KENTUCKY SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY

NATURE NOTES
A Monthly Publication of the
Wilderness Trail Chapter
of the
Kentucky Society of Natural History

May 6th Program

Tonight the Wilderness Trail Chapter is pleased to welcome Dr. Alan Heilman from Knoxville, Tennessee. Heilman, a retired professor of botany at UT, will speak on reproduction of wildflowers. The program will be illustrated by his slides, which have also been featured at area photography clubs.
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1999 Program Schedule

• June�A Member�s Potpourri (with members to describe or display favorite plants, animals, rocks, photos, etc.)
• July�Jack Collier, Cumberland Gap National Park Expansion
• August�Reptiles, with Jim Harrison
• September�Trip to Redbird (program to be announced)
• October�Mars Geology, Dean Henson & election of officers for 2000-2001; November�Annual Photography Exhibition
• December�Annual Christmas Social

Two field trips were planned�a wildflower walk in the park area, with members to bring a sack lunch for an al fresco lunch in the park, to be held on Saturday, May 22^nd, and a tour of the Cumberland Gap area with Tom Shattuck in June, set for June 12. Prepare to leave from Pine Mt. State Resort Park at 9:30 a.m. Discount ticket price for members and guests will be $ 7.00.
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Nature on Television

Check out the nature-related programming this month on KET.

From the Webmaster: Columbine High

������� An e-mail received at the KSNH web site said "Please copy this mail and pass it on to as many people and clubs that you can think of. I�m trying to spread a nationwide idea, a way to remember the students shot and killed at Columbine High School, a school named after this beautiful, tough little flower. Will you plant a columbine in your garden this year? If you can�t plant columbine in your zone, please choose another flower to silently honor an average of 16 children who die each day from gun-related violence. Planting a flower is a small but powerful act. In gardeners hope springs eternal. Please pass the Columbine Project along. Let it spread like seeds flung into a wind."
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(the following is excerpted from a story in the Lexington Herald-Leader, Thursday, April 29^th)

RED MAPLES TAKING OVER; OPPORTUNISTIC SPECIES REPLACING OAK, HICKORY IN EASTERN FORESTS

by William K. Stevens

The forests of the Eastern United States are turning increasingly red, and the growing brilliance of color signals a historic change in the ecological character of a vast region stretching from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic and from Canada well into the South.

Eastern deciduous woodlands are famous for their bright fall yellows, oranges and russets. Now much of the forest is acquiring a pervasive rosy blush in the spring as well. The soft green springtime hues of hardwoods like oaks and hickories, and the darker greens of northern conifers like pines, are being replaced by the blazing red buds, flowers and fruits of another, more adaptable and aggressive species of native tree: the red maple. Its fruits, small whirlybirds, rain down profusely in the spring, producing new little trees whose early start gives them a competitive advantage over other hardwood species, which do not drop their seeds until the fall. These arboreal hard-chargers are taking over the woods. Long viewed as the maple family's poor relations, they were once confined almost exclusively to low, wet areas. Now they have burst out of the swamps and are marching into the uplands in strength.

There they are starting to flaunt a new-found dominance that, if it continues, could signal the downfall of the majestic oaks that have been a mainstay of the deciduous forest for most of the last 10,000 years. A wide range of creatures adapted to the oak-hickory habitat could suffer as a result. The rise of the red maple is part of a larger, continuing transformation of the Eastern forest. The transformation has many causes, all related to humans' impact on the forest ecosystem. Two stand out in the case of the maple:

• People have suppressed fire. Before European settlement, forest fires routinely killed the thin-barked red maples while oaks and hickories were protected by their thicker bark. Fire also created open spaces ideal for the oaks' light-loving seedlings. Now those spaces are closing up; it so happens that red maple thrives in shade .
• Red maples spread like weeds onto disturbed ground. One way people have disturbed the forest is by chopping it up into a patchwork of disconnected woodland fragments and cleared fields. The maples take enthusiastically to both the forest fragments and the deforested patches between. In fact, they can grow about anywhere - in rich soil or poor, on dry land or wet or in between, in open sunlight or deep shade, in young forests or older, mature ones.

`Super generalist'

The upshot is that the red maple not only can colonize fresh ground easily, it can also grow in the shadow of an already-established forest. It is a "super generalist" among plants, and its ability to thrive in a wide range of soil conditions "is a real rarity in the plant world," said Marc Abrams, a forest ecologist and plant physiologist at Pennsylvania State University in State College. Abrams has been studying the ecology of the Eastern forest for the last 15 years, and has zeroed in especially on the advance of the red maple.

Liberated from their swamp ghettos, red maples have become abundant in the carpet of saplings and smaller plants under the canopy of many forested stretches in the Middle Atlantic states, the Northeast, the Midwest, the Great Lakes region and in higher Southern elevations like the Appalachians and Piedmont. When the oaks and other species of older trees die, red maples will replace them, Abrams said.

