Tag Archive for: walks

Celebrating 35 Years of RIWPS

– This article by Karen Joy Asher first appeared in WildfloraRI, Winter 2022

It all began sometime in 1986 when Lisa Lofland Gould, botanist, educator and author, gathered a few interested people at ASRI’s Eppley Refuge for a workshop in wild plant gardening. She told them about a wildflower club to which her mother belonged. This group had three primary interests: growing wild plants, working toward their conservation, and going on walks to see them in their native habitats. They were intrigued. “The seed had been planted and the ground was fertile,” Lisa said. “People were ready for it.” In its first year RIWPS had about 50 members. The next year, about 100. Today, we number more than 650 members.

The mission of RIWPS today is essentially the same as then. We are well-known for the plants we grow for our plant sales, our naturalist-led botany walks throughout the state, and our educational programs.

Plant Sale

The RIWPS plant sale has earned its reputation as “The best native plant sale in Rhode Island.” The first one was held in the back yard of founding member, Betty Salomon. Back then, members dug plants from their gardens, both native and nonnative, for the sale. Over time, the plant selection evolved to include more native plants, ferns, and shrubs, and non-native plants were gradually eliminated from the inventory.

Few retail nurseries carried native plants, so as word about the sale spread, crowds increased. Soon people were lining up before the sale opened to get first pick. Then RIWPS decided to allow members into the sale half an hour before the public. There was always a membership table at the plant sale, so eager plant shoppers could join on the spot. An information booth, “Ask the Experts,” provided advice and assistance.

This year we added native shrubs to the inventory; they were supplied on consignment from Morningstar Nursery in South County. We filled up the back of a pick-up truck, and the owner wished us luck. He expected that many would come back unsold. RIWPS sold every single one. In addition, Dorothy Swift, long-time leader of Seed Starters East, made sure we had plenty of azaleas, mountain laurels, and rhododendrons available.

WildFloraRI

RIWPS’ first newsletter invited its members to a “Pot Party”—asking our members to bring in small plastic flower pots to restock Seed Starters’ supply. The newsletter was a mix of scholarly articles and news about the society. In the pre-computer days it was typed; it had no photographs and few illustrations. Articles included “The RI Natural Heritage program” by Rick Enser, DEM botanist; “Competition” by Irene Stuckey, Botany Professor at URI; and “Thoughts on Herbicide” by URI Professor Larry Englander.

Today, the newsletter is called WildFloraRI and the photos are in color. The quality of the content has remained high, and the layout and design exemplary.

RI Spring Flower & Garden Show

One of the highlights of the RIWPS calendar every year was the RI Flower and Garden Show held at the Convention Center, a tradition that continued for 22 years, ending in 2016. Landscape architect Judy Ireland designed the exhibit and Jules Cohen chaired the show committee for many years. The committee of creative, devoted, and very hard-working volunteers essentially created a natural woodland on a bare cement floor in a huge open space in less than a week, year after year. Barney Webster of Nelumbo Water Gardens added the ponds, streams, and seeps.

Many visitors said our gardens brought back childhood memories of walking in the woods. Children delighted in finding the hidden animals and birds in the trees or hiding behind a rock. The sounds of the forest, which played on a continuous loop in the background, added to the charm. So spectacular and so realistic was the RIWPS garden it regularly received awards for Best in Show, People’s Choice, The Roger Swain Award for Design and Execution, and the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Gold Medal among others.

Walks, Talks & Programs

RIWPS is known for its excellent walks and talks. Gilbert George led one of the first ones at Parker Woodland in Greene, RI, to collect seed. For many, the walks provide a way to safely explore RI’s outdoor spaces and learn about our native flora. One man I met on a walk said he went from seeing everything as one big mass of green to noting the individual plants and trees, each with its own story.

Over the years we’ve sponsored many talks by experts in the field. Some examples: “The Importance of Maintaining Species Diversity,” “Meadow Gardening,” “Making A Habit of Restoration,” and “New England Plant Conservation.” More recently we’ve had Doug Tallamy speaking on his book, Nature’s Best Hope.

