Summer at the BEECH (Fagus grandifolia)

 

Sun shines through beech leaves in a hemlock-hardwood climax forest near 

Big Pond, PA, on July 3rd. (Climax forests are the peak of plant succession 
for a given climate and location.) 

When I first became interested in botany, ca 1970,* American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) was a widespread and distinctive tree of mature and old-growth beech-maple and hemlock-hardwood climax forests on soils with a moderate to ample moisture content. They were generally lacking from drought-tolerant oak-hickory forests that dominated the higher, well-drained plateaus of the Allegheny Province crossing from Pennsylvania into New York on the NW side of the Appalachians. Beech has a shallow, wide-spreading root system, whereas hickories have deep tap roots and oaks start with a taproot that is gradually replaced by a dense, bowl-shaped lateral system. 

In the 18th and 19th centuries, beech disappeared from suitable lowlands because early settlers realized the presence of beech indicated good farmland. In the last few decades, beech has been disappearing, like so many other native trees, because it is under attack from foreign invaders. Beech bark disease begins when the European beech-scale insect, Cryptococcus fagisuga, drills into the bark, creating a pathway for infection by Neonectria species of fungi. A canker develops and the tree is killed. A newer infection called Beech Leaf Disease (BLD) appeared in Ohio in 2012 and has been spreading through the northeast. "BLD is identifiable by its primary symptom: dark green bands of thickened tissue between the leaf veins." It's probably just a matter of time until it reaches the Northwoods like the Adirondacks.

Beech leaves are pinnately [feather] veined with each parallel side vein ending in a sharp point on the leaf edge. (June 12th at Junius Ponds, Seneca County, NY, 

before the spread of Beech Leaf Disease)

Beech is readily recognized by its smooth, light-gray bark, unlike the darker and furrowed, scaly or shaggy bark of other forest species. Its alternate leaves are rounded or short-tapered at the base and longer pointed at the tips. A main central leaf vein, or midrib, from the short stem to the tip is pinnately [feather] veined on both sides. Each parallel lateral vein is tipped with a sharp tooth on the leaf edge.

Because American Beech is shade-tolerant, it does well in mature woods. 

This grove in a forest near Big Pond, PA, likely developed from 

a combination of nut dispersal and root sprouts (a.k.a. root "suckers").

Prior to the Pleistocene Ice Age, beech was a transcontinental species from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Post glacially, its range constricted to roughly the eastern half of the United States and north into adjacent Canada. A beech subspecies (or to some botanists, a separate species) is scattered in Mexico. 

more at iNaturalist - American Beech

There is a wide variety of beech photos on Flora of Pennsylvania.

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*On a personal note, my interest in plants, particularly native woodland and wetland wildflowers, is thanks to the Botany Section of the Rochester Academy of Sciences and, by association and extension, to the Bergen Swamp Preservation Society of Western New York. As an assistant scoutmaster handling a variety of outdoor, nature and science merit badges at the time, I rapidly expanded into every facet of natural history. 

Bayberries (Morella sp.), Part 2

 

Song Sparrow atop a bayberry bush with summer leaves, June 26th, 
Assateague Island National Seashore, MD

Northern Bayberry (Morella pensylvanica, syn. Myrica pensylvanica) is native to eastern North America from Canada south along the coast, barely entering North Carolina where it is rare. Scattered outliers can be found westward to Ohio plus one limited population on the north shore of Lake Erie in Ontario, Canada. Southern Bayberry (Morella or Myrica caroliniensis) is sometimes considered co-specific with M. pensylvanica because the two can hybridize where their ranges overlap. From New Jersey south to its limit, Northern Bayberry also hybridizes with Wax Myrtle (Morella cerifera), an evergreen species which replaces it along the southeastern and Gulf coasts to Texas.

Bayberry is generally found growing in open, sandy soils with abundant sunshine. It does well as a "pioneer" species in this nutrient-poor environment by fixing its own atmospheric nitrogen with the help of Frankia spp. bacteria living in the shrub’s roots. This makes bayberry an ideal and beneficial candidate for the inter-dune environment where it enriches the soil and paves the way for other plants. Each plant can spread laterally up to 10 feet by rhizomatous growth. "Although typically considered a dune plant, Northern Bayberry also occurs inland thriving in fallow or abandoned agricultural land, along the borders of woodlands, pine barrens, marshes, swamps, and ponds" (Duncan and Duncan, 1987; Stalter, 1992).

