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TOPIC: Pioneer Mother's Memorial Forest
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/4d50d2d099576b88?hl=en
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== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Sun, Jun 1 2008 6:55 pm
From: Randy Brown

On April 23 & 24 of this year I spent two days visiting Pioneer
Mother's Memorial Forest in South central Indiana. Don Bragg
previously visited the site in 2005, did a quick walk through and
gives an excellent overview of the site:

http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/indiana/pioneer_mothers_memorial_forest.htm

The forest sits on a generally north eastern facing ridge. Generally
the Oaks and Hickories dominate the upper slopes and ridge tops and
then gradually grade into Beech, Sugar Maple, with the occasional
Kentucky Coffee Tree and Black Walnut. Finally one finds young Tulip
Tree, White or Green Ash, and Bitternut Hickory at the bottom. The
most massive and visually impressive trees are at the top of the ridge
just below the highway. Upon leaving the parking lot, one is
immediately treated to the sight of two massive, canopy reaching Black
Walnut. Something you almost never see in Ohio (I've seen one, but it
had a big hollow half way up). The trail quickly snakes past these
trees and then follows the crest of a ridge spur as it meanders toward
the valley below. To the untrained eye the show appears to be over
as the trail waltzes through a diverse, but comparatively unimpressive
Oak-Hickory forest.

The height's and dhb of the ridge top trees are fairly average for
nice second growth and the undergrowth is minimal. However, the
undergrowth rapidly increases down the steep slopes making it easy to
overlook the tall trees lurking down there. That and the thick
midstory of beach and sugar maple just starting to put out their
leaves. Luckily things weren't so far along that I couldn't get good
site lines on most of the trees. As Don suspected the tallest trees
in the forest are found here. Boy were there some doozies. The
bottom of the '2nd Cove' (see chart below) had three 135+ trees within
a roughly 1 acres area. These trees were all visible from the trail,
but they were easy to overlook them because they were so tall and
skinny and far enough away you didn't have a good sense of their
scale. You didn't realize just how big and tall they were till you
got about down in there among them. The tall sycamore is probably bit
shorter than in the past because the terminal leading limb had
recently broken out leaving a noticeably gap in the top center of the
crown. The Ash was still in wonderful shape and sitting right smack
in the middle of the shallow draw draining the cove. It's probably
got lots of growth left in it, till the EAB gets there anyway.

On the downside, it was immediately apparent that my tree ID skills
were in deep weeds, as species hitherto unseen in my usual northwest
Ohio haunts rose up from the depths of my neglected field guides to
make an appearance in the real world. My suspicion is the ridgetops
and upper slopes contains a mixture of Red, Scarlet and Black Oaks.
And on the Hickory side, Shagbark, Bitternut, Red, pignut, and maybe a
mockernut. I took quite a few high rez pictures (~ 5 MB per jpg) I
only put the ones that made the Rucker index up on the file page so
you guys and can check my educated guesses (This eats up all the
groups file space, so I'll try to get them off after a couple of days)

_MG_1440-1442

130.3' Bitternut hickory (C. cordiformis). Beautifully vigorous young
tree. Located a dozen or so yards away from the 140' Tulip tree (Also
a young tree).

_MG_1464-1466

At first blush I assume this is a Red Oak (Q. Rubra). But the bark at
the base seems a little more chunky than I'm used to on a tree this
size.

 _MG_1471-1472

I presume this is either Pignut Hickory (C. glabra) or Red Hickory (C.
ovalis). There weren't any leaves out to speak of and last year's
nuts were almost entire gone, so I'm pretty sketchy on this one.

Another neat side show was a recently fallen tree, which split open to
reveal a feral honeybee hive inside. There are still some bees
buzzing around it. I wonder what they're going to do? I assume they
can swarm to a new location? I also watched a pileated woodpecker,
pick away at a fallen tree a few yards away from me. It let me take
some pictures, but since I didn't have a telephoto lens, they turned
out pretty bland.

After two days of fairly thorough trawling through the forest I came
up with these numbers:

== 2 of 13 ==
Date: Mon, Jun 2 2008 4:16 am
From: "Will Blozan"

Randy,

Excellent work! I am so glad some ENTS are getting to these "oft spoken
about but not really sampled fully yet" sites. I was there in the
mid-nineties and was blown away by the walnuts. I recall a giant one not far
from the parking area that I lasered to 135' and ~ 12 feet in girth. I also
remember the diversity of the herbs in there and saw moonseed (Menispermum)
for the first time. I also recall some decent paw-paw and a huge chinquapin
oak on the ridge that at the time would have been close to a state champion.