In the past RIWPS sponsored several garden tours. The first ones featured gardens in northern RI, each chosen for its uniqueness and beauty, followed the next year by gardens in the southern RI.

In the early days there was an education committee. The members, led by Ethel Halsey, put together “Plant Discovery Boxes,” designed to assist elementary school teachers in sharing the world of plants with their students. The boxes contained books, games, posters, and other age- appropriate teaching materials.

Wild Plant Week was celebrated by RIWPS for many years. When the RI State Legislature officially declared the second week of May Wild Plant Week, members were asked to bring a live native plant (dug from their own garden and potted up) to their local library to be placed prominently on a library table accompanied by a small sign saying, “Do You Know This Wildflower?” Library visitors would guess, then check the back of the sign for the correct answer.

Over the years RIWPS has sponsored several Native Plant Conferences: In 2011 “Eco-System Gardening with Native Plants”; in 2013, “Challenges of a Changing Landscape: From Your Garden to the New England Forest”; and in 2015, “Growing Awareness: Planting Bio-Diverse and Resilient Landscapes,” including renowned guest speakers Uli Lorimer, then the Curator of Native Flora at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden; Claudia West, the ecological sales manager at North Creek Nurseries; and landscape architect Larry Weaner.

Publications

One of our first publications was a compendium of Cultivation Notes 1987-1997. In 1995, RIWPS member Gil George self-published “Botanical Survey Check List of the Naturalized Plants, Shrubs, and Trees of Rhode Island by Cities, Towns, and Counties”, a comprehensive work by a self- taught botanist. Gil’s work was an important source of baseline data for the Vascular Flora of Rhode Island, published in 1998 by the newly formed RI Natural History Survey.

The first RIWPS Coloring Book was published in honor of RIWPS 10th Anniversary, in 1998. It featured 31 of Rhode Island’s best-known native plants from early spring through late fall. All were illustrated by RIWPS members. Ten years later it was revised and reprinted; it is still in print and available today. This introductory field guide encourages children and their parents to go outdoors to find these plants in real life.

Creative Collaborations

The Society has always collaborated with other environmental groups including the Native Plant Trust (formerly the New England Wildflower Society), the Audubon Society (the RIWPS office was once located there) and particularly the RI Natural History Survey, also co-founded by Lisa Lofland Gould. We co-sponsor the annual Lisa Lofland Gould Native Plant Program with RINHS and the URI Master Gardeners.

And the collaborations have reached beyond environmental groups. In 2018 RIWPS collaborated with the RI Historical Society and the Brown University Herbarium on an exhibition at the John Hay Library entitled “Entwined: Botany, Art and the Lost Cat Swamp Habitat,” a show featuring the mid-1800 botanical illustrations of Edward Peckham. Also in 2018 Trinity Rep performed a new play, “Native Gardens,” that told the story of neighbors with very different gardening styles. A RIWPS article, Grow Wild! Use Native Plants in Your Garden, was published in their playbill. RIWPS set up a display in their lobby and handed out our plant sale flyers—helping us spread our message to so many Rhode Islanders.

Scholarships/ Grants

In 1992 RIWPS began offering a scholarship for an undergraduate enrolled in a four-year college in Rhode Island or a Rhode Island resident from an out-of-town college with a goal related to native plants and their habitats. Scholarships were awarded for “Studying the genetics of Pink Lady’s Slipper,” and “Studying ribosomal DNA in Sea Lavender.” Over the years the scholarship evolved into a grant that was available to everyone, not just college students. The grant has grown from the original $500 to $2,500 available annually for worthy native plant endeavors.

Fundraising Fun

RIWPS members have always enjoyed each other’s company. We could talk about plants all day long. In the very early days members would get together for informal picnics. Family BBQs, and the occasional Herbal Tea Party. These events usually included plant sales and raffles as well as garden tours.

