I cut my teeth on the conventional theory of invasive plants and animals --- they outcompete native species and cause a decline in diversity.  Species like kudzu are able to run amok in our climate because they have no native diseases and predators to keep them under control, so they can swallow up whole hillsides.  The solution is eradication --- rip out every kudzu plant you see.

Lately, though, I've read several thought-provoking analyses of the invasive situation.  In Edible Forest Gardens, Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier assert that invasives only gain a foothold if the ecosystem is already out of whack.  According to these permaculturalists, the answer is not to spend weeks weeding Japanese stiltgrass out of your woods, but to discover what man-made change has made the invasive able to take over in the first place.  In their eyes, my original view of invasive control is like sticking a band-aid on an ecosystem suffering from chicken pox.

Hugh Raffles' recent New York Times article considers invasives in yet another light.  Raffles looks at species over a geologic time frame and reminds us that many of our "native" plants and animals originated elsewhere.  Nature is constantly in flux, wiping out species that aren't able to deal with changing conditions while replacing them with hardier cousins.  Taking a purely preservationist view of the earth --- trying to turn our current species assemblage into a static museum --- is bound to fail because species would migrate and die out even if we hadn't stirred the pot.

I think that both of these modern analyses of invasive species have merit...and problems.  I love the idea of looking for and trying to fix the underlying problems that promote the spread of invasives, but what if the problem is forest fragmentation and can't be dealt with on the personal scale?  Should we just throw up our hands and let our biodiverse woodlands turn into a monoculture?

And although Hugh Raffles' has a very good point about species flux over the course of geologic time, it's also true that extinction rates are currently at an all-time high, presumably because of human meddling.  Raffles' argument is also strongly colored by his recent experience becoming an American citizen, and I think that he needs to be a bit more careful about drawing parallels between people immigrating and whole species moving in.

When it comes right down to it, my difference of opinion with all three of these commentators is responsibility --- I think that humanity is ethically bound to take responsibility for the environmental devastation we've caused.  Looking at the bigger picture is always a good idea, but not if the exercise enables us to say "that kudzu-coated hillside isn't really our fault."  We broke it, so we should do everything we can to fix it, especially if we can come up with innovative answers like Peter Becker's Japanese Knotweed elimination campaign.

My eyes are always peeled for the first spring flowers, but this year, I seem to be more interested in the insects on those flowers.  Perhaps it's because I'm obsessed with chicken foraging, and chickens love bugs, or maybe I'm just starting to get a real inkling for how important insects are in the landscape.

Except for our honeybees, I hadn't seen a single insect until about two weeks ago when the Commas/Question Marks (I never look closely enough to tell the difference) and the Mourning Cloaks started flying.  Within days, the Spring Azures had joined them, and this week I even saw big, showy Tiger and Zebra Swallowtails visiting my manure pile.

Butterflies are the prettiest early spring insects, but they aren't alone out there. When the hepaticas started blooming a week and a half ago, tiny little beetles were busy collecting pollen, and this week I started seeing Greater Bee Flies hovering around flowers.

I love how in sync the natural world is.  Bee flies show up one day; the next day, our first nectarine flowers open.  I get bit by a mosquito one day; the next evening a bat is swooping through the air gathering dinner.  It's all a reminder that the beautiful spring flowers we love so much didn't evolve for human enjoyment.  Flowers are here for the bees, so we need to protect our pollinators if we want the show to go on.

Outside the small manicured zone where steam lodge guests generally hang out, the area around Cozumel's steam lodge was clearly old farmland turning back into young forest.  I could tell that the earth needed a little love --- the further I wandered, the more it felt like abandoned city lots, full of debris, where dirt feels dirty instead of succulent with life.

Just like similar scrubby areas in the U.S., there are inhabitants who enjoy the early successional zone in the Cozumel forest.  The Magnolia Warbler on the right was flitting around looking for insects amid a morning-glory-choked tree while the hummingbird above kept catching my eye throughout the day as it visited cultivated flowers.  I didn't really get a good enough shot to be sure, but I think the hummingbird might be a species found only on Cozumel --- the Cozumel Fork-tailed Emerald --- which would make a visit to the steam lodge very much worthwhile for serious birders looking to add a notch to their life list.

The real natural beauties near the steam lodge, though, were the butterflies, and they were too quick for my camera.  While Petrus and Jose Luis filled the lodge with hot rocks, I saw a big blue butterfly (perhaps a Morpho), fly directly toward the entrance before veering away at the last instant.  Later, when we emerged, two long-winged black butterflies with a red and yellow spot on each pair of wings fluttered around us in air that suddenly seemed full of light.  Clearly, Petrus's care of the young earth was paying off and Cozumel's natural inhabitants were rebounding.

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The ruins at Coba were stunning, but my very favorite part of the visit (and of the entire vacation) was running across a group of army ants.  I've read about army ants for over a decade, about how these masses of insects march through the forest consuming other insects, lizards, small birds, and anything else they can get their hands on.  More recently, I learned that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of species of "camp followers" are associated with army ants.  These hangers-on take advantage of prey that flies out of reach of the ants, but which can be quickly consumed by larger, winged predators.

It was these camp follower birds who first caught my eye.  At the quieter, southern end of Coba, several birds were hanging out at the edge of the woods and seemed relatively impervious to my approach.  I snuck closer, trying to snap a shot, and saw a Woodcreeper (top photo) working its mouth like crazy, trying to get a cricket to go down its gullet.  Next, I noticed two Brown Jays watching the ground, and one darted off the branch to snag another insect.

Lower down, a brilliant orange-brown Rufous Piha reminded me of our Wood Thrushes.  Before I knew it, a real Virginia native popped out of the undergrowth --- a Hooded Warbler had flown hundreds of miles to winter in the Yucatan and was enjoying its army-ant-flushed dinner.

By the time I tired of photographing tame and unwary bird life, over half an hour had passed and Mark had wandered off.  As the Mastercard commercial goes, "Entrance to Coba, $5.  Experiencing an army ant foray --- priceless."

In its hey day, 900 to 1400 years ago, Coba was a massive Mayan city of 55,000 people.  Raised white roads (sacbeob) linked parts of the city together and also extended as far as 60 miles to other population centers.  The city of Coba was located on the shore of a lake, which is quite unusual in the Yucatan, and is along the dividing line between drier thorn forest to the north and wetter rainforest to the south --- an ecological paradise.

Today, you can explore the ruins at your leisure by walking down the newly cleared sacbeob (or by renting a bicycle or taking a ride in a bicycle taxi.)  Although the site is full of tourists, they feel like a different ilk than those you'd find elsewhere in the Yucatan.  Most are European, and they kept their voices low and reverent (and I couldn't understand a world they were saying, so I just assumed they were talking about history and culture instead of whether to stop at Wal-Mart on their way back to Cancun.)

Best yet, except for clearing broad avenues between ruins, the management left most of the native tree cover in place.  If you take one of the many uncharted side paths for a short distance, you can leave all of the tourists behind and imagine you're walking through the jungle during Mayan times.  Granted, the trees are nearly all young secondary growth, but here and there an ancient behemoth dominates the landscape, and in between there are all kinds of smaller plants and animals to keep you occupied.  In later posts, I'll showcase the amazing fauna that seemed quite happy to have their pictures taken, so here I'll just mention the dozens of epiphytes that kept me snapping photos for the first half hour before we were able to tear ourselves away from the entrance.  (The epiphytes are pictured a little further down on the page.)

The modern day site of Coba is set up in a Y, with the entrance (and medium-sized ruin complex) at the west end, a junction (and small ruin complex) after about a half mile walk, and then another half mile walk in each direction to reach the other two main sites.  On the south end of the Y (taking a right at the junction), the Macanxoc group consists of 8 stelae --- huge stone tablets upon which historical events were inscribed.  I highly recommend starting in this direction since it is much less travelled and allows you to get a real feel for the natural history of the area without hordes of tourists boxing you in.  Then backtrack to the junction and take the other avenue, heading northeast, and you'll end up at the Nohoch Mul group, the tourist mecca --- a huge pyramid you can climb to look out over the forest.  During our visit, we felt like the strolls between ruins were walking meditation, and by the time we ascended the pyramid, we were nearing enlightenment (marred only by the crowds at the end.)

Although you could walk the entire site in an hour or two, we spent more like four hours there, which allowed us to gently stroll and really experience everything.  You can hire a tour guide at the entrance, but we preferred to just bring a book (Mexico: A Hiker's Guide to Mexico's Natural History has a short chapter on Coba) and immerse ourselves in the site.

Although cruise ships try to scare you away from booking outside tours, we're coming to believe that you get twice the experience for the same money by going on your own.  For $59 apiece, we could have spent two hours each way packed into a tour bus with fifty other people and then spent a scant two hours at the site in a press of humanity that would have shielded us from the real world.  Instead, we spent $140 to hire a private driver (Anthony, who is an employee of Vicente Rodriguez, who you can contact by email at ridetravelcancun@hotmail.com) who picked us up at Calica and got us to the site in a mere hour and fifteen minutes, leaving us double the time to explore the ruins.  Granted, we did have to pay around $20 for parking and admission, but contrary to what various internet sources report, we had no trouble using American money for this.  Anthony let me practice my Spanish on him, telling me about his garden (banana and orange trees, chile peppers and tomatoes), his three kids, and his home in the outskirts of Cancun.  And at the end he led us to a buffet restaurant overlooking the lake, where we tasted authentic Mayan food for $12 apiece.

Our experience at Coba, although compeletely different, matches and perhaps exceeds our glorious day at Serpent Mound a year and a half ago.  The combination of nature, walking, and glorious ruins make this my top recommended side trip in the Yucatan.  Plan an entire day, or two if possible, and go --- you won't regret it.

The first time I found a gentian flower, I kept checking on it day after day, hoping the flower would open up enough for me to identify it.  Little did I know that the bud-like flowers are the easiest way to identify gentians.

Gentian flowers have evolved to be pollinated by one of our most important native pollinators --- bumblebees.  These hefty insects are able to push their way into gentian flowers, and I assume that the exclusion of other pollinators makes gentian pollination more efficient.

I found this lovely bloom along the Chimney Rock Trail on High Knob a few weeks ago.  Although I got too excited to take photos once I got to the top, I highly recommend this half mile trail because of the large sandstone cave at the peak of the hill.  To get there, park at the Bark Camp Lake day use area and walk a short way down the road toward the boat ramp.  Before you reach the boat ramp, you'll see the trail branching off on your left.  Since the trail is a loop, you'll see the trail branching off again a few yards further down the road.  The trail is well built, with lots of switchbacks that make the climb feel insignificant.

Although it's not as photogenic as my other natural interests, I have to admit that I was intrigued when a deer turned up dead in our neighbor's field.  The first morning, there were just a couple of turkey vultures on the carcass, but by that evening a dozen vultures had been joined by a couple of loudly croaking ravens.

A day later, the scavengers were gone, and the deer presented a much lower profile, presumably eaten down to skin and bones.  At the 48 hour mark, there was absolutely nothing left --- something larger must have found the bones and dragged them off to gnaw on at its leisure.

Decomposition is an awe-inspiring process, isn't it?

The epiphyte flowers Maggie was constantly collecting from the trail all seemed to be cast from a similar mold.  Most of the blooms had long tubes and were either pink, orange, or red --- clear signs of hummingbird pollination.

Scientists estimate that about a sixth of Monteverde's plants are pollinated by these tiny birds, and whole families seem to have placed their reproductive potential into the beaks of hummers.  Ericaceae, Gesneriaceae, Bromeliaceae, and --- on the forest floor --- Heliconiaceae are all hummingbird pollinated.

As you ascend the mountain above Monteverde, hummingbird-pollinated flowers become more and more numerous.  Cooler temperatures at high elevations make it tough for insects to fly, so hummingbirds are the best pollinator around (although bats and hawkmoths are also common pollinators.)  So it's no wonder Monteverde's cloud forest floor is littered with pink and orange tubes, leftover from yesterday's hummingbird feasts.


3-26-01
Today we got our housing contract made --- quite an ordeal, but we did it.  The contract even explains that I have one surname since I'm from the US --- apparently everyone here has two.  The lawyer was very unfair to us, and I had to make him go back and change part of the contract, but after 2.5 hours, it was done.

Anna:

After spending some time in Monteverde's cloud forest, I returned to the lower elevation of the town with new questions on my mind.  For example --- why were thorny trunks prevalent on trees lower down, but not up in the cloud forest?

Although epiphytes can benefit the host tree, too many epiphytes put the host in real danger of splitting or falling under the added weight.  A cloud forest tree has to perform a constant juggling act --- a few epiphytes are a nice addition to its canopy ecosystem, but the tree doesn't want to make its surface too conducive to epiphyte growth.  And the latter is precisely what thorns would do.  Just imagine how easy it would be for falling leaves to be snagged by thorns and rot into dirt, providing the perfect niche for epiphyte seeds to germinate.  Cloud forest trees just can't risk thorny trunks.

