Battelle Darby & Cedar Bog

Battelle Darby Metro Park

Wet Prairie Community

Battelle Darby Metro Park has been transformed from farmland acreage to a beautiful natural area of wet prairies and woodlands. The location of this park’s prairie is near a large water source, Big Darby Creek, making the area particularly wet and low-laying, which is ideal for grasses and wildflowers. Non-woody plants, forbs, wildflowers, and grasses dominate the prairie landscape. Some of the dominant plants in the ground cover layer included big blue stem, Indian grass, narrow-leaved cattails, broad-leaved cattails, sneezeweed, false white indigo, common milkweed, and tall boneset. In the next layer up, the shrub layer, there were not many shrubs occurring as a majority of the plants in the prairie were non-woody and herbaceous. However, within the tree layer, there were a few eastern cottonwood trees and American sycamores that technically would not be here in a natural setting.

Wet Prairie Trees – How To Identify

American sycamore

Here we have an American sycamore tree, Platanus occidentalis, held by Dr. Kilps. This water loving tree is one of the two main trees we found at Battelle Darby’s wet prairie land and it is identified by their camouflaged brown and white bark, large “maple-like” leaves that are palmately veined with 3-5 lobes, alternately arranged, and simple, and these trees also have a petiole that wraps all the way around the lateral buds. Wow!

eastern cottonwood

The second tree we found in the wet prairie was an eastern cottonwood, Populus deltoides. This tree is another water-loving species and can be identified by its distinctly triangular leaves with a flat base and pointed tip, their alternate arrangement, and mature bark resembling deeply furrowed with long, ash-gray ridges.

Wet Prairie Grasses and Forbs – Identification

big bluestem

Here is one of the most abundant grasses in the prairie: big bluestem. Big blue stem, Andropogon gerardii, is also known by the name “turkey foot” as you can see the resemblance of this amazing native grass to a turkey’s foot. The name holds some truth as the stems appear purplish blue when you encounter them. This grass flowers in spikes, grows to be about 4-8 feet tall, and has flattened stems.

Indian grass

Indian grass, Sorghastrum nutans, can be easily identified by its seed heads, which are golden-to-yellow, plumelike, and have twisted awns. This species also has yellow anthers and fluffy stigma as seen in this photo! Similar to big bluestem, Indian grass also grows to be about 4-7 feet tall and is found in wet prairies among other habitats.

sneezeweed

Here we have an herbaceous flowering plant that is not a graminoid, a forb, called sneezeweed. Sneezeweed, Helenium autumnale, can be identified by its daisy-like flowers with triply-wedged, yellow petals, lance-shaped leaves, and compound flower heads (in the Asteraceae family).

Natural History Note: Graminoids

Graminoids are among one of the more interesting plant categories in the prairie. Graminoids are grass-like plants that include grasses and sedges. Grasses are distinguished by their narrow leaves, small wind-pollinated flowers, overlapping leaf sheath, and round structure to their leaves. Sedges on the other hand have sedges (remember, sEDGES have EDGES) have leaves with three edges, the base of the leaves wrap around the stem, and they have a closed leaf sheath.

 

Woodland Community

The second area we explored at Battelle Darby Metropark was their woodlands. This area compared to the prairie had much larger woody plants, more plant biomass, and many lime-loving trees. The understory layer of this land was composed of many native species of flowers and grasses such as sanicle, blue-stemmed goldenrod, and wild ginger. In the next layer up, the shrub layer was composed of many native species such as spicebush and witch-hazel and some invasives such as autumn olive and honeysuckle. The overstory layer included many lime-loving trees, or calciphiles, that thrive in soils rich with calcium (lime-rich soil); including species such as chinquapin oak, hackberry, blue ash, fragrant sumac, redbud, and eastern hophornbeam. This layer had other common native Ohio trees such as pawpaws, flowering dogwoods, sugar maples, and American basswoods.

Calciphiles – Identification

1. hackberry

Our first lime-loving tree is hackberry, Celtis occidentalis. Hackberry trees are known for their gray, ashy bark that is covered in warty/ bumpy/ corky ridges that eventually join together with maturation. The leaves are simple, alternately arranged, and toothed along the margins. One of the better identification points of the leaves is their uneven base with a long, narrow, tapering point (Petrides, 1972).

2. eastern hophornbeam

 

 

Our second calciphile tree is none other than the eastern hophornbeam, Ostrya virginiana. This tree has alternate, simple leaves with a doubly-toothed margin. The best identification feature for this tree is its bark that appears “cat-scratched” with long slim, shaggy plates of bark that look shredded.
Here are those lovely alternate and doubly-serrate leaves that I was telling you about! Another interesting fact is that their fruits are small and flat with brown seeds that resemble hops, hence their common name! (Petrides, 1972).

