Machetes, False nettles, thriving shrubs, and North Valley Road history
A year ago we wrote about the progress of the 2023 planting in Valley Creek Preserve, despite that year’s dry summer. This year we’ve been treated to more steady rainfall and high temperatures, and trees and shrubs so well planted two years ago by OLC’s phenomenal volunteers - Thank You! - are flourishing. A diverse habitat (including volunteer Sycamore and Honey locust trees and False indigo bushes) is replacing the prior Phragmites monoculture and the dying Ash trees. The one year Burnweed phenomenon from last year is over, but different challenges brought a similar need for intervention, and OLC’s Preserve Managers came to help.
First, here’s a look at the section of the planting north of the driveway. You can see the new plants bursting from protective tubes and cages, behind the foreground growth of a plant called False nettle, the genus Boehmeria. This is a native plant, a crucial food source for the caterpillar stage of several butterfly species, including the Red Admiral, Eastern Comma, and Question Mark butterflies, and it provides shelter and a food source for various other beneficial insects and pollinators. Google AI notes that “its ability to tolerate various conditions, from moist to moderate drought, makes it useful for restoring wetland habitats and stabilizing stream banks”. And here it is, helping out all on its own! For humans, the tender young foliage is edible, and can be used similarly to spinach in cooking, but most importantly for those of us venturing amongst it, it does not sting like its cousins in the genus Urtica¸ Stinging nettle.
The False nettle and accompanying grasses are reasonable complements to our plantings, which can grow above them and as they do so, claim the all-important sunlight and growing space. In the meantime, though, the plants need a little help to keep those uninvited guests from invading the protective cages. Also, a number of the trees were being impeded by the nets at the top of the tubes intended to keep out birds and wasps, and needed to be freed. That’s where our Preserve Managers and Greg Sprissler’s machetes came in! The machetes turned out to be the perfect tools to cut a path from tree to tree and to clear around the tubes and cages, allowing access for nets to be cut and cages to be cleared. Not to scare anyone, but here’s the crew that came in to help Preserve Manager Ray Clarke on a beautiful late summer morning…..
Left to right: Bob Schuster, Tim Magee, Tim Lander and Greg Sprissler.
Readers may be interested in a couple of the shrubs that are doing so well in their cages, originally planted by OLC’s terrific partners from Resolution Life. Here’s a Bottlebrush buckeye, Aesculus parviflora. This shrub grows to 6 – 12 feet and produces flowers in erect “panicles” 8-20 inches long resembling a traditional bottle brush. The flowers give way to pear-shaped capsules containing polished, brown seeds. The plant is highly poisonous to humans if eaten, and deer seem to avoid it, although will eat it in extreme conditions. Here is one of ours, cage cleared of grasses and nettles, producing its first, rather weird, seed pod:
Other members of the Aesculus family include the Ohio buckeye tree and its European relative the Horse chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum. It is this tree, alternating red and white varieties, that lines North Valley Road between Swedesford and Yellow Springs roads, passing OLC’s George Lorimer Preserve. The trees were planted around a century ago by local residents, who formed Great Bear Tract to preserve and beautify the rural road across the valley from Paoli. The group persuaded utility companies to bury their lines and eventually donated the land that became OLC’s Airdrie Forest Preserve. Visitors should be on the look out for the spectacular spring flowering of these trees.
The other shrub of interest is the Smooth alder, here being shown off by OLC President Tim Lander. This is a plant that is native to the northeast US, although not common in OLC Preserves. But it likes moist soil near streams, and its flexible stems and fibrous root system made it a good fit for our riparian restoration. We hope our plants will reach a mature height of 8-12 feet in 10 years. A point of interest: Alders produce nitrogen for themselves by the activity of nitrogen-fixing bacteria located in root nodules.
(Alert viewers of this photo will notice that the Phragmites has not given up! We plan to treat remaining plants in coming weeks).
Members and visitors are welcome to get in touch with us (info@openlandconservancy.org) to volunteer for the maintenance tasks that will help transform the habitat in our Preserves.