Bayberry can grow to a height of 15 feet with dense branches and foliage making good cover for birds and other small animals plus browse for larger mammals. It is primarily dioecious with male and female flowers on separate plants. "Both male and female flowers are inconspicuous catkins; male flowers are yellowish green while female flowers lack both sepals and petals" [Brand, 2015] which is an indication of wind pollination rather than insect vectors. Mature fruits develop a bluish-gray, waxy coating with a high lipid content that makes them perfect bird food. Large flocks of migrating Tree Swallows will descend on the bushes and devour the fruits during fall migration.* Residual berries become cold-weather food for Yellow-rumped Warblers. The eastern subspecies is called the Myrtle Warbler in reference to the Wax Myrtle, a close relative of bayberry. (Wax Myrtle is a southern coastal plant from New Jersey to Texas.) Myrtle Warblers have special digestive enzymes that allow them to break down and absorb the wax. Most of the other bird species that eat the berries lack these enzymes, so much of the energy potential is wasted. The bayberry, however, still benefits from the bird's dispersal of the seeds.

Myrtle Warblers also eat Poison-ivy berries, as well as bayberry fruits, 

during autumn migration.

Bayberry's alternate leaves average two to three inches long and a half-inch wide. (Large leaves can reach four inches long and up to an inch wide.) The tips are bluntly pointed, sometimes with two or more tiny, lateral teeth, or simply rounded and smooth (entire).  The leaf bases taper like a wedge to a short stem (petiole). The undersides of the leaves have scent glands that are fragrant when crushed. By comparison, Wax Myrtle leaves have aromatic scent glands on both sides and can be more fragrant. Northern Bayberry's leaves are deciduous and drop in the fall. At the southern end of its coastal range, they persist longer and some may last through the winter.

Northern Bayberry plant form and leaves in autumn, 

Assateague Island National Seashore, MD

Northern Bayberry fruit detail in autumn, 

Assateague Island National Seashore, MD

If you have tips or tricks for separating and identifying the three main bayberry species, or anecdotes about these plants, please share them in a comment.

*For a photo and discussion of Tree Swallows and bayberries, 

please see the previous blog.

For more information on iNaturalist, see Northern Bayberry

Tree Swallows and Bayberry

 

Trees Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) descend on Northern Bayberry bushes 

(Morella pensylvanica) to feast on the gray, waxy berries during fall migration.

The shrubs grew in the post-glacial sand deposits around Junius Ponds, NY.

My first recorded encounter with Tree Swallows was August 2nd, 1969, but I didn't pay them special attention until a migrating flock descended on the bayberry bushes around Junius Ponds* on October 12th, 1976. It turns out this behavior is rather famous and was (temporarily?) "immortalized" on an interpretive sign along Assateague Island National Seashore's Life-of-the-Dunes trail. The text read, "Northern bayberry is an abundant interdune shrub that enriches the surrounding soil and helps form protective thickets for wildlife. Many species of birds, especially great flocks of migrating tree swallows, feed on the gray waxy berries. Early colonists made candles from the wax of the 'candleberry bush.' Berries are most visible in early fall." That sign was already deteriorating in 2013, and I hope they've replaced it, but we haven't been back to that trail to see. (Please comment if you know. Our last trip to Delmarva was back in 2016.)

*Junius Ponds is in Seneca County, NY. At the time, the bayberries were part of the Bayberry Environmental Education Center (originally Junius Ponds Nature Center) which is now closed. Since bayberries are a sun-loving shrub, they gradually lost out to natural succession as encroaching trees grew taller and overshadowed them.

All About Birds: Tree Swallows

iNaturalist: Northern Bayberry

Assateague Island National Seashore's Life-of-the-Dunes trail 2013 interpretive sign

Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia)

 

Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), single leaf 

Zurich Bog, Wayne County, NY, June 17th (© Dave Spier)

Round-leaved Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) is a carnivorous bog plant. What look like dewdrops on the tips of red, glandular hairs, are sweet, sticky-mucilage secretions to attract and hold insects. The hairs curl to further hold the prey which is then digested with enzymes to extract nitrogen and minerals. It's an adaption to supplement the nutrient-poor environment of acidic sphagnum bogs. 

Multiple leaves, seven or so like the one pictured above, form a rosette around the base of the plant. The small flowers (not pictured) grow in a one-sided raceme at the top of a stalk rising above the leaves. The flowers usually have five white, rounded petals, although I've seen photos with only four. 