3. American hornbeam

The third calciphile we learned on this trip was the American hornbeam, Carpinus caroliniana. Their leaves are extremely similar to the eastern hophornbeam as they are also alternate in arrangement, simple, and doubly-serrate. These leaves however do not have a fuzzy texture when touched, unlike the leaves of eastern hophornbeam. The best way to distinguish the two trees is by their bark. This species has one of the coolest bark identifications ever because their trunks look like leg muscles. It is very interesting how the smooth, gray bark resembles the muscles of a human leg. The fruit of this tree is a nutlet surrounded by a leafy bract on a long, hanging stalk.

4. blue ash

The fourth calciphile we learned was blue ash, Fraxinus quadrangulata. Blue ash has opposite, pinnately compound leaves with four-sided, square twigs (a great ID feature!). This species also has perfect flowers and broad/ oblong samaras (Petrides, 1972).

Invasive Plants – Identification

honeysuckle

Pictured above is Amur honeysuckle, Lonicera maackii, which is an invasive deciduous shrub that is native to East Asia. This shrub can grow up to 20 feet tall and has lots of brittle twigs (so it is “sticky”) and oppositely arranged leaves with bright red fruits (drupes).

Natural History Note – Invasive Plants

There are many invasive plants of deciduous forests, including shrubby honeysuckle that has opposite, simple leaves and red drupes, and autumn olive that has silvery leaves and red fruits with silver scales. Invasive plants can become an issue when they outcompete native plants and take over areas of land which could potentially lead to the extinction of important Ohio plant species.

Cedar Bog

Sedge Meadow Community

Cedar Bog (that is not a bog, it is a fen) was a beautiful 450 acreage of glaciated land that highlighted some rare and endangered Ohio plants due to its interesting soil composition from the ice sheets that flattened the landscape, pushing boreal plants south into Ohio. Cedar Bog is actually a fen as their wetlands are made up of groundwater that “flushes” through the system like a toilet. Water reaches the fen by surface runoff from uplands around the site and groundwater filtering through gravel from glacial hills. Within the 3 layers of the ecosystem (ground cover, shrubs, and canopy cover), there were lots of interesting and new species present here compared to Columbus, Ohio. In the ground layer, there was grass of Parnassus, sedges, rough leaf goldenrod, Ohio goldenrod, swamp goldenrod, great lobelia, Kalm’s lobelia, swamp lousewort, sundew, Canadian burnet, shrubby cinquefoil, and cup plant. In the shrub layer, we found poison sumac, multiflora rose, and privet, and in the canopy cover, we saw common hoptrees, swamp birch, and eastern white-cedar. Unique ecological conditions of the sedge meadow include the soil being glaciated (geology) and its complex hydrology from being a fen.

Here is a pretty picture I took overviewing many of the native wildflowers, grasses, sedges, and vines found at Cedar Bog!

Swamp Forest Community

The second ecosystem type we saw at Cedar Bog was its swamp forest. Here, a majority of the large trees present were eastern white-cedars, likely due to the land’s cold water and non-acidic soil. In the ground layer of this community, we found jack in the pulpit, jewelweed, goldenrod species, great lobelia, virgin’s bower, swamp thistle, moonseed, and cup plants. The shrub layer was composed of prickly-ash, poison sumac, European privet, and multiflora rose. And interestingly, the canopy layer was composed of many eastern white-cedar trees, tuliptrees, black ashes, green ashes, and American basswoods.

“Conservative” Plants – Identification

Coefficients of conservatism (CC) are assigned to each species of Ohio plants by Andreas et al. (2002) with values ranging from 0 to 10. This estimate shows the degree to which species are associated with high-quality, natural communities similar to those that existed in pre-settlement times. A CC of 10 is considered highly conservative and often rare.

1. grass of Parnassus

Grass of parnassus is a rare flowering plant with distinctive white flowers and dark green leaves. There are 5 bright white petals with greenish-yellow netting (Newcomb, 1977). COC=10

2. swamp lousewort

Swamp lousewort is a perennial plant with opposite leaves on the lower stem and alternate leaves on the upper (how crazy!). The flowers are pale yellow or cream-colored, tubular in shape, and about 1 inch long (Newcomb, 1977). COC=6

3. shrubby cinquefoil

Shrubby cinquefoil is a deciduous shrub that has bright yellow, saucer-shaped flowers with 5 petals. These flowers bloom from late May to late September. Leaves on this species are pinnately compound with 5 narrow leaflets each (Newcomb, 1977). COC=10

