Anatomy of the Buckhorn Tavern Tree
Now that Jake is exploring the vast prairies of the west, I am left to tend to the interlobate prairies in Michigan. Winter is coming and it is a good time to bond with the forests that co-inhabit the oak openings of our area. Todays lesson is gathered from the harvesting of a large old red oak tree that blew over last spring.
The first step is to honor the tree for its contribution to the land. It has produced countless food for many small animals for decades as well as its role in cleansing the air and building the soil of the forest. The fallen tree has uprooted a large stump which creates an opening in the earth for important fungi and bacteria to grow. This tree will be harvested for fuel in my wood burning stove that heats my home. It seems rediculous that such a fine piece of wood which has served wood's highest, best purpose (being a living tree) for a century and a half would be used for one of the lowest purposes (burning for heat). This however is the world we live in and we honor the tree for its contribution.
Next, the first cuts into the trunk with the chain saw free up several twenty inch long logs which will be split later into firewood. I stack the wood outdoors to air dry until next spring when it will be split and then stored indoors to dry. The tree has a 23 inch dbh and about 35 feet of straight, clear oak wood, before branching out into a beautiful broad crown. Anyone who has ever cut a red oak can attest to the intoxicating aroma of the fresh cut oak wood. It is no surprise that distillers used this delicious wood for construction of their burbon casks and its rich aroma permeates fine burbon. I stop to rest and sit down in the forest next to copious piles of rich red oak sawdust that my saw has piled up from doing its work. Inhale and savor the aroma.
As I stack the round logs, I notice that this tree makes a great example of why old growth wood was so desireable for constructing things and why the young trees that we use today as a "renewable resource" are not the same as old growth wood which is hard to find. My new saw is sharp and leaves a nice clean cut that reveals the rings of the tree clearly. The center of the tree has thick rings of young growth for the first 30 to 50 years of age. The thickness of the rings gets progressively thinner as the tree ages. This aging effect is what gives the old growth wood its superior properties of strength and beauty from its dense tight grain.

 As the tree reaches an age of about 100 years the growth is very slow and is producing the finest wood. This tree has 146 rings measured at the first cut about two feet above the earth. It was just sprouting about the time that John Rhodes was opening his famous Buckhorn Tavern on the Shiawassee Trail near here.

At the center of the tree the rings are measured at about 9 years per inch of radius. At the outer edge the rings measure 24 years per inch of radial growth.

This section is from further up the trunk has 136 rings. It is incredible how tight the outer rings are and I have to put on my glasses to see well enought to count the rings. That is only about 0.040 inch of growth per year (less than the gap on a spark plug).

I stand in awe at this fine tree and wish that there was some way that I could tap into the changes to the landscape that it has seen. I would never cut a live tree so the opportunity to disect such a fine example is truly appreciated. This is an important benchmark since this tree is far from the largest in my forest. Always honor your ancestors.

Prairies and Savannas of Colorado - Part 1

Shortgrass prairie of eastern Colorado

Colorado is an interesting place to say the least.  There is a mystery about the native vegetation of the high plains and the front range, where the prairies of the central United States meet the dynamic and erratic landscape of the rocky mountains.  Living in Denver now, I am eager to learn more about this dry landscape and how it might of looked prior to the great changes that occured when it was settled by Europeans.

Denver lies within an area known as the flat to rolling high plains where the native shortgrass vegetation was blue grama grass, buffalo grass, assorted wildflowers and probably treeless.  This area predominated the northeastern and eastern side of the state and ran into western Nebraska and Kansas.  As you move closer to the foothills, you reach a narrow ecoregion known as the 'front range fans' where sedimentary deposits have eroded down out of the foothills trapping more moisture and allowing more tallgrass and mixed-grass species to grow.  Annual precipitation is higher here as well due to a proximity to the weather-making mountains.  This is where it gets interesting.  Because this narrow area of landscape is slightly wetter than the eastern high plains, isolated areas of tallgrass prairie with big bluestem, indiangrass and switchgrass can be found.  This type of prairie is common 500 miles to the east, but in Colorado it can be found here along the front range and in isolated basins within the rockies where precipitation is higher than average.

Ponderosa pine forests - south of Denver

As you move south out of Denver towards Colorado Springs, there is a rise in elevation and the landscape is more dissected and picturesque. This area, known as the 'southwestern tablelands' ecoregion, consists of mixed-grass prairies and ponderosa pine woodlands.  The area receives more rainfall annually and is a bit cooler due to the elevated hills and scattered mesas.  It reminds me a lot more of the dry areas of northern Michigan like Mio and Grayling (minus the mesas), where it is gently rolling and full of pine trees.  As opposed to northern Michigan, where red pine, jack pine and white pine are dominant among a variety of deciduous trees, the pine forests in this region are almost all ponderosa pine.  There are areas where gamble oak is common along with native shrubs, but ponderosa pine is almost always the dominant tree species.  An area called the "black forest" due to an abundance of ponderosa pine woodlands, is just north of Colorado Springs and is my next area of exploration.

