Bog Walk

Northern pitcher plant

Yesterday was a bit chilly but gloriously sunny; so I took the opportunity to go to my “secret” boggy lake in Michigan’s Yankee Springs Recreation Area (Barry County) to take photos of some of the typical bog plants that most folks rarely see. I was hoping to see the striking flowers of our northern pitcher plant, but because of the cold spring, they were just starting to bud.

[Click on the photos to see them in a larger size. The ones that enlarge are my photos. The ones that don't are usually gotten from the Web---mostly from Wikipedia.]

Bogs are wonderful places, and rather rare in the US—found mostly in the northern and northeastern states from Minnesota to Maine. They were formed by the retreating glaciers, and some have been around

Blueberry blossoms

for thousands of years, having trapped water in hollows in areas where there is not a large inflow of fresh water. This creates a good habitat for the prime creator and maintainer of a bog: sphagnum moss that leaches hydrogen atoms into the water to create acidic conditions, which in turn sets the stage for bog plants like the pitcher plant, sundew (both carnivorous plants), cranberry, blueberry, Labrador tea, cotton grass, some rare orchids, and poison sumac, the relatively uncommon plant that has given a bad name to our very common smooth and staghorn sumac that you see along the roadside.

These ubiquitous sumacs sporting their flame-shaped ruby red seed clusters at the top of each branch are not poisonous. In fact, throughout the summer those fresh seed heads can be soaked in water to create a tangy lemonade-like drink call “rhus tea” to which you will want to add sugar! Sometimes when I hike I will take a few of the seeds and pop them in my mouth (after checking for insects!) for a refreshing burst of sour—spitting them out when the flavor is gone

Fresh tamarack needles

One way to identify a bog, or at least boggy areas, is to look for the tamarack tree, that curious conifer that’s also deciduous. It looks a bit like a feathery pine tree from a distance, but in the fall the needles turn yellow and drop off. This makes them look like dead evergreens. But in the spring, the star-burst needle clusters will erupt from the branches and even the trunks along with the leaves of the surrounding non-coniferous trees. Tamaracks that grow in the most acidic part of the bog don’t grow very large and take on a dwarf-tree look without the traditional spire of their larger neighbors—but may in fact be older than a thirty-foot tree growing in less acidic conditions.

Many Cornerstone University students here in Grand Rapids who take general biology from my friend, Professor Ray Gates (known as “Gator”), often take a “bog walk”—but quite different from mine. They go to a more typical bog that has a large floating mat of sphagnum moss surrounded by a moat of brownish water that has to be crossed before they can climb up onto the floating island. Sporting grubs that can be sacrificed for the muddy experience, they wade chest to neck-deep through the moat and for their trouble end up with a great adventure identifying the plants found on the undulating central mat—taking care to look for “puddles” that are really holes in the mossy mass and into which you can drop down over your head. “If you fall through and drown and we don’t find you” Gator tells them, “you will have the good fortune of having your body well preserved for hundreds of years—because decomposing organisms don’t live in the acid water.” That usually suffices as a good warning.

Tawny cotton grass

So far Gator has not lost any students! But they do go away with a great college memory told and retold over the years.

One reminder for me of a bog walk in the Jordan River valley in Northern Michigan is a dried arrangement of tawny cotton grass that we have had in our home for perhaps ten years. It is a regular keepsake that helps to keep fresh in my mind this awesome habitat—this amazing and wonderful curiosity of God’s creation.

[For more photos of Gator's bog walk, go to the website of Margaux Drake.]

See you outdoors!

Dean

Nature Nearby

I have to confess that if I had the opportunity I would go every other day to some exciting outdoor location, be it a bog, a marsh, a cypress swamp, a desert—or a national park or two! But few folks have that sort of opportunity—including me. What I really do, however, is only an occasional excursion surrounded in time by a lot of mundane activities: walking the dog, walking to work, walking the dog, going to the store, walking the dog, spending time with children and grandchildren, and walking the dog.

That being the case, and my soul demanding attentive connection with the natural world, I’ve learned that there’s a great deal I don’t know about God’s creation even within a half-mile radius of our home. I’ve written often about the wonders of the old orchard that lies between our condo and RBC. There’s another couple acres that have been allowed to remain wild between us and Wal-Mart, but since it’s a rare deer haven in our heavily developed area, I leave that spot alone.

