October 17, 2022

Thanks to the entomologists!

Thanks to members of the University of Delaware Entomology Club and the Delaware Tech-Stanton Science Club, who turned out last night for mothing and insect hunting at Goat Hill. It was a little late in the season to see much diversity, but we had an interesting time turning up carabid and tenebrionid beetles, some wolf spiders, and surprisingly, several redback salamanders and a red eft! Thanks for adding your observations.

Posted on October 17, 2022 12:54 AM by choess choess | 2 comments | Leave a comment

May 21, 2019

Upcoming serpentine workshop and project addition

Hello,

I wanted to let project members know about a workshop on mid-Atlantic serpentine barrens being sponsored by Pennsylvania Botany on May 31. The workshop will be run by @rogerlatham, well-known for his leading role over the past several decades in researching, understanding, and restoring mid-Atlantic serpentine barrens and other Pennsylvania grasslands.

Please take a look at the workshop and consider registering, and send it to friends who may be interested.

I've also added Rock Springs Serpentine Barrens, a property of the Lancaster Conservancy, to iNaturalist and included it in the list of areas for this project. Gordon Bosler is undertaking to start restoration here as a Pennsylvania Master Naturalist project, working in conjunction with the Conservancy and the Friends of the State Line Serpentine Barrens. Accordingly, we'll start collecting data to build species lists and find locations of particular interest there.

Chris Hoess
Chair, Friends of the State Line Serpentine Barrens

Posted on May 21, 2019 07:58 PM by choess choess | 0 comments | Leave a comment

April 26, 2018

Nottingham plant list update

Hello,

I'm working with Roger Latham to compile an updated plant list for Nottingham County Park, drawing on updates by Bill Vanderwerff to his original list, observations by Jack Holt and Janet Ebert, PA DCNR serpentine seepage surveys, and individual observations. We hope to publish this in a local botanical journal in the near future, and I would also like to update the checklist here when it's complete. So far, I've reached 507 taxa (subspecies and varieties)! 92 are non-native.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that iNaturalist observations yielded a number of species which were not present in any of the other plant lists and observations. While most of them are not serpentine specialists (they include the flora around McPherson Lake and the "front country" recreation areas), they remain useful additions to the list. @vailbass has found 8 new to the list, @choess 3, @treichard 2, @keimwj 1, and @hollycybelle 1.

This is an area that's been well-examined by competent botanists, albeit generally focusing on the serpentine flora. I think this is a nice demonstration of how useful iNaturalist can be in compiling comprehensive species lists for an area.

Posted on April 26, 2018 05:36 PM by choess choess | 0 comments | Leave a comment

April 2, 2018

Southern Pine Beetle and other insects

Hello,

It's been a while since I wrote a journal post, so I thought I'd deliver an update on the southern pine beetle and its effects on the serpentine barrens. The southern pine beetle (Dendroctonus frontalis) is a southern US native that is a generalist feeder on pine trees. Historically reported as far north as southern Pennsylvania and the New Jersey Pine Barrens, it has, within the past decade or so, crept up the New England littoral as far as Massachusetts.

In healthy pine forests, D. frontalis can maintain an endemic presence, where low numbers of beetles prey on stressed or damaged trees. However, periodic epidemics occur, usually when large numbers of stressed and weakened pines have allowed a beetle population boom. A healthy pine can fight off the pine beetles by exuding resin, flushing the beetles out of the bark. However, in the face of large numbers of pine beetles, an individual pine tree will run out of resin and be unable to expel all of the beetles. During epidemics, large numbers of healthy pines can be wiped out as the beetles dig galleries in the bark and introduce blue-stain fungus, ultimately blocking the vascular tissue and girdling the tree. Adults typically disperse during the spring, flying up to 2 miles from the host tree (although they only survive for a few days), while infestation progresses in the summer. Secondary dispersal can occur during the fall; winter is a period of quiescence, and exceptionally cold winters (for this area) may cause beetle mortality.

Unfortunately, the thick, closely-spaced pitch pine groves on many of our serpentine barrens are a perfect breeding ground for southern pine beetle infestation. Without fire management to maintain open savanna-like conditions, the tightly-packed pitch pines tend to be stressed, and vulnerable to beetles. Last year, at Nottingham County Park, an infestation took off and has now killed almost all of the mature pitch pine in the park. While saplings and seedlings will survive the infestation, huge numbers of dead snags have been left behind, and are now being logged off. Chester County is retaining Roger Latham, a mid-Atlantic grasslands expert, to manage the post-logging restoration, and we hope that the end result will be large gains in healthy serpentine grassland and savanna. However, the loss of so much pitch pine in a short time will put great pressure on pine-dwelling and -feeding birds and insects.

