Maples, butternuts, and bitternuts

by Sandy Garland

The Tuesday group wanted to plant trees – a positive, long-term, satisfying job at any time and much more fun than always pulling things out. I had doubts, because the Old Woodlot is so overgrown with opportunist species taking advantage of all the light to grow to gigantic proportions that there’s no room for anything else. We compromised by loading up a modest number of saplings from our nursery (three) and set off for the woods.

Here’s the situation

Can you see the fern in the photo (above right)? Derek knew it was something good, but it’s completely overshadowed by all the vegetation that has grown in the last 2 years since the ash trees were removed from the woods. The Old Woodlot has changed so dramatically that it’s always a surprise to find things that were planted even 5 years ago.

At the left is one of three Striped Maples (Acer pensylvanicum) planted as saplings back in 1997. This species needs shade, at the moment provided by Norway Maples, which we hope to eventually replace with native species.

While making a place to plant our Bitternut Hickories, we were also able to pull out some large masses of DSV that were covering ground vegetation and starting to climb up into trees.

We cleared our more burdock, motherwort, some Manitoba maples, and some buckthorn, finally making a place big enough to plant our two Bitternut Hickories and a Butternut.

We were fortunate to acquire 5 butternut trees this spring by trading wildflowers for schoolyards with Nature Canada. They are certified native species – unlike the many hybrids that populate the area. Hopefully, they are also canker-resistant and will live many years to feed our wildlife and produce seeds for more native butternut trees at the FWG. (More about the butternut recovery program)

How to tell the difference between Norway and Sugar MapleThis is a very important skill as our Old Woodlot contains many Norway Maples, which are not native and create too much shade for our understory plants. Sugar Maples are a much better choice for an eastern Ontario forest and we have been planting Sugar Maple seedlings for many years. Our woodlot started as mowed grass under a plantation of ash trees interspersed with Red Oaks – not very “natural” looking and not particularly wildlife friendly (see photo from 1991). The mowing was stopped and OFNC members donated their fall leaves to the cause of creating a rich humousy soil for future planting of native trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. Unfortunately, more than just leaves arrived – seeds of many unwanted trees and other plants have grown up over the years, but Norway Maples have been most persistent and difficult to weed out as they resemble Sugar Maples. Three reliable ways to tell the difference (leaf shape being unreliable) Comparing the keys of Sugar (left) and Norway Maple (right) 1. Keys or those double seeds that maples are famous for are very different. Norway Maple keys are much larger and flatter and the wings form almost a straight line (in Sugar Maples they make an upside down V). Comparing buds of Sugar (left) and Norway Maples (right). 2. Buds of Sugar Maples are brown and pointed; those of Norways are purplish and rounded.3. Easiest of all, during the growing season sap of Sugar Maple is clear; sap of Norways is white. Pick a leaf and cut through the leaf stem (petiole) to check sap colour.

Plants and creatures of note

Toad in wood chips, dried “skeleton” of Wild cucumber fruit – all that’s left are the veins of last-year’s seed pod, Eastern Cottontail, Eastern Chipmunk.