There are ghost town sites all around me. About 2 miles east or northeast of here is Gloucester Furnace. Then of course where I was today- Crowleytown. Near Crowleytown you can find Hermann City and Bulltown. Further north there is Harrisville and also Martha Furnace, where I was photographing all the crazy Catalpa trees a couple weeks ago, and the list goes on... Unfortunately when I worked at Batsto I was only a summer-seasonal worker, and could not get a job year-round, and couldn't join the union, etc. I once dated a real piney, but she left me, and last year she got married and moved out of the Pine Barrens. The pine flies and mosquitoes are bad if you are near water. If you are in the uplands you won't find any bugs, except ticks, which can be found in all the woods I guess. I got a tick on me today unfortunately. I could probably recommend two dozen or more books for you to read. But for learning about flora and fauna, I would recommend A Field Guide to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, By Howard Boyd. It's an excellent resource. His fourth book was just released last Fall, and he is 93 years old. I just heard him do a talk on the Pine Barrens about a week ago. Barry
--- On Mon, 3/16/09, JennyNYC <[email protected]> wrote: From: JennyNYC <[email protected]> Subject: [ENTS] Re: Some great finds today! To: "ENTSTrees" <[email protected]> Date: Monday, March 16, 2009, 4:32 PM What a great day Barry! I can't wait to see the pix. And I can't believe you worked in Batsto and are familiar with the ghost towns. And it's a bit scary that there is a road named "Burnt Schoolhouse"...yikes! (They need a new road called "Burnt McMansion".) I hope this is not offensive (it probably is...), but I'm curious if there are there still people living there called "Pinies"? I met a woman from Rutgers who does research on a lot of the fish in the water system there and she said she always brings her dog to feel more secure! But I suppose the otherworldy quality is part of what makes it so fascinating. I just ordered up some books from the library about the flora and fauna and ecology and I'll print up info from the websites Ed posted. I should get out there soon before heat and insects are a problem, right? Thanks and looking forward to the pix. Jenny On Mar 16, 5:31 pm, Barry Caselli <[email protected]> wrote: > ENTS, > Today I took off from work even though I'm supposed to be off the layoff now. That's because I've had the flu or something since a week ago last night. So I bought a cup of coffee and a hoagie, and decided to go somewhere in Wharton SF to eat. I hadn't decided exactly where. But I drove up to the Batsto/Pleasant Mills church cemetery, and walked around, and took some pictures. Then I decided to go elsewhere to eat. I ended up at the state picnic area at the old Crowleytown (or Crowleyville) ghost town site. I'm very familiar with the site because I worked there on the weekends when I worked at Batsto in the late 1980s. Anyway, while there I noticed a particularly big red cedar. So after eating I walked to my truck and got the tape. The CBH turned out to be 8' 1 1/2". This is the second largest extant red cedar I know about. (The one at Seaville Methodist Church is 9' 7" or more.) While walking around I saw a tree that was hollow, and right at ground > level you could look through it from one side to the other, seeing daylight through it. There was no bark that I could see. I said to myself, almost outloud, "There's now way that tree could possibly be alive." But no sooner did I say that, then I discovered that it was a Catalpa, and that it was alive, without a doubt. There were vertical strips of bark covering live wood in a couple spots on the trunk, plus a couple branches had a lot of bark on them, with old seed pods hanging from last year. Those Catalpas never cease to amaze me! > > I took a lot of pictures of other red cedars there, and some other things including that Catalpa, and then walked across 542 to the Buttonwood Hill state campsite, which sits on the site of the Buttonwood Hill Tavern, of the late 18th century. Right away I noticed the largest extant wild black cherry that I've ever seen. It's very messed-up looking, but still very much alive. It's hard to kill a wild cherry. They are real survivors. I measured the CBH, which turned out to be 9' 9" ! I was very happy! > > I then started to walk up a sand road into the woods. If memory serves, it is called Burnt Schoolhouse Road. I have to read my maps to see if I'm right. I walked up that road and saw a nice-sized Atlantic White Cedar that I decided to measure. White Cedars were all around me. The CBH turned out to be 5' 11". Not huge, but nice. I saw several with similar girth. But then later on I saw something I've never seen before- a mature Sassafras, in a forest situation no less. I had to measure it. It was not giant or anything, but I had to measure it, since it's rare to see forest-grown Sassafras trees living past sapling age. This thing actually had a larger trunk than the trees immediately around it. The CBH turned out to be only 5', but that's a good sized forest-grown tree. I was happy with all these finds, though the White Cedar was nothing to write home about. I took many lichen pictures too, for Jenny and whoever might be interested. I will get them > together soon, with some others from other days, and I will probably put them all in my Photobucket account. I'll let everyone know once I've done that. > Take care, > > Barry --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Eastern Native Tree Society http://www.nativetreesociety.org Send email to [email protected] Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees?hl=en To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
