Forest Floor

This spring after pruning the dead branches, I found the 2009 planting area to be almost at the point where I can easily walk under the trees. Almost like it is becoming a real forest. However, while the trees have filled in and in many areas have shaded out the grass, the ground looks nothing like a proper forest floor. There is too much dry bare earth. I don't know if it is normal for it to take this long for humus to develop but digging into the soil isn't anything like digging into a real forest floor. It is mostly heavy clay while a forest floor soil should be mostly organic matter.

To aid the diversity of plants on the forest floor I planted a variety of native plants that I identified as likely understory plants appropriate for a mixed deciduous forest floor. I planted:

• Hop Hornbeam
• Pagoda dogwood
• Liverwort
• Trilliums
• Canada Mayflower
• Purple-Flowered Raspberry
• Prickly Gooseberry
• Dog-toothed Violet
• Ostrich fern
• Virginia Waterleaf
• Chokecherry

Now to see how they take to their new home. Some of them naturally die back in the summer so I'll have to wait until next spring to see if they come back up.

Ruby-Crowned Kinglet

Not the greatest picture of this tiny bird flitting through the branches feeding on insects, but I'm just happy it's in focus because these birds weren't staying still for long. There were a bunch them I saw on that day feeding along the berm. I don't know if I've ever seen them before. Luckily I did spot the small red crown on a couple of them or else I wouldn't have a clue how to start identifying them from this picture.

Early Spring 2024

It is a very early spring this year with the alder tree's catkins already spreading pollen and some maple trees in flower.

Rabbits caused a significant amount of damage to some trees and bushes this winter. The serviceberry bushes in the 2010 area got severly attacked as did many apple trees as in the above picture. It is interesting how the winter damage varies from year to year. That apple tree had escaped their notice for about 10 years until this winter. I also found damage this year on sumac, basswood (see below) and cedar, trees that don't usually get much significant browsing damage. Perhaps it is just a matter of individual taste. Perhaps it was just one rabbit hanging around having a good feed on his favorite things.

An Owl

It was a lovely day today to visit the roadside berm. I spent some time clearing out the european buckthorn bushes that form a barrier between the 2009 area and the older forest. It is really easy to recognize the buckthorns at this time of year as they are the only deciduous bushes with grean leaves still hanging on. On my way home I was surprised by this owl just hanging out a few feet from me.

The 2009 replanting area is now starting to resemble a forest. Some of the maple trees are starting to gain some character, like the one below that is starting to push up the earth as the root flare grows. The forest floor of the 2009 area is losing its grass and some seedlings are starting to establish themselves. Below is the first pine seedling I've noticed growing in the area.

As I was walking along, looking at the forest floor, I found one odd bit of trash. I wonder if it was a eurpoean or african swallow that dropped this.

Buckthorn experiment part 2

Summer is about over and what I have learnt from my fight with the buckthorn is that buckthorn is a tough opponent. Many of the stumps sprouted vigorous growth so that by late summer it was a significant bush. I removed the suckers from many of the stumps but today at the end of September when I revisited locations where I know I removed the suckers, the buckthorn is regrowing once again. I'll have to go around again removing suckers. Perhaps eventually the roots will expend all their energy and have a hard time coming back in the spring. In the picture below you can see a couple of the buckthorn stumps regrowing as small bushes. They are surrounded by the branches and small trunks of the bushes that were cut down in the spring. While a lot more light is getting through the understory canopy, not much has started growing among the brush piles other than the stumps.

My little experiment this spring with buckthorn cuttings piled on grass demonstrated that the buckthorn cuttings did effectively supress the grass. When I moved it, I found the earth was mostly bare under the loose branch pile (see below). I'm not sure if it was simply because of the lack of sunlight or if there is a chemical component to the grass supression.

Buckthorn experiment part 1

I've spent a fair bit of time this past month cutting back the buckthorn in the 1995 area. It had half taken over the understory so I decided to cut them back in areas to give other trees and bushes a chance. In doing so I've made quite large piles of twigs and branches and I wonder if it is good for the other plants to have such piles decomposing around them. Here I've made a crude experiment where I've left a pile of buckthorn on some grass outside the forest. The above image was on June 4th when I first piled it there. The image below is today the 30th of June after it had been sitting there for a month of mostly dry weather. I'll check back on it and see how the grass under the pile survived at the end of summer. If buckthorn as it decomposes gives off toxic chemicals perhaps the grass will die back from the pile of twigs.

Natives and invasives

 

These Trilliums have been here for 13 years since they were rescued from an area in Kanata that was to be developed. There were 6 flowers this year, about the same number as I started out with but there are a bunch of plants with small leaves so maybe in a year or two if the rabbits don't take an interest there'll be more. For the past few years it seems like one gets felled each year by a rabbit that has to relearn that trilliums don't taste good. This year the rabbit ate half the flower bud from one plant, which is at least better for the plant than taking it down at the stem.

This year I removed some buckthorns from around these trilliums in order to give them a bit of light. I've recently learned that European Buckthorn is alleopathic, meaning they produce a chemical that supresses the growth and germination of other plants, so I've become much more willing to intervene and remove the buckthorn. I've noticed that buckthorns are pretty effective at suppressing grass. Where they form the edge of the forest the grass dies back from under the bushes. Other trees and bushes are not nearly so effective at keeping the grass at bay; for instance grass can happily grow under sumac.

This flower is Creeping Charlie, an invasive from Europe. I planted this patch, inadvertently, about 6 years ago when I planted a black locust in the 2009 area. In contrast to the trilliums, the creeping charlie is spreading quickly as a dense mat in the shade of the blacklocust. That part of the 2009 area still has grass although the black locust is growing quickly. I expect the creeping charlie will eventually disappear when the grass loses out to trees and bushes. Creeping Charlie seems to like growing in tall grass (there is more of it on the north side of the berm in the long grass) but I've never seen it growing in a proper forest's leaf litter.