August 17 Last Chance for New Knox County Naturalist Program

Lori Totman, director of the Knox County Parks District,  shows a photo of flowering bloodroot in one of the field guides she recommends, the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America" by David M. Brandenburg.  She mentioned she knew Brandenburg but was too modest to mention that she is mentioned in the book's acknowledgements for her help when she worked at the Dawes Arboretum, where Brandenburg is a botanist. 

August 17 Last Chance for New Knox County Naturalist Program

Knox  County’s chance to have its first Ohio Certified Naturalist Program, like Licking County’s, is endangered as the deadline for getting at least 15 applicants approaches:  August 17.

As of August 3, I was only the 8^th applicant.  The program is a great chance to learn about Nature and then share it with others so more and more people become environmental stewards. 

Our Backyards Are Frontiers of Ecology

The backyards and countryside and parks of counties like ours are the real frontiers of ecology, the places where we can make a difference in the survival of wildlife, from monarch butterflies that winter in Mexico to polar bears in the Arctic, where ice is melting because of practices in our country.

To become a certified naturalist, we need to complete 40 hours of classroom and field instruction between August 25 and September 29.  Then we need to perform 40 hours of volunteer service that can range from leading tours to monitoring bluebird houses to logging computer data, depending on individual interests.

Interested persons should call 740-397-0401 or e-mail Sabrina Schirtzinger at schirtzinger.55@osu.edu.

For more information, read the article “Deadline approaching for naturalist program”, (page A-6 , August 10, Mount Vernon News.

Schirtzinger, Knox County Ohio State University Extension Educator for Agriculture and Natural Resources, is organizing the program.  One of the program's many instructors is Knox County Parks Division director.  She got her start as a professional naturalist and served as a Volunteer Naturalist in Licking County.  She also worked at the Dawes Arboretum.  Her colleague at Dawes, David Brandenburg, is another instructor in the program.  He wrote the National Wildlife Federation's "Field Guide to Wildflowers of North America."

The program is patterned after the Master Gardener program. 

As one example of the countless projects participants can engage in, Totman cited expanding and maintaining Wolf Run Park’s small trail of 12 bluebird houses, adding maybe 12 more near Upper Gilchrest and Yauger Roads.  Or, she said, we could build bluebird trails in Honey Run Highlands Park.

Proving that the possibilities of service projects are endless, organizations involved with the program, in addition to the Knox County Park Division and Extension, include the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources' Division of Wildlife.

Another possibility is education and outreach work with Schirtzinger, working with adults or children.  Totman said that they would “play on the strengths of the volunteers.”  

Examples also include leading bird walks, removing non-native plants, creating National Wildlife Federation certified wildlife habitat in our backyards, planting milkweed for Monarch butterflies, and counting birds at park feeders for Project FeederWatch.  For those who don’t want to get down and dirty, there is office work such as data entry.  My Cider Press articles might qualify, as might my wildlife gardens, my moth counting, and the school tours of the Brown Center I’ve volunteered for.

Totman said there is a need for long-term collection of data on populations of all species of wildlife—“insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, mollusks, etc.”--on the County’s approximate 1,150 acres of parkland, to spot trends.  I know that parks consultant Gary Moore told me long ago that data like my moth counts are valuable in documenting the biodiversity value of parkland.

The training topics include Watersheds & Aquatic Life, Plants, Geology, Herpetology, Ornithology, and Mammals.

To get a taste of what you might learn by becoming a volunteer, check out the following article I wrote for the June 2015 issue of the Apple Valley Cider Press.  The story is about two tours I covered, one by Totman and one by Heather Doherty of the Brown Family Enviornmental Center.  Both are instructors in the naturalist program that will only begin if more people enroll!

Heather Doherty, program manager for the Brown Family Environmental Center, shows plants to children at a wildflower hike.   (Photo by Don Comis)

May’s Fertility 

Well into a wildflower hike in the shaded woods of Honey Run Falls near Millwood on May 9, Lori Totman, Knox County Park District Director, revealed her secret motivation for the hike:  To show us the valued native spring ephemeral woodland flowers to inspire us to help her remove the non-native plants that threaten these treasures.

“We want you to know what’s here, what we can lose to non-native invasive plants,” she said.

Saving Honey Run Falls’ Treasures

She mentioned this when she reached one of the major offenders, garlic mustard plants, after we passed native spring beauties, blue violets, Dutchman’s breeches, squirrel corn, bloodroot, Mayapples, wild blue phlox, wild ginger, kidney leaf buttercup, butterweed, white trillium, hepatica, and true Solomon’s seal.

Then we reached a clump of garlic mustard, at which point Totman offered us a free pass for removing the invasive pest along any public trail in the county parks.  Some of the dozen who came for the walk dutifully pulled clumps of mustard and carried them off.

The Knox County Park District website (http://www.knoxcountyparks.org) asks anyone interested in pulling invasive plants or helping in other ways to send an email to info@knoxcountypark.org, or call (740) 392-7275.

