and down a steep mountainside, still searching for the elusive American bugbane. As we descend a particularly steep slope, I pull a thigh muscle and limp my way over rough terrain with the help of my indispensable walking stick.

Finally, seeing no way back on the mountain side of the creek, or, more likely, taking pity on me, McPherson removes her shoes and socks and quickly wades across the rocky-bottomed creek up to her knees in rushing water. Lacking her exquisite balance, I gulp and, keeping my boots on and a tight grip on my walking stick, pick my way carefully across the wide creek. My boots fill with water, but I don’t care. We have reached a gravel road where I am able to stretch that thigh muscle enough to prevent my limping. Even so, although I had managed to keep up with McPherson only because, as a plant ecologist she moves comparatively slowly, her eyes constantly roving for plants, I am not in the shape she is.

Not only does she do this kind of rugged fieldwork, following land forms instead of trails, much of the year, she also lives the life of a committed conservationist in Pittsburgh, biking instead of owning a car, consuming little, and wondering why others can’t similarly enjoy more outdoor-oriented lives. A native of Maryland and a graduate of Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, she had recently joined other friends in a mammoth biking trip across Pennsylvania to New York City.

At the end of our day at Bob’s Creek, McPherson pulls a dried American bugbane from her plant press to show me what we didn’t find–a plant that looks much like its close relative black cohosh (C. racemosa) except that it blooms later in the season, is somewhat shorter, and has white flowers on one side of the stem instead of alternately as black cohosh does. Its resemblance to black cohosh is one reason why American bugbane is increasingly rare. Herbal collectors for the plant trade mistake it for its look-alike relative.

McPherson also tells me about some of her discoveries on other gamelands in Blair and Cambria counties. State Game Land #166 in Blair County, which adjoins Canoe Creek State Park, has a “huge, amazing wetland” in the middle of which she found a stand of poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) that usually grows mostly in northwestern Pennsylvania in calcium-rich soils. This “unique” land form includes shrub wetlands and a mixed palustrine (periodically wet) forest.

State Game Land #158 in Blair and Cambria counties has Pennsylvania state threatened northeastern bullrush (Scirpus ancistrochaetus) in its vernal ponds. A vernal pond on State Game Land #184 has a rare dragonfly. The state endangered Greene’s or Maryland hawkweed (Hieracium traillii) grows in a unique natural community on acidic cliffs on State Game Lands # 118.

McPherson is not just interested in surveying public property. She is also eager to survey private property, but she only goes where she is invited. Earlier, on a cool August day, she accompanied my son Dave and me on a walk over our mountaintop property. Once again she was alert to every plant on the ground and tree in the forest.

When we crossed the powerline right-of-way, McPherson stopped to admire a large deerberry shrub (Vaccinium stamineum).

“I don’t see much of this,” she commented.

She also spent time peering into our three-acre exclosure because it already illustrates what a mature hardwood forest might look like without heavy deer pressure.

She was most interested in seeing our four vernal ponds on top of Sapsucker Ridge. Vernal ponds, along with limestone outcrops, dry acidic cliffs, uncut limestone slopes, or uncut or unplowed wetlands, have been most fruitful during her survey in Blair County. But our vernal ponds have no rare plants growing in or around them. Only one pond has the common fowl manna-grass (Glyceria striata) growing along its edges. At least it is a native grass. So too is the grass she identified growing on the Far Field Road–Virginia cut grass (Leirsia virginica). Other plants that she identified for us were Lycopodium hickeyi (Hickey’s ground-pine) and a leafy liverwort rock spikemoss (Selaginella rupestris) growing along our stream. On a talus slope, she admired two large and twisted chestnut oaks and found at least two species of lichens on the rocks.

Once we stopped to watch a pair of box turtles courting near the vernal ponds, the male on top of the female but unconnected. And at our small exclosure (36′ by 36′), she was amazed to find the green carpet of Canada mayflower and Solomon’s seal leaves so late in the season. Coming back on Shortway Trail, we stopped to admire a row of deep rose and yellow pinesaps.

She concluded that we have “forest communities typical of our area but interesting because of their age and higher quality [unmanaged] habitat.” She went on to say that some of the nicest stuff she sees is on private lands, especially examples of intact natural communities, i.e. forests and wetlands with good species diversity and low impact or no management such as our place.

When she visits private lands, she always tells landowners that what she might find does not impact their ability to do anything on their property. She merely describes what she has found and suggests ways they can maintain special habitats and species. Many landowners are proud of their land and eager to protect whatever rare species or natural communities might be found on it.

The Natural Heritage Program is an international network for biological information. Pennsylvania has been divided in half for Natural Heritage Inventory purposes. The Pennsylvania chapter of The Nature Conservancy is finishing up the eastern half of the state and the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy the western. Unfortunately, a block of counties in the northwest of the state is not cooperating, and so there will be a big hole in our knowledge of what natural treasures our state still possesses. Over the years, 116 plants, at least 17 mussel species, six mammals, six birds, one salamander, two turtles, 15 fishes, and no one knows how many insects have been extirpated from Pennsylvania, and more and more species are endangered, rare, or threatened.

As runaway development sprawl and more highways per mile than any other state in the country gobble up more and more open land, we need to develop an ethic of caring for the natural world we have left. Surely, all of us want to leave a natural heritage for our children and grandchildren at least as rich as the one we have experienced.