| Elm
forest, west of Minneapolis |
Lee
E. Frelich |
| Jul
28, 2004 10:14 PDT |
ENTS:
Yesterday I visited a privately-owned forest of American elm,
red elm and
rock elm west of Minneapolis. I had never seen such a thing
before. The
main canopy is 90 feet high with trees 100-150 years old and
3-7' cbh.
There is also regeneration in the seedling and sapling size
classes. Dutch
elm disease has been there for 20 years, yet most of the old
elms are still
alive, even though there is several hundred acres of contiguous
elm. A few
have gotten Dutch elm disease and had it for several years and
then
recovered. There are some hackberry and basswood trees mixed in
with the
elms. This forest is just a few miles beyond the range limit of
sugar
maple, and the elms, hackberry and basswood have filled the
maple's niche.
There are areas where most of the elms are rock elm. Previously
I had seen
a few scattered rock elm, but never a whole stand of it.
The site also has bur oak savanna, dwarf bur oak savanna on
gravel eskers,
prairie, marshes, and some lowland cottonwood forest with trees
up to 25'
cbh, which were already large trees on a photograph taken in
1896. Cottonwood must live longer than we normally suppose.
During the Mid
1800s the area was slated to be Minnesota's capital. Of course
plans to
build the capitol there were abandoned due to the Sioux Indian
wars, and
the capitol building was eventually built in Pig's Eye (renamed
St.Paul,
since Pig's Eye is not a suitable name for a state's Capital
city).
All of the trees in the area have the growth form you would
expect for an
area at the climatic limits for tree growth, with extremely cold
winters,
hot summers, frequent high winds, tornadoes and lots of
lightning. Most
older trees have lightning scars, and most apparently die from
blowing down
after rot initiated by lightning scars. Before I visited this
site I
thought Minneapolis had an extreme climate.
Lee |
| Re:
RE: Elm forest |
Jess
Riddle |
| Aug
06, 2004 05:21 PDT |
Thanks for the description of the fascinating site. Do you now
what
factors in addition to the position relative to the range of
sugar maple
have contributed to producing the unusual canopy composition? Do
topography and soil characteristics appear to explain the
unusual
concentrations of some species. Also, what other species occur
in the
understory and herbaceous layer? Most of the sites where I've
seen red
elm growing in near the edge of the southern Appalachians have
rich,
circum-neutral soils with unusually high calcium content. Hence,
in this
area, black walnut, red mulberry, and paw paw are common
associates. As
far as I know, rock elm's range is no where near this area, so I
can't
imagine the sites the species typically occupies.
Jess Riddle
|
| Re:
RE: Elm forest |
Lee
E. Frelich |
| Aug
06, 2004 08:13 PDT |
Jess:
This site has pH 7.0, black silt, 4-6 feet deep. Most soils at
the edge of
the prairie have a lot of calcium, since wind blown silt comes
in from the
Dakotas and Nebraska, which have high pH calcium rich soils.
Deposition of
this silt has probably been going on for thousands of years, and
continues
today. The silt holds a lot of water, so it allows development
of a rich
forest even though there is nothing but grass for the next
thousand miles
to the west. Some of the forest is on peninsulas and isthmuses
between
lakes, so it had fewer fires than the surrounding area, thus
allowing
forests to develop. The bur oak savannas are all on the south
shores of the
lakes, where fires would have had an unrestricted sweep before
settlement.
There are quite a few nice looking black walnut in the area,
even though
the range map for black walnut shows the edge of the range about
40 miles
south of this forest. None of them are more than 100 years old,
so they
must have been brought in by farmers. Red mulberry does not
occur in the
area, since winters are too cold, and they would die back to the
ground
almost every year (in the relative banana-belt climate of
Minneapolis, 90
miles further east, red mulberry can live 15-20 years between
killing
freezes of -30). Paw paw wouldn't have the slightest chance of
surviving in
the area.