For a number of years I’ve walked our condo lane looking and listening for birds in the conifers that line its length, and have every so often pinched off a brilliant chartreuse twig of spring growth from a Colorado spruce, which is almost feathery soft, to brush against my face. Across the county road there are some balsam firs and what look like Douglas firs hybridized for landscaping. Along our lane are Austrian pines, red pines, a lonesome jack pine, and Colorado spruces. I used to call them the “blue spruces” but learned by seeing them growing next to each other that there are natural blue and green varieties. Some new spruces have been planted by the condo association that have cones only about a quarter the size of the standard spruce. (Horticulturists and animal breeders are alike: always tinkering with genetics!)

This year I’ve decided to learn more about the life cycles of the trees in the area, and spring is the ideal time to do that. As is virtually always the case, what I’ve learned is amazing. Let me share (as illustrated by my photos) just the bit about how the wonderful conifers reproduce.

Austrian pine showing new growth spike, male cones, and immature female cones

I have always noticed the different fruiting structures on the trees, but never understood exactly what I was looking at: As new growth begins, swelling twigs push off the waxy tip covers that protected them in the winter. Then clusters of what appear to be new cones seem to pop up almost overnight; but these never get hard and they never stay. Instead they sort of bloom and start shedding yellow “dust” in the wind—or when I snap them with my finger to create a virtual cloud, not of dust, but of pollen. Such, of course, is the cause of many spring allergies (along with oak pollen). Here’s the amazing part: these temporary cones are actually the male cones that cast into the breezes their pollen grains (male gametophytes), some of which are snagged by sticky young female cones (the permanent ones). When the grains land, they create a pollen tube that extends down between the cone scales (ovules) to fertilize the female gametophytes.

Then, as is common in virtually all reproduction, fertilization occurs, and the egg begins to divide and grow as the cone itself also grows and hardens into the mature new cones we see by summer’s end. The male cones dry up and drop off to add to the duff on the ground below the tree. In the second year, the cone scales open up and drop their fertile seeds to grow new trees—that is if squirrels have not gotten to the seeds first! Eventually the old female cones drop from the tree and often find themselves as parts of Christmas decorations. (That reminds me of the time a few years back when I was scolded by a neighbor for snipping a few cone-laden boughs from along the lane to use in the house. He felt I was “damaging community property.” I guess he was unaware that for healthy trees careful pruning leads to more growth, not less.)

But that’s not the end of the evergreen wonders. You’ve probably noticed that most permanent cones are near the top of the tree—especially on the spruces—and most of the temporary male cones are nearer the bottom of the tree. So how do the two tango? Well, it’s best that they not. That would result in too much inbreeding and weaken the stock. To ensure genetic diversity and healthier trees, it’s better that the female cones catch the pollen from male cones of other trees. If the female cones were below the male cones on the same tree, simple gravity would ensure that they would get the majority of pollen from above them. Instead, by being near the top they are more likely to receive windblown pollen from other trees.

That’s a total “wow” to me. Yet some claim that none of that was intelligently directed: it was the result of time plus chance and accidental order—called “unguided evolution.” Hmm. I have to go with the sentiment expressed by Joaquin Miller, who, examining a tree, exulted, “Ten thousand leaves on every tree, / And each a miracle to me; / And yet there be men who question God!” And this set of “miracles” is one of hundreds that surround us and show us the Creator’s “eternal power and divine nature” (Romans 1:20). I wanted to share this recent lesson with you just in case you’ve not experienced a creation wow lately. Go out now and hug an evergreen!

See you outdoors!

Dean

Spruce twig with and without waxy winter cap

Turtle Time

Migrating turtles, egg-laying turtles, baby snappers, big snappers, painted turtles, wood turtles—all the Michigan varieties are on the move in early June. And when the paths of turtle and child cross, there is instant fascination—at least on the part of the chil
Yesterday afternoon was the perfect time to take children turtle scouting—and to take a nostalgia trip back to Hastings where my wife and I spent our barefoot years. Marge (Olsson) and I have known each other virtually all our lives, our family’s having had a friendship since 1945, when my dad moved the family from Grand Rapids to Hastings (about 35 miles) where he and a friend became partners in ownership of Hastings Motor Sales. We met the Olssons in the Evangelical United Brethren church and then migrated together to First Baptist Church where another of Dad’s friends had become pastor. I was about five then. Marge was three.

