By Steve Emery, volunteer
Despite the warmer weather we had a smaller group for our second data collection event at Brumley South. Even with the smaller team of counters, though, we got as many plots documented as on the first session. The participants, like the couple below, had many levels of experience, from a trained forester, to people totally new to identifying plants.
They all caught on quickly and did great, accurate work. We have a photo guide to the plants, with pictures shot on the site.
TLC planted a number of different species in this space, with the intention of speeding up the return to climax oak forest. The hundreds of cages are mostly protecting white oaks and black oaks, but there are also understory trees, like the red bud thriving in cage 153, shown in this photo.
The data collection sheets, like the sample below, have been easy to use in the field, and the data will help the land stewards make decisions about invasive and aggressive species and will provide trend data on how quickly they spread. The teams noticed that different parts of the region seem to favor some species more than others , though Japanese honeysuckle was the universal winner for sheer numbers.
We would love to have more people join us for this effort, and we’re also looking for additional event leaders, to guide teams on more dates, so we can complete the work. If you are interested in learning to lead a counting event, please contact Melissa Kennedy at [email protected].
