We started our trip at Battelle Darby Metro Park in the prairie wetland. The landscape is mostly flat and open without an overstory. Although there is not currently an overstory there are some Eastern Cottonwoods and American Sycamores invading the prairie area that if allowed to fully grow will make up an overstory. The shrub layer and ground cover are dominated by grasses and forbes.
Identifying two trees of the wet prairie. The Eastern Cottonwood and The American Sycamore.
Eastern Cottonwood: The first step is to look for simple, alternate, toothed leaves. The bark of young trees should be smooth and white, while older trees should have hard, grey bark. (Trees and Shrubs Peterson Field Guide by Goerge A. Petrides).
Eastern Cottonwood
American Sycamore: The leaves are simple, alternate, and have a unique fan-lobed shape and pattern. The bark is white and will peel off as the tree grows giving the trunk a unique look. (Trees and Shrubs Peterson Field Guide by Goerge A. Petrides)
American Sycamore
Identifying a prairie grass. Big Bluestem Grass: As the name suggests, the stem will be a blue-green color, and the grass is tall. The grass will change to a pinkish purple color towards the top and the end of the grass will branch off into several sections.
Big Bluestem Grass
Identifying a prairie forb. Common Milkweed: Leaves are short stalked and oblong. Their fruits are horn-shaped, green, and have soft spines on them.
Common Milkweed
After the prairie, we moved to a forested section of the park called Cedar Ridge to see some limestone loving plants. The forest had a large overstory made up of a diverse range of trees. A nice shrub layer that wasn’t too dense made up of young trees and shrubs. The ground cover was a mix of some different types of wildflowers and Canadian Wild Ginger.
Four limestone loving plants of the woods are the Eastern Redbud, the Fragrant Sumac, the Blue Ash, and the Hop Hornbeam.
The Eastern Redbud can be identified by its alternate, simple and heart-shaped leaves. It has pink flowers and produces legume fruits. (Trees and Shrubs Peterson Field Guide by Goerge A. Petrides)
Eastern Redbud
The American Hackberry can be identified by its coarse toothed, flat leaves that have an uneven base. (Trees and Shrubs Peterson Field Guide by Goerge A. Petrides)
American Hackberry
The Blue Ash can be identified to the ash family by its opposite, compound leaves and can be identified from among other ashes by its square, four lined twigs. (Trees and Shrubs Peterson Field Guide by Goerge A. Petrides)
Blue Ash
Blue Ash up close
The Hop Hornbeam can be identified by its alternate, simple, and serrated leaves. It also has unique shaggy, scaly, bark. (Trees and Shrubs Peterson Field Guide by Goerge A. Petrides)
Hop Hornbeam
Hop Hornbeam Bark
There are also invasive plants that grow in all types of environments that can cause problems for native plants. One such example that we saw throughout the wetland prairie was the Narrow Leaf Cattail. Cattail plants in general can be easily identified by their corn dog-like appearance. The Narrow-leaved Cattail can then be identified from the Common Cattail by its more narrow leaves that are rounded on the back and by the gap between the upper and lower parts of the spike. (Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide by Lawrence Newcomb)
Narrow Leaf Cattail
Throughout our trip we learned about many different plants and a variety of fun facts about them. One fact that we learned was about Poison Ivy. We learned that the oil on the plant causes the allergy response due to it activating the immune system. We also learned some fun rhymes to help identify it! 1. Leaflets of 3, leave it be. 2. Aerial roots, use your boots. 3. Fruits of white, run in fright. These are all in reference to the key identification factors, the first is its trifold leaves, the second is the vines have aerial roots on them, and the third is the white drupe fruits the plant produces. (Trees and Shrubs Peterson Field Guide by Goerge A. Petrides)
Poison Ivy
Geobotany
Ohio geology is divided into western and eastern. The western part is underlain with limestone that has been worn down into mostly flat land. The eastern part, by contrast, is underlain with sandstone that is more resistant to erosion.
The reason for the difference in rock types is because a thick layer of limestone overlaid by sandstone was tiled away to form the Appalachian Mountains, leaving the exposed limestone beneath in a near flat plain to the west. The east however had erosion resistant sandstone that caused the formation of sandstone hills. Most of the erosion of the limestone and sandstone was caused by the preglacial Teays River that flowed through Ohio for about 200 million years.
The pleistocene glaciers that later invaded Ohio quickly covered the flat limestone plains in the west, but were greatly slowed by the steep sandstone hills of the east.
Map of glacier invasion line. Blue=Glaciated and Green = not glaciated
Glacial till is an unsorted mix of sand, silt, clay, and boulders that reflects the geographic materials of the area that the glacier moved over. As such, western Ohio has an abundance of lime and clay products in the till, while eastern Ohio has very little till with only small amounts of lime and clay products.
In western Ohio, the clayey till is poorly drained, inadequately aerated, and with high nutrient availability. Also in western Ohio the areas where the till is thin, have excessive draining and are very high in lime. In eastern Ohio, drainage tends to be runoff rather than soaking into the soil, exposed sandstone and shale both have low acid levels, and are low-nutrient substances.
Five species of trees and shrubs that have a distribution generally limited to limestone or limey substrates are Eastern Red Cedar, Ninebark, Hoptree, Blue Ash, and Redbud.
Eastern Red Cedar
Blue Ash
Eastern Redbud
Five species of trees and shrubs that have a distribution generally limited to high-lime, clay-rich substrates developed in the thick glacial till of western Ohio are the sugar maple, Beech, Red Oak, Shagbark Hickory, and White Oak
Five species of trees and shrubs that have a distribution generally limited to sandstone hill of eastern OH are Sourwood, Scrub Pine, Pitch Pine, Mountain Laurel, and Huckleberry-Blueberry.
The major determinant of distribution for Sweet Buckeye is the glacial boundary, it doesn’t occur anywhere within the boundary. Hemlock, in contrast to Sweet Buckeye, needs continuously cool, moist environments, such as deep valleys, and grows both in and out of the glacial boundary. Rhododendron is determined by low, flat shale with lime-rich soil.
Citation for Geobotany section: Forsyth, J. (1971). Geobotany.
The sedge meadow areas of the fen don’t have an overstory, but have a middle layer made up of tall grasses and flowers such as Grass of Parnassus and Prairie Dock. The ground layer of shorter wildflowers such as Goldenrods and Shrubby Cinquefoil. The swamp forest has an overstory of trees such as Black Ash and Tulip Trees, an understory of shrubs such as Prickly-Ash and Hop Tree, and a ground cover of flowers and small plants such as Great Lobelia. The fen is in a lowland area that flushes water and has cold groundwater running through it all year. Due to glaciation seeds from northern areas were deposited in the lowland area as the glaciers retreated and due to the access to cold water it allowed more northern species to thrive.
Due to the fens’ unique ecological conditions it is home to some rare plants. For our trip we learned about the coefficient of conservatism (CC value), which is based on the range of ecological tolerances a plant has and while it is not directly testing the rarity of a plant, the two do often overlap with one another. Four species that we saw on our trip with higher CC values are the Black Ash, Swamp Goldenrod, Shrubby Cinquefoil, and Round Leaf Sundew.
Black Ash – CC : 7
Swamp Goldenrod – CC : 9
Shrubby Cinquefoil – CC : 10
Round Leaf Sundew – CC : 7
We again learned about many different plants and a variety of fun facts about them. One of the things we learned about was the woody vines of the swamp forest. We learned that the Virgin’s Bower is in the buttercup family and Moonseed twines itself as it grows up the plant and has leaves that are attached inwards from the edge.
Virgin’s Bower
Moonseed
Moonseed Leaf