Reading the Landscape

July 19, 2012
Last Thursday, our research group went back out to the plots in order to "read" the land and begin our second inventory.  We found part of a stonewall, with only large stones- indicating that this land may have been pastured at one time.  Old white pines were found on one side of the stonewall.  I have no idea how old they were, but they were old... three of them had fallen half way up the trunk and decayed-- possibly storm damage?  The trunks were lying to the southeast of the tree.  Then there were two multi-stemmed oaks that were large as well.  They weren't as large as the pines, but they were larger than the multi-stemmed trees on the other side of the wall.  My hypothesis:  all hardwoods were cut at one time to create pasture.  This allowed the white pine to grow large and reach for the sun.  The oaks on the unpastured side of the wall grew back as multi-stemmed, while the hardwoods inside the wall continued to be grazed or removed.  Eventually these trees were permitted to grow back when pasturing was removed, but then they were logged again... perhaps?  Still difficult to "read" the land.  What happened to the remaining part of the wall?  Why did the use of the land change? 

The land in our second plot was very different than in our first plot- although it was only (apporximately) 50- 75 feet away.  This plot was wetter, had more light, and the vegetation was denser.  There were so many birch!  And, distinguishing birch, when bark is young is so difficult!   We could identify the black birch and even tasted the leaves.  The gray birch has more triangular leaves.  But there was this birch with pinkish, salmon-colored bark that was starting to peel--- yellow birch?  It wasn't white/paper birch because it wasn't white enough.  Then, there was this birch with the blackest bark... what was that?  There were also a large amount of cinnamon fern and two shrubs we could not identify.   We had discussed how this portion of the woods was younger than that of the first plot.  So was it logged more recently?  Or was it just the wet habitat that enabled slower growing plants to proprogate there?  Hopefully, I have learned a little bit about fern identification by looking for the cinnamon fern...

Sam's literature discussion on Thursday really involved a lot of high level thinking skills.  When we had to write a historical fiction about the landscape-- that was so difficult.  The other group had a great idea of using the white pine as the character speaking.