The replacement of oaks by red maples is a major ecological event because so many animals rely on the oaks. Countless insects live in the interstices of the oak's rough bark, and numerous bird species depend on these for food. Many small nut-eating animals also depend on them.

Now that chestnuts are gone and walnuts are in decline, and their nuts with them, loss of oaks and their acorns could profoundly change the mixture of species in the forest. The details of this potential change are unclear and are the subject of further studies.

If forest managers wanted to alter the trend toward red maple ascendancy, Abrams wrote in an article in the journal BioScience last year, the periodic setting of controlled, prescribed fires - now a standard conservation technique - might be the best strategy. But "given the current ecology and management of Eastern forests," he wrote, "the increasing dominance of forest overstories by red maple seems inevitable," and the eclipse of oaks and pines "will be a primary consequence."
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(source:�� http://metalab.unc.edu/london/althealth/herbal-references/Canadian-Society-for-Herbal-Research/cherherb.txt)

• Agrimony (Agrimonia Gyposepala) Drink tea of burs to check bowels, and for fevers; root tea to build up blood.
• Alder, red/smooth/tag (Alnus Serrulata) For pains related to birth, ingredient in tea for menstrual period - acts as an emetic and a true purgative.
• Alder, white (Clethra Acuminata) Decoction of bark and wild cherry is drunk to break a high fever.
• Aloe, false Aloe (Agave Virginica) Chew root for abstinent problems with diarrhea. Also good for treating animals for worms.
• Alum-root, American Sanicle (Heuchera Americana) Root is an astringent; root tea for bowel complaints or dysentery (usually made with honey to improve the taste).
• Angelica (Angelica Atropurpurea) Root tonic for fevers and colds; Gargle for sore throats and mouth pains/cold sores.
• Bastard Toadflax (Comandra Umbellataa) Steep with roots of pink lady's slipper for kidneys; put juice on open cuts or sores.
• Beardtongue, hairy (Penstemon Laevigatus) Tea for cramps.
• Birch,cherry/mountain/red/river/sweet (Betula Lenta) chew leaves or drink tea for dysentery; tea for colds.
• Bittersweet (Celastrus Scandens) Bark tea to settle stomache; strong tea combined with red raspberry leaves for pains of childbirth.
• Blood leather/rock tripe (Gyrophora Dillenii) Stop bleeding from open wounds.
• Bluebells\lungwort\virginia cowslip Mertensia Virginica) for whooping cough; consumption.
• Bluets (Houstonia Caerulea) Tea to stop bedwetting.
• Branch lettuce/saxifrage (Saxifraga Pensylvanica) Root poultice for sore swollen muscles.
• Buckeye, red (Aesculus Pavia) Pounded nuts are poultice for swelling, sprains and infected wounds. bark tea drank for facilitating woman's delivery in childbirth.
• Buffalo nut/oilnut (Pyrularia Pubera) Salve for old sores.
• Butterflyweed/ Witch weed (Asclepias Tuberosa) Seeds or root are a gentle laxative; boil seeds in new milk for diarrhea; also for pleurisy, pains in breast, stomache and lungs.
• Cinnamon tree (Cinnamomum Zeylanicum) Bark tea for flu.
• Comfrey (Symphytum Officinale) roots in water for gonorrhea.
• Coneflower/Black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia Fulgida) Root ooze for earache. wash for snakebites and swelling caused by worms.
• Fern, bracken (Pteridium Aquilinum) Root tonic used as antiseptic.
• Fern, rattlesnake (Botrychium Virginianum) boil root down tyo syrup and rub on snake bites.
• Feverfew (Chrysanthemum Parthenium) Bathe swollen feet in a tea.
• Geranium, wild (Geranium Maculatum) used for open wounds; astringent.
• Goosegrass (Galium Aparine) Tea to move bowels.
• Indian Pipe/Fit root/ice plant (Monotropa Uniflora) root pulverized and given for epilepsy and convulsions.
• Mountain Laurel, (Kalmia Latifola) Ingredient in liniments.
• �New jersey tea/Red root (Ceanothus Americanus) hold root tea on an aching tooth; hot root tea for bowel complaints.
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Short Bibliography

Cobb, B. 1963 : Field guide to The Ferns. Boston. Houghton-Mifflin Co.

Fernald, M.L. : Gray's Manual of Botany. NY

Hamel, Paul : Plants of The Cherokees. 1974.

Plowden, C.C. : Manual of Plant Names. NY 1970.

Sharp, J.E. : The Cherokees Past and Present. 1970. Cherokee Press.
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[This is not meant to be a complete monograph on the subject of the Cherokee plant lore, just a sampling of the available information.]

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