Ents, The Adirondack Park encompasses about six million acres of northern New York, but the area is not uniformly mountainous. While the High Peaks region in the northeastern part of the park includes rugged peaks that rise 3000’ above surrounding lands, a gentler terrain of low irregular hills and scattered small lakes predominates in the park’s southwestern quadrant. Occasional northeast-southwest oriented ridges with steep eastern sides hint at the more rugged terrain to the northeast, but they rarely rise more than a few hundred feet. As Barbara McMartin points out in The Great Forest of the Adirondacks, even though that terrain posed little impediment to 19th century logging operations, the region’s dearth of desirable timber species caused loggers to concentrate on other parts of the Adirondacks. White pine, the most sought after species of the time, occurred throughout the mountains in only limited populations, and red spruce, the second most desired species, became abundant only at elevations higher than those common in the southwestern Adirondacks, generally slightly less than 2000’. Hence, a mixture of cleared, highgraded, and untouched lands were incorporated into the park.
The Ha-de-ron-dah Wilderness Area lies on the western edge of Old Forge, the largest town in the southwestern Adirondacks (although still not large enough to have a traffic light). On June 25th, my dad and I crossed the area on a series of unmaintained trails. Flat sections of trail traversed low areas of second growth forests that frequently gave way to beaver ponds. Black cherry, red maple and sugar maple dominate the overstory with the cherry occasionally forming nearly pure stands. Red and striped maple saplings pierced the sea of hay scented fern and bracken fern covering the forest floor to form a sparse understory. Near the ponds, red spruce and balsam fir mixed into the overstory and the ferns gave way to goldthread, bunchberry, false violet, and blueberries. Vegetation in and on the edges of the ponds varied with time since abandonment, and ranged from sedge meadows to shrub thickets that included speckled alder, leatherleaf, wild raison, and chokeberry. Between Big Otter Lake and Simon pond, two glacier produced water bodies, the old trail weaves between several 200 to 300’ high hills and through a much less disturbed forest. Yellow birch, frequently two and a half to three feet in diameter, forms most of the overstory with scattered red maple and formerly beech. Beech bark disease has killed most of the beech over a foot in diameter leaving canopy gaps that either smaller beech or striped maple have filled. Near streams and lakeshores, red spruce, although none that look old, and scattered hemlocks also reach the canopy. Except in a few lake shore areas, intermediate wood fern dominates the herbaceous layer, and witch hobble forms a patchy understory. The most productive forest grows on level areas elevated perhaps 30 to 50’ above adjacent streams or lakes. In that setting, hemlocks reach about three feet dbh and the largest yellow birch seen was 13’3.5” x 85.3’. Jess Riddle --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