4. Kalm’s lobelia

Kalm’s lobelia is a small, perennial herb with blue flowers and it grows in wet environments. Each flower is blue with a white/ white and yellow eye. These flowers are arranged in loose racemes and bloom from late July through August (Newcomb, 1977). COC=9

Natural History Note – Woody Vines

At Cedar Bog, there were two cool vines present: virgin’s bower and moonseed. These two woody vines were abundant throughout the swamp forest ecosystem and were easy to spot due to their interesting identification features as shown below.

moonseed

Pictured above is moonseed, a climbing vine that resembles a crescent moon. Their leaves can be triangular with 3-7 shallow lobes and are usually dull green. An interesting fact about this vine is that its leaf stalk is attached to the lower surface of the leaf, near the margin. COC=5

virgin’s bower

This woody vine has small, white, and fragrant flowers that bloom in late summer. Virgin’s bower grows quickly and can reach 10-20 feet. The leaves are opposite and pinnately compound with three leaflets and coarse teeth along the margins. The base of the leaf blade is heart-shaped and ends abruptly in a straight line. COC=3

 

Geobotany

1. The geology of Ohio (if not regarded too closely) may be divided neatly into two parts. Contrast these two parts in terms of their geographic location, types of underlying rocks and their physical properties, and the landscape/topography that characterizes each.

  • Part 1 is the western part is underlain by limestone, a rock type that is relatively nonresistant in this humid climate. As a result, through millions of years of erosion, this part of Ohio has been worn down to a comparatively flat landscape. Part 2 is the eastern part of Ohio is underlain predominantly by sandstone, a relatively resistant rock, which is underlain by shale to the west. Erosion of the sandstone is accomplished mainly by the solution of the natural cement holding the grains together by water seeping down through the rock. Although water seeps through sandstone very readily, the process of dissolving this cement goes on very slowly, giving the rock its resistant character. Shale is much less resistant and is being worn down to low plains everywhere except where it is capped by the sandstone. As a result, erosion in eastern Ohio has succeeded only in carving out deep valleys, but not wearing away the intervening highland, forming a landscape of steep-sided sandstone hills/sandstone-capped hills (Forsythe, 1971).

2. The reason for the difference in the kinds of rocks is not difficult to understand. Describe the original sequence of sedimentary rock strata (three types in order from top to bottom), an arch that formed 200 million years ago noting where the crest of the arch was located compared with the low-lying toe of the arch, and an important river system that occupied OH for a long time. (Be sure to give the name of the river, state how many years it flowed, and what effect it had upon the landscape. What curtailed the activities of the river?)

  • The original horizontal sequence of sedimentary rock state in Ohio (a thick series of limestone layers (bottom) overlain by shales which were in turn overlain by sandstones(top)) was gently tilted into the form of a low arch before erosion began. This arch was in part a product of those pressures which, approximately 200 million years ago (at the end of the Paleozoic Era), created the original Appalachian Mountains to the east. Subsequent erosion has cut the deepest where the arch stood highest, exposing the oldest rocks along its crest which extends generally north-south through western Ohio. An important river system that occupied Ohio for a long time was the preglacial stream, the Teays River. Most of the erosion of all the limestone in western Ohio and all of the shale and sandstone in the east was accomplished by the Teays River. This river was present for a long time, about 200 million years, and as far as we know, these streams continued to erode the land throughout the entire length of that long interval of time. Their activities were curtailed only by the advance of the glaciers of the Ice Age (Pleistocene Epoch) less than 1 million years ago (Forsythe, 1971).

3. Pleistocene glaciers invaded OH a few hundred thousand years ago or less. What feature of the landscape slowed the glaciers and so caused there to be a glacial boundary cutting across OH? Sketch a map of Ohio and on it place the glacial boundary

  • Pleistocene glaciers were greatly slowed down by the steep-sided sandstone hills of eastern Ohio, so the glacial boundary there is no farther south than the latitude of Canton, OH. In contrast, on the broad limestone plains of western Ohio, where there was nothing to hinder the advance of the ice, it extended as far south as northern Kentucky (Forsythe, 1971).

4. Describe “glacial till” in terms of its general composition (a definition of till), and how it differs in eastern and western OH).

  • Glacial till is an unsorted mixture of sand, silt, clay, and boulders accumulated directly by the melting of ice, and the sand and gravel materials deposited by the glacial meltwater. The composition of the till reflects the nature of the geologic materials (bedrock or earlier glacial deposits) over which the glacier moved that left the deposit. So, in western Ohio, the glacial till is rich in lime and clay, products of the glacial abrasion of the limestone bedrock. In eastern Ohio, on the other hand, most of the till contains very little lime and clay, although, near the margins of the area of sandstone hills, where the ice moved from limestone bedrock onto sandstone, the till is higher in both lime and clay than it is elsewhere in eastern Ohio (Forsythe, 1971).