The understory on the peninsulas is dominated by wood nettle 6
feet tall,
with about 50 plants per square meter. In fact we got lost in
the nettle
for an hour or so, since it was slightly higher than eye height
and there
was no way to tell where we were going. We each got several
thousand
nettle stings, but that's typical for a hike in a southern MN
forest. Blue
cohosh, spring beauty, Dutchman's breeches, yellow violets, and
sweet
cicely are all very common. There is a lot of elm, hackberry,
basswood, and
ironwood in the sapling layer. There are also seven species of
woodpeckers,
bald eagles, and pelicans in the area, and millions of mosquitoes
of the
species that carry West Nile virus, cases of which are frequent
in the area
during July and August.
Lee
|
| Elm/
Oak Savannah Forest |
Edward
Frank |
| Mar
01, 2007 15:23 PST |
Lee,
Several days ago you made the comment that you had been trying
to get
The Nature Conservancy in Minnesota to work toward preserving an
unusual
elm forest/dry burr oak savannah forest west of Minneapolis.
This is
the one you described here:
http://www.nativetreesociety.org/fieldtrips/minnesota/elm_forest.htm
right? Is there anything I can do, or that ENTS could do to prod
them
or other groups toward protecting this unusual patch of woods?
Write
letters? Any suggestions?
Ed Frank |
| Re:
Elm/ Oak Savannah Forest |
Lee
Frelich |
| Mar
01, 2007 18:55 PST |
Ed:
Yes, that is the forest. As far as I have been able to
determine, it
contains the only known rock elm forest, as well as very rare
oak savanna.
It might just help if ENTS wrote a letter stating how important
it is to
protect the only known example of that forest type, which could
be signed
by you, Will, Bob and other interested ENTS. Maybe that is
something we
could do at the meeting at Cook Forest. Do we have official ENTS
stationery?
Lee
== 3 of 3 ==
Date: Thurs, Apr 3 2008 8:03 pm
From: Lee Frelich
ENTS:
I just gave a presentation to the Minnesota Native Plant Society
'"he
Kandiyohi forest: mysteries of elms and Minnesota forests of the
past and
future" about the Rock elm forest in central Minnesota, along
with tree
pathologist Mark Stennes, who gave some hypotheses about why this
forest
has not died from Dutch elm disease even though the disease has been
present for 25 years. Some of the hypotheses are that there are
native bugs
in the forest that compete with elm bark beetles, thus reducing rate
of
spread, that there are native fungi that compete with the elm
disease
fungus, and the possibility of resistance, as was found in the
Princeton
elm, which has been commercially available for 90 years and turned
by
accident to be resistant.
My part of the presentation showed that this forest may be a relic
of a
much more extensive forest from the paleo record that covered
millions of
acres 9,000 years ago, but that it never burned and converted to oak
savanna because it is surrounded by lakes, and sugar maple, which
replaced
the elm in most locations, never migrated that far west. This is
also the
only old growth elm forest I have ever seen, with trees up to 250
years old.
In addition to rock, red and American elms, the forest also has
hackberry,
American basswood, green ash, Kentucky coffeetree, bitternut
hickory. All
of these species have maximum abundances in eastern Kansas, which is
the
same climate Minnesota is headed for by the end of the 21st Century.
Therefore, this forest is not only the past, but the future forest
of
Minnesota.
BTW--the snow in southern MN melted today with temperatures near 60
degrees, but there are still no flowers or leaves on any trees, not
even
silver maple (although 2 or 3 more warm days may bring out silver
maple
flowers). There is still plenty of snow to the north; the Minnesota
North
Shore, and the Porcupine Mountains (south shore in MI) still have
several
feet of snow and picked up a couple feet of snow Tuesday.
Lee Frelich
September 04, 2008
Bob:
On your trip from St.Cloud to Pipestone, you passed within 10
miles of the Kandiyohi rock elm forest. I was just out
there today. I am more convinced than ever that the three
tracts of elm are really remnants from 9000 years ago. They
didn't burn during the mid-Holocene warm period 7,500 to 5,000
bp because they are on peninsulae in lakes, and they didn't get
replaced by sugar maple as the climate cooled during the last
few thousand years because sugar maple never got that far west.
So that left a few stands of the ancient elm forest intact.
Lee
Kangiyohi Rock Elm Forest Slide Presentation
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