Extension News: April 2009 Archives

Early spring is a great time to take a good look at bark before the trees leaf out. The bark of each variety of shrub and tree is different in texture and color, and changes as the tree grows.

I started noticing bark after a field trip and presentation I attended a couple of years ago given by Tom Wessels, a professor of ecology at Antioch New England and author of Reading the Forested Landscape.

The bark of paper birch is one of my favorites. You’ll find this tree growing way up north in the coldest of temperatures­it can survive to minus 40 degrees F. Of course, its white color allows it to stand out in any clump of trees, but Wessels told us the bark also allows the tree to thrive where other trees might not survive.

First, the white bark allows the tree to reflect winter sunlight. If it couldn’t, the low winter sun, even in January, might heat up the inside of the tree, causing it to expand; then, as the sun sets, the bark would contract faster than wood underneath and split.

Wessels told us the paper birch developed the ability to peel off in those gorgeous layers to discourage the growth of epiphytes (plants that grow on other plants without harming them,) which could expand and darken the bark. Underneath the exfoliating layers, new white bark grows, keeping the tree safe from winter sun.

The oily birch bark also acts as a vapor barrier, keeping water inside the tree during the cold, dry months. Native Americans of the Northeast knew that and used the bark to build canoes, baskets, and watertight boxes.

So how do other trees survive cold winters if they don’t have white bark? Take a good look at a mature oak or a black cherry. The rough, ridged bark of the oak and the scales of the cherry bark act like fins that dissipate heat into the surrounding air rather than conduct it to the wood beneath.

Another bark that offers great winter interest belongs to the Common Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius), a shrub native to New Hampshire. Its common name gives you a clue as to why it’s such an interesting plant to have in your garden. The bark exfoliates, layer after layer, peeling off great long strips of pale orange brown bark. Beneath them, you can see the newer layers, which are lighter in color. When I feel that nothing is happening in the winter garden, I trudge over to the Ninebarks and enjoy the texture of their stems, noting the marks where bark has loosened itself to flutter in light breezes.

In the swamp near our home, there are many dead trees, killed by the rising waters behind beaver dams. It’s easy to tell the hemlocks. Hemlocks, pines and spruces all rot from the outside in, but the hemlock retains its bark around the rotting trunk. If I find a tree with just the bark still in place and not much else, I know it was a hemlock. Of course, enough time must have elapsed for the wood to rot away. Wessels said he’s seen hemlocks 35, maybe even 50 years dead.

As bark leaves a dead tree, what’s left behind is fascinating to look at. It’s easy to find where a limb broke off years ago and was then covered with new growth. The tunnels made by wood- eating insects meander up and around. Often you can find large bore holes, rectangular and wide at the surface and narrowing down as they go in. These were made by woodpeckers, removing dead material to get to the insects living inside.

The dead trees that still have bark often have wonderful epiphytes growing on them, curly white and gray-green lichen, crawling up the sides and spreading out like a slowly widening pool of water or looking as if someone had thrown paint onto the trunks.

Many dead branches have strands of plant material that twist in the breeze. At a distance, the trees still look alive with their coating of pale green. It’s only when you get close you notice the lack of leaves, the gaping holes, the slightly peeling bark. Near the base, I’ll often find lovely, soft moss crawling up the trunk. In season, small stalks with little rounded tips appear. The moss works its way into the crevices of the rough bark and I love to run my hand over the smooth surface.

Like our own skin, the bark covers the tree and protects it. When a nick is made in the bark, the tree works to repair the opening, growing from the sides over the wound. In a few years, the gash is covered once more. The bark is whole again and the tree continues its quest for the sky.

By Susan M. Poirier, Master Gardener

Snow lingers in the woods, though a few bare spots have emerged under the firs, where the snow never amounted to much. The ice is mostly gone from the pond, and now, in mid April, we listen carefully for the wood frogs, lovely tan creatures with black masks who find the merest signs of spring reason enough to wake up and go for a swim.

One day I hear a couple of frogs and then a day or two later, I hear hundreds of them, their low key quacking easily mistaken for ducks. If any other frogs are about, it’s only a few spring peepers that pierce the wood frogs’ soft symphony.

The males are the first to reach the pond. Some command a foot or so of shoreline, hoping a female will hop down the hillside; others spread out across one of the coves, spacing themselves about a yard apart, hoping to intercept the females who must swim across from the opposite shore.

When a female arrives, males will try to climb on her back and then grasp her very tightly around her neck, gaining a position that will allow them to fertilize the eggs when they are eventually deposited, a process known as “amplexis.” Since two or more males will, if they can, glom onto a single female, it is essential the females be much larger than the males so they can pop up for a breath of air whenever they want to.

One year the frogs arrived on a Sunday, April 19. I found a spot near the shore where I could see five dozen frogs without even moving my head. While sitting there, I would hear rustling behind me and then watch crazed males take wild leaps into the pond. While any quick movement would cause all the males to submerge, an extremely loud sneeze had no effect!