5. Contrast the basic substrate for plants in western and eastern OH in terms of drainage, aeration, pH (limey versus acid) nutrient availability.

  • On the plains of western Ohio, the most common substrate is limy, clayey till which provides a relatively impermeable soil, high in lime but poorly drained and inadequately aerated (high pH). This soil does not allow water to soak in very fast and instead tends to remain on the surface, creating low oxygen availability during wet periods and bad drouths during dry spells. The supply of plant nutrients here is relatively abundant. In eastern Ohio on the other hand, the very permeable sandstone bedrock, where it is exposed, produces a very acidic (low pH), low nutrient substrate which is especially dry on the tops of the hulls. Locally, the sandstone crops out at lower elevations. Here, though it is also acid, it provides a supply of moisture that is continually both available and cool because it comes from springs, the water of which has percolated down through permeable sandstone and emerged deep in the valleys without being sun-warmed. The shale present beneath the sandstone in some areas also produces a generally acid-low-nutrient substrate. However, unlike the sandstone, it is impermeable. As a result, surface water tends to run off rather than soak in, making it an especially drouthy substrate during prolonged dry spells (Forsythe, 1971).

6. Name 5 species of trees/shrubs that have a distribution generally limited to limestone or limey substrates (such as Ohio’s Lake Erie islands).

  • 1. redbud
Redbud: calciphile with alternately arranged, simple leaves in the shapes of hearts.
  • 2. red-cedar
Eastern red-cedar: a calciphile with scale-like opposite leaves and pale-blue fleshy cones that resemble berries.
  • 3. hop hornbeam
Eastern hop hornbeam: a calciphile with alternately arranged, simple leaved that are doubly-serrated on the margins. The bark appears as “cat scratched”.
  • 4. hackberry
Hackberry: a calciphile with alternately arranged simple leaves that are uneven. The bark is grayish with many warts or bumps formed in vertical lines.
  • 5. blue ash
Blue ash: a calciphile with oppositely arranged, pinnately compound leaves that has a square stem. 7-11 leaflets per leaf.

***include photos and descriptions of any such species you saw on the trip here***

7. Name 5 species of trees/shrubs that have a distribution generally limited to high-lime, clay-rich substrates developed in the thick glacial till of western Ohio

  • 1. sugar maple
  • 2. American beech
  • 3. red oak
  • 4. shagbark hickory
  • 5. white oak

8. Name 5 species of trees/shrubs that have a distribution generally limited to sandstone hills of eastern OH

  • 1. chestnut oak
  • 2. sourwood
  • 3. scrub pine
  • 4. pitch pine
  • 5. eastern hemlock

9. What is the major determinant of the distribution of each of these species: a) sweet buckeye (contrast with hemlock), b)  hemlock (contrast with sweet buckeye c) rhododendron?

  • A.) Sweet buckeye:
    • The distribution of sweet buckeye is one of several species that does not occur anywhere inside the glacial boundary. The reasons are (possibly) problems with repopulation by these plants in clayey high-lime glacial tills in the short time since the ice left Ohio. 
  • B.) Hemlock:  
    • The distribution of hemlock in Ohio shows that it is present in unglaciated areas, but it extends far to the north (well north of the glacial boundary in that area). The reason for this more extensive distribution seems to be its restriction to continuously cool, moist environments such as are found in the bottoms of deep valleys cut into sandstone and watered by cool spring water in the south. 
  • C.) Rhododendron:
    • There are some plant species present south of the glacial boundary (which might suggest that they belonged to the mixed mesophytic association in Ohio) even though they do not occur everywhere in Ohio. Only when their distribution is compared to the valleys in the ancient Teays system does a possible explanation occur. This species represents one that lived (and still lives) in the Appalachian highlands and which migrated down through the preglacial Teays River system from that area north into southern Ohio. 

 

 

References Used: 

Andreas, B., et al. (2002). Floristic quality assessment index (FQAI) for vascular plants and mosses for the State of Ohio. Kent State University,pages 1-217.

Forsythe, J. (1971). Linking Geology and Botany… a new approach. Geology Department, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 13(3), pages 1-7.

Newcomb, L. (1977). Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide. Little, Brown & Company, pages 1-351.

Petrides, George A. (1972). Trees and Shrubs of Northeast and North Central US and Southeast and South Central Canada. Peterson Field Guide: Houghton Miflin, page 204.