At lower elevations, though, ecosystem variables shift in favor of thorns.  The extended dry season makes it difficult for epiphytes to survive, but also means that trees have more to lose if they are munched by hungry predators.  As a result, many trees in the seasonal forest grow thorns, while those in the cloud forest do not.


Maggie:

3-22-01
We set off to the library with our empty bookbags 5 minutes away walking. We picked up an old version of the Fanny Farmer cookbook, told our news about the house, and departed for the supercoop. We had piled several potatoes and some fruit in my hat before realizing that there are baskets. With thorough price comparisons, we took the basics of the kitchen for only 26 bucks.

When we got home we merrily put away the groceries. Then I started supper while Anna assembled a bookshelf in her room. Supper was served: spaghetti with vegetables and our $1 pineapple for desert. Which brings me here to the living room where the sun is just almost disappared from view. Only with time, the warm orange ball will rise again.

Anna:

5-10-01
Clambering around on a fallen tree laden with epiphytes, I realized that tropical rainforests aren't as devoid of small herbs as they seem to be --- the herbs are just all up in the trees.  Epiphytes live in a very different land where competition for light is rather irrelevant and the problems are finding water and nutrients and clinging to the branch for dear life.  Because while some larger epiphytes can survive for up to two years if knocked from their perch, a tiny Peperomia would be quickly lost in the shuffle.

Epiphytes are the most striking feature of the cloud forest.  The phrase literally means "upon plant" and refers to species of all shapes and sizes that perch on the trunks or branches of trees.  Here in temperate U.S.A., epiphytes are limited to crusts of lichen and mosses, but in tropical areas with a nearly constant rainy season or daily heavy fogs, epiphytes can tear down branches with their weight.  A little lower down the mountain, the Pacific slope seasonal forest has a pronounced dry season, so epiphytic plants tend to dry up and are much less diverse around the elevation of the town.  You have to travel to the peak to see the real epiphyte circus.

You might think that trees would do their best to shed epiphytes, but it turns out that epiphytes do their part to keep their hosts healthy.  The pockets of dirt held in place by epiphytes stimulate the tree to grow crown roots out of their trunks and branches, allowing the trees to suck up some of the nitrogen and water captured by the epiphytes from the surrounding fogs.  In return, the crown roots keep the little clumps of soil from sliding off the side of the tree, which provides a better habitat for epiphyte seed germination.

Although the diversity of Monteverde epiphytes is staggering, once you break them down to the family level, there are just a few main contenders.  Orchids and Piperaceae enjoy living on the outer branches of trees where their succulent leaves help these epiphytes put up with water stress.  In the sheltered center of the canopy, bromeliads and members of Ericaceae colonize the larger branches that can sustain these generally heftier plants' weight.  Finally, the upper trunks of trees are often populated with aroids and members of Gesneriaceae, epiphytes whose fruits are dispersed by birds and mammals perched on the first branches.

Of course, no post on epiphytes would be complete without a quick mention of hemiepiphyes.  Strangler figs are the classic example of this category of plants that begin life as epiphytes, then send down roots and finish their career as terrestrial trees.  In the Monteverde area, Clusia was another extremely common hemiepiphyte, its unique leaves resulting in Quaker children giving it the nickname "Mickey Mouse plant."

(Please note that most but not all of the plants included in this post are epiphytes.  I've thrown in a few species that are members of common epiphytic families, but which grow on the ground.)

Maggie:
3-22-01
I am writing by the light of the setting sun through our large windows in our newly rented house. Yesterday, Anna drew a graph of our emotional ups and downs. She probably should have waited for today.







Anna:
I nearly didn't survive this day.  I tried to call Silvia [our new landlady] in the morning, but couldn't get through and didn't want to ask repeatedly to use the hotel phone.  So we took a chance --- packed up and checked out and set off down the road.  Surprisingly, I had the same joyous feeling of being a vagrant that I always feel when moving to a new place.  Even though the Mammoth was packed to the brim with library books, I still had a spring in my step.





Maggie:
Last night the phone line was cut off when Anna was going to ask Sylvia if we could move in today. So after our breakfast, we packed up and began our journey to the Supercoop [grocery store]. The walk was mostly painless despite the heavy bags. When we arrived at the Supercoop, we attempted to call Sylvia, but failing, we walked on to our beautiful yellow home.








Anna:
The house sits on a hill, down which we can look at neighbors, conifers, eucalypts (!), and a row of windswept, native giants.  On the south side of the house lies a woods with trails, which may be quite extensive.  As I write this, I'm stiting on my thermarest in the living room, looking downhill --- west --- at the sun setting behind the trees.  But then I wasn't so peaceful.  I was worried about getting the house, and I jittered around a bit.






Maggie:
We lay in the sunny yard until Sylvia and Tino (the worker who greeted us with a machete on our first arrival) came walking up the road. Another "Anna" came with them, also to look at the house.











Anna:
At 11:50 am, Silvia arrived and gave us the tour and didn't seem to find it too odd that we had all our stuff here and wanted to move right in.  But she put us in a state by going back to wanting us to pay utilities, which is, quite simply, over my budget.









Maggie:
My Anna repeatedly asked if Sylvia would pay the utilities, only to receive avoidant answers or no answer at all. "I have friends who are renting smaller houses for $500."

I can barely see the page in this dim light but the beat of a neighbor's drum is guiding me along the page. Mostly the house is quiet. It is blessed with its very own woods. Also there is a shed where Sylvia's husband used to make instruments such as violins.

Anna:
After Silvia left us, Maggie pounded granola against the wall and I was generally angry.  We didn't unpack, but sat, playing cards, while waiting for her to return with sheets and blankets and kitchen stuff she'd promised us.

When Silvia returned, my game plan was in place.  I asked her a hundred questions, including things like --- what are those cracks in the ceiling?  Will the roof leak?  What's with the piece of wood which blew off the roof?  Then came the ultimatum --- we can't take the house if we have to pay utilities.

The answer wasn't perfect.  For the first month, we won't pay utilities, then Silvia will look at the electricity and water bills and we'll renegotiate.





Maggie:
Anna even made it clear that we would not pay for utilities the first month. Only after we pointed out every flaw in the house. Luckily a piece of roof fell off just before she arrived. Reluctantly, she agreed on our rental offer.

Soon after she left, we exploded with joy. I attempted to cartwheel in the hall. The bare house grew in our minds, acquiring a tremendous beauty.

Anna:

Although my last many posts have been about the Pacific slope seasonal forest around Monteverde, most people don't go to Monteverde to see this area.  Instead, the town is merely a staging ground for the cloud forest that sits atop the mountain.

Cloud forests are found on tropical mountains, where the peaks drift up into the clouds.  The copious moisture from constant fogginess eases the dry season, allowing huge quantities of mosses and other epiphytes to colonize the trees.  Due to the uniqueness of the cloud forest ecosystem, many endemic species tend to be found in such areas, making these spots a mecca for ecotourists.

From a less scientific standpoint, cloud forests are simply beautiful.  Imagine a forest constantly cloaked in fog, the trees turning into silhouettes, and you'll understand why thousands of people flock to Monteverde every year.

The images in this post are from a subset of the Monteverde cloud forest --- the elfin forest.  Although the mountain above 4,900 feet at Monteverde is all considered cloud forest, only the windy peaks are home to elfin forest.  There, trees are dwarfed and gnarled by the weather, and the forest captures even more moisture from the clouds than do the trees in the main section of the cloud forest, so epiphytes are particularly numerous.  The combination makes for vivid images and (from a botanical standpoint) easy access to the fascinating epiphytes that are often invisible above your head.

Our first trip to the cloud forest took us straight up into the elfin forest at Cerros Amigos (aka, the TV towers) --- elevation 6,043 feet.  The road up to the towers was very steep and I gasped my way to the top.


 Maggie:

3-7-01
I write quite literally from the clouds. It is chilly, so I am sitting inside the black bag for Anna’s bookbag. It was a long long walk from the hotel to the cloud forest, mostly uphill. I jogged a few short stretches. Some tourists saw me and were impressed.

I've been writing for weeks now about the Pacific slope seasonal forest around Monteverde, but I suspect you still can't imagine the whole picture.  What does a slightly dry rainforest look like on the side of a Costa Rican mountain?  I hope that the image above will put the Piper bushes and aroids in perspective.

As you can see, the activity in a rainforest is mostly high in the air, so I often contented myself with drawing flowers and fruits that had fallen to the forest floor.  The rest of the images in this post are Pacific slope seasonal forest detritus, mostly from trees that didn't quite make the cut to be included in my post about trees of Monteverde's Pacific slope seasonal forest.  Enjoy!

The Pica-pica (Mucuna urens) was one of the first plants I drew in Monteverde, and it remained one of my favorites.  With so much of the Pacific slope seasonal forest invisible above my head, I could appreciate a vine that dropped its flowers and fruits down on long stems for easy drawing.  Of course, Pica-pica didn't have botanists in mind when it developed its dangling flowers.  Instead, the adaptation is a vine version of cauliflory, ensuring that flowers are easily accessible to pollinating bats and hummingbirds.

Although Pica-pica and Ojo de Buey were common names for Mucuna urens in Monteverde, the plant is better known as Sea Bean.  The air-filled pods float downstream to the ocean, where they may drift for months before washing up on a foreign shore and germinating.  No wonder Pica-pica can be found throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Since I'm about to move on to the cloud forest next week, I wanted to toss in some extra images of three other common Pacific slope seasonal forest vines.  Take a close look at the Passiflora biflora leaves opposite and you'll see tiny dots that mimick butterfly eggs --- the plant's way of saying "This leaf is already occupied.  Move along and feed your kids on somebody else!"




3-27-01
Today the horrible finally happened --- my watch died.  It actually upset me more than it should have.  After all, it's only a watch.  But I haven't gone a day without it for 5 (6?) years and it's really a part of me.  I depend on it a lot and will probably get a cheap watch with date and time to eke me through these last few months.

Later, I did in fact come up with a cheap watch, but it barely kept time.  My relentless records of time in my journal and sketchbooks became vaguer, and one day I accidentally showed up at a lecture nearly an hour early.  Perhaps I had finally discovered the Central American concept of time?

Although no single tree species dominates a tropical forest, the Avocado Family (Lauraceae) contains many prominant forest trees in the Monteverde area.  With 66 species in the area, Lauraceae is also the most diverse family of trees at the elevation of the town.

I didn't notice lauraceous fruits until near the end of my stay in Monteverde because every species in the family fruits simultaneously at the beginning of the rainy season.  Once they started falling, though, I loved picking up lauraceous fruits as I walked along the road and trails.  Each one was like a tiny avocado --- one large seed in the center surrounded by firm, green flesh.

The fruits are too large to be gulped down by small, generalist birds and have instead evolved to be eaten by bigger specialists, like quetzals, bellbirds, guans, and toucans.  The elongated shape of lauraceous fruits helps them slide down the larger gullets of their favored dispersal agents, who are the lucky recipients of flesh rich in proteins and lipids.

As a budding botany geek, I was intrigued to learn that Lauraceae and Piperaceae are both members of the plant subclass Magnoliidae, an ancient line of plants that is considered to be neither monocots nor true dicots.  Scientists think that Magnoliids may have been among the earliest flowering plants to evolve, which would explain their pantropical distribution.

Geekery aside, you're probably more familiar with the Avocado Family than you think.  In addition to providing us with the oily fruits that give the family its name, Lauraceae includes Cinnamon, Spicebush, and Sassafras.  Pluck a Sassafras fruit this fall and tear it apart to see the exact same kind of fruits I drew with such glee in Costa Rica.


6/27/01
While Maggie glowed in the embrace of the expatriate American Quakers, I withdrew from the machismo of the Ticos (native Costa Ricans.)  Central American culture separates women quite neatly into the Virgin or the Whore, and by wandering around without a man (and leaving my bra at home), I was placed in the latter category.  As I drew plants up in the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, Tico workers would walk by whistling and leering.  In retrospect, the problem was largely my own fault --- I was young and figured the world would bend around me, but a traveler is obligated to bend around the world.

Later, I discovered that Monteverde culture had become much more supportive of strong women in the last 35 years.  In the 1970s, 80% of the women in Monteverde were illiterate, and nearly none worked outside the home.  Then, in 1982, eight women artists came together to produce CASEM --- Cooperativa de Artesanas de Santa Elena y Monteverde.  The gallery coop gives women a space to show their arts and crafts, in the process channeling tourism dollars into the womens' families and also building the womens' self esteem.  If you ever make the trek to Monteverde, be sure to stop in and see the handicrafts of local Ticas.

Anna:

While walking down the Hidden Valley Nature Trail, we stumbled across a line of ants carrying bits and pieces of leaves on their backs.  The ants were following paths brushed clean of any debris, as if a gush of water had flowed through and washed 4 to 5 inches of ground clear.