The pine beetle has also been trapped at Goat Hill, and has caused tree mortality places there, including damage observed by an FSLSB work crew last winter. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry is working on a management plan for the area to reduce stand density and prevent another outbreak. That said, pine beetle infestations could appear in any pine stand, on or off the serpentine barrens, during the summer. Adults have been trapped last year, in Chester County, as far north as French Creek State Park. Be on the lookout when hiking in the barrens, and inform neighbors and landowners in the vicinity. Examine any pine trees showing yellowing in the crown. Popcornlike resin tubes, as shown in this observation, can be seen on the bark of attacked trees. See DCNR's fact sheet for other signs of pine beetle attack. If you find a pine beetle infestation in the area, please contact the PA Bureau of Forestry's Division of Forest Health; if it's in or near the serpentine barrens, please consider leaving a comment here as well.

On a brighter note, a warm welcome to @bobobaby who has recently joined the project and has been sharing a wealth of observations from many years at Nottingham County Park, particularly birds and insects. Marian is responsible for many new Chester County insect records at BugGuide and has a great eye for moths and many neglected insects. You can see her observations in the project listing (and our vastly expanded species list!) but I thought I'd share a few favorites:

Many thanks from the Friends, and don't forget to spare a little time from your rich, mesic woodlands during spring ephemeral season for the serpentine barrens, to look for arrowleaf violets and Michaux's stitchwort blooming and mourning cloaks coming out.

Posted on April 2, 2018 12:12 AM by choess choess | 1 comment | Leave a comment

October 9, 2017

New Texas Barrens

Hello, friends of the Serpentine Barrens! Thanks for joining this project to contribute your observations and identifications. Since my most recent batch of observations came in part from a workday at New Texas, I thought I'd give a description of that barrens and some of the species I've observed on it.

The hamlet of New Texas is located at the junction of Black Barren Road and Route 222 in southern Lancaster County. New Texas Barrens lies along Black Barren Road a short distance to the northwest. (Black Barren, named for its owner, Dr. James Black of Lancaster, lay to the south of New Texas Barrens near where Black Barren Road ends on Pilottown Road.) Between New Texas Barrens and Rock Springs Barrens, the next major serpentine barrens to the south, was the farm of Joel Jackson Carter. Carter was an enthusiastic botanist, and coauthored a flora of Lancaster County with J.K. Small; his herbarium is now in the collection of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. Carter's collections provide excellent documentation of the serpentine flora of the area in the late 19th and early 20th Century.

The more fertile areas around New Texas Barrens are farmed, and part of the barrens themselves were grazed until the early 1980s. This may have played a role in the health of the barrens; although prescribed fire (to the best of my knowledge) has never occurred at New Texas, it still contains many large, healthy grasslands on which vines and trees have largely not encroached. For over 30 years, the barrens have been owned by the Hannum family; the FSLSB and its predecessors have been clearing grasslands at New Texas for 20 years, with their gracious permission.

I took a number of pictures during our workday on September 17th, in some of the southern grasslands near Happy Hollow Road. What appeared to be an old prospect pit, filled with water, was harboring a small stand of common reed. Not much of a threat on the dry barrens, though. There was quite a bit of orange-grass in the grassland, which I don't recall seeing on other barrens. This is actually a tiny-flowered St. John's-Wort, often found in gravelly or sandy habitats. Tony Davis helpfully demonstrated for us where it gets its name—a faint citrus odor from the broken plant. Whorled milkwort is, if not frequent, to be found on most barrens, but often dwarfed, inconspicuous, and requires diligent search. And serpentine aster is a commonplace on the State Line Barrens; globally rare, locally abundant!

Another grassland held large patches of prairie dropseed, a disjunct prairie species known in Pennsylvania only from barrens. The cespitose (tufted) habit is distinctive (but don't confuse it with Deschampsia caespitosa in wet serpentine areas!), and the fruiting heads have a powerful smell of new-mown hay when ripe! (Thanks to Emily Tinalli for showing me this a few years ago.) While hauling cut brush and trees to a brush pile beyond the grassland edge, I almost fell over an eastern box turtle heading down the bank towards a stream. The conservation prospects for the species are rather grim, given their low reproductive success, so it's a slightly melancholy pleasure to see them. I also caught a picture of a variegated fritillary; pearl crescents, fritillaries, common buckeyes, and sulphurs are all frequently observed on barrens in the early fall. Purple gerardia, still blooming, is one of the buckeye's food plants.

If you'd like to see some of the New Texas Barrens yourself, the best way to do it is as part of one of our working parties. Our next stewardship day there is on November 17; contact the FSLSB if you'd like to join us to help preserve habitat and see this high-quality serpentine barrens.

Coming topics: the southern pine beetle and what's happening at Nottingham, walking fern on serpentine, the importance of New Jersey tea and wild false indigo, and more!

Posted on October 9, 2017 12:09 AM by choess choess | 0 comments | Leave a comment

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