Did you happen to find two rolls of slide film? I lost all the shots I took
there.

Keep it up!

Will



_____

== 3 of 13 ==
Date: Mon, Jun 2 2008 5:34 am
From: dbhguru@comcast.net


Randy,

Excellent trip report. Pioneer Mother's Memorial Forest enters the ENTS books. You are the 3rd Ent to visit Pioneer Mother. Will Blozan was the first years ago and Don Bragg back in 2005.

Bob

== 4 of 13 ==
Date: Mon, Jun 2 2008 5:35 am
From: doncbragg@netscape.net


Randy--

Nice trip reports! I'm glad someone has been able to revisit these sites--I knew that I had only scratched the surface at both Spring Mill and Pioneer Mother's, and your work confirms this!

Don

== 5 of 13 ==
Date: Mon, Jun 2 2008 8:46 am
From: "symplastless"


I visited this site and did fertility level test for black walnut. I went back to the area where the back walnuts were up to and over 4' DBH.

John

== 13 of 13 ==
Date: Mon, Jun 2 2008 7:31 pm
From: Randy Brown


Thanks Will,

I don't think I saw the huge walnut you speak of. The largest one I
found was the second tree listed, but it was only 116' tall. I don't
remember any noticeable crown damage. It also had a noticeable
smalller (but still big if seen anywhere else) walnut growing perhaps
20' away from it. There was one small cove on the far northwestern
corner I didn't investigate beyond a brief glance. In that breif
glance it didn't look too promising and it was getting late. Perhaps
I missed something after all?

I do remember a fairly fat chinquapin oak near the ridge top. It
didn't look very tall and was surrounded by brush, didn't have any
higher ground above it to make shooting the top easy, so I didn't
bother to measure it (oops).

Lastly, I'm afraid your film is still enjoying the wild's along with
the pencil I made spontaneously vanish out there..somewhere..

== 3 of 11 ==
Date: Sat, Jun 7 2008 5:06 am
From: Randy Brown


I ran into some Hickory trees a Pioneer Mother's forest that I'm not
sure of the ID of. I put pictures up on the File area (warning they
are high rez). I presume these are a mixtureof either Pignut Hickory
(C. glabra) or Red Hickory (C. ovalis). There weren't any leaves out
to speak of and last year's nuts were almost entire gone, so I'm
pretty sketchy on this one.

The individual trees are divided up as follows

_MG_1446-1448

http://tinyurl.com/3g7ep3
http://tinyurl.com/3sg9nl
http://tinyurl.com/4tabsz

_MG_1471-1472
http://tinyurl.com/4u6hoj
http://tinyurl.com/53rcba

This last bunch are two of these trees similar looking trees growing
side by side
_MG_1491-1493
http://tinyurl.com/4wg772
http://tinyurl.com/46df8m
http://tinyurl.com/4arblr

Thanks

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Hickory ID question
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/3b95301bd02ad60e?hl=en
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, Jun 11 2008 9:09 am
From: "Jess Riddle"


Randy,

Separating red hickory from pignut hickory has been the biggest
challenge for me in identifying trees in the eastern US. Depending on
which author you follow, red hickory is a either a separate species, a
variety of pignut hickory (C. glabra var. odorata), or just a bunch of
pignut hickories that look a little different. I think the most
definitive characteristic is supposed to be the dehiscence of the
fruit; the husk stays attached to the nut in pignut but in red the
sutures split freely to the base and sections of the husk may fall
off. Then there's a host of other characters that are often mentioned
but don't seem consistent: pignut usually has five leaflets and red
usually has seven, red hickory leaves are spicy-aromatic when crushed,
the petiole (leaf stem) is reddish on red hickory, and the bark may be
scaly on red hickory. Trees that I suspect of being red hickory also
tend to grow in fairly rich sites and the fruits are slightly
flattened spheres rather than the pear shaped nuts of pignuts. I only
occasionally see reds with strips of bark peeling of the trunk, but
the bark ridges do consistently have sharp rather than rounded edges.
Getting back to your trees, based on the appearance of the bark and
the associated species I would lean towards call them red hickory, but
like I said, I find the taxon generally confusing. I curious to hear
others' opinions.

Jess

==============================================================================
TOPIC: Hickory ID question
http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/3b95301bd02ad60e?hl=en
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== 1 of 2 ==
Date: Thurs, Jun 12 2008 7:26 pm
From: Randy Brown

Jess,

Thanks for the info. Comforting to know there's a good reason I'm
confused.

Also, my apologies to anyone who checks my original email. The images
were on the google groups file page and they ran afoul of our fine
webmaster's limited patience.