Cottonwood Savanna

When Emily, John and Sophia came to town, we had a chance to venture into the high plains area east of Denver to pick pumpkins and get in the Halloween mood.  It was here that I noticed how sandy and dry it was.  As we rode the hay wagon out to the pumpkin patch, we passed through an old pasture area full of big cottonwood trees.  In true savanna fashion, they were widely-spaced apart and had big open crowns.  Was this characteristic of areas within the high plains?  Big cottonwood savannas?  Who knows, I was a little distracted by all the "goatheads" that I got in the bottom of my sandles (a few were in my feet too!).  Goatheads, as the locals call them, are invasive, viney plants with seedheads that are rock-hard and full of little burs.  Other common names are "puncturevine" and "devil's eyelash" - scientific name Tribulus terrestris.  They grow all over hell and will grow in absolutely hellish conditions, thus the high plains!!

'Trailblazer' switchgrass???

I'll admit, there was a point in time when I thought that farming should be the fate of any large piece of property and that 'farmers' were experts of their environment and could do no wrong.  After all, farmers devote their entire lives to working outside, "improving" the land and making a living off of their efforts to tame Mother Nature.  Not to mention, I grew up in an old farmhouse and later helped to resurrect an even older farmhouse along with the surrounding farm land which was an ideal environment to groom me for this type of mindset.  As I got older and started to actually create my dream of having a working farm, I spent endless hours cutting autumn olive and buckthorn shrubs to restore the overgrown fields on the property and make way for animal pastures and cultivated crops.  In retrospect though, cutting the invasive shrubs was really the only positive aspect of my efforts and it turns out, farmers don't know shit about what's good for the environment, but they're out to grow food not wildlife.  Picture above shows brush piles from newly cleared field, circa 2001?

With the old fields restored to their open conditions, I was ready to plant.  One of the earliest plantings that I did was in an old field out back dubbed "the back forty", even though it was really only about an acre and a half.  I remember thinking that it would make a good hay field due to the soggy conditions that were present after snow melt in the spring and after a heavy rain.  Great, hayfields don't have to be worked in the spring.  I also remember looking at the bare ground that was the result of years of autumn olive growth, which provided heavy shade and thinking that I could easily plant this field to a grass/legume seed mix without any site prep.  The seed mix that I bought for this area was a pre-mixed blend of non-native hay grasses, clovers and alfalfa for hay plantings and pasture renovations.  At the time, I was employed by Highland Feed, a local farm supply store, making it easy to purchase the seed mix for this little site.  I believe it was called "pasture mix".  Anyways, the problem I'm having now is knowing exactly what was in that particular seed mix.  If I were a little more organized at the time, I would have kept the tag off of the bag or wrote down the species list that made up the pasture mix.  Picture above from 2004, when management was mowing and keeping the place "nice and neat".

This old field, "the back forty", is now known as "old mesic" and is our highest quality remnant prairie.  After a few years of mowing that soggy old field (and a little knowledge gain), I began noticing something significant that was occuring there and nowhere else.  Without the thick brush that once covered the entire area, the site received lots more sunlight, spawning the growth of plant species that had been suppressed for decades.  Along the edges of the field, I noticed a vibrant array of wildflowers and sedges growing where my mower failed to cut.  The following year, I didn't mow the field at all and was amazed at what I had discovered.  A diverse collection of native wildflowers covered the entire field.  Nowhere else on the property did I find the plants that were growing in this old field.  This area was most likely always used as a pasture due to the soggy conditions that made it hard to plow for crops in the spring.  As a result, the native plants have for the most part remained intact over time, waiting for the chance to once again flourish in the absence of human activity.  Since about 2005, we have assisted "old mesic" in it's recovery by removing invasive plants and reimplementing the historic fire regime that over thousands of years has shaped it into the diverse prairie it now is.  Picture above from 2006, when I stopped mowing.

Going back to my point though.  If I had better records of the pasture mix that I planted a decade ago, then I would know if the switchgrass that's growing out there is native or not.  Something is telling me that it's not native and that it was a component of the pasture mix.  For starters, native switchgrass is the first native warm-season grass to produce seed heads in the summer, usually in late June or early July.  It develops quickly in the spring and is mature by the 4th of July.  My switchgrass develops slowly in the spring and doesn't produce seed heads until early to late September.  This is not at all common of the native switchgrass.  After a little googlin', I found a cultivar of switchgrass known as 'Trailblazer switchgrass'.  This is a crop that is utilized by ranchers in the central US who need a drought tolerant plant that will withstand the long dry periods of late summer and extremely cold winter conditions in the upper great plains.  One of the key features, this cultivated variety grows slowly and consistently throughout the entire growing season, maturing in late summer.  Aha@!!  Exactly what I'm experiencing!  While it is not native, I have been watching it for the past several years and noticed that it is not spreading, so I'll leave it.  I would like to get the native strain established though as switchgrass would have been a perfect fit for Old Mesic!  Picture above shows the fresh seed heads from this strain of switchgrass that just developed in September (2 monthes after the native strain).