Articles on nature and the natural history of the Grand Traverse Region. From descriptions of geological strata or animals and plants of the Great Lakes states to nature walks and gardens of the region, this feature covers everything in the great outdoors.
O broken life! O wretched bits of being, Unrhythmic, patched, the even and the odd! But Bradda still has lichens worth the seeing, And thunder in her caves—thank God! Thank God! – Thomas Edward Brown, quoted in Lichens of North America, p. 3
More than 24,000 souls are buried in Oakwood Cemetery on Eighth Street.Their monuments fill sixty acres all told, the earliest ones dating from the 1860s.They are made of limestone, granite, and even zinc, the last material only used for a few persons buried between 1885 and 1890.Draped urns, lambs, weeping willows, angels, passages of Scripture—even baby shoes—are carved on them, symbols of grief and the hope of life to come.Besides these human expressions of emotion are marks Nature herself bestows upon the stone as a reminder of continual change: lichens.
Foliose lichen, characterized by their leafy appearance. Image courtesy of the author.
Lichens are informally called “moss” by most people, but are different from that organism.Mosses have leaves and stems, for one thing, and lichens do not.A moss is a single organism, every cell with moss DNA, while a lichen is like a chimera (an animal made up of two different kinds—like a centaur).Its body is made of a fungus which has captured a colored food-making element, an alga or a kind of bacteria. Often forming a crust or spreading as a leaf-like thallus over a stone monument, many of them are stunning, especially when examined under a ten-power lens.
We think of organisms only when they impact our lives and, in this regard, lichens are no different from other living things.What good are they?What harm do they do?What is their role in nature?These questions tug at us even as we admire their beauty.
We can’t eat them, though a few cultures—like the Inuit–manage to extract scant nourishment in extreme habitats like the arctic.They colonize our statues and monuments, their slender filaments penetrating even hard granite to a few millimeters and softer limestone to a depth of 16 millimeters (more than a half inch).Lichens are colonizers: they move onto unfriendly substrates like tree bark, barren soil, or rock, creating patches of organic matter which are taken over by more complex plants like mosses and ferns.They are pioneers.
Crustose lichens form a crust that strongly adheres to the substrate (here, a granite tombstone), making separation from the substrate impossible without destruction. Image courtesy of the author.
Lichens are not friends to sextons of cemeteries.Degrading statuary and carvings, they make inscriptions hard to read, obscuring names and dates.Only the scattered zinc monuments are free of the problem, that surface providing scant toeholds for colonization.Inscriptions on the oldest stones are scarcely legible, so encrusted with green and orange lichen growth that observers vainly scratch them away to capture the names and dates of persons long forgotten.
Yet we should not despise lichens, for they charm us with their intricate structure.Under the lens, some of them present an array of disks aimed upward, not to catch something from above but to give something off: spores.Called apothecia, these miniature dishes produce millions of fungal spores which enter the streams of the wind.Upon landing in a fertile place, they send out tiny threads and wait for the landing of the right bacteria or algae, photosynthetic cells responsible for growth.
A variety of lichens, clinging to tombstones at Oakwood Cemetery, Traverse City. Image courtesy of the author.
Slowly the colonies grow, and we should be glad, since lichens only thrive wherever the air is pure and clean.It is well known that tree trunks downwind from polluting industries are bare of lichens.When our tree trunks are bare of them in Northern Michigan, when gravestones stand without those round patches of sage green, orange, and yellow, then we will know that the air has gone bad.We should take joy in the lichens around us.
Books of most interest to readers are Michigan Lichens by local author Julie Medlin and the ponderous Lichens of North America by Irwin M. Brodo, Sylvia Duran Sharnoff, and Stephen Sharnoff.Both of them may be found in the Traverse Area District Library.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
A naturalist must cope with whatever Nature deals out. Once when I took a course in invertebrates, I had to walk through shallow, warm ponds in the middle of summer, an action that would surely attract leeches (known by some as bloodsuckers). Sure enough, after traipsing through one particularly muddy body of water, I looked down to discover that one had attached to my leg. It was not only attached, but was apparently feeding: it wouldn’t let go.
When one’s life blood is being sucked out by a predator, one does not always behave rationally. Not entertaining the notion of spraying an offensive chemical on the animal so it would let go on its own, I used my fingernails to scrape it off. Not a good idea. The wound bled and bled, taking twenty minutes or so to stop. Thus, I learned about the anti-coagulant properties of leech saliva: leech bites don’t readily stop bleeding because the creature injects hirudin, an chemical that prevents the blood from clotting.
The wound didn’t hurt—I am told the clever leech employs an anesthetic as well as an anti-coagulant. It would never do to annoy a mammal to the point it would forcibly remove the animal feeding off it.: better to feed quietly and drop off to browse, sated with food and satisfied for any number of months to come.
This predator leech—the word “predator” is more appropriate than “parasite” since it feeds for only minutes instead of days and months—was Macrobdella decora, the American medicinal leech, the red-bellied leech. As its name implies, it sports an attractively decorated array of red spots, a possible design pattern for a necktie or a scarf. The animal is a distant relative of the earthworm with its concentric rings that encircle its body, marking off no fewer than 34 segments.