Maggie and I joined the line of ants and soon came upon a huge mound, about twenty feet wide and three feet tall.  The mound was clearly the center of the leaf-cutter ant operation, with trails radiating out in all directions from their home.  I tried to follow a trail to its end, but eventually gave up --- the ants travel long distances, often running along horizontal tree limbs in addition to their cleanly swept trails.  I decided that ants must prefer certain tree species to go to so much trouble when they could use the leaves of the trees growing right out of the mound.

Costa Rica is home to two genera and several species of leaf-cutter ants, but a handy pamphlet (The Fabulous Leafcutters, by Amy Mertl) explained that the most common species is Atta cephalotes.  Just like the Azteca ants farm mealybugs, the leaf-cutter ants farm fungi --- they carry home leaves, chew the plants up to feed the fungi, then eat the gongylidia produced on the fungal strands.  When new queens leave to form their own colony, the queens carry a little bit of fungus with them, just as the first European colonists to the Americas brought along seeds of their vegetable crops.

Later, I watched another colony of leaf-cutter ants gnawing circles out of an elephant ear leaf.  An ant stood on the bit of leaf it was biting off, then reached out its legs to grab onto the main part of the leaf just in time so that excised section and ant didn't fall together to the ground.  The leaves remaining on the plant looked like someone had gone after them with a hole-puncher.

Although Maggie and I thought the leaf-cutters were unbelievably cool, farmers are less impressed.  Every day, a colony of leafcutter ants can harvest as many leaves as an adult cow, and the ants are quite fond of banana, sugar cane, and corn.  Scientists estimate that leaf-cutter ants harvest 12 to 17% of Costa Rica's total leaf production every year --- and I thought our deer problem was bad!

I did have a small run in with the leaf-cutters after months of watching their work.  During the rainy season, I often carried home plant specimens to draw indoors, but one day I noted:

4-1-01
Yesterday was a glorious and horrible day --- nearly more than I could bear.  It was the day of La Caminata, another of the Friends' School's impressive fundraiser ideas.  The concept --- La Caminata was a 12.5 kilometer walk up to San Geraldo Mirador, from which, on good days, one can see the Arenal Volcano.  We didn't get to see the volcano --- too misty --- but we did see the lake at its base through the mist, saw lovely new scenery, and had a ball getting there.

The money-making aspect was pretty simple.  We either had to pay an entrance fee ($3 for adults, $1.50 for kids), or get sponsors who would pay a certain amount for each kilometer we walked.  Maggie and I just paid to get in, but most of the kids were sponsored.

Then we set off.  After we'd completed each kilometer, we found someone sitting by the side of the road to stamp our sheet and give us a treat.  The treats were delicious, but were eventually our downfall as they shot us into the worst sugar reaction I'd ever had.  The treats --- home-dried bananas (chewy), Snickers mini-bars, hard candy, soft candy, oranges, various homemade cookies, lemonaide, pineapple, watermelon, brownies, and dried pineapple.  Perhaps you can see why we overdid it?

It was a long walk, especially when we started going uphill, and I nearly didn't make it up one steep slope.  I scared myself by starting to wheeze --- the elevation? --- and had to stop and rest a bit.  At the top, we walked into the mist, wished on a white horse on a hill, and pressed on.

At the end of our journey, Maggie entertained the kids by juggling oranges while I lounged (and was glad we stopped in Santa Elena on the way to get our weekly shopping done.)  Then the man who'd walked the whole thing on stilts eventually showed up, it started to pour, we ate up the rest of the cookies, and we caught a ride home.


Maggie:

4-1-01
Last night Anna and I were in such a physical crash from all the walking and sweets of the caminata. We were in a sad, sad state. We had the type of headaches that disable you from moving. So at first I sat reading while Anna slaved away at making stew for today's potluck and our dinner. When night fell, Anna was reading and I had made the great journey into the kitchen to sit at the table and stare out the windows. It was raining beautifully. It soothed my headache to watch a drip from the roof.

Quite frankly, Anna and I felt just about as close to being stoned (under the influence of drugs) as we have ever in our lives. The combination of walking 12.5 Kilometers, being hot and sweating, and eating way too many sugary things did us in.

So eventually the stew was ready, and I talked Anna into eating some even though she said her stomach was upset. She had had an Ibuprofin and I had not. So we sat, attempting to keep as still as possible to prevent pangs of headaches, but giggling uncontrollably. Some of the things that we said that cracked me up were, "I've run out of chunks." (We were eating the stew with our fingers because as Anna put it, it was too difficult to manuver a fork. As I put it, "we might hurt ourselves with forks." In the mental institute that I had ran away from to get here we would not be allowed sharp objects due to the plain spastic silliness.)

I think it was Anna who said, "if you are real quiet, you can hear the yogurt talking". But for sure, we were real good at meditation last night. At one point I sat on the kitchen counter, almost in the sink, just being still.

While ants are numerous sidekicks in just about every habitat I've explored, these insects are main characters in Monteverde ecology.  Stay tuned for a post about the most obvious Costa Rican ants --- leaf-cutter ants --- in the near future.  For now, I want to share the story of the most fascinating case of symbiosis I've ever seen.

The common Cecropia found in open areas all around Monteverde is home to a three way mutualism that benefits the tree, the ants, and the mealybugs farmed by the ants.  At first, the tree does most of the work, providing hollows within its trunk for an ant colony to move into, then feeding the ants with nutrient-rich Mullerian bodies attached to the petioles of its leaves.

The Azteca ants never leave the Cecropia tree once they move in, so they farm mealybugs to round out their diet.  The mealybugs feed on the phloem of the Cecropia and the ants lap up the honeydew from the mealybugs, so in a way the tree is still providing for the ants, albeit secondhand.

But once an ant colony becomes established, the tables turn and the partnership becomes more equal.  With their food and housing provided, Azteca ants have plenty of time on their hands to protect their host tree.  The ants quickly chew through vines that try to climb up the Cecropia's trunk, and they destroy epiphytes sprouting on the tree's branches.  Azteca ants also attack and drive away herbivores nibbling on the tree's leaves, especially the devastating leaf-cutter ants I'll write about soon.  Although less obvious to the lay observer, Cecropia's pet ants even feed the tree --- the frass they leave behind in the center of the trunk is sucked up by the Cecropia and provides 93% of the tree's nitrogen intake.

In fact, when scientists add up the pluses and minuses of the interaction, the disadvantages are few and all three species come out winners.  In nature, real symbiosis is rare, but the Cecropia-Azteca-mealybug story seems to be a tale of true partnership.

Although we felt lucky to be able to take part in a ready-made community during our stay in Monteverde, I sometimes felt like I wasn't holding up my side of the bargain.  If I had been an Azteca ant, the Monteverde Cecropia probably would have kicked me out as not worth its while.

5-5-01
Today was a pretty bad day.  Well it's only 3:30, but if the day is not quite over, it ought to be.

First came Meeting.  Tyse (our neighbor's dog) has broken loose, with chain trailing, and followed us there, despite me yelling at him.  He whined and barked during Meeting so that a lady went out and sat with him the whole time, which made me feel horrible.  Then, during announcements, he started up again, and I took him home.

It was also potluck day, and I had made a pudding.  The dessert gelled last night, but by the time I got it to Meeting, the dish looked horrible, and of course no one ate it.

The day left me feeling like I have nothing to contribute to the community --- all I do is cause problems.

Anna:

I bumped into my first strangler fig while in the Australian rainforest, and I was blown away by the intricate network of roots that made up the tree's trunk.  I learned that a strangler fig begins its life when a bird eats a fig fruit and deposits the seeds high in a canopy tree of another species.  The baby fig first sends up leaves of its own, then drops roots down along the trunk of the host tree until they reach the forest soil.

Then begins the struggle.  Usually, a young tree would have to wait patiently in the shadow of a canopy tree until the mammoth fell to give the youngster a little light and space to grow.  But the strangler fig has cheated and begun at the top, so it is able to overshadow the canopy of the host tree and girdle the host's roots within about a century.  By that point, the strangler is strong enough to stand on its own, so the rotting host tree simply provides a tasty meal of stump dirt for the strangler's roots.  Walking through a tropical forest, you will often come across hollow strangler figs like the tree Maggie was playing inside in a previous post.

There are several species of strangler figs found in the world's tropics and subtropics, and Monteverde has different dominant fig species in each habitat type.  The Florida Strangler Fig (Ficus tuerckheimii) is the common species around the elevation of Monteverde itself, and is the one I drew most often.

While Costa Rica's strangler figs bear their fruits on twigs like most trees do, strangler figs will always be linked to cauliflory and ramiflory in my mind.  Take a look at how the Australian strangler figs attach their fruits directly to the side of the tree trunk:

In case you can't read my miniscule writing, here is a quick description of this odd growth habit:

Later, I came across a few alternative explanations of ramiflory and cauliflory.  Since the fruits --- like this cauliflorous Zygia I found in Costa Rica --- are always large, some scientists suspect the adaptation came about to prevent twigs from breaking under the fruits' weight.  Others posit that cauliflory may have evolved to allow terrestrial animals access to the fruits for surer dispersal.  Whatever the cause, ramiflory and cauliflory always make me smile at the odd fruits sprouting out of the trunks of trees.


Maggie:

3-12-01
I love this particular Quaker church and community. The singing is powerfully spiritual, the silence is useful for contemplation. The messages and stories that are told after silence are amazing. The one that is stuck with me presently is about how it is more enjoyable to give than to receive. This wasn't exactly speech with the intent of motivating us to give. It was lightly the fact that often it is kind of hard for the receivers. The vision that went with this message was of givers and receivers with joined hands, one up, one down, all in an active chain.

Anna:

Disturbance is one of the key factors determining which plants grow where -- specifically, what kind of disturbance and how often the disturbance occurs.  From my normal stomping grounds in the southern Appalachian mountains, I know that oak and pine forests here depend on fire to kill encroaching cove hardwood species.  But fire is nearly absent in the tropics, so what keeps the forest shifting through various ages and states?

You may remember that the annual rainfall in the Monteverde area ranges from 7.5 to 23 feet per year, and it is actually the excessive water that adds dynamism to the Costa Rican forest.  Heavy rains result in mudslides, which in turn create ravines (known as quebradas in Spanish.)  In the dry forest around Monteverde, you can see streams running between sheer rock cliffs twenty (or more) feet tall.  The flower above (Begonia involucrata) is one of the many herbs that are often found colonizing disturbed ground around quebradas.

Quebradas are also a great place to look for epiphytes since many of these plants are able to make the leap from growing on trees to growing on rocks.  My favorite quebrada feature, though, was this strangler fig growing along the Hidden Valley Nature Trail.  The words on the sketch are probably too small for you to read, but are worth repeating here:

Maggie:

3-3-01
The creek and the plants that we saw were beautiful. I did a lot of discovering while Anna did her first sketch of the creekbed. I walked across a rickety, small bridge, then read that it was closed for repairs!

I was drawn back into my Costa Rican journals by a curiosity about which, if any, plants could be seen in both Costa Rica and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.  It turns out that most of the Yucatan Peninsula is covered with tropical dry forest, a bit like Monteverde's Pacific slope seasonal forest (but even further on the dry side.)

Plants on the Yucatan Peninsula are often water-stressed for two reasons.  First of all, in the driest part of the Yucatan (the northwest section, where Uxmal is located), the dry season usually lasts for seven months, from October to May.  Meanwhile, the caves underlying the entire Peninsula allow rainwater to quickly filter down beyond the reach of plant roots.

The combination of factors means that many trees on the Yucatan peninsula drop their leaves every year as a water conservation measure during the long dry season.  From a botanical standpoint, though, the Yucatan's dry season is very different from our winter --- although the leaves are gone, the trees often take advantage of the "winter" months to flower and fruit.

The tropical dry forest is also nothing like the rainforest you may picture when you think of the tropics.  Delete the lianas, epiphytes, and towering trees from your mental image and replace them with short trees, parasitic plants and a well developed understory.  Many trees in the tropical dry forest are spiney, and cacti are common --- in fact, the Yucatan has 14 endemic cactus species (meaning that these species can be found nowhere else in the world.)

From a plant's point of view, the Yucatan peninsula is one big island.  Of course, it is surrounded on three sides by water, but the tropical wet forest on the inland side forms just as effective a barrier to plant movement, preventing dry-loving species from gaining a foothold there.  Scientists estimate that up to 10% of the plants found on the Yucatan are endemic, making the area a botanist's paradise.

If, like me, you're just trying to get a handle on what a typical Yucatan forest looks like, you should learn the top species.  The most common trees include Wild Tamarind (Lysiloma bahamensis --- perhaps this is the tree pictured above with the fascinating hairy pods?), Jamaican Dogwood (Piscidia piscipula), Alvaradoa amorphoides, Gumbo Limbo (Bursera simaruba), Cedrela mexicana, Chlorophora tinctoria, Cordia gerascanthus and Lonchocarpus rugosus.  If it helps you make sense of the jumble of scientific names, that list includes three legumes.

