Tour Stop 4: Sedge Marsh
The area you see here is a depression of about 100 square feet that remains damp for most of the year. The dominant plant is a sedge (Carex stricta) that takes the form of clump-like mounds. Though these look as though one could easily hop from one mound to another, don’t try it; they’re truly unstable. This sedge has a plethora of flora that associate well with them: turtlehead, cardinal flower, cinnamon fern, royal fern, meadow beauty, swamp rose and high-bush blueberry all call this area home.
Here we have cleared away invasive honeysuckle and planted a few varieties of hydrophitic (water-loving) species like wild leek and swamp magnolia. In the spring of 2000, a group of volunteers had traveled to Chester, NJ, on a salvage mission to collect some native ferns, blueberries and chokecherries from a site that is being managed for a state-endangered species — the bog turtle. The Chester area has a known population of bog turtles but is being overrun by taller secondary growth plants that create too much cover. The bog turtle’s preferred habitat consists of open canopy with a constant supply of surface ground water. The biologist in charge of that project uses goats to crop the secondary growth in order to maintain the habitat for the turtles. We asked if we could grab a few native plants before the goats did, and with the help of a few intrepid volunteers we managed to relocate a number of ferns and shrubs to our sedge marsh.
Meadow beauty.