While the practice of leeching, using leeches to bleed patients, has fallen into disfavor since the nineteenth century, it still is occasionally employed in modern medicine whenever it is necessary to increase circulation to a blood-starved part of the body such as a newly reattached finger that has been accidently cut off, for example. I remember distinctly that in our own Munson hospital not too many years ago, a young girl had a finger reattached and submitted to treatment with leeches. “It’s kissing my finger,” she would tell visitors. Indeed, in a way, it was.
Most leeches do not feed upon mammals, preferring frogs, fish, and, especially, snapping turtles. Some do not attack large animals at all, being satisfied with earthworms and smaller creatures found in water. One of the largest leeches to be found in the area, its body extending a full six inches or more, seldom feeds on humans or their pets–the horse leech, Haemopis marmorata. I have observed this creature in Lime Lake, Leelanau County, where it can be seen rapidly scudding across the marly bottom, fully as capable of swimming as a fish.
Horse leeches sometimes are found on mud at the edge of the water. If they are grabbed to use for bait—as bass or walleye fishermen will occasionally do—they will readily try to climb out of the bucket, unlike other more docile species.
Leeches are given a bad rap. They seldom bite, they do not spread disease, they have medical uses, and they make good bait. However, the idea of having our blood sucked does not go down well with us. We despise things that do that–mosquitoes, black flies, or biting midges—and we cut them no slack. Perhaps, we should, though, with leeches. After all, they do us little harm–much less than mosquitoes—and at least one of them, Macrobdella decora, looks terrific!
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
Header image courtesy of Tim Eisele at “The Backyard Arthropod Project”, American Medical Leech.
When you look out at Power Island, South Manitou, or Mackinac Island, you see a tiered wedding cake apparition rising from the water.Often we take that appearance at face value, never asking the important question, “How did it come to be that way?”Indeed, there is an explanation and it is not hard to understand.
A moraine is a glacially-formed accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris that occurs in formerly glaciated regions. Image courtesy of Illinois State Genealogical Society.
Most residents of the Traverse area know that the Lakes were carved out by glaciers—and not so long ago in geologic time.The last major advance was 14,000 years ago, with secondary advances occurring as late as 12,000 years ago.This continental glacier was a mile thick in places, certainly big enough to carry boulders to unlikely places, make north-south gouges in underlying bedrock, and form moraines both at the endpoints of its advances and at points where the glaciers simply melted, letting down its cargo of rocks, gravel, and sand.The steep, winding path of M-72 going up from West Bay climbs the end moraine of the last glacial advance.
What does the glacier have to do with the wedding cake appearance of islands in the upper Great Lakes?The terraces far above the present lake levels are beaches created during our glacial past when the water took different pathways to drain the melted ice water.
As the ice retreated, that water left the Upper Great Lakes by way of the Chicago River to the west and Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River to the east.This was a high water level, the surface of future Lakes Michigan and Lake Huron standing at 605 feet above sea level.Since the present level of those lakes is 535 feet, an ancient beach can observed high above the water on Mackinac Island—the uppermost tier.The combined waters of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan formed a single expanse called Lake Algonquin.
Stages of development of Lake Algonquin, “Glacial lakes”. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glacial_lakes.jpg#/media/File:Glacial_lakes.jpg
Later, retreating ice opened a drainage pattern through Georgian Bay and out through Ontario by way of the Ottawa River.This event marked a low water stage for the Upper Lakes, a state that was not preserved very long.
As the weight of the glacier left the land, it sprang back up much like a trampoline relieved of a hurtling athlete.The effect was to cut off the drainage directly through Canada and bring back the familiar pattern through the Chicago River and the Detroit River.Another high water level stage resulted, this time resulting in a combined lake comprising Lakes Michigan and Huron called Lake Nipissing.Lake Nipissing beaches are lower than Lake Algonquin’s, but they can be seen readily on Power Island and the Manitous.
The Great Lakes are constantly changing: the land is still springing back as a consequence of the disappearance of the glacier and changes in precipitation and evaporation (as well as human use) cause year-to-year, decade-to-decade changes.Climate change might cause rapid changes, low water stages resulting from increased evaporation or high water stages coming from increased precipitation.As yet, a clear pattern has not emerged.
The story of the Great Lakes is charmingly told in a Canadian Film Board movie, The Rise and Fall of the Great Lakes, which we reference here:
Dear readers, this marker is placed near the railroad tracks, close to the Woodmere Branch of Traverse Area District Library. What does that mysterious “W” stand for? And who should pay attention to it?
Here’s your clue: Your editors believe this to be rather antiquated, and feel that the “W” might be better replaced with a “H” for modern times.
In late summer in puddles, bird baths, pools, and even wet grass a long, thin writhing worm can sometimes be found, often coiling in extravagant knots, that behavior explaining one of its names, the gordian worm. As some readers may remember from school, Alexander the Great was confronted with the Gordian knot, having been told whoever untied it would rule the known world. After a few futile attempts he simply took out his sword and whacked it in two, presumably showing his contempt for that story.
Horsehair worms are harmless to humans… but not crickets. Image courtesy of Anders Lennver, https://flic.kr/p/56JJfs.
