To all those who turned out for the recent Roam Among the Giants Hike, thank you for spending your Saturday with us as we waded and walked through the Emmons Augusta Floodplain Forest.
We truly enjoyed having you along for the discovery as we gazed up into the canopy and scoured the forest floor for amphibians, wildflowers, and other signs of spring. Even better, no one fell in the muck!
We were lucky to have naturalist, conservationist, and writer, Tom Springer, along for the walk – and he wrote the following piece that perfectly captures the texture of the morning. Enjoy!
Boot-sucking Muck, Primal Diversity at Augusta Floodplain
May 1, 2019 • Tom Springer
The Augusta Floodplain Preserve sprawls across 290 acres, but on Saturday, visitors found that even a square foot of soggy soil has a world of stories to tell.
“OK, I want everybody to look down at their feet,” said Mitch Lettow, Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy Stewardship Specialist, during the Roam Among the Giants hike. “How many kinds of plants do you see? I counted eight species in my 18 square inches.”
“Diversity begets diversity,” said Lettow. “It brings more roots, blooms, trees and biological matter. And the more food the forest produces, the more birds and animals can live together without competition.”
This included rue anemone, spring beauties, jack in the pulpit and white trillium just coming into flower. Such rich diversity, Lettow said, bears the hallmark of a healthy ecosystem – and not only for wildflowers. For the blue-lined salamander that a hiker found beneath an overturned log. For the crayfish holes, little chimneys of pelletized earth that look like mini-versions of Africa termite mounds. For the rare thorny honey locust, whose menacing, three-inch spikes evolved to deter giant tree sloths during the Pleistocene.
Twenty-five hikers turned out to explore the preserve, whose fragile ecology usually makes it off limits to the public. The hike is one of four events scheduled by SWMLC this spring and summer to build awareness of rarely visited wild lands and waters around Gull Lake.
The morning began at a tiny “parking lot,” a few spaces of mowed grass next to a high-speed rail line. Minutes later an Amtrak train whistled by, as the group moved through a 30-acre abandoned corn field that SWMLC will soon convert to prairie.
“This is a high-quality preserve that’s large enough for natural systems to work like they’re supposed to,” Lettow explained. “The woods were last logged in the early 1900s.
Back then, the open spaces were colonized with native pioneer species. The invasive species didn’t move in as they would today.”
A red-tail hawked keened overhead, but the chilly north wind abated as the field gave way to woods. The rusty hulk of a bullet-riddled, 1930s sedan stood like a Capone-era sentinel by a footbridge that crossed and unnamed stream. From there, it was all boot-sucking muck, interspersed with patches of “high ground,” where elms, red oaks and maples reached high and straight for the life-giving sun.
While the preserve looks kitchen-table flat, Lettow said that an altitude change of even a few feet creates conditions favorable to diversity. A case in point being the tip-ups – large trees with shallow roots, usually silver maples, that blow over during storms. Their massive, upturned roots create raised mounds where plants that prefer drier conditions can thrive, such as blue cohosh. Meanwhile, the boggy holes vacated by the roots form vernal pools, some two-feet deep and six feet across. On Saturday they were alive with frogs; tadpoles and mosquitoes will likely follow as warmer days permit.
Several hikers who came from Kellogg Biological Station near Gull Lake brought field guides and cameras to document the flowers for blogs and field research. With more than 280 species of plants and 20 species of birds, there was much to document. One of the more popular finds was Downy Wood mint, whose edible leaves taste remarkably like Andes Mints.
As the preserve has no formal trails, the group slogged east through the remnants of oxbows once formed and abandoned by the ever-changing river.
Beavers had gnawed and felled trees throughout. Then, everyone made a final stop by the Kalamazoo River, which swept past wide, silent and deep. The SWMLC preserve sits across from Fort Custer State Recreation Area, and together, they preserve two miles of river frontage.
“I made maple syrup this spring and that got me thinking about how much water trees can hold,” Lettow said. “I did the math this week, and estimate that trees in a floodplain forest this size can absorb thousands of tons of water. And that doesn’t even count what the soil can hold. As we get heavier rains and floods, natural areas that soak up water upstream from cities become even more important.”
“What we preserve out here is really important for protecting places like Kalamazoo.”
Photos, Amelia Hansen
