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.

I’m sure you’ve been outside, and a yellow and black, bee-like critter flies up to your head and just hovers in mid air, staring at you. Growing up I was told they were “news bees” and they were trying to tell me something. Another name for news bees is hover fly, and as the name suggests these creatures have the ability to hover perfectly still like a hummingbird or helicopter.

Occasionally you pay a price for being in the woods, especially if you go off trail as I often do. I recently got hammered with chigger bites, especially around my ankles and feet. They are almost microscopic yet pack a wallop of misery.

Chiggers are a species of mite in the larval stage. They are too small to see with the naked eye, and under a microscope look sort of like tiny ticks. The adults, which can be seen, feed only on plants and are not a problem for us, except for their laying eggs that make more baby chiggers.

Humans are apparently hard-wired to love seeing rainbows, as proven by all the Facebook postings that pop up whenever one appears in our area. But have you ever wondered if, say your dog sitting beside you, sees the same rainbow you do? Or how about other animals? Let us delve into color vision by various residents of our planet.