Perhaps not as intricate as the real Gordian knot, the Gordian worm nevertheless displays a formidable tangle, its length sometimes stretching to 36 inches or more. It may be iridescent white if it has recently appeared, but rapidly turns a dark brown as time passes. For this reason—it takes on a more horsey hue–it is given another name, horsehair worm, perhaps in the mistaken belief that it originates from horses come to drink at watering troughs. In fact, it is associated not with horses at all, but with beetles, crickets, and grasshoppers.
Horsehair worms are common parasites of those insects. One summer long ago I participated in an informal survey of the grasshopper population to determine the rate of infection. Upon examination fully one grasshopper out of twenty harbored the tightly coiled worm, a death sentence for it as sure as the dissecting scissors that exposed its fellow traveler.
One question about the worm is unanswered: how do the parasites know when the insect is close to water? If it emerges in a dry hot place, it will surely shrivel in the sun. Somehow it must induce thirst in the grasshopper, driving it to approach water to drink. Does it control its host zombie-style, depriving it of its own grasshopper consciousness? Perhaps—and the image is strangely disturbing.
A single horsehair worm displays its characteristic tangle. Image courtesy of Sara Viernum, https://flic.kr/p/dj6A4M.
Upon emerging from its host the horsehair worm spends time in or near its body of water, eventually finding a relatively warm place to spend the winter. As waters warm in spring, the female worm sheds as many as 27 million eggs into the water, many of which are fertilized by the male as he passes over them. The young larvae creep along the bottom of their watery homes, seeking passage to the body of a cricket, grasshopper or beetle. The lucky ones hitch a ride in an aquatic insect, a larval cranefly, black fly, or dragonfly, perhaps. They form cysts within the those insects, wait for them to transform into adult winged forms, and ride out of the aquatic environment to a terrestrial one, a place where their host insects dwell. Leaving their “transportation host” after a rain or on a dewy morning, they wait for a hapless grasshopper or cricket passer-by. If good fortune allows them to be taken into the insect’s body, they bore through the animal’s gut and take up residence in the abdomen of its body, thereby completing its life cycle.
We should not hate horsehair worms. If they destroy one out of every twenty grasshoppers, surely they must save untold numbers of plants from being consumed by voracious insects. Even if their life cycle is not pretty, they provide a service for us. Even superficially repulsive wriggling worms have their place in Nature.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
The voice on the other end was animated: “Come over now! They’ve got wings and they are swarming!”
I knew what she was talking about because I had discussed the subject previously.Ants were beginning their nuptial flights.
“I’ll be right over!See what you can do to keep them from flying!” I answered with unrestrained emotion.
“A spoonful of sugar?A dead beetle carcass?I don’t know what to do!” she wailed, enjoying the conversational gambit.I took no time to reply and jumped into the car with my camera.
My friend met me in her driveway when I arrived and led me to the scene.There they were: tens of small winged forms with two or three larger winged ones mingled among them.Some tiny workers, wingless bit players in the drama, milled around as if uncertain what to do.
My camera is not the best and my skills as a photographer are unremarkable, but I set it on macro, focused, and shot five times without a flash.The best ones appear in this account.
Can you find two large, winged virgin queens? Image courtesy of the author.
The word “nuptial” has to do with marriage, but that term has to be stretched to encompass the nuptial flights of ants. Males—the drones—finally emerge from the depths after having been taken care of the entire season long.No doubt some female humans can relate to that scenario.At the same time, a number of virgin queens were similarly readied for this day, the day they would be inseminated and fly off to found a new colony.It is a “marriage” in name only.
When the day length is right—late summer as a rule—and when conditions of humidity and sunlight somehow satisfy senses of the colony, the nuptial flight begins.
One-by-one the females depart, the males flying up with them.No doubt a chemical exuded by them induce the males to fly upwards, towards the light.However, the drones do not necessarily inseminate the colony’s virgin queens: after all, that would be incest since all members of the colony have the same DNA.Under the best scenario, males from another colony would mate with them far away from the home colony.
The mating of ants takes place quickly and without ceremony.After separating, the “lucky” male flies away to die as his food reserves run out.He has served his purpose, and no longer receives the attention of his colony.
Activity declines after the queens depart. Image courtesy of the author.
Meanwhile, the queen continues her flight, carrying the sperm in an internal packet which she will use over her entire reproductive life (several years to as many as 23).If she avoids interactions with predacious insects, birds, and car windshields, she will settle down and remove her wings through a deft motion of her body.Then she will seek to dig a burrow and lay her first eggs.It is the only “manual labor” she will have to perform because newly hatched workers will take over the mundane tasks of gathering food, carrying out the garbage, and taking care of new workers as well as the new princes and princesses of the next generation.
By the way, the new potential queens differ not at all from the workers: they only receive special food that grants them royalty.In a sense, it is like the transformation of a frog into a prince, since in each case a lowly, unprepossessing creature becomes something wonderful.Males, on the other hand, differ significantly from females: they have only one set of chromosomes (as opposed to two sets in the females).No doubt they, like human males with only one X chromosome, suffer certain genetic diseases more frequently than the females that surround them.
Winged ants cause psychological trauma in some persons.They grab insecticides and spray until the ground is littered with insect carcasses.I don’t know if this account of ant reproduction will score any points with those who regard the only good insect as a dead insect, but I hope it might suggest that the winged forms are temporary and cause no harm.They do not eat our food, nor do they sting or bite.