I’ve often told my childhood stories to the grandkids, so they were eager to see where those events took place—especially the place where a painted turtle bit my belly. When we got there, I pointed out the very spot where it happened. Now they can picture the scene: With my buddies Dickie Andrews and Lanny Kenfield (The OAK boys: Ohlman, Andrews, and Kenfield) we were returning from the creek with a fist-sized painted turtle, which I was holding—carelessly. Suddenly I felt great pain and realized that the frightened turtle had attached itself to my bare tummy (we typically spent the summer barefooted and barebacked).

When a child experiences pain, there’s nothing like a mother to run to. So I dropped the turtle and started to run. Sensing the precariousness of being high in the air above a concrete sidewalk, the insecure turtle simply “held on for dear life” as I ran—causing me greater pain with every flop. When I got to the house, however, Mother was not there. I had forgotten that she was going to have coffee with Mrs. Offley two doors down and across the street. So still with dangling turtle, I rushed yelling through the back yards and burst rudely through the screen door without knocking and was met by my anxious mother in the kitchen. “O my” is all she said. With one swift tug she detached the turtle and a piece of my flesh with it. That was one of many scars I acquired through my childhood: dog bite scars on nose and wrist, hatchet scar on the top of my foot, barbed-wire and knife scars on my hands, and a mailbox scar on my chest—and a story to go with each!

Well, we saw a few turtles (most of them crushed on the road), saw the houses where Grandma and Grandpa lived, saw where our friends lived and where our schools had been, saw the hospital where Marge was born and where her father died at age 50, and even drove the long mile that Marge had to walk to go to her one-room school house (yep, sometimes in snow knee-deep!). We did not collect any turtles on this trip because we already have a baby snapper and good-sized painted turtle at home, their having to endure captivity for a week or so before we return them to their native habitats (having to educate children and a big black dog being their temporary burden).

O, and that brings up another memory: one of the community summer activities in Hastings that certainly would not be approved by the ASPCA today: Turtle racing in the high school gym, where each kid was given a painted turtle and a thin switch to tap it on the back to “motivate” it to reach the finish line (Those who tried to cheat by pushing the turtle with the stick were disqualified). I wonder if the turtle that bit me had a sixth sense about such fate in the hands of humans. It’s a good thing turtles are hardy creatures.

See you outdoors!

Dean

Ye Olde Farmstead

“I was born on the dining room table in that old house.” “Yes, Dad, I know. You say that every time we drive by here!” That was a common conversation with my father when I was a teenager and we lived some six miles from the Hudsonville farm where Dad was born and where he and his five brothers labored under the stern rule of my grandfather, whom they called “the Kaiser” (which was fitting, since his father was born a quarter mile from the Rhine in old Prussia.) The old house on Van Buren Street is long gone and the foundation hauled out to enlarge the field of rich, loamy soil, part of which is also highly valued muck. Hundreds of acres adjoining it are now filled with crops or topped by dozens of greenhouses filled with flowers. [You can see it on Google Maps here.]

Last week I decided to amble out that way—compelled a bit by nostalgia, but mostly by my thoughts and feelings about creation care and how circumstances are so radically different now from when my father was a child. A hundred years ago he would have been nine and already doing the “chores,” which is a euphemism hard farm labor. Child labor laws did not apply to farmers. The farm he was born on was only one of three properties that my grandfather worked (he and my dad were both “Henry”—in a long line of Heinrichs that goes back to the Reformation). Actually, when he was nine, they were tenants on an even larger farm, which was between his birthplace and an 80-acre woodlot from which mature timber was sustainably cut to help supply hardwoods (mostly maple and red oak) to the furniture factories in Grand Rapids, then called America’s “Furniture City.”