In 1997 the Harvest Dinner and Auction was born. It was held at URI’s Alton Jones campus in West Greenwich. It included a silent auction, a live auction, and a gourmet dinner buffet. Live auction items included such treats as a half-day botanical inventory of your property by Hope Leeson and a botany walk and lunch with Anne Wagner for the winner and three friends. The Harvest Dinner went on for several years with a switch in venue to the Yawgoo Clam Bakes & Barbecues in Exeter.

RIWPS has kept up with the times. Our newsletter is now printed in full color. The plant sale now sells only plants native to our ecoregion. We set up our first website around 2008 when our office was located in Peacedale. We started an E-Newsletter in the early 2000s; it was a whole new way to keep in touch with our members and other interested folks. We’ve never looked back.

RIWPS has had a real impact on the environment in RI. Through our plant sales hundreds of thousands of native plants are growing in people’s gardens across the state. The pollinators are thanking us. We should be proud that today using native plants in your garden has gone from being a fringe interest to something many people are trying to do. Clearly, we were right all along. RIWPS was founded by visionaries who understood the importance of native plants in the environment. Today, the majority of the population agrees with what we knew all along, native plants rock!

Long & Ell Pond – Hopkinton, RI

Long and Ell Ponds Natural Area in Hopkinton – Bruce Fellman

WildforaRI, Fall 2021

The mantra among real estate professionals is, of course, “location, location, location,” and this phrase was certainly ringing loud and clear as my wife and I looked over the small ranch house in Hopkinton in 1978 that we’d soon decide to buy. To be sure, all the usual inducements — decent schools, good construction, and a nice neighborhood — played a role in our decision-making, but for me, the ultimate tipping point was this: the house was right down the rural road from a natural paradise known as the Long and Ell Pond preserves.

Ell Pond, BFellman

I’d first started to trek the area’s rugged trails, which many hikers regard as the most challenging in Rhode Island, in the late 1960s, when I discovered that rumors about Long Pond’s reputation as a clothing-optional swimming hole were delightfully true. (Yes, I often took the plunge in the altogether.) Several years later, on an excursion with the venerated University of Rhode Island plant scientist Elmer Palmatier as part of his legendary Field Botany course, I set an uneasy foot on Ell Pond’s quaking bog, that thick fringe of sphagnum moss and other acid-loving vegetation that could miraculously support the weight of a budding naturalist.

Since those halcyon days and occasional nights, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve explored the area, which continues to call to me, despite the fact that we outgrew the house and moved to Connecticut four decades ago; swimming, suited or not, has long been banned; and the quaking bog has, like its chief supporter, passed into history. (Elmer departed this earth in 1995.) But if you’re physically up to it — I’ve seen nimble youngsters and their folks and grandparents navigating the time- worn boulders and wooden stair steps, many of which are lovingly crafted and maintained by the RI chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club — you won’t find a more stunning or intriguing botanical venue in the state.

Long Pond, BFellman

One of the chief attractions of the Long and Ell Ponds Natural Area (LEPNA), which is managed by The Nature Conservancy, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island, and the RI Department of Environmental Management, is a highly unusual lowland forest dominated by native great rosebay rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) and mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia). While both species are common enough along the state’s byways and in many gardens, there’s something about Long and Ell’s highly acidic rocky soil and moisture regime, to say nothing of its persistent isolation from development, that has enabled the Hopkinton venue to provide a refuge for a profusion of evergreens that call to mind the slopes of the Appalachian highlands rather than the typical woods of the Ocean State.

Probably the best time to visit LEPNA is when the target plants are in bloom: early-to-mid June for the laurels, late June to early July for R. maximum. They don’t put on a show every year, but even an off-display is worth the trek, and when the blossoms are abundant, as the laurels were in 2021 — I can’t vouch for the “rhodies” this past year, since I was, at the time, still too hobbled from surgery to make the trip — the sight and delicate scents of the bee-laden flowers is grist for the memory mill.

Nor are these evergreens the only plants worth noticing. As you search for good handholds among well-worn rocks and boot-polished exposed tree roots, the exercise makes you slow down and pay closer attention to the landscape. In short order, you begin noticing things you might have missed, among them an abundance of mushrooms, lichens, and mosses.