It is not too late to see winged ants.In their bookJourney to the Ants, E.O. Wilson and Bert Holldobler describe the scene of a common ant that enacts nuptial flights during September:
The slaughter of failed reproductive hopefuls can be seen all over the eastern United States at the end of each summer, when the “Labor Day ant,” Lasius neoniger, attempts colony reproduction.The species is one of the dominant insects of city sidewalks and lawns, open fields, golf courses, and country roadsides.The dumpy little brown workers build inconspicuous crater mounds, piles of excavated soil that encircle the entrance holes, causing the nests to look a bit like miniature volcanic calderas.Emerging from the nests, the workers forage over the ground, in among the grass tussocks, and up onto low grasses and shrubs in search of dead insects and nectar.For a few hours each year, however, this routine is abandonedand activity around the anthills changes drastically.In the last few days of August or the first two weeks of September—around Labor Day—at five o’clock on a sunny afternoon, if rain has recently fallen and if the air is still and warm and humid, vast swarms of virgin queens and males emerge from Lasius neoniger nests and fly upward.For an hour or two the air is filled with the winged ants, meeting and copulating while still aloft.Many end up splattered on windshields.Birds, dragonflies, robber flies, and other airborne predators also scythe through the airborne ranks.Some individuals stray far out over lakes, doomed to alight on water and drown.As twilight approaches the orgy ends, and the last of the survivors flutter to the ground.The queens scrape off their wings and search for a place to dig their earthen nest.Few will get far on this final journey…
Most winged forms die without our help.Insecticides are superfluous.Besides, why would anyone want to do away with a major natural spectacle?
Club mosses are not mosses, nor are they armed with clubs.They are small, however—only a few inches high on average—and are easily missed by hikers and those out for casual walks in the woods. Like mosses, they reproduce by spores, but, unlike them, they have vascular tissue to transport water from the roots (like flowering plants).
Lycopodiella inundata, found in local bogs. Image courtesy of the author.
Most species of club mosses bear those spores on a stalk held above the plant proper, this structure called a strobilus (or, in plain English, a club).They shed their spores to the wind abundantly in the early summer: Just nudging a strobilus will send a cloud into the air, perhaps a danger to those with allergies, but perhaps not, since tree and grass pollen wreak far more damage.
Lycopodium clavatum. Image courtesy of the author.
Once in our history those spores had economic value.In the days before photographic flash, photographers would ignite a charge of club moss spores to produce a burst of light.Glass plate negatives were thereby exposed, making it unnecessary for subjects to spend many seconds in a strained pose. The spores contained tiny droplets of oil, which instantly caught on fire, much as flour dust ignites in grain elevator explosions.
Most club mosses are clonal: that is, they creep along the ground or else have underground rhizomes that put up new plants at regular intervals.An old clone can be many meters in diameter.In Leelanau county I have paced off one clone that occupied a circular space more than 30 feet across.There is at least one exception to the clonal habit of club mosses, however.
Shining Club Moss, with springboards for gemmae. Image courtesy of the author.
The shining club moss, Huperzia lucidula, grows in clumps, successive plants growing from horizontal stem often hidden under leaves on the forest floor.In addition to creeping forward in this manner, it spreads in a way that is singularly interesting to botanists and to people that like to play with other living beings.I count myself among the latter group, having spent many enjoyable hours turning click beetles over to watch them click upright with a bound, feeding ants to ant lions in their dens, and pestering pill bugs until they roll up in balls.The shining club moss offers as much amusement to me as those organisms do.
In August they have developed tiny springboards among the upper leaves, each one of which equipped with reproductive structures called gemmae, which are capable of growing into new plants.If you depress the springboard with the tip of a pencil, it will react convulsively, jumping upwards and releasing its gemmae.
How far do they travel?The answer is readily available to us.Look at the clump of Huperzia and see how far the farthest plant lies from the collection that comprises the clump.It grew from a gemma that was propelled from one of its parents, that plant often two or three feet away.Perhaps safety glasses are called for when the springboards are springing!
Huperzia is one of a few club mosses that does not bear its spores in clubs.In late summer you can see tiny yellow bodies in the axils of the leaves, each one a sporangium that will release its spores.The plant is unique in that way, and will not be confused with other lycopods (a word that refers to this group of plants).It is a joy to find one growing in a Northern Michigan hardwoods.
That is where I have always found them: a rich forest composed of beech, sugar maple, red maple, basswood, with an understory of ironwood and striped maple.It prefers a rich soil with a measure of clay.Some lycopods can be found growing on sterile soil in partial sun, too.Frequently the naturalist is surprised by their appearance in such unexpected habitats.
Dendrolycopodium dendroides. Image courtesy of the author.
