Blooms from the Cold Earth

Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve hosts a winter walk.

By: Jodi Thompson

Staff photo by Jodi Thompson

Pidcock Creek runs through Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve in New Hope, Pa.

   If there had been fresh snow on the ground, Gabrielle Sivitz, education coordinator at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve in New Hope, Pa., would be pointing out tracks left by fox and other critters roaming the 100-acre woods. Yet, a layer of the white stuff would have hidden what she now uses her bamboo walking stick to point out along the red-stone path during this rather warm winter’s walk, an hour-long foray into winter plant and animal survival and identification.
   Ms. Sivitz points to a 6-inch white circle on the path of red tipple stone. Some walkers hone in for a better view. Others, recognizing the circle of white for what it is, hold back some. It seems a large bird of prey has relieved itself from a perch high above.
   "Either a hawk or an owl was right over our heads at one point," says Ms. Sivitz, gazing up to the branches above.
   She knows her stuff about the flora and fauna of the preserve, explaining you can often hear the hoot of the great horned owl just around dusk on winter evenings.
   Ms. Sivitz points out beaver damage to a large beech tree nearby. Beaver live in the Delaware Canal and their offspring venture out to find their own territory, she tells the group.
   "We had a visitor," she says. "He was munching on this beech tree, which was too big for him to fell. But he took care of some of the saplings."
   Indeed, many saplings trunks stand in the area, gnawed to a point about a foot off the ground.

Staff photo by Jodi Thompson Above, beaver damage to a beech tree.

Below, a reaction to insect infestation in a golden rod, known as a rosette.

Staff photo by Jodi Thompson

   "It happens," Ms. Sivitz says. "It’s part of the cycle."
   She’s not concerned by the little bugger’s busyness. Ms. Sivitz points to other trees with beaver damage from previous years, all healed.
   Upright visitors are restricted to the paths in all but one area within the deer fence, which surrounds 80 acres of the preserve. This is to protect the delicate native plants.
   One such growing thing, the putty root, is rare and endangered in Pennsylvania. Its broad, papery leaves are visible only in the winter. The plant flowers in the summer when the leaves are long gone. Ms. Sivitz leaves the trail to carefully indicate the green leaves of a putty root among the dry maple and sycamore leaves on the ground.

   "I wanted to point that out to you because that’s kind of a special plant," Ms. Sivitz says as she returns to the trail with a warning to do as she says, not as she does.
   There is so much more to see in the winter forest than expected. Mushrooms break down a fallen branch. Insect infestation of plants causes rosettes and galls that are more visible without greenery. The rosette on the tall golden rod is the plant’s reaction to insect egg or larvae inside. The gall marks the spot where a wasp laid her eggs in the stalk of the plant. The plant grows around it forming a wonderful wintering haven for the larvae. In the spring, the wasps will eat their way out.
   It’s not only the shapes that catch Ms. Sivitz’s eye during the walk. She delights in the deep red sticks of the Virginia rose, in the shamrock hue of the evergreen Christmas fern that peeks from beneath shrubs and in the clear blue of the sky.
   "That’s one of the things I love about taking walks in the winter," she says, "the colors. You’d think it’d just be brown and blah, but there’s a lot (of color.)"
   The green shoots speckled with purple pushing their way through the ground belong to the skunk cabbage, the first spring plant to appear. It blooms with a yellow flower in late January or early February. Such a lowly name for a clever plant; it produces its own heat. The air near the shoots can be 30 degrees warmer than the surrounding air.
   "It’s just an amazing adaptation to produce heat to attract flies to pollinate them," Ms. Sivitz says. "If it was snowy, you’d see a little circle in the snow melted around them."

Staff photo by Jodi Thompson Above, Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve Education Coordinator Gabrielle Sivitz.

Below, the evergreen Christmas fern peeks from beneath fallen leaves and shrubs.

Staff photo by Jodi Thompson

   Duckweed is yet another humbly tagged plant. Many people mistake the smallest flowering plant that grows on the surface of still water for algae. It is not, as it is not bad for the ecosystem, providing nutrients and shelter for living things, so long as it doesn’t grow so thick as to block the sunlight.
   The duckweed is actually stuck in the defrosting layer of ice on the preserve’s pond. Ms. Sivitz explains that normally duckweed sinks to the bottom for the duration of winter.
   "There are always exceptions in nature," she says.
   One thing that remains stable is living beings’ thirst for sweet things. This is evident by the paw paw tree we come across. Its rough black trunk has drill holes through to the yellow flesh, the work of a very busy yellow-bellied sapsucker.
   He’ll return to his drill holes to lick the sap seeping from them. Bugs will feast on the sweet sap, only to become a meal for the returning sapsucker or other birds like the titmouse and chickadees. In the spring, ruby-throated hummingbirds will feed from the sap still in the holes.
   The feathered driller didn’t do permanent harm to the tree. The bark will heal. Farmers in New England tap the same trees each year. Acid rain, global warming and root compaction are more damaging to the tree than tapping.
   The warm days and cold nights of late winter are perfect for making the sap flow. Bowman’s Hill will hold Maple Sugaring days Feb. 16 and March 2. Families can learn about tapping live sugar maples and making maple syrup. They will offer samples, tasting much better than that artificial stuff sold in supermarkets. The Native Americans knew so much more about the plants around them than we do today, probably from studying animals.
   The colonists grew to know their environment, as well. They used musclewood, also called ironwood, for their ax handles. The gray ripples and smooth bark even look sinewy and muscular.
   "One of the things I love about the winter is you really get to concentrate on the form of the tree and the bark of the tree because the leaves aren’t in the way," says Ms. Sivitz, while touching the delicate curves of the strong trunk.
   Winter walks through the woods offer the chance to see how clever our wild friends are, a reminder of the resourcefulness of the people who came before us and also how delicate nature can be.
The next Winter Walk takes place at Bowman’s Hill Wildflower Preserve, River Road, just below New
Hope, Pa., Feb. 9, 2-3 p.m. $3 per person; $5 family/couple; $2 members; $3 member family/couple. Pre-registration
suggested. Maple Sugaring will be held at the preserve Feb. 16 and March 2, 1-2 p.m. $5 adults; $3 children;
$3 member; $1 member child. Pre-registration suggested. For information, call (215) 862-2924. On the Web: www.bhwp.org