Finally, a female appeared. Redder and larger than the males, she swam up under some grass clippings and stuck her nose up, the grass hanging over her forehead, making her seem like a teenager who’d dyed her hair to upset her parents. She eventually moved to within an inch of the shoreline. After a while, she set out for the nearest male, who was just hanging in the water four feet away. But she quickly veered off and swam within a couple of inches of the next male, then sped past. This guy quickly caught up, jumped on, and grabbed her around the neck.

Another female made passes at three males. Each time she approached and stopped, allowing the male to swim by for her inspection. The first two times, she apparently didn’t like what she saw and swam away. The third time, she swam past the male, paused, and allowed the male to mount. A would be suitor contested the pairing, but the first male held on tightly enough and the pair swam off.

The wood frogs continued most of that Sunday, taking a break for a couple of hours during the middle of the afternoon, then continuing until at least 9 pm. On Monday morning, there were only a few dozen frogs left in the pond, but there were more than 325 clumps of eggs in the reeds, each with two hundred or so eggs well over 50,000 eggs!

It was a lovely 65 degree day, the first real day of spring, when I next went out to check on the wood frog eggs. Numerous migrating birds had arrived overnight, including a small flock of evening grosbeaks, a phoebe, a flicker, a pair of wood ducks and three mergansers. Two ruby crowned kinglets, faster even than warblers, flitted about in the willows and the brush, while a song sparrow serenaded a pair of tree swallows that were checking out a bird house by the pond.

The wood frogs were gone, but their egg masses attracted a lot of notice. Nine newts squirmed in, around and through the jumble of egg clumps, sometimes twisting around each other and at other times plunging solo through the gooey masses. Several huge leeches attached to the clumps of eggs, and a painted turtle swam by, checking out the whole operation.

Within five or six days, about half of the tadpoles were out or active within their sacs; within a week, all had emerged; within another day or two, the egg cases themselves were mostly gone. I couldn’t tell who was eating them, it could have been ducks, newts, other frogs, the muskrat I noted hiding in the reeds or perhaps they just dissolve.

It may or may not be coincidence that ducks and a magnificent pair of great blue herons began to visit our little pond just after the wood frogs arrived. They were certainly enjoying their feeding, though I never could see what they were capturing.

From time to time over the next several weeks, I would see a vast swarm of tadpoles a yard wide, a foot deep, and more than 50 feet long, moving slowly along the edge of the pond, feeding on minute bits of vegetation and detritus and generally cleaning up the grasses and sedges at the edge of the pond. What a marvelous example of the incredible explosion of life in the pond!

Carl D. Martland, Coverts Cooperator

In Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious...

Surely the poet e.e. cummings was thinking about New Hampshire as he wrote the opening lines to his poem in Just. And isn't the word mudluscious just perfect to describe the month of April? Unless you are a newcomer here, you know that the Granite State has four seasons: summer, fall, winter, and mud.

With the deeper ground often still frozen, the spring rains and the melting snow turn the top layer of soil into a quagmire which makes traveling on our dirt roads a challenge. After a long cold winter though, it’s a challenge many welcome, for with it comes the first signs of returning life.

Cummings goes on to say that in spring, the world is puddle-wonderful. And so it is. Suddenly one day you hear a strange cracking sound and you know the frogs and toads are back. Ending their winter hibernation, the Eastern American toads have dug their way out of their burrows and traveled back to their vernal breeding pools, and now the males are croaking away for a mate with all the volume, enthusiasm, and ardor the mating season demands.

Joining them are the big bullfrogs that wintered underwater in the mud and leaves. From the hearty trill of the gray treefrog to the high-pitched, bell-like chorus of the spring peepers, the night sounds of spring give us reason to rejoice in mud. Without standing water, few if any of the toads or frogs would be able to mate, and our springs would be strangely and sadly quiet without their calls.

If you sit quietly for a while near a vernal pool or a ditch or the backwaters of a stream, you’re likely to find another amphibian now that spring has encouraged you to explore-the eastern or red-spotted newt. Although the young efts (terrestrial stage of a newt) will hibernate under logs or rocks all winter, the adult newts are often still active under the ice. Come spring, though, they are ready to mate. The adult females can lay 200-375 eggs, but only in unpolluted water. Since adults consume thousands of mosquito larvae and ticks, they, like the frogs and toads, are nice to have around.

For months, the landscape has been brown, the ground covered with snow. But now, the melting and slowly increasing warmth have brought about a transformation at the ends of certain branches. Here the pussy willow, with its happy wet feet, starts to show just a bit of gray. In a short time, the gray expands to the soft, familiar flower of the plant. The sight of the pussy willow in the wetlands bordering a road is another welcome reminder of the value of these watery areas.

And here in this soggy area, the green leaves of the marsh marigold appear. It won't be long before its yellow flowers will burst out. Does any flower proclaim spring with as much vigor and pizzazz? Much lovelier than the later dandelion, the marsh marigold makes a joyful statement about marsh life in the spring.

In cummings’s poem, the children eddieandbill and bettyandisbel come out to enjoy the spring. The whistle of the “old balloonman” beckon them to follow him. You can almost smell the fresh, stirring air as they play marbles and pirates and jump-rope and hop-scotch. Their names run together as they run around, exploding in the warmth of the new season.

