Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Alders

 We were on a new trail. I was looking at the plants covering the forest floor and was surprised to see thickets of alders, Alnus serrulate.

I was expecting to see muscadine vines, Vitus rotundifolia. Muscadines cover much of the forest floor in the Georgia Piedmont. Alders can grow to 15 feet, but the ones we saw were knee-high shrubs.

The canopy was the usual mix of pine and hardwood. I wondered why there were so many alders and so few muscadines.

The textbook says alder is a marker for wetlands. The trail we were on ran near a lake but followed a hill above the water table. It never got boggy.

I’m still wondering, and it occurred to me that’s the usual disposition of a person who’s interested in natural history. You always seem to have something in mind that’s provisional — something in mind where the explanations kind of fits, but not really.

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Alders

  We were on a new trail. I was looking at the plants covering the forest floor and was surprised to see thickets of alders,  Alnus serrulat...

  • Alice Oswald's poem on battle
     An appropriate read for Memorial Day? How about Alice Oswald’s long poem  Memorial , which recounts how soldiers in the  Iliad  met their e...
  • Lang: 'Letters to Dead Authors'
      Andrew Lang, a Scottish polymath who lived from 1844 to 1912, wrote   Letters to Dead Authors . I like the idea of the book, rather than t...
  • The things you hear
      Some days you go into the woods and see all kinds of things. Some days you don’t. And then there are days when you don’t see but   hear . ...