As I drove the couple miles between Dad’s birth farm and the tenant farm last week, my attention was yanked to what is probably the largest agricultural rig I’ve ever seen—operating a half-mile from where my grandfather used draft horses. I discovered that it is the John Deere DB120 planter that plants seeds and chemicals at the same time. Here’s a description of it (along with a photo I took of it. Click on it to see it larger.):

The DB120 is an agricultural planter made by John Deere. Upon its release in 2009, it was the largest production planter in the world. It has a 120 feet wide tool-bar and plants 48 rows which are 30 inches apart. It is estimated that the planter should sow 90 to 100 acres per hour at 5 to 5.5 miles per hour ground speed. John Deere claims that the planter is 30% more productive than their 36 row DB90 planter. To transport such an incredibly wide implement, the DB120 folds into five sections. The planter weighs in at over 20 tons empty and almost 24 tons when loaded with seed. The DB120 had a limited release in 2009 with orders being taken for the 2010 season. It retailed at $345,000 dollars. The DB120 needs a GPS System to guide it as there are no row markers to indicate where to position the tractor/planter.

I have to confess that I was awed by the machine and the engineers and technicians who made it. I can’t image what my grandfather would think were he alive today! I guessed that it was half a football field wide, which, it turns out, was not far off: it’s 120 feet wide. The reality of the difference a hundred years has made in how we “do agriculture” is really shocking.

I drove another mile to the corner where the tenant farm was, already knowing that, contrary to Dad’s birth farm, there the farm fields were almost gone. But the house, barn, and old shed were still standing. West of the house, which has been added to and remodeled many times, is a huge complex of Little League ball fields. South of the house and across the road is a mega-church with a pond and fountain. West of the church lies the lone section of the farm on which corn is still grown—but probably not for long: The city of Hudsonville is one of the most rapidly growing communities in Michigan. [See the site on Google maps here. If you go to street view at the corner of 28th and Baldwin, you will be able to see the farm buildings from the street level. ]

From there I motored a couple more miles to the “woodlot.” The photo here shows what’s become of it: a lake surrounded by houses that run from around $400,000 to whatever (no doubt less now than when they were built!). My grandfather bought the 80 acres a couple days after my father was born (April 4, 1902) for $2,800 and sold it fifteen years later for $4,500. Years later after the forest was clearcut, I believe it was farmed for a while. Later yet, however, a gift of the great glacier was discovered below the soil: gravel. And when the gravel gave out (or perhaps because of the difficulty of dredging gravel out of the water-filled pit—the water table being close to the surface there) the entire 8th of a section was sold to developers who put up the houses. [See the site on Google maps here.]

It was a hot and humid the evening I took my drive, and nearly every house had a dock and a boat, but there was not one watercraft on the water! What does one get a boat for but for puttering around a lake on a warm night’s eve?

What are my thoughts about this history and all these changes duplicated thousands of times around America? For sure they are conflicted—especially since yesterday when I heard Diane Sawyer on an ABC news report that nearly all our store-bought produce still has pesticide residue on it even after washing, and some of it is actually inside the fruits and vegetables (strawberries being the most contaminated). The big John Deere rig, as the picture shows, carries three large tanks that instills insecticide along with the seeds. I’m not sure what seed was being sown (if the word “sow” is still appropriate) since most corn and soybean crops are already well above ground. (As my dad commonly said, it was a good year when the corn was “knee-high by the 4th of July.”) Perhaps it was another Monsanto seed product that is “Roundup ready” (seeds engineered to tolerate Monsanto’s flagship herbicide). I’m uncomfortable about that too, after reading a report today about Roundup being in our blood and linked to genetic deformity in children.

What a can of worms, eh? It brings to my mind Francis Schaeffer’s thoughts in Pollution and the Death of Man about the lyrics of The Doors’ song “When the Music’s Over”:

What have they done to the earth?
What have they done to our fair sister?
Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her
Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn
And tied her with fences and dragged her down

Says Schaeffer: “St. Francis’ use of the term ‘brothers to the birds’ is not only theologically correct, but a thing to be intellectually thought of and practically practiced. More, it is to be psychologically felt as I face the tree, the bird, the ant. If this is what ‘The Doors’ meant when they spoke of ‘our fair sister,’ it would have been beautiful. Why have orthodox, evangelical Christians not produced hymns putting such a beautiful concept in a proper theological setting?”

Yes, why? And what indeed are we doing to the earth, our fair sister?

See you outdoors!

Dean

One Step Forward . . .