Anna:

Can you imagine spending eight hours drawing plants within a day's walking distance of your home?  Then repeating the endeavor every day for four months?  That's what we did in the spring of 2001, and I seldom felt a hint of boredom.

I had chosen Monteverde carefully...and not just for the expatriate American Quaker community that meant I could get by with limited Spanish.  Costa Rica is basically a chain of mountains, wet on the Caribbean side, dry on the Pacific side, and topped by cloud forests on the highest ridges.  Since Monteverde sits near the peak of the Cordillera de Tilaran,  we could easily walk to four completely different habitats and explore all of the niches in between.  I quickly discovered that rainfall was the most important factor in determining which plants and animals we would find on our journeys.

The Atlantic slope of the Cordillera de Tilaran is nearly aseasonal in its rainfall pattern, with storms from the Caribbean dropping water here year round.  The average annual rainfall in this area is staggering, reaching 23 feet in certain areas, and the wetness leads to lush plant growth.  The result is called the Atlantic slope rain forest and is the only true rain forest we experienced during our stay.  We would visit this area only once, so you'll have to wait for this adventure.

At the top of the mountain (above about 4900 feet in elevation) lies the cloud forest.  Although the cloud forest has less rainfall than on the Atlantic slope (a mere 10 feet on average per year), frequent mists from low-lying clouds keep the cloud forest in a constant state of damp.  You'll notice that several pages of my sketchbook (like the one at the top of the page) are wrinkled or smudged from the damp conditions, even during the "dry season."  We often made a trek up to the cloud forest to explore the epiphytes and other unique features of this diverse forest.

But the easiest habitat to reach was right outside our door --- the Pacific slope seasonal forest.  The town of Monteverde lies in the mountain's rain shadow and has a notable dry season from November to May.  Even though the total annual rainfall in the Pacific slope seasonal forest (around 7.5 feet) is nothing to sneeze at, six months without rain does away with some of the jungle-like features seen in cloud forests and Atlantic slope rain forests.  In fact, as you descend the west side of the Cordillera de Tilaran, conditions become drier and drier until you reach patches of forest that lose their leaves for the dry season.  We took several walks down the side of the mountain to explore this much drier forest, which I consider a fourth habitat type.


Maggie:

3-3-01
After the thrill of my life, I am lounging back in the hotel before supper.  The thrill occurred while Anna was drawing and I decided to explore the paths.... 

Eventually our accumulated dogs and I came to the road which we followed briefly before coming to another side path.  It looked like the place to be.  So I followed it to a few buildings which I found to be the library, Friends meeting house/(church), and Friends’ school.

I was ecstatic as I explored the library.  It was empty, even of librarians.  In fact, it runs on the honors system.  I rushed back to tell Anna and to bring her to my magnificent find.  I am excited to attend the Friends meeting tomorrow since I imagine we will meet many local Quakers.

I splurged and bought a field guide (more on that later) for the Yucatan, and I've been enjoying looking back at least year's photos to finally get an idea what I saw at Uxmal.  I'm pretty sure this tree is Kapok (Ceiba pentandra), which is quite common in southern Mexico but can also be found throughout Central American, the Caribbean, the northern part of South America, and even in tropical west Africa.  (Kapok trees are also cultivated in plantations in Asia.)

Kapok is quite distinctive, with palmately compound leaves, a thorny trunk (when young), and buttresses at the base of the tree.  Until recently, the cottony fibers in the seed pods were widely used to stuff mattresses and other objects, especially life preservers, and were also used as insulation.  In addition, the leaves are sometimes used when preparing Ayahuasca (a hallucinogenic drink that seems to be popular at the moment in various circles.)

Kapok is often called by its scientific name Ceiba (pronounced "say-ba") in Mexico, which is actually a Mayan word referring to the tree of life.  Like the cedar tree in the center of Sunwatch Village, the Ceiba was sacred to Mayans, who believed it connected the three worlds.  Ceibas were planted in the middle of Mayan plazas and you can even see Ceiba thorns decorating Mayan ceramics, like the one shown below.  Isn't it strange how my obsessions with North American Native Americans and Mayans interlink?

The Kapok is a typical part of the tropical decidous forest in Mexico, although it can be found in other habitats.  The plant is well-adapted to the harsh conditions on the northern side of the Yucatan peninsula, since the buttress roots help the tree survive hurricane winds and since the tree can store water in its trunk for use during dry spells.  During the dry season (November through April in Mexico), Kapoks and their neighbors lose their leaves --- thus the term "tropical deciduous forest" for their habitat.

While walking many of Sugar Hill's trails, I find myself transported back to the eighteenth century or even earlier.  I can almost imagine that I will see Baron Tubeuf striding around the bend of the trail, on his way to harry his snake-handling neighbors.  Maybe I have stepped even further back in time and will be treated to acres of canebrake and a glimpse of yellow and olive on the now-extinct Bachman's Warbler. 

Along the Cliff Trail, I can imagine a forest untouched by human hands, where trees are just reaching their prime at two centuries old, towering over the rotting carcasses of their parents.

But down on the Oxbow Lake Loop Trail, I am jolted back to the present.  Along the paved walkway, introduced plants like periwinkles and forsythia remind me that folks have cut, burned, grazed, and planted these hills into submission.  A coal train rattles by above tree trunks engraved with love notes from previous generations.  Under the roar of the train, the highway forms a humming backdrop, and I am reminded that my drive to Sugar Hill spewed carbon dioxide into the air and promoted global warming.

Our very existence changes the world around us, but we can choose what kind of signs we leave for future generations.  Rather than wounding a tree by carving our names into its bark, we can plant a riparian buffer, garden with native species, and maybe even drive a little less often.  Imagine hillsides coated with ginseng and turtles happily sunning themselves above water so clean that mussel populations have rebounded.  What a legacy to leave our grandchildren!

In addition to waterfowl, the other nearly ubiquitous feature of Oxbow Lake is its morning fog blankets.  Fog is an important feature of many mountain and coastal ecosystems, but until recently scientists were unsure how fog affects the plants and animals in these areas.  Now we are beginning to realize that in certain areas of the world with extremely heavy fog, water dripping from these ground-level clouds to the trees and soil can add as much water to the ecosystem as is deposited by rain.  These so-called cloud forests are usually found in tropical regions where trees are coated with moisture-loving mosses and epiphytes.

Even though we do not call them cloud forests, fog plays an important role in adding water to central Appalachian forests.  The nearby Whitetop Mountain receives an average of 35 inches of water from its fog blankets every year, about 71% as much water as falls onto the mountain as rain and snow.  How much water does fog add to Sugar Hill's coffers?  How does the extra moisture affect the hillside's plant life?  We are waiting on the next generation of scientists to tell us.

Water is a magnet for animal life, and the Oxbow Lake is no exception.  I often see swallows swooping down to pick off airborne insects above the lake and deer slipping through the trees for a drink at the water's edge.  But the lake's real characters are Mallards and Pied-billed Grebes.

Ever since I read The Wind in the Willows, I have had a soft spot in my heart for dabbling ducks like Mallards.  Kenneth Grahame describes their behavior best in his “Duck's Ditty”:

Mallards look like they are having so much fun as they duck their heads down in search of underwater bugs and plants, leaving their tails bobbing above them.

And then I met the Pied-billed Grebe, which quickly became my favorite type of waterfowl.  I rounded a bend in the trail and saw a small, duck-like bird, dark against the reflective water.  Then --- pop --- the bird was gone! Pied-billed Grebes are much shier than Mallards and are prone to dive down completely underwater if disturbed.  The grebe's diving habit is not just a way of escaping predators, though.  Pied-billed Grebes regularly dive deep beneath the lake's surface in search of food which is beyond the reach of dabbling ducks.

The dining habits of Mallards and grebes are more than just a curiosity.  For the birds themselves, dabbling and diving are methods of living in the same lake without fighting over dinner.  Just like the plants along the Cliff Trail which are able to coexist by living in slightly different niches, Mallards and Pied-billed Grebes coexist by feeding on different foods.

If I had to pick one category of animals to represent the River Trail, turtles would win hands down.  During a summer hike down the trail, I can nearly always hear the plop of turtles sliding off their basking logs and into the water as I pass by.  One September, I was lucky enough to stumble across recently hatched turtle eggs on Bryce Beach.  The white, leathery shells were scattered amid loose soil, marking the spot where hatchling turtles burrowed their way out of the ground and crawled into the river.

Like many of our river creatures, turtles have a dubious future, but not because of the usual combination of habitat loss and  pollution.  Instead, the root of the problem is all about sex.  As you may have learned in high school, the sex of most animals is determined at the instant of fertilization, when the sperm and the egg cells unite to create a fertilized egg.  In humans, all egg cells have an X chromosome, while sperm cells can have either an X or a Y chromosome.  If an X chromosome sperm joins with the egg, the resulting XX fertilized egg is female.  On the other hand, if a Y chromosome sperm joins with the egg, the resulting XY fertilized egg is male.

This cut and dried version of sex determination that works for humans gets shaken up when you enter the turtle world.  Many turtles, like the Eastern Painted Turtles and Snapping Turtles that you often see in the Clinch, have temperature-dependent sex determination --- a complicated phrase for a complicated concept.  When a mother turtle lays her eggs, the offspring have not yet been designated as male or female.  Instead, the sex of the young turtles is determined by the temperature of the surrounding soil during the months that the eggs sit in the ground.  Cooler temperatures result in male offspring while warmer temperatures result in female offspring.

Temperature-dependent sex determination seems like something a science fiction writer might dream up to make his aliens more interesting, but scientists have discovered that the process may help turtle hatchlings survive the first critical years of their lives.  Hatchlings that come from nests composed of all female or all male turtles tend to survive better than those from nests of mixed sex turtles, though the reason for the hatchlings’ increased survival is unclear.  We do know that mother turtles are able to determine the sex of their offspring to some extent by laying eggs in shady areas under vegetation to create males or in sunny areas to create females.  Many human expecting parents would have been thrilled to be given such an option!

Unfortunately, the temperature-dependent sex determination that has worked so well for turtles in the past may be the cause of their downfall.  As global warming changes the earth’s climate over the next century, some scientists predict that the earth’s temperature will rise by 4 degrees Celsius --- enough to make Eastern Painted Turtles produce completely female offspring even if the eggs are laid in the shade.  Although older male turtles will be present for a few decades, eventually the female turtles will have no one to mate with and our familiar river turtles will fade away.  I find it impossible to imagine the River Trail without the quiet plop as turtle after turtle slides into the water, but the twenty-second century residents of Russell County may walk a much quieter trail than the one I know.

To the horsetails growing along the shore of the Clinch River, the ancient Arcto-Tertiary forest that gave rise to our cove hardwood community was a recent upstart.  Horsetails’ long slender shoots look like rushes, but the plants are actually close relatives of ferns --- and of the plants that dominated our landscape 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Era. 

Once again, there were no dinosaurs present, this time because dinosaurs were not yet a twinkle in their father’s eye.  Instead, the animal life at the time consisted of insects and spiders, including dragonflies with three foot wingspans.  The climate was wet and hot, similar to tropical rainforests today, but only the most ancient plants were present.  Ferns, clubmosses, and horsetails dominated the landscape, with relatives of all three growing to tree height.  I like to try to imagine our Common Horsetail growing dozens of feet tall, pushing up toward the sky between ferny fronds of other species. 

If plants could tell stories, the horsetails along the River Trail would tease us with tales of their many-times-great-grandparents whose bodies fell into a massive swamp, pushing down the fallen trunks of horsetails below them.  Unable to decompose quickly underwater, the massive remains of ancient horsetails and their relatives were pressed together into coal.  All of the coal mined in southwest Virginia began as ancient plants, living and dying in Carboniferous swamps 300 million years ago.

Nowadays, ferns and horsetails are small herbs scattered sparsely across the forest floor.  What happened to make the massive ferns disappear? Scientists tell us that different plants came along that were able to reproduce better and faster, pushing the ferns and their allies to the margins.  Ferns and horsetails reproduce using spores, which look like dust to the naked eye and have no room for storage of nutrients to give their offspring a jump-start on life.  When conifers developed, their large seeds gave them a marked advantage over the ferns, allowing conifers to sprout in harsh habitats where tiny fern seedlings would never have been able to gain a foothold.  Of course, even conifers are not our most common plants now --- they were soon overshadowed in turn by flowering plants, a group that encompasses most of the plants on Sugar Hill.  Flowering plants produce showy blooms, most of which attract insects to move their pollen from plant to plant, resulting in even more efficient reproduction.  And so the Common Horsetail ended up a historical side note, diminutive relative of the plants that dominated the moist Carboniferous forests.