Later we saw Jacob’s ladder, jewelweed, false Solomon’s seal, and other wildflowers.

Totman taught me that most of these native woodland flowers are early bloomers because they have to be done flowering before the forest leaf canopy fills in and shades them out.

Wildflowers We Can Eat

We started seeing native wildflowers right in the parking lot at the beginning of the walk— pink spring beauties and blue violets.  A common theme with many wildflowers emerged right then when Totman mentioned both are edible.  Native Americans ate the tubers of spring beauties and the flowers and leaves of blue violets can be eaten too.  The blue violet leaves and flowers can be used in salad.  The leaves can be eaten raw or sautéed like spinach.  The flowers add a peppery taste to salads.  “Or dip the flowers in sugar for cake decorations,” Totman added.  Also the flowers can be brewed as a tea that will be “more blue than purple”, she said.

Sautéing came up in discussions of other wildflowers as well.

Obviously, we aren’t allowed to remove more than a taste when we find them on parkland, unlike the garlic mustard.

We must avoid Mayapple plants because every part of them is poisonous, except the “apples” they produce in August.  But you have to beat wildlife to the punch to get any.

I could see why these flowers are called “ephemeral”—many of the flowers were gone by the day of our hike, including the flowers of bloodroot and hepatica, which blooms in mid-March.  And the flowers of Dutchman’s breeches were on their way out.

It reminded me of how quickly things can change in May, like the blossoms on my crabapple tree disappearing so quickly, probably sped up by the mini-heat wave in early May.  A friend told me he saw the same thing with his apple trees, the blossoms not surviving long enough to attract a lot of bees as they did last year.

Love Along the Kokosing

By the time we reached the end of the hike, at a sandy beach along the Kokosing River, we had seen about 30 different species of native wildflowers.  The beautiful scene by the river, with huge boulders and two boats, was a fitting climax to a walk through shaded woodlands with colorful flowers and beautiful rock formations and cliffs and a gorgeous waterfall cooling off children and picnickers, including the Amish.  We even got to see a man propose to his girlfriend on a large boulder overlooking the river!

The preview of summer had packed the park, at least the falls, and filled the park’s two parking lots.

For wildlife, we saw an American toad, heard a frog plop into water, and heard gray tree frogs and two migrating birds—an Acadian flycatcher and a yellow warbler.

Celebrating Spring’s Fertility Rites at Kenyon

On a May 2 wildflower hike at the Brown Family Environmental Center at Kenyon College, Program Manager Heather Doherty said that she heard her first tree frogs that day.  Now, they’ve replaced spring peepers as serenades outside my bedroom/office window. 

I celebrated spring May 2 on the Brown Center’s 1.5 mile Fern Trail.  That hike was not capped by any marriage proposals, but it did end with an outside dance performance by Kenyon students, which I saw as a celebration of the Center’s woods and fields.

During the hike, we saw some flowers not seen at Honey Run, such as a trillium that Doherty accurately called “smelly” and “ugly”, planted in a garden near the beginning of the walk.  Doherty explained that the trillium’s smell is designed to attract flies to pollinate the plant.  We also saw flowering bluebells, speedwell (one of the first to flower in spring), dead nettle, and bedstraw.

Doherty reminded us that we can tell that dead nettle is in the mint family because of its square stem.  I recognized the purplish flowering plant as a common weed in my garden and widespread in a farm field I drove by since the walk.

We also saw mustard plants (bittercress) which explode when touched, sending out seeds.  I recognize them in my garden too, and they may have been the plants that coated my shirt with pollen after I walked through them.

The star of the Kenyon walk for me was Grant Metcalf, 4.  First of all he wore the kind of outfit I’d like to live in—cargo pants and a cargo vest, with an official looking “Metro Parks Columbus” patch.  (Of course, my patch would read “Knox County Parks”.) Second, there wasn’t an edible plant he didn’t eat on the walk, including dead nettle, violets, and chickweed.

He particularly liked bedstraw plants because the entire plant sticks to people’s clothes when thrown on them.  And throw them he did.

On our way back to the hike’s starting point, after watching the dance, Doherty opened one of the Center’s many bluebird houses to show us three small pale blue eggs.

From the proposal we witnessed at Honey Run to the bluebird eggs and flowers producing seed, we sure celebrated May’s fertility on those two walks!

Check out my website (www.doncomis.simplesite.com) and blog (www.donaldcomis.blogspot.com) for more photos and stories.  For example, by searching for my “Visiting Guy Denny's Ohio Prairie” blog of July 27, 2014, you can read about my experience last year at an event that was repeated this past July, with a link to the Owl Creek Conservancy’s website list of this and other upcoming events in the 14th annual “Explore the Nature of Knox County” 2015 series.

Note:  Anyone with comments or suggestions is welcome to send me an e-mail at doncomis@centurylink.net or post comments on my website or blog.