Palm Hammock Clean-Up -- October 1

Into the wilds of the Palm Hammock, another semester, another October. Nineteen Eckerd College students, armed with bow saws, loppers, axes, and shovels, sweated through the hot Florida sun this morning, taking another bite out of the shrinking patch of Brazilian Pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius) that has invaded the peninsula in our Palm Hammock Nature Area on the Eckerd College campus. This is what it looked like just before we started this morning. You can click on the photo and get much larger view.

This project has been underway since the spring of 2007 when several students from the Introduction to Environmental Studies course asked if there might be a way to battle the Brazilian Pepper in the Palm Hammock without using herbicides. I bought some tools and we set to work. In the past four years we have cleared four and one half acres by hand during three Saturday clean-ups that take place three times each semester. The project allows students to experience the work of removing these tenacious plants, to feel it in their bones.

It is part of a bigger project to rethink the way we approach environmental ethics. The work puts college students into a problem solving mode in nature. I give them a very brief description of three techniques we have developed for breaking down and removing the trees and I hand them tools. For many of them, this is the first time they have been expected to labor with saws and axes cutting into nature. Every time, though, the students very quickly fall into a rhythm and, even more striking, they being to work together, developing cooperative technique and teaching each other. By the end of three hours, their bodies are sore, but their minds are filled with ideas. They have become expert pepper removers. And something more.

This time, too, I saw friendships blossom, and conversations turn from the work in the Hammock to the schoolwork they all have to the social lives they are all building at Eckerd College, and back again to the plants, one folding into the next in interesting ways. One participant even used the experience in the plants as a metaphor to describe a friend of his. "He's like a Brazilian Pepper," he said, "Overdoing everything." The students laughed at themselves and each other and put in a solid morning of work, which I have no doubt is aching in their bodies as I write.

I am, as always, grateful for their help.

"Pullin' weeds and pickin' stones..."

Last week, after one week's delay, we had a work day in the brazilian pepper removal site. A dozen Eckerd College students got up by 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, despite late night Roman celebrations that many had attended, and used loppers and hand saws and shoulders and backs to cut and pile the brazilian pepper trees (Schinus terebinthifolius) that had once covered the entire peninsula section of the Palm Hammock. This project has had college students slowly saw and lop through stand of about three acres of trees, much of which is now covered in dog fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium) and dangle pod or is sprouting a sea myrtle (Baccharis halimifolia) and baby live oak (Quercus virginiana) forest.

Saturday, the students worked primarily on removing the tops, cutting the trunks and branches into straight pieces and piling them in between the palm trees trees you see in the bottom photograph. We also dug two or three big stumps. I am hoping the pile, which students were careful to make parallel and pack down as tightly as they could, will prevent the brazilian pepper sprouts that were coming up between these trees from growing. I have decided to allow the sprouts that are littered throughout last spring's clearing areas grow. There are more than any of us could get in one sweep, and they are not now large enough to pull from a standing position. I will wait until they have grown enough to be seen, and then we'll make a day of it. By the end of the shift, the remaning students were ready for a cooling shower and perhaps an afternoon in the beach side hammock. "We are made of dreams and bones."

Thanks to Stephen, Kathryn, Philip, Veronika, Noah, Rosie, Robin, Walker, Elise, Taylor, and Margie for all your hard work!

Itchy

The week passed with only a few passing rains. The pond in the middle of the clearing is slowly retreating into the bowl that it fills, leaving a layers of duck weed (the tenacious Lemnaoideae Family of floating plants) to suffocate upon dry ground. They perish and slowly decompose where water once floated them leaving a brownish, yellowish ring around the pond, which you can see if you click on the photo and then magnify it. The green that you see through the weeds are those plants covering the surface. The frogs also continue to inhabit the edges and the surface of the pond. I noted that they seemed to swim beneath the surface as well. This is the first year I have seen them in four years of observation. I took a careful look at the ground in the areas we cleared last winter and spring. We spread a lot of new Brazilian pepper (Schinus terebithifolius) seed around that area by mistake and we will be pulling new sprouts out of there for years, I believe. The pepper sprouts seem to be able to hold on even beneath a tall overstory of dog fennel and sedge. I see them sitting there, waiting for the opportunity. Pushing down roots, building up energy. We will try to find these this fall and pull them. The plants grew fast with the rains a few weeks ago, but now everything is over extended and where it can, plants turn to flower and seed converting the last advantages into next year's crop before the present generation passes on. This stage is an itchy stage from the perspective of a being with skin. Powdery whisps and drying extensions, everything a little sharper and more brittle. It tickles at the nose, teasing a sneeze or into the lungs erupting as a cough or into the side of an ankle where sand spur tines puncture down to the fibula sending shock waves back up the spine. Fall hides in the landscape in subtropical Florida, luring the unaware into dangerous circumstances. The common rag weed flower (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) [in the photo above] can be seen everywhere. This ubiquitous plant has done well in the palm hammock this season. There are towering plants in some places over six feet tall. All of them now sport these compact flower/seed pods. Bright green. In the farthest reaches of our clearing, to the west, I also happened upon this delightful splash of color, a blooming Lantana plant (Lantana camara), [in the photo to the left] which has volunteered from elsewhere in the Hammock. This farthest section has taken on the most variety of pioneers after clearing as any of the sections cleared so far. It is closer to the development across the pond. And it is the most recent fill location in the whole natural area. The earth, though squishy in places, felt mostly firm beneath my feet.