The floodplain forest is home to one of Sugar Hill’s rarest plants along with another unusual species.  Together, these two plants represent the dueling reproductive strategies of herbs in our area.  Celandine-Poppy and Mist-Flower are like the Aesop’s fable about the tortoise and the hare --- slow and steady versus quick and fleeting --- but in nature, there is room for everyone to be a winner.

First the tortoise --- the Celandine-Poppy.  Like many of the flowers in the nearby cove hardwood forest, Celandine-Poppies are perennials that mature and reproduce slowly, storing energy in their roots from year to year.  Their seeds are also dispersed slowly since each seed has a fatty bulge that attracts ants, tempting the insects to carry Celandine-Poppy’s seeds underground to a new location a few feet away.  Slow-growing herbs like the Celandine-Poppy are well-suited to life in mature forests where their ability to store sugar in their roots and bloom before the leaves come out on the trees gives them an advantage.  Unsurprisingly, the Celandine-Poppies in the floodplain are tucked back against the hillside, where raging floodwaters will have slowed to gently pond around and feed the Celandine-Poppies without pushing the old roots out of the ground.

If Celandine-Poppy is the tortoise, Mist-Flower is the hare.  Mist-Flower is a member of an immensely successful family --- the Aster family --- that is probably already familiar to you from the dandelions in your yard or the Oxeye Daisies growing along the side of the road.  The Aster family contains hundreds of species in southwest Virginia alone, most of which prefer to grow in old fields or other disturbed habitats.  If you pick a dandelion and peer closely at its flower, you will see what distinguishes this family from all others --- each “flower” is actually dozens or even hundreds of tiny flowers packed together.  The combined flower head is big and showy enough to attract pollinators, and once pollinated each tiny flower turns into a seed.  One Mist-Flower plant can easily produce a thousand seeds, each of which is framed by tiny hairs that catch the wind or water, spreading the plant’s young for miles in every direction.

Unlike the Celandine-Poppy that stores energy in its roots and blooms in early spring, most members of the Aster family start from scratch with few or no reserves each spring.  As a result, the Mist-Flower and its relatives need to suck up sunlight all spring and summer before they have enough energy to put out flowers.  This strategy works well in disturbed habitats like old fields and the banks of rivers since there is often bare ground where the young plant can start growing without a lot of competition from more slow and steady neighbors.

These two floodplain herbs are also indicative of the two main threats to floodplain forests.  Slow-reproducing Celandine-Poppies are most threatened by fragmentation since they are unable to spread their seeds between forest patches separated by pastures or yards.  Mist-Flowers, on the other hand, are threatened by damming up rivers, preventing the flooding that disturbs the soil and gives them a place to grow.  Only in protected forests along untamed rivers are the tortoise and the hare able to grow in harmony.

Heavy rains saturated the soil, but the rain kept falling.  Before long, creeks were up, pouring muddy water into the Clinch.  Slowly, the river raised its ponderous bulk up above the banks, spreading out across the flat land on either side, lapping at the feet of the nearby hills.  The aptly named floodplain was underwater.

As the rains ended, the river shrank back down between its banks.  But the slowly moving water that had spread across the floodplain left behind rich mud and sand, carried off slopes above by the eroding forces of water and now enriching the bottomland on either side of the Clinch.  Seeds had also been carried by the rushing water --- not just Bladdernut pods, but also the seeds of Sycamores, Black Willows, and Box-elders.  Some trees on the Clinch’s bank had been knocked over by the raging river, leaving gaps in the canopy and sunny spots on the forest floor.  The forces of nature that shape the floodplain forest had done their work.

The entire length of the River Trail runs through floodplain forest where signs of past floods abound.  The trail follows the curve of the Clinch River, wending between Sycamore, Box-Elder, and Slippery Elm --- typical floodplain trees that can colonize areas disturbed by high water and grow quickly to gain a foothold before the next flood comes to wipe slower-growing trees away.  The floodplain forest tends to be more open than the denser forests on higher ground, and plenty of light filters down to feed the healthy shrub layer dominated by Black Willow, Common Elderberry, Paw-paw, Spicebush, and Bladdernut.

Beneath the shrubs, the forest floor is coated with herbs that thrive on the infrequent deposits of rich soil.  Virginia Bluebells form masses of brilliant blooms in the spring, giving way to Purple-node Joe Pye Weed and Wingstem in the summer.  During every season, the floodplain community is vibrant with life.

The same rich soil that feeds the floodplain forest has drawn farmers to riverbanks for millions of years.  The earliest human civilizations were located in fertile river valleys, like the Tigris-Euphrates, Nile, and Indus River civilizations that arose about five thousand years ago.  Even in our region, many of our towns (like St.  Paul) are located on the banks of rivers that provide us with water and rich soil for farming.  The unfortunate side effect of our interest in riverbanks is the demise of the floodplain forest --- while a few patches of old growth oak-hickory or cove hardwood forest may be found scattered across our region, floodplain forests are typically young and overrun with invasive species.  In many cases, the forests have been completely replaced by pastures or farmland.  In other areas, rivers have been dammed so that they no longer flood above their banks, protecting houses on the rivers’ edges but breaking down the complex web of forces that feeds the floodplain forest.

Although the Clinch River is dammed in Tennessee, the Virginia section of the Clinch flows as a natural river.  With new government programs that help farmers create riparian buffers --- strips of trees on either side of rivers fenced out of the adjacent pastures or cropland --- the floodplain forest seems to be rebounding.  As you walk the River Trail, you can see firsthand the resiliency of the floodplain forest.  Even though corroded barbed wire hints that the land was pasture in the not too distant past, the beautiful white trunks of Sycamores arch over the water and spring ephemerals dot the forest floor.  When it rains, I anticipate the rise of the life-giving river, feeding Sugar Hill’s floodplain forest.

The oak-hickory community is not just a world of turkeys and squirrels.  While leading a hike of naturalist wannabes along the trail, I keep my eyes peeled for millipedes' black, shiny backs dotted with yellow or red.  Millipedes are common in our mature forests, where they live a simple life of munching on decaying vegetation and minding their own business.  Until, that is, I come along to disrupt them.

“Aha!” I exult, snatching up the little critter.  My hikers draw around me, intrigued, as I close my fist gently around the millipede and give it a light shake or two.  The traumatized arthropod curls up into a ball to protect its soft underbelly, and when I open my hand it lies still, playing dead.

“Now smell!” I command, wafting the shaken millipede under each viewer’s nose.  “Oh!” they inevitably exclaim, as the scent of almonds or cherries rises to their nostrils.  I release the millipede (frightened but unharmed) as I explain why it is so strongly scented.

We humans often confuse millipedes with their more voracious relatives --- centipedes --- but the two types of animals are actually miles apart.  Centipedes have flattened bodies with one pair of legs per body segment while millipedes have rounded bodies with two pairs of legs per body segment, but the cosmetic differences pale in comparison to the lifestyle differences.  Centipedes, like salamanders, are mighty hunters of the forest floor, but unlike salamanders they paralyze their prey with their poisoned bite.  If I was an inch or less in diameter, I would run as fast as I could when I saw a centipede coming.

Millipedes, on the other hand, are gentle critters who would never hurt anyone.  All they crave is to be left alone to nibble on their rotting plants.  So, rather than wasting energy to create a poisoned bite, millipedes save their poisons to deter predators.  When a bird swoops down to scoop a millipede off the forest floor, the millipede emits cyanide, iodine, or quinine out of holes along its length.  These poisons, if aimed accurately into the bird’s eyes, will temporarily blind the predator and give the millipede time to scurry away.  When I shook up my millipede (both literally and figuratively), the frightened critter squirted out its poisons in hopes of scaring me away.  Since the chemicals only hit my skin, though, they did no damage.

The bright markings along the sides of the millipede are a warning to predators (especially birds) to steer clear.  After trying to eat one stinky millipede, most birds learn their lesson and stay away from similar looking critters in the future.  I hope that my millipedes live long and happy lives, burrowing amid the leaf litter and scaring away birds ten times their size.

In recent decades, scientists have begun to realize that fire --- like masting --- is an essential part of the oak-hickory community.  The exact role of fire, though, has been roundly debated.  Scientists agree that before humans arrived in North America, many ecosystems naturally burned when lightning ignited dead plant matter like fallen logs or dried grasses.  Once Native Americans reached the continent, they accelerated the burning process in many areas, starting wildfires to open up forests for agricultural land, to promote the growth of edible plants like blueberries, and to provide browse for game animals like deer.  Then Europeans arrived, and for a while the fires were tremendous.  Some fires were set purposefully for many of the same reasons Native Americans had burned the land, while other fires were set accidentally.

As our settlements encroached further and further into the forest, we entered an era of fire suppression.  Smoky the Bear warned us that “Only you can prevent forest fires”, and we took the message to heart.  Not only were people more careful of their own fires, we began to put out naturally occurring fires.  Fire was --- and is --- dangerous when it laps up against barns and houses.  It seemed better, safer, to just to quench the flames whenever they occurred.

In some areas, fire suppression was not a big deal.  In moist coves here in the mountains, scientists suspect that non-human fires would naturally burn once or twice a century, or even less often.  Fallen branches and trees quickly rot in our moist, humid climate, turning into rich soil for salamanders and millipedes to wander through.  Out West, though, fire suppression is another matter entirely.

Many dry ecosystems, like pine forests, depend on fires to stay in business.  When left to their own devices, these woods might burn every couple of years, killing out encroaching hardwoods and opening up the canopy for sun-loving pine seeds to germinate.  Without fire, some pines cannot reproduce at all --- the Table Mountain Pine, which can be found around here on extremely dry ridges, keeps its cones closed tightly around the seeds until fires come through to melt the cones open, releasing the seeds to germinate in the rich ash left behind.  In the western United States, many more species depend on frequent fires to release their seeds and sprout.

Ecologists warned us that we were getting in deep water by suppressing the natural fires in these ecosystems, but most of us were not interested in a pine tree that was unable to reproduce.  We started perking up our ears, though, when the fire suppression tactics hit us in the wallets.  Western forests are far drier than our Appalachian mountain woods, and when western trees fall to the ground, they are extremely slow to decay.  Without frequent fires to break the debris down, the forests became choked with bone dry wood, just waiting to ignite.  When lightning finally struck, or a campfire swept out of control, the wildfires ravaged the countryside like never before.  Before fire suppression, frequent fires cleaned up the debris at regular intervals, so fires tended to run through western forests fast and cool, seldom licking up into the tops of trees or doing real damage to anything except seedlings.  Post-fire-suppression fires, though, raged as if the forests had been doused with lighter fluid.  The flames leaped up into the canopies of the trees, racing and ravaging through the forests and into the suburbs.  You have probably heard about the devastating California fires of the last few years --- these fires are largely due to decades of suppressing every natural fire that came along.

Which brings us back to the oak-hickory forest.  Oaks are not quite as dependent on fire as pine communities are, but scientists are beginning to realize that fire has boosted their abundance.  Most acorns will not germinate in the shade, so they depend on some kind of disturbance to open up the canopy and give them a little sunlight in which to grow.  Without frequent fires, most oak communities in the eastern United States are slowly turning into other types of forests.  Around here, cove hardwood forests are advancing up the hillsides, slipping between aging oaks as the moisture-loving trees grow toward the canopy.  Without fire, our oak forests may disappear from everywhere except the driest ridges within the next century or two.

Some land managers are fighting back using prescribed burns --- intentionally lit fires that can be controlled to run quickly across the forest floor, mimicking the natural process of lightning-ignited fires.  In western States and in the pine forests near the Gulf coast, these prescribed burns seem to be doing a good job of keeping the natural ecosystems in balance while preventing devastating wildfires.  In oak forests, though, prescribed burns lead to more questions than answers.

Remember how I said that Native Americans set fires intentionally for thousands of years before European settlers arrived in North America?  Palaeontological evidence suggests that our oak-hickory forests --- now so widespread --- followed in the footsteps of the fires lit by Native Americans, and later by European settlers.  The reason our oak forests are beginning to fade away is that, in most parts of our mountains, oak forests are essentially man-made.  Should we be maintaining an ecosystem that would not occur over much of its range without the help of people?  On the other hand, if we let the oak forests fade back to their natural obscurity, will we lose plants and animals that evolved to live in these man-made oak forests?

The relationship between humans, oaks, and fire is a tricky one that brings us to a difficult question --- what exactly is natural? Like most difficult questions, there is no single right answer.  Short of packing up every human being in North America and shipping us overseas, we have to learn to coexist with our ecosystem, to compromise between our needs and the needs of the natural world.

