Vernon VT Nature Finds: Doesn't it Look Like a Banana?

Monday, June 8, 2020

Doesn't it Look Like a Banana?

Sometimes when wandering about in nature you encounter a heart stopping moment that has nothing to do with smacking face first into the web of a Black and Yellow Garden Spider. I was so excited about this possible find that I didn't dare confess to Wayne exactly what it was that I thought that I had found for fear that I had gotten it wrong. "Look at this long banana leaf, doesn't it look like a banana?" I don't even know what that means, bananas don't grow in the town forest I silently scolded myself.

Honestly I was unprepared for how excited I was; but it felt like that time I was eating church breakfast in the basement of St Rose of Lima church in South Hero when Governor Jim Douglas and Dorthy Foster walked in and sat down with my family to eat Red Flannel Hash. I just don't know how it is that Wayne remained composed while I went all paparazzi on that banana leaf. "Do you know what this is? Do you see any more?" I asked Wayne who speculated that we were looking at an American Beech. "Beech tree leaves are wider in the middle" I informed him. I desperately wanted to slam dunk my identification, however I hadn't a clue what the difference was between American Beech bark and American Chestnut bark. We had some discussion about it as we continued on the trail and it went like this; every time I saw a Beech I pointed to it and said there's a Beech, there's a Beech, see the bark that's a Beech, that leaf is wider in the middle, it's a Beech.

Now I knew that there used to be American Chestnuts in the town forest because I went on a guided tour into the Black Gum swamps last fall when the guide announced that she had heard that there was a Chestnut ring near the area where we were standing. Like Scouts who had just failed their hiking badge test, the entire lot of us went off trail in search of the ring. I'm not entirely sure that we found it; but it was a lot like hunting for a hard boiled egg at a chicken farm. Speaking of finding treasure, Wayne thought that it would be nice to take the State Line Trail and lo and behold that is where we once again bumped into Karen Saunders who is a scientist with Antioch College and studies the swamps up there. I didn't immediately recognize her as she was carrying different instruments than the last two times I met her. I inquired about her tools which turned out to be depth rods and she told me that the deepest swamp she had found thus far is the State Line Swamp (she dubbed it that) at 19 feet. She said that the upper and lower swamps though purported to be deeper, she had measured at 12 feet. Slyly now, I worked my leaf photograph into the conversation after learning that the swamps are located in troughs created by upright rock that predates the glaciers. I queried, "Could it be that the swamps are filling in with dead trees, and oh hey speaking of trees look at this picture." With that Karen both confirmed a tree on my bucket list and then dumped it back out by adding that it was the big mature trees that they are interested in. The little ones like in my picture wouldn't survive due to the blight.

Karen showed us a neat trick, she explained that on the Beech, the underside of the leaf's base is hairy while the Chestnut's is not. With all of this information, the next time I venture into the forest, I'm bringing my binoculars and looking for a mother tree. In the meantime I'm going to do a better job of my homework and find out more about this rare and once queen of our forest. One last note, if you think that you have been in contact with an American Chestnut, take every precaution to not transfer the blight from one tree to another. - Norma Manning

American Chestnut Comeback? CBS This Morning

The American Chestnut Foundation Note there is a VT chapter that can be accessed through this link