Wood Observation Essay

On Saturday November 17th I went and observed the local woods of the Back 40 on the Messiah College campus in Grantham Pennsylvania, the block of land there is actually home to white tail deer and other mammals. The woods change quite drastically as one moves farther from the yellow breaches where deciduous sycamore trees and conifers such as tamaracks are common to a more mature oak forest. The weather leading up to this observation had been relatively wet and rainy, the leaves on the ground were very heavy and much more abundant than our last observation in October. The canopy near the water tower was mostly mature Oaks with a few ash, and maple. There was a variety of smaller woody shrubs that were about nine feet in height, these has small …show more content…
There were hard Conks on the standing trees that were about 4” across. There were also fungus growing in a shelf style about 6” to 8” long and white in color, these grew very close to the end of the dead wood and parallel to the ground. There were also button mushrooms that were a burnt orange color and were your typical fungus shape with a stool, and umbrella top. A strange orange creeping slime cover complete branches of this one tree behind Mellinger. The tree was a deciduous type (not maple, oak, or ash), and about at mid maturity maybe 15’ tall. The fungus was visible on all the tree bark starting at the trunk and on the branches, it was not slimy it was actually dry and brittle. There were also a few lichen and old man’s beard hanging from, but not as much as there is at my woods home in Maine. Fungus are usually an epiphyte that benefits a tree so it is not healthy to see it growing on a living tree, as it retains the moisture and causes the tree to …show more content…
The college has surrounded the perimeter of the field with small wooden bird houses. This man made infrastructure helps to compensate for natural standing dead wood that birds would naturally burrow in for nesting. The college is also enticing students to interact with this space by providing recreational disk golf nets scattered about. This encouragement may influence students to go outside and recreate when they otherwise may elect not to. Because of many loose soils being stored back there the college implemented black cloth erosion controls that were attempting to keep soil from being moved into places it was not intended to. If uncontrolled this sediment could eventually make its way back to the yellow breaches or fill in fragile vernal