As toddlers, many of us may well have dreamed of endless sandboxes to play in, but since few remember their toddler dreams, joy in the thought of endless sands probably went subliminal. Perhaps that’s the reason that Michigan’s massive sand dunes bordered by a vista of endless water creates a sort of ecstasy for children and relieves tension for adults. [Sandbox photo source]

I had a free afternoon last week to wander the shore and dunes of Lake Michigan at Hoffmaster State Park just south of Muskegon—finding that such ambling indeed does quiet the spirit, and if you desire to climb the dunes, gives your heart and legs a good workout. Steep dunes, in fact, can provide the reality on which an old metaphor is based: “one step forward and two steps back.” In a couple spots I had to stop climbing upward and go laterally because I was losing ground with each step! And there’s a sort of reversal of that metaphoric reality when you go down the steepest slopes: “one step forward and four steps down!” It had rained the day before and there was a damp crust of firmer sand over the dry sand on the dune I climbed, which meant that when I started down, the sand immediately under foot became a fragile “ski” that would have sent me down in a tumbling rush if a few saplings had not been at hand. (With my new camera around my neck, it could have also become the photographer’s nightmare: sand in the lens!).

After spending a few moments taking some photos for a family visiting from St. Louis (mom was trying to herd everyone into poses from which she would have been absent) I wandered the shoreline for a while—experiencing the phenomenon of “singing sands”: There’s a spot between the totally saturated wave zone and the dry dunes where there is just the right amount of moisture in the sand for your feet to make a squeak with every step, which is not unlike the crunch of snow under your feet when you walk in it in especially frigid weather. You can read about singing (or barking sands) on this Wikipedia link (Go to the bottom right-hand corner to hear a recording of the sound.)

Sand dunes are a very dramatic ecosystem where on windy days change happens as you watch: waves reforming the beach and ribbons of blowing sand moving up and over the top of bare dunes to create drifts and mini sandstorms. Such drifting and shifting sand over the years has buried entire abandoned villages, and to the dismay of landowners, blown away valuable property or threatened to inundate their homes and required them to take expensive measures to stop the encroaching drifts.

If you visit a dune area only occasionally, you are often surprised to find an entirely different appearance every time you go. Where trees once stood solid, you might find them toppling where the sand has been blown away from the roots. The roots of many plants in dune areas go very deep in search of water, and many trees take on a sort of grotesque appearance with bare twisted roots looking more like limbs. The survival capacity of such trees is amazing. Some roots have been exposed so long that they are hard to distinguish from limbs.

On my amble along the shore, some deep yellow flowers caught my eye; so I wandered up into a blowout to discover what they were (a “blowout” in dune terminology is a spot on the shoreline where the wind has managed to clear out vegetation and created a rift of mostly bare sand that projects well into what was earlier a stable, wooded hillside). In a park a blowout is the sandbox of a child’s dream; on your own property, though, it can be a virtual nightmare.

Parks are also great places for botanists to test dune stability and erosion prevention. The planting of native marram grass is the most common way to stabilize the dunes. Once the hardy and deep rooted grass has taken hold, the drifting stops. Then other plants begin to grow. The flowers, I discovered, were the hoary/hairy puccoon, which stood out like torches in the otherwise gray-green setting. After taking a few photos to add to my wildflower picture library, I also discovered a few of the rare Pitcher’s thistles that grow only in the dunes of the Great Lakes. They survive by sending their roots down as far as six feet! Also amazing to find were hundreds of oak seedlings that were taking root from last year’s acorns—no doubt assisted by one of the wettest and cloudiest Mays I can remember. Most will likely be blown away, covered up, or dried up by fall.

The dunes of the Great Lakes are the largest fresh water dune system in the world—which is one reason the US government established the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to help preserve this system and provide enjoyment for millions of visitors. The Sleeping Bear Dunes are the most extensive and tallest dunes on the Great Lakes. Its highest dune is about 450 feet tall (depending upon whether the wind is piling on or shaving away its peak). Some years ago when I was flying from Grand Rapids to Minneapolis on a crystal-clear and cloudless day, I spotted the dunes from the plane as we started across the Big Lake at Muskegon. They were some 115 miles away! I could see them like a white beacon on the horizon as we flew over the lake and on over Wisconsin’s beautiful Door County. They were still visible when we were well past Green Bay. [Dunes photo source]

Sand dunes: what a wonder of creation! (If you follow the links in this account you can learn a great deal about them. And if you have not loaded Google Earth onto your computer, be sure you do that. The satellite photos and tools on Google Earth make a “virtual reality” of such wonders that you could get for real only if you were an astronaut).

See you outdoors,

Dean