When I think of the oak-hickory forest, I think of nuts.  Acorns and hickory nuts are a very important food source for most animals that live in this forest type since the nuts are large and full of nutrients.  Critters like turkeys can eat whole acorns and grind them up with rocks in their gizzards.  Nearby, squirrels perch on logs and nibble away the outer casings of the acorns, leaving the debris in a heap below their favorite perch, then chew up the tasty interior.  Native Americans ate a lot of acorns too, although they processed them by pounding and boiling them to remove the bitter-tasting tannins.

To anthropomorphize wildly, oaks and hickories get riled up when they spend so much of their energy making nuts that just get gobbled down by Blue Jays and squirrels.  Sure, both species like to cache nuts, hiding a few underground for later snacking, but these critters also have pretty good memories and tend to go back and eat up the nuts they have hidden.  Luckily, oaks and hickories are even wilier and over centuries they came up with a strategy known as masting.

Most years, oaks produce a few nuts --- not too many, but enough to keep the squirrels, Blue Jays, and turkeys alive.  Since these animals determine how many offspring to produce based on how well nourished they are, acorn predator populations stay steady, never growing past the point where the few nuts dropped by the oaks can sustain them.  Then one year, every single oak in an area somehow teams up and decides this will be the big year, the mast year.  Like a Thanksgiving dinner, the oaks produce so many nuts that the squirrels eat until their bellies nearly pop.  Every animal in the forest gorges during mast years and hides nuts for the winter, but there are just too many nuts to use them all.  Hundreds or thousands of leftover nuts litter the forest floor, rolling underfoot, and then sprouting to grow into oak trees.  During mast years, I can almost hear the oak trees snickering.  “Take that, you squirrels!” they seem to be saying.  “We fooled you!”

Hickories, beeches, and white pines all go through mast years as well, although their years do not tend to coincide with the oaks’ mast years.  In fact, saying that all oaks mast during the same year is an oversimplification --- there are actually two main types of oaks that mast on different schedules.  The white oak group contains White Oak and Chestnut Oak, as well as a few other species, all of which have rounded leaf lobes with no pointy bits.  The red oak group contains Red Oak, Black Oak, Pin Oak, and Scarlet Oak, all of which have long points at the end of each leaf’s lobes.  These two groups of oaks seem to speak different languages, with the red oak group masting in one year and the white oak group masting in another.

Scientists are still trying to decipher how a group of oaks decides whether to mast in a certain year.  Most likely, oaks respond to weather conditions like summer droughts and spring frosts, combined with an inherent tendency not to produce a big crop of acorns every year.  However, I have always wondered if their decision to mast might be a bit more complicated.  In the last couple of decades, scientists have started turning up startling examples of plant to plant communication.  In one example, an alder tree bitten by an insect emitted chemicals that alerted the neighboring trees that ravenous insects were in town.  The neighboring trees then produced nasty chemicals in their own leaves that kept the insects from nibbling.  If trees can “talk” and warn their neighbors to scare insects away, who is to say that they cannot actually “talk” about whether now would be a good time to mast?

As I walk down the Marlene Path, I like to imagine the oaks chattering away above my head.  “So, Jimmy, how are you feeling this year?  Ready to make some nuts?”  “Sure, Joe.  Those pesky squirrels are giving me headaches.  Let’s stick it to them!”

Like identical twins separated at birth, China and the eastern United States share many similarities.  Our climates and geology are remarkably similar, and as a result plants and animals from China often find it easy to grow and thrive in Virginia’s landscape.  So I was not surprised to discover that most of our invasive plants originated in Asia.  Autumn-Olive and Japanese Honeysuckle are two members of this “Asian Invasion” that we could have done without.

Autumn Olive is easily recognized by the silvery scales that coat the undersides of the shrub’s leaves.  The plant was first introduced to the United States in 1830, but it seemed to be a well behaved guest until the Soil Conservation Service bred the “Cardinal” strain in 1963 and began to recommend planting Autumn Olive to reclaim strip mined land and to promote wildlife habitat.  As the Soil Conservation Service promised, the numerous red Autumn Olive berries were beloved by birds, who gobbled them up and spread the seeds throughout the eastern United States.  Today, Autumn Olive is expanding rapidly and is considered by many scientists to be the most troubling invasive shrub on the horizon.

Japanese Honeysuckle was introduced as an ornamental plant in 1806, and like Autumn Olive took decades before it started to encroach on native habitats.  Despite that fact that the vine is now listed as an invasive plant in four states and can be found choking out native plants in most old fields in our area, I have seen it for sale in local nurseries within the past year.

I consider both Autumn Olive and Japanese Honeysuckle to be cautionary tales --- the ecologist’s version of Little Red Riding Hood’s “grandmother” turning out to be a wolf.  I know I have already said this in an earlier chapter, but it bears repeating: Please try to stick with native plants in your landscaping, and whatever you do, steer clear of alien plants listed as providing “wildlife habitat.”  If the birds like their berries as much as the catalog promises, you may soon see that exciting ornamental cropping up in your neighbor’s forest.

If you get lost in the forest, you can sometimes find your way home with a simple piece of information --- moss likes to grow on the north sides of trees.  The reason lies with the sun, which is not directly overhead here in the northern hemisphere.  Instead, the sun stays over in the south side of the sky, with the result that the north sides of trees tend to get a lot more shade than the south sides.  Mosses like shade, thus they live on the north sides of trees.  Actually, mosses like the east sides of trees too since that side just gets morning sun and tends to stay damp.  South and west sides of trees are usually too hot and dry for mosses to survive.

You can experience a larger example of the same phenomenon by walking up the Cliff Trail then back down the Marlene Path.  Winding up the Cliff Trail, on the east side of Sugar Hill, you will see plenty of mosses.  You will also see cove hardwood forest, a plant community that thrives on damp.  The Cliff Trail is shaded for most of the day by Sugar Hill, so water tends to stay put rather than evaporating away.

When you crest the hill and start back down the west side, the forest subtly changes as drought-tolerant oaks and hickories replace the water-loving Tulip-Trees and basswoods.  Here, the hillside is pummeled with near constant sun, so rainwater quickly dries up and leaves the ground parched.  The oak-hickory community you walk through on the Marlene Path is the most common plant community in the eastern United States, covering much of the landscape both east and west of the Appalachian Mountains.  As you can see at Sugar Hill, the oak-hickory community is also common in the mountains where it tends to stay on the south and west sides of hills and on dry ridgetops.

One word of warning, though, before you head out into the woods with only the moss to guide you.  In our hollers, I have often seen moss growing all the way around the trees.  The preponderance of moss on the north sides of trees is probably a nugget of knowledge best pulled out at cocktail parties --- when in the woods, I carry a compass and map.

If you plan to only walk one trail on Sugar Hill, the Cliff Trail should be the one, and not just because of the maturity of the forest.  Rock outcrops along the trail drip with mosses, ferns, and flowers in a perfect example of the wet limestone cliff community, while dense jumbles of boulders beneath the cliffs showcase the boulderfield forest community.  Both of these plant communities are all about rocks that began as living beings --- limestone.

Limestone is not a typical rock.  Instead of forming from sand, silt, or molten lava, limestone can be traced back to tiny critters living in an ancient ocean.  Many of these ocean animals extract a mineral called calcium carbonate out of the water and use it to form hard shells like the ones you see washed up on ocean beaches.  When the shell-encased animals die, a few of their shells do end up on beaches but most instead drift down to the ocean floor where they are ground up by wave action and eventually compacted into layers of rock called limestone.  Over millions of years, the limestone on the ocean floor may be lifted up into mountains, leaving behind the remains of ocean critters in places like Sugar Hill.

Eventually, all rocks begin to weather into dirt, but the soil produced on top of limestone is very different from the soil produced by other rocks.  Sandstone, for example, breaks down into sandy soil that tends to be acidic, while limestone breaks down into alkaline soil.  Acidity and alkalinity are measures of pH --- even if you have not heard of pH, you have certainly experienced the sour acidity of lemons and the slippery alkalinity of bleach.

Just as we can taste or feel the difference between acidic and alkaline foods, plants can tell the difference between acidic and alkaline soil, and most plants prefer one over the other.  Many of the flowers you will find growing along the cliffs on Sugar Hill would not be caught dead growing on acidic sandstone.  These limestone-lovers include several of the ferns discussed in an earlier chapter as well as plants like Red Columbine and Smooth Sicklepod.

Other plants are found on the limestone cliffs because they are able to thrive in desert-like conditions.  Although the shaded hillside along the Cliff Trail stays moist for much of the year, the lack of soil on the cliff face means that plants go for long periods without being able to soak up water through their roots.  Three-leaved Stonecrop is perfectly adapted to surviving droughts --- the plant’s thick, succulent leaves fill up with water during rainy spells, storing moisture for the stonecrop to use during dry, sunny days between storms.  Wild Hydrangeas also seem to do well in rocky areas with only pockets of soil, and I often see them clinging to the side of cliff faces.  Pete’s Rock --- on the sunnier side of Sugar Hill --- is home to even more of these desert-adapted cliff plants.

One more niche is worth looking for along the Cliff Trail --- the boulderfield community.  Talus heaps of boulders are often found at the bases of cliffs, where winter’s freezing and thawing cracks blocks of stone loose to roll down and collect in a pile beneath the cliff.  For plants, boulderfields are even more difficult to colonize than cliffs are --- as the saying goes, a rolling stone gathers no moss, and stones in the talus heap do slowly move and roll as boulders knock into them from above.  Trees can seldom find a safe foothold in the boulderfield, but mosses and lichens manage to cling onto the more stable rocks.  Without even the tiny pockets of soil that collect in crannies in the cliff-face, lichens on boulders have to create their own dirt.  The lichens secrete acids that hasten the breakdown of the rock surface, forming little clumps of dirt into which mosses and eventually larger plants can grow.  Here in the boulderfields along the Cliff Trail, you can see the true beginnings of forest succession as bare rock slowly dissolves into soil and provides a home to lichens, mosses, and finally flowers and ferns.

Tapping Sugar Maples leaves little evidence behind, and the forest along the Cliff Trail now seems to be virtually untouched by human hands.  I am always stunned when I stumble across patches of old growth (or near old growth) forest --- the term scientists give to mature forests that appear to be relatively unaffected by human activity.  In the eastern United States, old growth can only be found in small pockets, usually in areas like the eastern side of Sugar Hill where steep slopes or treacherous boulderfields scared former owners away from logging or even grazing their animals.  There, little patches of forest serve as a reservoir for plants and animals that are unable to live in the younger forests surrounding them.

I still remember the first patch of old growth forest I saw as a teenager.  The few acre section on the Holston Mountain was off the beaten trail, tucked into a dip near the top of a precipitous ridge.  A naturalist friend had given me a map and detailed directions to the spot --- along with an admonition to keep the location a strict secret.  I huffed and puffed up the slope, then paused in awe.  I had not realized that the forests I was so accustomed to were like a pencil sketch of the real, full color forest.  Old trees, young trees, middle-aged trees; standing snags full of woodpecker holes; rotting logs on the forest floor.  I rolled one log over and found an indented network of shrew tunnels in the dense duff underneath.  A salamander slithered for cover at my feet and above my head a Hooded Warbler sang its tale of the untouched forest.

I had to walk carefully to keep my footing on the uneven forest floor.  Here and there a massive tree had died and pulled up a big ball of roots and dirt as it thundered toward the ground.  Tucked under an overhang in the side of one root mass, I found a little bird nest, probably home to a family of phoebes.  Flowers were already colonizing the top of the root mass, taking advantage of the disturbed ground to sprout without competition from neighbors.

The Cliff Trail is about as close to old growth as you will find on the beaten trail in our region.  In addition to trees of many ages and plentiful logs, dense stands of trilliums are a sign of the forest’s age.  Trilliums spread very slowly into new areas, partly because their seeds are dispersed by ants and do not travel far from the parent plant, and partly because trilliums take a long time to grow old enough to reproduce.  When a Big White Trillium seed germinates, the plant spends the entire first year of its life growing roots with nothing visible above the soil surface.  In the second year, the seedling finally unfolds its seed leaves, and in the third year it puts up one true leaf, though even this leaf does not look like the traditional three-parted trillium leaf.  Plants that reach four years old often manage to make an adult, three-parted leaf, but it takes them at least another dozen years to store up enough energy to bloom.  Small wonder that drifts of trilliums like the ones you see along the Cliff Trail are only found in mature forests.

The Bladdernut is not really all that far from its proper habitat --- in fact, you can find stands of the shrub along the River Trail that are rooted in just the right place.  The ones on the Cliff Trail would not be so odd if they were not 300 feet higher in elevation than the floodplain plant community.  You see, Bladdernuts like floodplains.  Actually, what they like the most is floods.

