Wet Winter Wanderings--Poison Ivy and Lesser Celandine

Observations from visit on February 4, 2016

Puddles… wet shoes… dirt-speckled snow patches…

With Thaiss Park wet and swampy from recent rain and snowmelt, our class ventured into the puddle-filled stream valley to find our “special spots.” As part of our Readings in Natural History, I wanted my students to connect to and experience the details of seasonal changes by visiting their chosen spot several times over the quarter, even if that meant connecting to and experiencing the wet chill of early February.  

I was looking for the excuse to get out and explore the park myself, as I had spent my past few years teaching in an urban environment where field trips and parks were hard to come by.  I feel blessed and spoiled to know that my class can access this gem with less than a 10 minute walk, and I intend to get us “out there” at least once a week.  I felt like I had lost my connection to NoVA Nature since completing my Virginia Master Naturalist coursework in 2009, then living in a completely different biome for 3 years, then returning and forgetting much of the seemingly infinite species list I had once learned.  Now I am in the process of getting reacquainted with my native environment.

There is the paradox of the winter forest--there is “less” to see, yet you can see more/farther into the forest with the leaves gone.   Bare, but not boring.  It’s like talking to an introverted person for the first time--because of the quiet and the minimalist nature of the stripped woods, it can seem like there’s nothing there at first.  But with careful observation, you start to notice more of what makes it tick…

The first familiar connection I made was the rust-colored hairy vines clinging to the trees.  As a small child who attended plenty of nature camps and girl scout camps, I was taught early and often about how to identify poison ivy.  While the “leaves of three, let it be” works in the summer, without leaves, the obvious feature to identify it was the thick, well-established poison ivy vines.  With our anthropocentric tendencies, it’s easy to write poison ivy off as evil, out to get us, useless, etc.  While it’s true that exposure to oils in the sap can cause itchy, red reactions in humans, poison ivy is a major food source for browsing deer or birds attracted by their white berries.   It’s also a native vine that belongs in our ecosystem--while it might be appropriate for removal in a residential yard where children play, it’s ecologically advantageous to just let it grow in the wild.

Image Source

Sorry.  I had to.  I have a Frozen-obsessed 3-year-old at home.  It hasn’t rubbed off on me at all [sarcasm].

One of my laments about plant identification in Northern Virginia is that so many species common in our parks are invasive--most of the obvious plants you get excited about seeing and knowing are targets for elimination through initiatives in the park service.  Not that their elimination is a bad thing--many times these invasive species crowd out natives so that there is no competition.  Such was the case for the beautiful, lush, green patch of lesser celandine I observed on the forest floor (Ranunculus ficaria L. ).  Because it has hardy, tuberous roots, it’s especially difficult to eliminate completely.  Lesser celandine’s early timing as a spring ephemeral plant also crowds out other more subtle native beauties like trout lily before they have a chance to surface.  It can also grow in giant swaths that don’t leave room for any other plants to grow.  I hope to observe the bright yellow flowers to confirm my identification when they bloom in the coming weeks… and then contact Fairfax’s invasive species removal program!

In our next ventures to our observation spots, I hope to focus on finding and observing more native plants and beneficial species in our parks.  I also have questions (as any curious naturalist should!) about why some trees still have dead, brown leaves hanging on them through the winter.  Is it an inefficiency in the leaf-shedding process and they shouldn’t really be there? Do they somehow protect the surface of the branch where the new leaf will sprout in the spring?  Is there any ecological advantage or disadvantage to this in different species?  Please leave a comment if you have any insight.  Thanks!

Sources

http://www.poison-ivy.org/poison-ivy-winter

http://www.invasive.org/weedcd/pdfs/wgw/lessercelandine.pdf