Fall

Of the many things that one needs to get used to having transported from the 42nd parallel to the 28th is the inversion of seasons. Summer means dormancy. Fall means new-growth. This week the dangle pods seemed to have doubled in size. So much so that I could not get my photo panaroma maker to make a decent panorama out of my photos. Instead, I will begin with this image of the eucalyptus tree that centers the plot we have been clearing. Two years ago, the tree was surrounded by Brazilian pepper. Now it stands nearly free amongst a field of dog fennel, bushy bluestem, and sedge. The dangle pod growth heralds the growth that has renewed everywhere. Oaks are sprouting the maroon baby leaves we see two or three times a year and the palms are pushing out new fronds and their soon to be flowering effervescence. When I made my way across the clearing today, I notice dozens of small frogs that have come to populate the small pond that centers the area. The pond itself has been infested with duck weed as long as we have been working here, but it has been mostly dead as a result, since the duck weed prevents decomposition underwater and makes the water anoxic. These frogs seems to have adapted an ability to rest atop the duck weed and use the pond as a wide open surface on which they hunt insects. They all apear to have been born in the past few weeks. While there is lots of new greenery everywhere, the flowers are still waiting even cooler weather. There are a few new bloomers, though. Like these white ones which I have not seen before in the Hammock. It is growing in three places right now. It grew in no places last year. The final shot is the understory of the dangle pod forest.

Verdant

The changes over a week are far more subtle than over several. This week has been especially rainy, so the plants have in fact taken on quite a bit more size, especially the dangle-pod. They are fast growing annuals and have outpaced the dog fennel. [You can click on the photo for a closer look.] On the west side of the pond the swamp flatsedge (Cyperus ligularis) that were killed in the January frost are recovering, slowly. It will take some time for them to repopulate, if there is even space for them. The bushy bluestem (Andropogon glomeratus), which has made a regular home in the meadow, is growing to monumental proportions after the rains, with grass leaves towering six and half feet into the air before the first suggestions of the tufts that will come begin to show. Mostly, it is green everywhere. If you lean in close, however, you can see the dangle-pods beginning to flower. This pale yellow blossoms will metamorphose into a long dry dangling bean pod by October. The red flower is called a tasselflower (Emilia fosbergii) and it grows at the edges of the Palm Hammock, far from the re-growing restoration site. But they are so striking against the general green of everything else, I could not refrain from taking their picture. The ground was mushy everywhere from the rains.

Yellowish

The whole pond region has transformed since my last visit in mid-July. Two weeks of fairly regular rains and no human visitors and the dangle-pod (Sesbania herbacea) has colonized in among the dog-fennel (Eupatorium capillifolium) and a new growth of grasses and sedge seem to be filling in the empty spaces. The far west region of the clearing has the same appearance as the other parts we have cleared -- sprouting dog fennel and dangle weed, yellow-nut sedge (Cyperus esculentus), purslane and pusley crawling along the ground building succulent leaves -- but when you kneel down and look closer to the ground you can see the mistakes we made last winter. In a regrettable act of hubris, no efforts were made to contain the red Brasilian pepper seeds, and the cold weather seems to have incubated them well. Brazilian pepper sprouts (Schinus terebinthifolius) are everywhere. Our first task this fall will be to remove them.

Overall, the area has taken on the quiet beauty of late summer Florida. Beach sunflowers have covered a pile of sticks, opening their smiley yellow faces to the hot summer sun. Similarly, dozens upon dozens of this golden yellow aster (Pityopsis gaminifolia) are blooming across the Palm Hammock Nature Area, lending subtle highlights to the landscape's sun-baked green appearance. Fall, our growing season, will be upon us soon.

July 19, 2010

It has rained again this week some after a long stretch without. It has been a dry summer. [click on the photo for a larger view] Dog fennel has returned, but not with the same robust density as last season. All of the sedge on the left side perished in the freeze this past January, which has transformed the growth patterns there as the thick dead grass remains undecomposed and acts as a sort of mulch, preventing sunlight from reaching soil. Several myrtle trees have sprung up and grown with vigor. Two live oaks. Still no palms. It is partly cloudy and very muggy. Today this flower blooms all over Seth's Meadow.