Club mosses have little practical value.By Michigan law they are protected from harvest by persons wishing to gather them on state land and sell them at Christmas time for decoration.Apparently, their evergreen branches remind people of cedar boughs at that bitter time of the year. Some species resemble tiny conifers and are planted in terrariums with varying success.Dried, they might pass for trees in a miniature railroad layout or diorama.In any case, they brighten our lives with their curious growth form and unlikely habits.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
Fairy rings- circles of mushrooms growing in yards are known—and sometimes respected- by both children and grown-ups.“Respected” because, according to Irish and Welsh legend, they are places inhabited by the wee folk, fairies and leprechauns.Within the circles they dance, sometimes enticing a human passer-by to join them, much to his eventual regret. Once inside the ring, he cannot get out and is compelled to dance until exhaustion and death carry him away.Fairy rings deserve respect: it is at your own peril if you enter them.
Image of Fairy Ring, composed of Marasmius oreades. Image courtesy of Steve Trudell.
Many kinds of mushrooms form fairy rings, but the commonest is probably Marasmius oreades, the fairy ring mushroom.It has an off-white cap with widely spaced gills, a slender fibrous stalk without a ring, and white spores.Unlike most mushrooms which decay and rot over time, Marasmius mummifies in summer heat, shrinking to a fraction of its fresh size, its firm flesh becoming tough and leathery over time.
If a fresh rain falls upon the mushroom, it perks up, expanding to its former size and regaining its firm texture.Not only does it appear to resurrect itself, it actually does that very thing.It has been shown that Marasmius oreades resumes its life processes, respiring and consuming food, even producing new spores on its gills.Somehow it goes into suspended animation for as long as a summer drought holds on, only to continue its business when growing conditions improve.
One hypothesis explaining the resurrection is the presence of a special sugar within the flesh of the mushroom, trehalose.After a dry spell, rainwater is absorbed, thereby dissolving the sugar–which enters cells, reviving and stimulating them to divide.This Marasmius is considered edible (but not especially delicious), having been incorporated into recipes for omelets, gravies, and even chocolate chip cookies.Perhaps the trehalose sugar helps the cookies taste better, though I suspect that the best change to the recipe would be to leave the mushrooms out.
The Fairy Ring Mushroom, Marasmius oreades. Image courtesy of Les Chatfield.
Marasmius oreades grows in circles for a very good reason.It starts out when a mushroom spore lands in a favorable place for food, decayed matter underground.It spreads out a net of slender cells, hyphae (collectively called the mycelium), eventually reaching a size large enough to send up its first fruiting bodies, the familiar mushrooms we see above ground.Year by year the mycelium grows outward, forever producing new crops of mushrooms at its outer margin.The circle gets bigger, five feet in diameter, then ten, then even larger—certainly big enough to accommodate a large band of dancing fairies and an occasional hapless human.
Within the circle the grass may appear yellow and exhausted: the mushroom has absorbed nutrients in the soil, while at the edge it may be green and luxuriant as nutrients are released to be absorbed by the fungus and neighboring grass plants. Overzealous yard managers sometimes try to get rid of the circles of mushrooms, preferring the monotony of turf to the disorderliness of fairy ring mushrooms.They are seldom successful.
To end this piece one can do no better than to quote a poem about fairy rings, this one unsigned:
If you see a fairy ring In a field of grass, Very lightly step around, Tiptoe as you pass; Last night fairies frolicked there, And they’re sleeping somewhere near.
If you see a tiny fay Lying fast asleep, Shut your eyes and run away, Do not stay or peep; And be sure you never tell, Or you’ll break the fairy spell.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
In my spare time I read field guides—books that help me identify flowering plants, ferns, salamanders, fossils, and insects. It has always been so—going back to my grade school years—and I make no apologies for it. Such a hobby, while unpromising as a source of wealth or useful knowledge, has no downsides as far as I can see. And frequently it leads me onto pathways of delight, whenever a fringed gentian in a marsh comes to my attention, a fossil crinoid discovered upon the beach, or an ant lion pit dug along a sandy trail. Field guides make such delights possible.
So it was that I picked up Barnes and Wagner’s Michigan Trees to spend a profitable quarter hour before bed. The page opened to the American Chestnut and there on page 208 the following passage appeared:
A plantation of chestnut trees, established in 1910 in Benzie Co., gave rise to a stand of several thousand offspring (Thompson, 1969).
Checking the source (Thompson, 1969) at the back of the book, I discovered that an obscure Michigan journal, the Michigan Academician, published the original paper describing the plantation. Could I get a copy of it and find out if this mysterious grove of chestnuts still existed, disease-free?
European Chestnut leaves, image courtesy of the author.
Here it is necessary to provide background for my curiosity. The American chestnut, Castanea dentata, was a grand component of the eastern American hardwood forest throughout the nineteenth century. In Michigan it naturally penetrated as far north as St. Clair county and was locally abundant in Monroe and Wayne counties in Southeastern Michigan. Beginning about 1900 the tree suffered the attack of a vicious fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica, likely imported from Asia, which destroyed American chestnuts everywhere. By 1940 the tree had largely disappeared from American forests, though suckers from dead trees continued to sprout for years afterwards, only to die upon reaching maturity.
The American chestnut should be distinguished from the horsechestnut, Aesculus hippocastanea, a tree commonly planted around homes. That tree, a permanent resident arrived from Europe after white settlement here, displays candelabras of white blossoms in June, finally producing inedible nuts that resemble chestnuts in appearance. Contrary to expectation, it is not enjoyed by horses, neither the leaves nor the nuts, though folklore insists it cures COPD in those animals.
