Trees and spookiness kind of go hand in hand, and you won’t have to try hard to think of movies with a scene of a terrified person walking alone among trees with branches swaying in the wind like arms with long grasping fingers. Scary looking trees show up a lot in artwork, especially clip art caricatures that often give a gruesome face to the tree. I got to looking at these scary tree silhouettes and scratching my head, because they looked familiar. Then it hit me….. they all in profile look like a black walnut, a common local tree that produces very tasty nuts that are dropping from the branches as we speak.

With a nod to the season of Halloween, I’ll share a tale about something that has creeped people out for centuries. A superstition that came across with settlers from Europe and established itself here in the eastern U.S. It involves death and a bug.

Back in the day people did not die in hospitals, but in their own beds, and it became a tradition to watch over the dying until their end, and this became known as a death watch or vigil. During this time the house was kept very quiet, with limited activity and conversations held in a whisper. With the house this still, a tapping sound could often be heard that seemed to come from all over the house and occurred often enough that the sound became synonymous with impending death, and superstitions arose as a result. One thought was that the tapping sound was the grim reaper tapping his bony fingers impatiently waiting for the loved one to die. Another was that it was the sound of time ticking off the dying person’s last moments. Records of the phenomena date back to the 17th century, so it was a spooky occurrence that’s been around a while.

By Steve Roark
Volunteer Interpreter, Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

Fall coloration of trees in our area is a much looked for event. The presence of vast forests having brilliant fall foliage is more unusual than you think, as the only other places in the world with a similar abundance of foliage colorations are northern China, Korea, and Japan. A common question this time of year is: will the colors be good or not? The answer is meteorological.

By Steve Roark
Volunteer Cumberland Gap National Historical Park

The most common forest type we have in our area is called Oak-Hickory, meaning those two trees are commonly found in the forest mix. There are several species of both hickory and oak, and one of the easier oaks to find and identify in the woods is Chestnut oak.

With autumn comes the nostalgia of the apple harvest, a fruit whose history goes back a long way. Legend and art have made the Tree of Knowledge that led to the downfall of Adam and Eve an apple, but the Bible only refers to a fruit. What follows is more apple knowledge of this famous fruit than you probably care to know.

Many species of trees have “mast years”, when their seed/fruit production is extraordinarily high. And this year it looks to be Chestnut oak, whose acorns are thick on the ground right now. Mast refers to tree seeds that are a food source for wildlife. It comes from the old English word “maest”, referring to tree nuts that have accumulated on the forest floor. Hard mast includes all the nut trees, including oak (nine local species), hickory (four local species), walnut, beech, chinquapin, and hazelnut. Soft mast includes fleshy fruits like dogwood, sassafras, blackgum, blueberry, blackberry and cherry. The nut trees tend to have periodic bumper crop years, and when it happens, a mast year is conspicuous. Several years of low to moderate seed production will suddenly be augmented by a year when the trees are loaded. How tree species coordinate mast years all produce heavy at once is still a mystery, but it’s known trees communicate with each other through chemical signals passed through the air or through underground root/fungal connections and weather cues. You may notice that mast-consuming species such as squirrels, jays, turkey, grouse, and deer, and bear are more visible during masting years. In poor crop years, wildlife sightings drop as they move away in search of food.

Plant life is absolutely lush in our part of the world. If ground is not paved or has a building on it, it usually has plants growing on it or at least trying to get a toe hold. Which begs the question: how do plants spread if they are literally rooted to the ground? The answer is in seed design, and several ingenious mechanisms are used to allow plant embryos (seeds) to move away from the shadows of the mother plant.

Sumac is very common in our area, most often found in overgrown fields and forest edges. While considered a weed by many, it does have the virtues of providing cover and food for wildlife, and nice fall coloration for human enjoyment.

Sumac, or “shumate” in mountain speech, is a woody shrub that grows as multi-stem clumps with fairly smooth brownish bark spattered with small lines or dots. They average 7-10 feet tall but can reach 20 feet. The leaves are compound (more than one leaf) and configured like a feather with 10 to 30 leaflets. They are among the first to change color in the fall and are a brilliant red. Their flowers bloom in horn-like clumps at the tops of the branches, and around September those clumps form showy, bright red fruit that is quite striking. The shrubs are underutilized as a landscape plant for color and interesting form.

You may have noticed trees with end branches covered with a gaum of spidery webbing. The cause is a pesky little caterpillar called Fall Webworm, whose population seems to be up this year.

Seems like whenever I write about a tree pest it involves a foreign invader that got loose on us. But Fall Webworm (Hyphantria cunea) is actually a native species that shows up this time of year. The simplest way to describe them is to go through their life cycle.

Most people associate butterflies with flowers, watching them tranquilly sipping nectar like royalty. However, you may also see butterflies hanging around less savory food.

Flight is energy expensive, and butterflies get most of the calories needed from sugars found in flower nectar. The best flowers produce nectar with a 20-25% sugar content and store it in chambers that can be easily penetrated by the butterflies’ proboscis, a sipping straw-like mouth part. Suitable blossoms also provide a good landing pad on which to feed, the favorites being asters, daisies, milkweeds, mustards, mints, peas, and vervains.