The shrub received its name because of the balloon-like bladder of air surrounding each seed, an adaptation to water dispersal.  If you pluck one of the odd, bulgy seed pods off the Bladdernut bush and toss it in the river, you will be able to watch as the pod bobs along on the surface until it rounds the next bend and drifts out of sight.  The plant is extremely well adapted to habitats that flood frequently, because the high waters naturally pick up the seed pods and carry them many miles downstream to a new floodplain just waiting to be colonized.  When the flood waters recede, the Bladdernut pod drops to the ground and slowly rots to reveal the seed inside, which will, in turn, sprout and grow into a new Bladdernut bush.

So how did Bladdernut shrubs end up near the top of Sugar Hill?  They seem to be doing fine in their new, cliff-side habitat, perhaps because Bladdernuts thrive on limestone as well as floods.  I cannot help wondering whether one of the settlers who used the Cliff Trail to reach the Frenchman’s Settlement might have planted a Bladdernut along the trail, or even just dropped a seed that he was fiddling with as he climbed.  The other possibility seems far-fetched --- that the Clinch River flooded so high that Sugar Hill was nearly completely underwater, allowing a Bladdernut pod to drift up and land on the edge of the Cliff Trail.

In addition to being a great spot to view medicinal plants, Sugar Hill has geological significance.  Geologists divide the earth into hundreds of physiographic provinces, each of which represents a unique land form and helps determine the type of plants and animals which will live there.  Sugar Hill is located within the Ridge and Valley Province, a portion of the Appalachian Mountains where the underlying rocks have been folded like a crumpled up carpet into a serious of parallel ridges divided by long river valleys.  Sugar Hill is wedged into the Clinch River valley north of the Clinch Mountain, a ridge that runs in a nearly straight line for about 150 miles from Burke’s Garden, Virginia, to Knoxville, Tennessee.

Just north and west of Sugar Hill, however, the form of the land changes.  Here on the Cumberland Plateau, the land more closely resembles a crumpled up paper towel with stream valleys running in all directions.  The elevation on the Cumberland Plateau is also higher than that in the Ridge and Valley Province and different plants and animals call this region home.

Ecologists call the border of two ecosystems an ecotone --- for example, the shrubby plants growing along the fence between a pasture and the forest form one type of ecotone.  Ecotones often contain more types of plants and animals than can be found in either of the two ecosystems they divide, a phenomenon known as the edge effect.  So it should come as no surprise that Sugar Hill, located on the border of two physiographic provinces, is home to such a diversity of life.  Keep your eyes open for misplaced Cumberland Plateau species as you hike the trails around Sugar Hill.

The southern half of the Loop Trail is truly red in tooth and claw, full of murder and chemical warfare.  As you return to the parking area, you will pass by one more bloodthirsty species, this one a native plant.

The yellowish-orange vines of dodder are easily mistaken for a mass of fishing line --- they clearly do not appear to be a plant.  As you probably learned in elementary school science, plants are green and feed themselves by turning energy from the sun into sugars through photosynthesis.  Dodder does not do any of that.  Instead, dodder twines around nearby plants and sends modified branches, called haustoria, into the support plants’ stems.  The haustoria suck nutrient-filled sap out of the host plants, feeding the parasitic dodder.

Not every plant is a suitable host for the dodder, though.  Scientists are not quite sure what makes a host plant tasty or disgusting to the twining dodder, but they do know that dodder can tell the difference.  After making an initial loop or two, the dodder decides to either send haustoria into the support plant or just grow a longer tendril, reaching out toward a more tasty specimen.  A recent study by Penn State researchers suggests that dodder reacts to airborne chemicals when determining the suitability of a host plant --- in essence, smelling its prey.

In our area, dodder is most often found in moist habitats where it seems to thrive on hosts including jewelweed and Clearweed.  Dodder can also be an agricultural pest, choking crops such as potatoes.  In my own garden, I have a terrible time keeping the dodder off my carrots --- once it catches hold of one carrot leaf, the dodder branches off in several directions to penetrate every nearby plant.  After a week or so, the result is a tangled mass of dodder covering a few choked carrot plants.  Despite the devastation, I cannot help being intrigued by this parasite that acts nothing like a conventional plant.

When I was a youngster, I spent as much time in the woods as possible, but I never saw a wild deer.  Instead, I was enthralled by the deer bred at Bays Mountain Park in Kingsport, dreaming of stumbling across their graceful forms as I hiked my favorite trails.  After leaving for college, I distinctly remember my mother emailing me about the wild deer she startled on the Clinch Mountain --- both of us were awestruck by her close encounter with such an amazing animal.

That was ten years ago.  Now, I count myself lucky if I go a whole day without seeing a deer.  The beasts eat my garden down to the roots, chop the limbs off my young apple trees, and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

Even so, our deer problem is not quite as bad as folks have it a few hundred miles north.  In 2001, I spent a year working on a preserve in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia where the deer population hovered around 45 deer per square mile.  I was shocked by the deer browse line in the park’s forest --- every plant within deer reach had been decimated.  Oak forests were turning into Red Maple forests since deer nibbled every oak seedling as soon as it poked out of the ground while leaving Red Maples alone.

Deer overpopulation is a new trend.  Before Europeans arrived with their guns, approximately eight deer could be found per square mile across the United States.  By 1900, though, we had nearly hunted the deer to extinction, with only about one deer being found in every ten square miles.  In southwest Virginia, deer were effectively absent. 

Strict hunting laws and restocking slowly built the deer population back up over the course of the twentieth century, until suddenly the pendulum swung the other way into overpopulation.  Deer are especially prevalent in suburbs where they have plenty of well-watered lawns to munch on, and where they kill approximately 130 Americans per year by jumping in front of cars.  Current deer densities in Russell County average two to three times the deer population before European settlement, and densities in nearby Scott County may be nearing the population density in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia.

The problem is exacerbated by a lack of natural predators, a culture shift away from hunting, and by state game laws that cater to hunters and promote overpopulation.  Most state game management agencies still mandate strict limits on the number of does to be killed, a strategy that worked well when the deer were close to extinction but now means that hunters make little dent in the deer population.  After all, it only takes one buck to fertilize a dozen does.  The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, for example, is currently working to increase populations of deer on public lands in southwest Virginia while stabilizing the population on private lands.

Although I am tempted to start breeding wolves and mountain lions every time I go out to dig a sweet potato and discover that the deer beat me to it, the Quality Deer Management Association has a better strategy that is likely to please hunters, farmers, and city-dwellers alike.  The Association advocates new game laws that would require hunters to kill several does each year before they are allowed to kill a buck.  The policy has been put into place in a few states already, and scientists have noticed that as doe populations decline, buck sizes increase --- a bonus for the deer hunters who crave massive, twelve-point bucks.  And as deer densities retreat to more manageable levels, the forest begins to recover.  Perhaps in my lifetime, seeing a deer will once again be a mystical experience.

May-Apples move into an area just as meadowlarks are moving out.  Dense stands of their umbrella-like leaves are a common sight in early successional forests, though May-Apples can also be found at the edges of fields and in more mature forest.  Each May-Apple stand begins as a single plant, then quickly reproduces through underground runners until the patch ends up covering an area as large as six feet or more in diameter.  Peek under the umbrellas in late April or early May and you are likely to find the large white flowers that two-leaved plants produce.  (One-leaved May-Apples will not be blooming that year.)

Although May-Apples reproduce readily through underground runners, they have another trick up their sleeves that helps them colonize new areas.  As their flowers fade in late spring, the ovaries swell into a fruit that is reputed to be edible to humans when ripe.  I have never managed to find a ripe fruit, though, since the maypops (as they are colloquially named) are a favorite food of the Eastern Box Turtle and dangle just at turtle head level.  In fact, without the turtle, May-Apple seeds seldom germinate --- a thick coating on May-Apple seeds means that only about 8.5% of the seeds germinate if left to their own devices.  But when a box turtle munches on the maypop, digestive juices break down the seeds’ coating just enough to raise the germination rate to 38.7%.  So, chances are that the May-Apple patch you are walking through began life as a seed pooped out by a passing turtle.

The Eastern Box Turtle is the only land turtle you are likely to see on Sugar Hill and chances are you will stumble across one after a few hikes.  I like to count the rings on the turtle’s back to get an idea of its age --- like a tree, box turtles make a new ring every year.  These turtles have been known to live up to eighty years, becoming mature after about seven to ten.

Habitat fragmentation is taking a heavy toll on their populations, though, and I wince every time I pass a smashed box turtle in the middle of the road.  When I see a living box turtle on the tarmac, I do my best to stop and help it to the other side, but am careful to always move it to the side toward which it was heading --- turtles know exactly where they are going and will turn around and head back across the road if you put them on the wrong side.  They will also head back to their home territory if captured and released on the other side of town, so please do not move box turtles more than a few feet from where you find them.

Populations of old field birds have dwindled over the last few decades as small farms were turned into subdivisions or were merged into huge agricultural operations.  In either case, the Eastern Meadowlark and other typical residents of old fields lost their homes.  If you keep your eyes peeled as you walk through the field south of the Frenchman’s Settlement, though, you are likely to catch a glimpse of the brilliant yellow breasts and melodic songs of Eastern Meadowlarks.

The future of the meadowlark does not have to be grim.  Many farmers are beginning to operate with old field birds in mind, realizing that they can make their fields into better habitat for these birds while only reducing agricultural yields marginally.  Hedgerows of trees are left in place along fencelines, providing a spot for animals to hide from predators, and small sections of a hayfield are left unmowed each year to provide breeding habitat.  Even a simple matter of timing can make a difference.  Mowing pastures and other fields later than usual --- around early August --- allows meadowlark chicks to fledge and fly away rather than being crushed in their nests.  The field at the top of Sugar Hill is mowed infrequently enough to keep the meadowlarks regaling us with their clear whistles.

What kind of forest greeted the first settlers to our region?  We like to think of North America before European settlement as a vast expanse of unbroken forest, but the truth is that forests have been pushed, chopped, frozen, or burned down as long as they have existed.  Every time, the forest eventually regrows.  Sometimes the regrowth is slow --- if an entire hillside sloughs off in a mudslide, the bare rock that is revealed may take thousands of years to turn back into forest.  On the other hand, if a single tree dies from insects or disease, the surrounding forest may close up the gap in just a few years.

The south half of the Loop Trail is a perfect example of what scientists call forest succession --- the stages that an ecosystem goes through as it regrows a mature forest after some type of disturbance.  In this case, the original forest was wiped out by centuries of farming, remnants of which are seen in the mature apple and pear trees which line the peak of Sugar Hill.

Once the farmers left the land to its own devices for a few years, nature quickly began to take over.  This first step in forest succession is called the old field stage and is visible just south of the Frenchman's settlement along the Loop Trail.  Ankle to shoulder high plants abound in the old field stage, and most of the earliest ones have wind-dispersed seeds.  The most common examples are thistles and milkweeds which produce light seeds with hairlike projections, well-adapted for catching a breeze and wafting for a few feet or a few miles.

The growth of thistles and milkweeds provided protective cover, quickly attracting birds to the old field.  Like wind, birds are another vector for the spread of old field plants, leaving behind seeds of species like Pokeweed when they defecate.  These bird-dispersed plants produce tasty berries as an inducement for their avian friends to spread the plants' seeds into new habitats.  Other plants, like burdock, grow seeds covered with little hooks that catch in the fur of passing animals, hitchhiking to a new spot.

Milkweeds, thistles, Pokeweed, and burdock maintain their dominance of the old field for only a few years in nature before they have built up enough organic matter in the soil to allow wind-dispersed tree seedlings to gain a foothold.  The first trees to enter an old field in our area are often Box-Elder, Red Maple, Eastern Red Cedar, and Tulip-tree.  Without the frequent mowing which maintains the fields on Sugar Hill, young trees would smother out most of the old field herbs within a decade.  The dense thicket that forms is often full of thorny shrubs like Multiflora Rose and blackberries and is known as early successional forest.  Native Americans often burned forests to produce these thickets since they house and feed game animals and are often full of plants edible to humans as well.

Just as the old field herbs enriched the soil to allow early successional trees to grow, the early successional trees lay the groundwork for their own demise.  Another decade or two may pass before the Red Maples and Tulip-trees form a dense canopy, but once they do their sun-loving seeds are no longer able to germinate.  Instead, magnolias, Beech, and other trees begin to sprout in the dense shade on the forest floor.  These trees are the first signs of what scientists call the climax forest --- the type of plant community that will live in an area in the absence of disturbance.  The cove hardwood forest discussed in the last chapter is one of the climax forest types that can be found on Sugar Hill.

After a few hundred years, the forest has hit its stride.  The rabbits and meadowlarks that hid in the old field and early successional forest have given way to Pileated Woodpeckers that hunt for grubs in standing dead snags and Black Bears that curl up on winter nights inside hollow trees.  Trees have aged and range in size from saplings to behemoths.  Some have fallen over, leaving behind logs that host mosses, voles, and salamanders.  None of Sugar Hill has quite reached this stage --- which is commonly known as old growth --- but the hill above Oxbow Lake comes close.