American chestnuts were planted in the Grand Traverse area from early times. I had seen individual trees planted near farms on Old Mission peninsula and had heard stories of trees planted elsewhere nearby. But had a whole grove of them survived, a grove planted in 1910? If they still lived, the trees would be more than a hundred years old. They would be magnificent.
The Grand Traverse Conservancy provided the key that would unlock the mystery of the hidden chestnut grove. In response to my query, Conservancy staffer Angie Lucas, plant expert extraordinaire, e-mailed me the Michigan Academician article. And there it was: the information I needed to find the chestnuts:
The grove, owned by James Rogers, is located at Chimney Corners (SE ¼ Sect. 35, T27N, R16W) at the top of the Point Betsie Moraine, a massive 300-foot glacial ridge which flanks the north shore of Crystal Lake.
I live in Traverse City and am scarcely familiar with Crystal Lake, but I had a human resource that would guide me to the proper coordinates: Dan Palmer, resident of Leelanau county, knowledgeable in forestry, brought up in Frankfort, and familiar with the back trails of Benzie county. We would explore the north of Crystal Lake and find these trees hidden in Chimney Corners.
To those who know Benzie County, Chimney Corners is hardly obscure. It is a venerable resort with roots going back to the early twentieth century. The lodge stands now as it did in 1908, its stone fireplace dominating the space as you enter, grooved beadboard woodwork, electric lights from an earlier time, collections of beach reading from the fifties, and the grit of sand on hardwood floors. The proprietors kindly allowed us to walk the ridge to see the chestnuts: Just follow “chestnut trail,” they said.
The three-hundred foot moraine was surmounted with breathlessness as our party proceeded up the trail. It was a steep climb through a maple, beech, and basswood forest of moderate age, but there was no sign of the sharply toothed leaves of Castanea dentata. Were we in the right place?
Then, up ahead, a clue, though not a felicitous one. An enormous white skeleton of a tree stripped of its bark with many of its larger branches fallen roundabout stood out in the shade of taller trees. It was long dead, likely a chestnut, given its size and location. My hopes dropped: They were gone, all of them.
European Chestnut bur, image courtesy of the author.
Still, we kept walking and along the trail were more dead trees, but some of them had suckers at the base that brandished the green leaves of living chestnuts. The forest floor, though, was not littered with the burs that encased the shiny chestnuts. Reproduction was not happening here: the shoots would live for a decade and die before flowering. The chestnut grove was doomed.
As we walked out of the forest, there were more dead trees, but as we came into a sunnier place, the chestnut suckers—offshoots–were more robust, as much as five inches in diameter, some of them reaching twenty-five feet or more into the sky. Green spikes of flowers appeared at the end of twigs, vague promises that chestnuts might be found in autumn at this place. We found a few burs from last year, the chestnuts missing from inside, either because the trees had not enough energy to make the nuts or because squirrels had devoured them.
Cankers caused by Cryphonectria parasitica appeared on the small stems of the chestnut suckers: the trees were unhealthy and would not live much longer. It would be a race between their mortality and their ability to produce nuts that would grow into the next generation. Remembering the fate of the white giants within the forest, I would bet on the fungus to destroy the trees before they could reproduce. There is good reason that Castanea dentata disappeared from the eastern United States.
The story could end here, but there is another thread to follow. The Grand Traverse Conservancy has just acquired a beautiful parcel of land from the estate of Naomi Borwell. Located just inside Manistee county off Manistee County Line Road, it offers a diversity of habitats: hardwood forests, deep valleys, frontage on the Betsie River, swamps, and a developed farm planted with a variety of interesting trees: spruces, birches, hawthorns—even a row of shagbark hickories—unusual in this part of Michigan. Best of all, there is a grove of American chestnuts with diameters of twelve inches, standing 45 feet high—though the ugly cankers on the large branches indicate the disease has penetrated here, too. You get the feeling the chestnut plantation is waiting its doom–which lurks in its very near future.
In nature it is unfair to take sides, though we do it all the time. Cryphonectria parasitica depends upon American chestnuts for its survival, but the fungus does not charm us with its form or grace. I have read of numerous attempts to hybridize the American chestnut with Asian forms that have a degree of resistance to the disease: you can learn about those efforts at the American Chestnut Foundation, http://www.acf.org/FAQ.php It seems likely that blight-resistant chestnuts with American chestnut features will become available within a decade or two, though the degree of resistance has not been determined as of now.
Perhaps it will be years before we can obtain American chestnuts to plant beside our homes without fear of the fungus destroying the trees, but when that time comes, I will be among the first to get them, God willing. With its glorious history in our forests, its stately grace, its delicious fruit, the American chestnut is too splendid for us to abandon.
Postscript
Sometimes stories refuse to end, no matter how hard you try to bring them to a conclusion. A friend at the public library informed me that he was quite sure a Michigan champion American Chestnut could be found at the end of Old Mission Peninsula. After a few days he emailed me the specifics: according to the Michigan Botanist, Volume 37, 1995, an enormous tree could be found off Old Mission Road, quite close to the country store, a bit past a curve, off a drive heading towards a cherry orchard. Could it still exist 20 years later?
Author at base of blight-free, Michigan champion American Chestnut on Old Mission, 28 May 2015.