As the trail climbs towards higher and drier spots, the broad-leafed plants give way to mountain chestnut oak (Quercus montana) and scrub oak (Quercus ilicifolia), as well as pitch pine (Pinus rigida), species that can fare well on the moisture-challenged rocky slopes. In other parched spots, I noticed patches of trailing arbutus (Epigaea repens), eastern spicy wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens) and a wand-flowered goldenrod (Solidago spp.) that I wish I could have collected to determine its precise identity. (Bring field guides or have a plant photo ID app on your phone —collecting is definitely not encouraged.)

At approximately the height of land, the main trail presents the hiker with three choices. To the east is a short descent to a massive rock outcrop that offers stunning views of Long Pond and the surrounding forest. Stay on the main trail to pick your way down an impressive gorge and make a formidable trek around Long Pond that botanically offers a repeat of what the observer has already seen. (Unless you’ve brought a second car, this walk also demands either turning around at the DEM parking area and retracing your steps back to the North Road trailhead or hiking a series of dusty backwoods roads to return to your vehicle.)

For plant aficionados, however, the best option is to take the fork that leads west to Ell Pond. Officially, the trail ends on a large rocky hill, technically termed a monadnock, marked with a National Park Service plaque noting that in 1974 Ell Pond was designated a National Natural Landmark. Geologists have determined that Ell, which is increasingly obscured by trees, is a “kettle pond,” a body of water that formed when huge blocks of ice left behind more than 10,000 years ago by retreating glaciers melted and filled in deep, glacier-carved gouges in the landscape.

Sundew, BFellman

There’s no path to the pond, but I’ve been there and can report that the area is a spongy wonderland dominated by Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides), an increasingly rare species that forms the core of a globally threatened wetlands ecosystem. The quaking bog that once fringed the shoreline is no longer intact but the acid soil on the edge of the pond still provides a welcoming environment for charismatic botanical carnivores such as purple pitcher plant (Sarracenia purpurea) and round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia), along with a host of intriguing wet-feet specialists, such as the Massachusetts fern (Parathelypteris simulata), swamp loosestrife (Decodon verticillatus), common arrowhead (Sagittaria latifolia), and various cranberries (Vaccinium spp.)

But look quick. Ell, like many kettle ponds, is in the process of filling in and becoming a wet meadow. While climate change will no doubt exacerbate the inevitable stages of succession, there’s still at least a little bit of time to savor this well-preserved slice of botanical intrigue. Just don’t count on a swim.

On the Trail with Doug McGrady

I like being on—and off—the trail with Doug McGrady. Sometimes, he veers off into the brush or through the trees or into the swamps, and you just follow. Or not, it’s up to you. I’ve seen more than one cautious soul turn back as Doug keeps a brisk pace up and down hills, across streams too wide to leap (wear boots, balance on rocks or embrace wet feet), through buggy meadows (insect repellent helps), and along marshes stinking of rotting seaweed at low tide.

Simmons Mill Pond Management Area, Little Compton, RI

On the Trail – by Gail and Roger Green, Dick Fisher
WildfloraRI, Winter 2016

The Simmons  Mill Pond  Management Area is a 500+ acre site in Little Compton, RI, composed of several parcels of land, six ponds, and  more than three miles  of well-marked trails.  It is located in the  upper reaches of the  Cold Brook drainage  as it makes its way to  Quicksand Pond and  Goosewing Beach.  Trail access is available  from a parking lot on  Cold Brook Road near  the junction with Long Highway. A second trail originates from a small parking area on John Dyer Road, and canoe or kayak access to Simmons Pond is possible via Cold Brook as it crosses under Cold Brook Road east of the main parking area.

The plant communities here reflect centuries of changing land use patterns. Recorded use of the management area dates back to the 1600s when the town of Little Compton was created. This section of town was set aside as woodlots for farmers throughout the town. About 1750, Cold Brook was dammed to power a gristmill, flooding the adjacent lowland and creating wetland plant communities that still exist around Simmons Mill Pond.

