Following the annual meeting of the NY Nut Grower’s Association on October 17th, Carl Albers told me to check out the bottom of Lake Owasco since I was interested in shellbark hickory. Shellbark hickory is one of America’s very finest of nut trees.
Carl explained that in the bottoms along the inlet to Owasco Lake there were lots of shellbark hickories growing on the west as well as the east side. He described how there was a native settlement there for a long time and that it was archaeologically a very important area. The following morning I made my way over to the Owasco Flats Wildlife Management Area, as the area is known.
Over the past few years fire management and cultural burning have developed as a fascination in me. As a child I was always a bit of a pyro-maniac, but pairing such a Promethean yet utterly human urge with ecological management and plant cultivation reaps interesting and often unbelievable results. Don’t take it from me, but take it from indigenous people the world over. Humanity’s use (and in some cases, abuse) of fire is as old as our modern species. Carbon deposits from landscape-level burning at the hands of humans extends back at least 100,000 years and probably many more.
Japanese Stiltgrass (Microstegium vimineum) is a much-maligned “invasive plant,” but I don’t believe it deserves this reputation. Call me crazy, but personally, I love stiltgrass. And why not? She is beautiful, like a tiny bamboo forest. She clothes herself in a luxurious green and beams with lushness every morning dew. And she is also helpful… but I’ll get to that later.
At the beginning of March I had the opportunity to join Edwin Bridges, Alex Griffel, and Eric Ungberg down in central Florida for a weekend of botanizing throughout the region’s varied ecosystems, all of which are managed through prescribed fire. Edwin runs his own botanical and ecological consulting business, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the area’s flora is impressive. His work in ecosystematics presents a comprehensive picture of the ecological workings of the region. Alex is a graduate of the University of Central Florida and has worked with The Nature Conservancy’s Tiger Creek Preserve burn crew. Eric Ungberg is with Duke University’s plant lab, and was down in Florida for some of the same reasons I was, such as curiosity and the love of botanizing. All were great people to be around and to learn from.