How could anyone do anything but drive out there and find out? Surprisingly, the directions were easy to follow and, with the help of a neighbor, Jim Hilt, my friend Marlas Hanson and I soon observed a tree towering in front of us, an American Chestnut far larger than any we had seen heretofore. Its trunk was split into three stems, twisted each one of them, and the canopy spread above over a wide area. It showed a few dead limbs, but it was alive—and not in bad shape for an old tree. There was no evidence of chestnut blight.
However, there was something peculiar about the tree: one would expect American Chestnut saplings round about, planted by squirrels that forgot where they sequestered the nuts, perhaps. But there were none to be found—not one. A few old burs from the previous year were scattered around the base of the tree, the nuts gone. It looked as if the tree had bothered to produce the spiny burs, but either they were empty from the start or else contained nuts that were infertile—or maybe every single one had been consumed by wildlife. In any case this American Chestnut had no offspring.
Immature leaves of the Michigan champion American Chestnut on Old Mission, 28 May 2015.
A puzzle: Does the very character that makes the tree infertile cause it to be resistant to blight? In other words, this tree—and another located three farms away—are the only ones I have seen that have not succumbed to the disease. Do they avoid blight because they are incapable of reproducing? Or is the answer simpler–that the champion Michigan tree needs other chestnuts nearby in order to obtain pollen for fertilization and that its infertility has nothing to do with its resistance? I do not know the answer, but I would like to find out–but to investigate that thread would take another year or two or five, and this story must end sometime. And so, let us end it here for now.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of Grand Traverse Journal.
The first wildflowers of spring are Hepatica, Trailing Arbutus, and Spring Beauty. This year, Hepatica was the first to show a white (sometimes lavender) blossom that occasionally overtops last year’s maple and beech leaves on the forest floor. Growing nearby, Spring Beauty came next, its white, candy-striped petals attracting a few bees and flies for pollination. Trailing Arbutus blooms in an altogether different habitat, a forest of pine trees and oaks. It often conceals its fragrant white blooms underneath its tough, evergreen leaves.
Hepatica acutiloba, ca. 2003, image taken near Traverse City. Image provided by the author.
Hepatica is so interesting it deserves a full story by itself—that to appear in coming issues—so Spring Beauty and Trailing Arbutus will occupy us here. It is appropriate they are paired since they both figure in Native American legends about the return of spring. The following excerpt is taken from The Red Indian Fairy Book, published in 1917. Disregarding its somewhat racist title (Are Native Americans really “red”?), it tells the legend of the Spring Beauty, a story attributed to the Ojibwe (Chippewa).
Legend of the Spring Beauty
(Cbippewa)
An old man was sitting in his lodge, by the side of
a frozen stream. It was the end of Winter, the air
was not so cold, and his fire was nearly out. He
was old and alone. His locks were white with
age, and he trembled in every joint. Day after
day passed, and he heard nothing but the sound
of the storm sweeping before it the new-fallen
snow.
One day while his fire was dying, a handsome
young man entered the lodge. His cheeks were
red, his eyes sparkled. He walked with a quick,
light step. His forehead was bound with sweet-
grass, and he carried a bunch of fragrant flowers
in his hand.
“Ah, my Son,” said the old man, “I am happy
to see you. Come in. Tell me your adventures,
and what strange lands you have seen. I will tell
you my wonderful deeds, and what I can perform.
You shall do the same, and we will amuse each
other.”
The old man then drew from a bag a curiously
wrought pipe. He filled it with mild tobacco, and
handed it to his guest. They each smoked from
the pipe, and then began their stories.
Claytonia virginica (Spring Beauty), image taken ca. 2003, near Traverse City. Image provided by the author.
” I am Peboan, the Spirit of Winter/ said the
old man. ” I blow my breath, and the streams
stand still. The water becomes stiff and hard as
clear stone.”
“I am Seegwun, the Spirit of Spring,” answered
the youth. ” I breathe, and flowers spring up in
the meadows and woods.”
” I shake my locks,” said the old man, “and the
snow covers the land. The leaves fall from the
trees, and my breath blows them away. The birds
fly to the distant land, and the animals hide them
selves from the cold.”
” I shake my ringlets,” said the young man,
and the warm showers of soft rain fall upon the
Earth. The flowers lift their heads from the ground,
and the grass grows thick and green. My voice re
calls the birds, and they come flying joyfully from
the Southland. The warmth of my breath unbinds
the streams, and they sing the songs of Summer.
Music fills the groves wherever I walk, and all
Nature rejoices.”
And while they were thus talking, a wonderful
change took place. The Sun began to rise. Again
the warmth stole over the place. Peboan, the Spirit
of Winter, became silent. His head drooped, and
the snow outside the lodge melted away. Seegwun,
the Spirit of Spring, grew more radiant, and rose
joyfully to his feet. The Robin and the Bluebird
began to sing on the top of the lodge. The stream
murmured past the door, and the fragrance of open-
ing flowers came softly on the breeze.
The lodge faded away, and Peboan sank down
and dissolved into tiny streams of water, that van
ished under the brown leaves of the forest.
Thus the Spirit of Winter departed, and where
he melted away the Indian children gathered the
first blossoms, fragrant and delicately pink, the
modest Spring Beauty.