Portions of the woodlots were eventually cleared to create farms in the poorer soils on the east side of Little Compton. A farm-site on the Amy Hart Path (a historic laneway passing through the Management Area) demonstrates the former land use with its old well, barn foundation, and patchwork of stonewalls that enclosed pastures and cultivated fields. Some of the plants growing around the farm-site are characteristic of woodlands that have taken over former farm fields.

Ox carts used the paths until the 1930s to haul firewood from these old woodlots, and subsequently the cart paths were used by woodcutters’ trucks until the 1970s. These historic laneways are now maintained as walking paths through the rare Atlantic Oak-Holly forest. The laneways also pass by four newer ponds that were built in the 1960s.

The State of Rhode Island bought the land from the Chace family  in 1995 and opened it as a Management Area. Volunteers help maintain the laneways, keep fishing access sites open, and provide signage relating to the native flora and historic features.

Beginning in the main parking area on Cold Brook Road, the trail passes an information sign with a rough map of the area and descends gently for a half mile through Atlantic Oak-Holly forest to the Simmons Mill Pond, the largest of the six ponds. This is the site of the former gristmill, and the old mill’s raceway lined with stone walls is still visible through the elderberry and winterberry shrubs.

Across the dam from the old mill site the trail intersects the main farm loop. You can proceed in either direction around the one mile loop. The right-hand (or east) trail is the old cart-path, which passes through the lush growth of sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia) before arriving at the high dam overlooking Chace pond (to the north) and Horseshoe Pond (to the south). On the high dam of Chace pond, nodding ladies’ tresses (Spiranthes cernua) bloom in the early autumn.

The trail continues by Smith Pond, passes a fork to the right that leads to the parking area on John Dyer Road, and slowly ascends into Atlantic Oak-Holly forest as it reaches the historic farm site at the apex of the loop. From here, you can choose to take the adjoining Amy Hart Loop, which extends the walk for an additional mile through former woodlots, or you can remain on the Farmsite Loop and return to the dam at Simmons Mill Pond.

In the summer, the cart paths are lined with an abundance of ferns: cinnamon (Osmunda cinnamomea), interrupted (Osmunda claytoniana), lady (Athyrium filix-femina), New York (Thelypteris noveboracensis), royal (Osmunda regalis), and in the dryer places some bracken (Pteridium aquilinum). Off the trail grape fern (Botrychium sp.), Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), netted chain-fern (Woodwardia areolata) and Virginia chain-fern (Woodwardia virginica) can be found.

In the autumn, a succession of asters and goldenrod line the lane way and, as mentioned previously, nodding ladies’ tresses bloom at this time of year.

Spring wildflowers include star-flowers (Trientalis borealis), Canada mayflowers (Maianthemum canadense), and a succession of vio- lets. White violets along wet areas of the cart-paths include lance- leaved violet (V. lanceolata), primrose-leaved violet (V.primulifolia), and sweet white violet (V. blanda). Blue violets include common blue violet (V. papilionacea or sororia), northern blue violet (V. septentrionalis), and marsh blue violet (V. mcucullata).

In addition to being available for walking and botanizing, the area is open seasonally to hunting and fishing. The land is multiuse, so walkers must wear orange during the hunting season. In winter when the snow is good, it is a wonderful area for cross-country skis and snowshoes, having wide smooth trails and just enough elevation change to keep it interesting. The main parking lot on Cold Brook Road is kept plowed by volunteers.

This area is beautiful and feels very remote, especially when you are walking in the low-lying areas among the ponds. It is accessible all year, and the walking loops are level and smooth. The Rhode Island Hiking Club ranks them as #1, the designation for the easiest of walks. In addition, the local Boy Scout troop has recently installed sturdy benches in several places overlooking the trails and ponds. It is a hidden treasure, well worth a day of exploration.

This management area is located on Cold Brook Road, Little Compton.