And then little disasters strike.  A tree is blown over and takes down dozens of its neighbors, opening up a treefall gap --- a sunlit opening in the forest.  If the gap is large enough, a little field forms, full of milkweed and burdock, then young Tulip-trees, then Beeches and magnolias, and the cycle continues.

Many of the plants outlined in this chapter are most visible in the spring, but you will notice the interwoven vines of Dutchman’s Pipe at any season of the year.  Like the wild grapes that grow nearby, Dutchman’s Pipe begins as a sprouted seed on the forest floor, then winds its way up into the canopy, draping over tree branches to cushion its ascent.  Unlike the grapevines, though, Dutchman’s Pipe has smoother bark that does not come loose in curling strands.

If you keep your eyes open in June, you may see another field mark of the Dutchman’s Pipe --- black caterpillars speckled with orange spots.  These are the offspring of the Pipevine Swallowtail, so named because its caterpillars munch solely on the leaves of Dutchman’s Pipe and the related Pipevine.  You have probably heard of Monarch caterpillars that will only eat milkweed and related plants, but you may not realize that several other caterpillars are just as picky eaters.  Adult butterflies, like many adult humans, are happy to flit from food source to food source, but caterpillars are more like human children who refuse to eat anything except pizza.  To the caterpillars of the Pipevine Swallowtail, Dutchman’s Pipe is pizza --- the only food worth eating.

Why so picky?  Scientists cannot explain why your kid will only eat pizza, but they have made progress toward deciphering the picky nature of Pipevine Swallowtail offspring.  As the caterpillars munch on Dutchman’s Pipe leaves, they gather poisons out of the plants and safely pack them away within the caterpillars’ own bodies.  Blue Jays and other predators may consider the big caterpillars and butterflies easy pickings, but as soon as they eat their first poisoned caterpillar, the jays get a serious case of food poisoning and quickly learn to hunt down more nutritious food.  Although a few Pipevine Swallowtails may die in the process, the species as a whole is able to bypass most predators through its childhood of picky eating.

As you will soon learn, nature is full of cheats.  Several other butterflies in our area look remarkably similar to Pipevine Swallowtails --- the most common example is the black female version of the usually yellow Eastern Tiger Swallowtail.  The Eastern Tiger Swallowtail caterpillars cannot eat Dutchman’s Pipe leaves without getting sick themselves, but they can mimic the species that does.  The result?  Blue Jays tend to leave the black Eastern Tiger Swallowtails alone, afraid to take any chances on another noxious nibble.  Like the grapevine, the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail has learned to get ahead by working the system.

Summer Grape is probably the most common liana in southwest Virginia and is also a character in several interesting stories.  For example, my father always told me that if I got lost in the woods, I could cut the stem of a grapevine and drink the lightly sweetened water that gushes down from the plant’s upper reaches.  Although I was tempted, I never tried to drink from a grapevine because I knew that I would be killing a plant that took years to reach its current height.  But I did spend a lot of time looking up at the leafy peak, wondering why grapevines grow so tall.

Later, I came to understand trees as the plant version of our Cold War arms race.  Every plant needs sunlight, and trees figured out that if they grew a bit taller than their neighbors they could unfold their canopy in full sun and suck up all of the energy raining down from above.  The neighbors did not want to be outdone, so they grew just a little taller themselves.  Back and forth, the height contest spun out of control, until it finally had to end when trees were no longer able to push water from their roots any higher into the sky.  Each tree had thrust its leaves dozens of feet into the air, only to end up neck and neck with its neighbors after all.

I like to think of grapes as free loaders in this forest Cold War.  The lianas do not bother to build deep roots and strong trunks which would be necessary to hold up a tree-sized canopy.  Instead, they simply use tendrils to latch onto shrubs and trees as they climb toward the light.  In a fraction of the time (and for a fraction of the energy) that it takes for a tree to reach canopy height, a grapevine can wiggle its way up through the trees to achieve full sun.  It is easy to see that grapes are the true winners in the forest arms race.

Wild Ginger lacks the perky flowers of other early spring ephemerals.  In fact, most hikers miss its flowers entirely --- to find them, you have to lift up the leaves and look for a little brown cup that does not really resemble a flower at all.  Whenever I see Wild Ginger flowers, I think of the related species Little Brown Jug, named for the brown blooms that resemble another product of the Appalachian mountains.

Once, I wondered why Wild Ginger has such drab blooms hidden away where no one can see them.  Most of the other early spring ephemerals are pollinated by flying insects that are attracted to the bright colors facing the sky.  But Wild Ginger has gone another route.  It seeks out ground-dwelling beetles who stumble upon the Wild Ginger flowers as they amble across the leaf mold, crawl inside, and then wander back out covered with pollen to dust the pistils of the next flower.  Later, ants collect the seeds and carry them back to their burrows where some sprout and turn into new plants.  Now I find myself asking myself --- why should Wild Ginger flowers look up when they have so much to gain by looking down?

Just as descendants of the Arcto-Tertiary forest are well-represented in the canopy of the cove hardwood forest, they are widespread on the forest floor as well.  Wood Anemone and Sharp-lobed Hepatica are two examples of plants with close relatives found both here and in Asia, but nowhere in between --- signs of an Arcto-Tertiary ancestor.  In fact, the majority of the herbs on the floor of the cove hardwood forest show one of two related patterns, both of which are shared by herbs in China and (scientists believe) in the ancient Arcto-Tertiary forest. 

One pattern consists of perennial plants like trilliums and Jack-in-the-Pulpit that send up a bloom and leaves in the spring, then linger in the shade of the forest canopy for the rest of the year, putting out no new growth.  Instead, these plants are sucking up what little light comes their way and turning it into energy to store in their roots and feed next year’s blooms and leaves.

The other pattern is even more distinctive, enough so that this category of plants has been given its own name.  The early spring ephemerals bloom even earlier in the spring than the trilliums, some in late March when the days are still cold and only flies are out and about to act as pollinators.  Most --- like the toothworts, Rue Anemone, and Spring-Beauty --- have white or pale pink flowers to attract these generalist pollinators.

After blooming, the ephemerals quickly unfurl leaves and soak up late winter sun before the trees above them wake up.  Then the ephemerals' leaves fade away just as quickly.  By May, most of the early spring ephemerals are long gone, except for the roots nestled in the leaf litter that have stored enough energy to repeat the cycle next year.  Their tiny seeds have been carried away by ants to germinate a few feet from the parent --- small wonder that these species take so long to recolonize a forest after it has been clearcut.  Although once widespread in cove hardwood forests, the masses of early spring ephemerals found at Sugar Hill are now becoming the exception rather than the rule.

Arthur’s gauge of diversity served me well as I wandered the Appalachian woods in my  early teens.  But by the time I reached college biology, I was ready for a bit more hard data.  I had heard about the vast number of rare species that can be found in southwest Virginia, but now I began to wonder --- what makes a species rare?

A few of our region’s rare species have been hunted nearly to death.  Ginseng and Goldenseal have been dug by herb gatherers for centuries, and even deer had become uncommon in our area by the middle of the twentieth century due to hunting pressures.  Other species are rare due to habitat destruction --- plants and animals that require old growth forest are finding fewer and fewer places to call home as we cut down forests for wood and paper or just to claim the land for houses.

Some species are rare because their habitat is naturally rare.  Two counties west, The Cedars Natural Area Preserve is home to several rare species that can live only in the uncommon limestone glades habitat.  In many areas of The Cedars, thin soil and exposed bedrock prevent the growth of trees, resulting in patches of grasses and other herbs.  The habitat itself is considered globally rare, as are many of the species living there.

Scientists are less concerned about a third type of rarity --- species that are rare in one region, but common in other parts of their range.  For example, many northern species like Canada Violet find cool pockets to call home high in the southern Appalachian mountains.  These species are only locally rare.  Even though only a hundred individuals of some of these species may be found in the state of Virginia, tens of thousands are spread across the New England states.

Sugar Hill is home to six plant species that the state of Virginia lists as rare.  These species have no legal protection and most are secure on a global scale.  On the other hand, all are threatened in Virginia by habitat loss.  Most of them depend on the mature forests that can be found on Sugar Hill but that are less and less frequently seen in the rest of the region.

The numbers following the name of each rare plant in this book and website refer to the level of rareness of each species both globally ("G" followed by a number) and in the state of Virginia ("S" followed by a number.)  In each case, species are given a numerical rank ranging from 1 (extremely uncommon) to 5 (secure.)  The rank of each species is based on Townsend (2005), which includes the following explanations of the listed ranks:

Throughout this book and website, I will point out the rare species which can be seen along Sugar Hill's trails.  Keep your eyes peeled for the six rare plants, as well as for a variety of other uncommon species which did not quite make it onto the Virginia Rare Plant List.  Several of these species can be found nowhere else in the area.

The remnants of the Arcto-Tertiary forest, both here and in China, have made for two of the most diverse temperate regions of the world.  Within our local remnant, the Clinch River watershed stands out as a “biodiversity hotspot”, meaning that the watershed contains more types of plants and animals than can be found anywhere else in the continental U.S.  These waters flowing past Sugar Hill contain more mussel species than can be found in all of Europe and China combined.  Scientists also marvel over the varying colors and species of millipedes, the diversity of snail life, and the stunning variety of plants in our area.  On Sugar Hill itself, a survey of just the herbaceous understory plants (the small plants on the forest floor) turned up 155 species. 

Where does one start when exploring this astonishing diversity?  As a youngster beginning to learn about the Appalachian forest, I was lucky enough to spend a few days following in the footsteps of the noted local naturalist Arthur Smith.  Only years later did I discover how well known Arthur was in the region --- at the time, I was tempted out in the field by the extra chocolate bar he liked to bring along to share as part of our lunch.  In addition to feeding my sweet tooth, he simplified the world in a way that made sense, showing me how to gauge an area’s overall diversity by keeping an eye on the ferns.  Arthur explained that places with a large number of different fern species tend to have a higher diversity of other kinds of life --- more wildflowers, more salamanders, more trees.

First he taught me to watch out for our most common ferns --- Christmas Fern with its simple leaflets shaped like stockings and Ebony Spleenwort with its shiny black stem.  On moist, shady hillsides, the divided fronds of Maidenhair Ferns are likely to arch delicately over the leaf litter.  Rattlesnake Fern is considered an indicator species for Ginseng and can be found in the moist coves where that species once grew before overcollection nearly wiped it off the map.  Drier, more open woods are often home to Hay-scented Ferns, so named for the grassy odor that wafts up from their lacy fronds when brushed by a passing pant leg.

Other ferns are less widespread, each with its own microhabitat.  On Sugar Hill, the limestone cliffs house Walking Fern, named for its habit of rooting a new fern at the end of its attenuated, arrowhead-shaped frond.  Bulblet Bladder Fern also thrives on limestone where it reproduces by dropping little bulblets from the underside of its fronds.  Each bulblet will sprout tiny new leaves and grow into a daughter fern.  Meanwhile, drier limestone cliffs on the western side of the hill are home to Purple-stemmed Cliff-Brake, an unusual fern with asymmetrical fronds, and Wall-Rue.  Finally, Goldie’s Wood Fern and Narrow-leaved Glade Fern thrive in habitats similar to those enjoyed by Maidenhair and Rattlesnake Ferns.

Eleven fern species have been found so far at Sugar Hill, a large number for a preserve so small.  Just as you can measure an area’s overall diversity by counting its fern species, you can also get an idea for what drives that diversity.  Varying habitats abound on Sugar Hill, each with its own array of plants and animals.  Ancient heritage and a varied terrain are two of the factors that make Sugar Hill a treasure trove of Appalachian nature.

As travelers pass by the small town of St. Paul, Virginia, on alternative route 58, they may notice a little blue and white sign announcing “hiking/biking.” I drove by this sign at least a hundred times before I bothered to stop, assuming that the wayside was a small town park with a playground and paved walking path. Imagine my surprise when I was finally introduced to eight miles of trails threaded through a hundred acres of woodlands and meadows.

Sugar Hill contains the only public hiking trails along the Clinch River in Virginia. The river itself must be seen to be believed, with its rare aquatic life including the two-foot long Hellbender salamander and 21 types of federally threatened or endangered mussels and fish. The Nature Conservancy calls the Clinch the number one river worth protecting in entire the continental United States, and I would add that it is certainly the number one river worth visiting.

But Sugar Hill is more than just a river trail --- it is a microcosm of central Appalachian ecology. Spend a day or two on its trails and you will walk through floodplains, cove hardwoods, and oak-hickory forests, through open fields, young woods, and climax forest. Here, you can listen to the spring chorus of mating frogs and toads, uncover the secrets of the smelly millipede, and trace the history of a sex-changing flower. Sugar Hill even offers a human mystery for the amateur historian, a real-life whodunit which has yet to be solved. All told, the preserve is the perfect spot for naturalists to hone their skills of identification and deduction.