(The same story, this time with a beautiful maiden rather than a youth, has been told about the Trailing Arbutus. It has been attributed both to both the Iroquois and the Ojibwe traditions.)
The final paragraph was added to the story by the narrator of the legend—or so it seems to me. For one thing, Spring Beauties have no fragrance, at least as far as I can tell. They are not pink, but white with pink stripes, and their blossoms last for only a day or two. Who would want to pick them?
However, the whole plant might have been harvested for another purpose: eating. Underneath the soil—sometimes as deep as six inches—a corm guards the life of the plant when it is not growing. Sometimes nearly as large as a walnut, it is prized as a spring food for all who love the woods. Without the bitterness of other leaves and roots, it can be roasted or eaten raw. Considering their beauty, it is hard for me to dig up very many of them, but at a time before forests were cut down, they would have provided tribes with a plentiful food supply in early spring.
Spring Beauties stay above ground for only a few weeks. Before the canopy of the hardwood trees fills in to block the sun, they complete their life cycle, bearing flowers and developing fruit before disappearing in early summer. For ten months they sleep in the soil, only sending up shoots after the snow has melted. Like Squirrel Corn and Dutchman’s Breeches which grow in Northern Michigan hardwoods, it is described as an ephemeral, setting seed while the sun can still penetrate the leafy overstory. Their transitory nature makes them all the more dear to us.
Epigaea repens (Trailing Arbutus), image taken ca. 2003 near Traverse City. Image courtesy of the author.
Trailing Arbutus is an altogether different kind of plant. It’s tough leathery leaves persist year-to-year, hiding the fragrant white flowers beneath. They live in the pine forest, appearing on mossy banks, though I have seen them in wet places like the Skegemog Preserve. Because of their beauty, their refreshing comment on the change of seasons, and the rich green of their leaves, they were commonly ripped from the ground for decoration. Here is an article lamenting the destruction of Trailing Arbutus from the Record-Eagle dated 1923:
AGAIN PLEAD FOR ARBUTUS
Woman’s Club Pleads for Vine
Great Patches of Bloom Are rapidly Being Burned By Thoughtless Persons
Some time ago, when it seemed that spring might be coming, the Woman’s Club sent out a pleas to all seekers of wild flowers to use care in picking them so as not to disturb the roots.
Now that the Trailing Arbutus is in bloom this plea is again broadcasted.
To those who can remember back but a few years, the present feeble bloom of the spring’s loveliest flower, is a most pathetic thing. In the plots which have been picked over year after year the vine is disappearing. Instead of a blossom which rivaled the apple blossom in size, the arbutus has shrunk to a tiny flower on a short stem.
A pair of scissors would prevent this gradual disappearance of this typically Michigan vine. It is the constant pulling up by the roots which has made barren the great patches of arbutus which not long ago filled the pine woods, so the Woman’s Club urged all those seeking this spring flower to carry with them a small pair of scissors with which to clip the stems.
The article points out several things, both about the plant and about the times. It was formerly abundant and more prominent than now. From a blossom rivaling that of an apple blossom, it has “shrunk to a tiny flower on a short stem.” Edward Voss, in Michigan Flora, states that the flowers are often nearly hidden beneath the leaves—scarcely visible to wildflower aficionados. To those who decry the stripping of stems along with flowers, he offers the consolation that that stem and flowers emerge from a “stout, woody tap-rooted crown”, a hardy structure which may resist the savagery of collectors. Like the Spring Beauty (which is not related), the Trailing Arbutus seeds are distributed by ants which feast upon a food coat that surrounds the growing part of the seed.
I have never seen Trailing Arbutus with its stems held up high to display flowers as large as apple blossoms. Could it be that humans have gotten rid of that trait through genetic engineering? That is, by harvesting the largest blossoms did we drive evolution forward in the direction of smaller ones hidden under leaves? Clipped before they reproduce, the most showy flowers would not produce seed and would disappear over time–much as mowing has produced a variety of lawn weeds that complete their life cycles in dwarf form. It does not take DNA technology to change the gene make-up of organisms.
One more thing about the article: in 1923 the newspaper editor chose to publish an article warning about overharvesting a wildflower found in pine woods near the city of Traverse City. Would such an article be published today? I would argue, “No”, since nobody knows about Trailing Arbutus. By “nobody” I do exaggerate, but only by a little. In earlier times the people of Northern Michigan were more in touch with nature: they paid attention to wildflowers and the creatures that inhabited the land around them. Now it is an unusual person that can identify Trailing Arbutus, let alone consider picking it to brighten up the house. Our obsession with technological gadgets—our iPads and iPhones–has replaced our connection to nature, that shift working to preserve wildflowers. Not all components of modernity serve to attack nature—thank Heaven.
Spring Beauty and Trailing Arbutus, two very different plants that announce spring in Northern Michigan, give us a sense of community, a belongingness that join us all in nature, time, and place. We welcome them, however different they are, because they speak of the end of cold and ice, the beginning of warmth and harvest. Let us go out and look for them this month, but only to admire them, not to pick.
Richard Fidler is co-editor of the Grand Traverse Journal.
Locally-produced digital magazine featuring nature and local history from the Grand Traverse Region.