The Round-leaved Sundew, sometimes referred to as the common sundew, is circumboreal in distribution. In the Western Hemisphere it is primarily a northern plant scattered across Alaska and Canada with disjointed coastal range extensions south to California in the West and down the Appalachians to the Gulf of Mexico in the East. It is more common around the Great Lakes and Northeast into Canada where it grows in sunny acidic bogs, but it also can grow in fens, marshes and wet sand. In New York, it's considered exploitably vulnerable on IUCN's red list.

iNaturalist: Round-leaved Sundew

USDA: range map [zoom in for counties]

(photo at top ref. # 806-25)

Water Avens (Geum rivale)

Water Avens (Geum rivale), nodding flowers at Zurich Bog, Wayne County, NY, May 30th (© Dave Spier)

Water Avens (Geum rivale), a.k.a. Purple Avens, is another native member of the Rose family (Rosaceae) in the Great Lakes states and the Northeast as well as the Rocky Mountains, much of Canada and the temperate regions of Eurasia. It prefers wetlands with full or partial sun including slow-draining bogs, fens, pond edges, deciduous swamps, stream or river sides and wet meadows. It can hybridize with its close relative, Geum urbanum, as well as two other Geum species.

The half-inch, initially-nodding flowers have five yellowish petals mostly hidden under purple or maroon sepals that form the enclosing calyx. The flowers are set up to be pollinated mainly by bees but also flies and beetles. As a last resort it will self-pollinate. Water Avens has a long-flowering period, usually June to August. The resulting burr-like seeds get caught in the fur of rabbits and small mammals who do the job of dispersal. Rhizomal growth can maintain a colony and sometimes leads to dense clusters but expansion is otherwise limited by this method. 

If you boil the rhizomes, the tea has a faint taste of chocolate, hence another common name for the plant, "chocolate root." Native Americans used it medicinally to treat coughs and colds in children as well as dysentery and other ailments of the digestive tract and malaria. This led to the folk-name "Indian chocolate." Unlike the roots, the leaves are mildly bitter due to the presence of tannins.

The large compound basal leaves have heavily-toothed leaflets ranging in size from a small lateral pair toward the bottom, medium in the middle and finally a single, large, often-lobed terminal leaflet. These are interspersed with tiny leaflets along the main leaf stem (rachis). Each flower stem arises from the axil of a sharply-lobed or palmately compound, upper leaf with three points.

iNaturalist: Water Avens 

Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix)

Poison Sumac (Toxicodendron vernix) leaves and flowers at one of the Junius Ponds, natural post-glacial kettle lakes ringed by boggy wetlands in Seneca County, NY, June 24th

 

Poison Sumac, a.k.a. Swamp Sumach (Toxicodendron vernix, syn. Rhus vernix), like Poison Ivy and all of their relatives, belongs to the Cashew family (Anacardiaceae). Beware -- like Poison Ivy, the entire plant contains a resin called urushiol that can cause an itchy skin rash (contact dermatitis) on sensitive people. It's more toxic than Poison Ivy and Poison Oak due to differences in the chemical structure of the urushiol. Inhaling smoke from burning Poison Sumac can cause life-threatening pulmonary edema.

My first encounter with Poison Sumac was fortunate in the sense that I had a long macro lens and never touched the plant. It was growing in a boggy wetland ringing a natural post-glacial kettle-lake where I couldn't reach it. It wasn't until I got the slides back and tried to identify the plant that I realized my "luck."

The leaves are alternate on the branches and each is compound with 3-6 pairs of opposite leaflets plus one stalked terminal leaflet. The oval leaflets are smooth-edged (entire) and abruptly-pointed at the tips and taper to short stalks at the base. The leaves often form arching, umbrella-like clusters by crowding at the branch ends. 

Clusters of small, yellow-green flowers rise in loose panicles from the leaf axils (where the leaves emerge from the branch) in early summer. The flowers turn into whitish, beadlike fruits, each with a single seed much like a cherry or olive (both of which are totally unrelated and safe to eat). The weight of the berries makes each cluster droop. Like other sumacs and Poison Ivy, the seeds are spread by birds which are immune to the effects of ingesting the berries.

The scientific name, Toxicodendron vernix, translates to "toxic-tree varnish."

Other, non-toxic species of sumacs grow in drier, upland habitats.

(iNaturalist -- Poison Sumac)

Indian Cucumber-root (Medeola virginiana)

 

Indian Cucumber-root (Medeola virginiana), in the Lily family, is an eastern species, growing primarily up through the Appalachians, the mountains of New York and New England, and north into Canada.  This one was found at Cranberry Lake, in the northern NY Adirondacks, on October 8th (from my archives). It's a forest wildflower with edible rhizomes that resemble the taste and odor of cucumbers. The Iroquois also used it medicinally. Sometimes mice eat the seeds and berries. 

[Canon digital Rebel, EF 18-200mm zoom at 50mm, 1/125 sec., f/11, ISO 200, electronic flash, Center-weighted Average metering.] Ref. # D075319