The poem hints at a darker, deeper side of the mudluscious and puddle-wonderful season, hinting at the loss of innocence, as the “goat-footed balloonMan” (Pan) leads the children farther and farther away. We hear his whistle far and wee and understand that the children have gone with him. Are we, too, being led astray? Are we following paths that may destroy that which we so enjoy and need?

The plants and amphibians who live in our muddy pools bring us not only early signs of returning life after a long winter; they also act as barometers of the health of the wetlands, and ultimately, to the health of the planet. From newts’ breeding only in unpolluted waters, to the sad and alarming disappearance of many of our native toads and frogs, we can learn much about the effects of pollution and habitat loss.

How long can marsh marigolds and pussy willows live in water too sick for a newt to survive in? How sad would spring be if the frogs and toads, newts and marsh marigolds disappeared? Mud alone is not enough to make spring a beautiful time of the year.

Personally, I hope the sound of the frog choruses will drown out Pan as he whistles his way through our “mudlucious” spring. I bet you do too.

By Susan M. Poirier, Master Gardener

The Upper Meadow slopes from a row of young pines down toward the cattails at the edge of our pond. An overgrown field dotted with pines, birches, apple trees and alder clumps, the Upper Meadow attracts all of the usual and many of the unusual suspects of New Hampshire wildlife.

Deer and moose follow my trails through the goldenrod and meadowsweet, while snowshoe hare traipse along their lower-level network through the brambles and brush that protect them from hawks and coyotes. In the winter, a weasel or a fisher may drop in, meandering in and out of the thickets and hedges in search of a mouse or a vole.

In the spring, toads and tree frogs approach the pond, their trilling a bit louder and more concentrated for several days until they finally reach the water for a day or two of wild partying. In late June, spring peepers and lightning bugs stage their sound and light show, tiny fireworks sparkling over the meadow accompanied by the continuous chorus of the frogs.

For most visitors, the Upper Meadow offers a pleasant place to spend a few minutes, whether looking for tracks in the snow or spotting dragon flies hunting along the trails. However, for those in the know, the Upper Meadow demands a visit in early spring when the woodcock return.

Our neighbors were definitely in the know. Immediately after introducing themselves on the day we moved in, they interrogated us concerning our intentions for the field. Satisfying themselves that we liked the goldenrod and the asters and were not about to subdivide or construct any monstrous outbuildings, they confessed they had feared we would interfere with the woodcock mating ritual. This comment sounded rather bizarre to a pair of urban dwellers, but we simply assumed (not incorrectly) that we had fallen in among some eccentric nature lovers. Still among the uninitiated, we didn’t comprehend the allure of the woodcock.

The following spring, during maple-sugaring season, tiny pine trees finally emerged from the melting snow, and flattened openings appeared here and there across the meadow. Unbeknownst to us, this battered, drab, damp landscape represented romance­a veritable Waikiki Beach­to the lonely woodcock.

One evening, just at dusk, our neighbors stopped by, all excited.

“Have you heard the woodcock?”

“No,” I answered, betraying my total ignorance by adding “What do they sound like?”

“What! You’ve never heard them? You must come out right now!”

So we did. And we heard the calls: “Peeent... Peeent...Peeent.” The woodcock males, possibly deranged by their long migration, apparently thought this monotonous, atonal, unmistakable call-far closer to a door buzzer than to Frank Sinatra-would somehow entrance the loveliest and most feminine of their species.

But perhaps this call really was like a doorbell, while the romantic appeal was in the woodcock’s bursting out of the clearing, flying out low over the tree line, then circling ever higher over the meadow, emitting a mysterious and plausibly romantic whinny, audible as it circled and eventually fluttered back to the initial clearing.

The hopeful male repeated this intriguing display again and again, for more than an hour. Finally we returned to the house, at last understanding our neighbors’ concerns about preserving the field we had eventually christened the Upper Meadow.

Since that first spring, we eagerly await the return of the woodcock. The mating ritual begins as soon as there is some bare ground in late March or early April, and it may continue into May.

It is easy to observe the display; if you stand motionless, you don’t disrupt the romance. Since the males tend to flutter back to almost the same spot, you can move up to a bush or young pine and get within 20 feet of the bird, close enough to hear the soft “coos” between his “peeents,” and close enough to see him turn, walk a step or two, and send his plaintive call out in a different direction.

I have often observed the display, usually staying until it is too dark to see anything. I have counted the “peents,” sometimes fewer than 10 and sometimes more than 40 before the male takes off. In late summer, I have also seen many a happy family of woodcocks, so I know some sort of mating eventually does occur. However, I remain puzzled by the effort the allegedly lovelorn males expend in these elaborate, endlessly repeated displays. While wildlife biologists assure me that well-hidden female woodcock observe the ritual, presumably with great interest, I have only ever seen the males.
While the charade may continue past midnight, no guests ever show up, the party never starts, and-in my experience-they never get their girl.

By Carl D. Martland, Coverts Cooperator