This report covers my first visit to the Bacon Ridge Conservation Area in Crownsville, Maryland. This area is not yet an official "park" - while it is thanfully protected, it isn't really open to the public yet. I believe that this region was one of the areas in which the late Colby Rucker performed tree surveys in this part of Anne Arundel county: I can see what drew him to this place since it is beautiful.
Bacon Ridge / Scenic Rivers Land Trust Park: This park as of 2009 is neither finished nor open to the general public regularly. It is located not far from the Renaissance Faire in Crownsville Maryland, off of General’s Highway. Getting to the park is currently a strange experience since one must drive down a small path past the ruins of old buildings that were once part of a state or county mental hospital: most of the park land at one time belonged to the hospital, but it was never developed, thankfully. A couple of times a year, the park is opened to the public, though the events tend to attract mostly those who are truly interested in a walk through bushwhacked, unpaved trails – you even have to sign a disclosure form since the park is, in many ways, still wild. Currently, the Land Trust owns about 600 acres that form the core of the park, with other plots of adjacent land being added, as they are able to do so. Once the boundaries are established, paving the trails (or at least stabilizing them so they are no longer vulnerable to erosion) and adding an official parking lot and entrance road will be the next steps. The trip through this park (which has an impressive mix of terrain features and a good variety of trees) starts by crossing over I-97 on large foot bridge until one reaches a flat field that slopes upward to tree-topped hills, while a trail spirals downwards past the base of the hill. Our birding group of about 10 people followed that trail downwards until we reached a marshy area. Traversing this region was difficult since it was a shoe-sucking, muddy swamp (this area is a prime candidate for a footbridge in the future to keep shoes dry and the land from being trampled.) After crossing the swamp, with plenty of stops to look for various interesting birds, we crossed over a small stream and started heading upwards. After a bit, we crossed another small stream while carefully avoiding the poison ivy that unkindly covered the trunks of the trees one would normally use as handholds for the small stream crossing, and we then started a real climb up the hillside. Once we traveled up the hills a good distance, we got a better view of the park as a whole: off to the right was a steep drop down to more wetlands, while to the left the rest of the hill rose up above us. We passed through this type of terrain for a while, past some thickets that were great homes for many more birds, until we eventually reached a fork in the road. A huge tulip poplar had cracked apart and crashed onto one of the paths, but we wouldn’t have to scramble over that until the return trip. We took the right hand path that lead us around a few more bends and eventually downhill until we reached the beaver pond. The “pond” is large enough to be a small lake: it’s surface was smooth and tranquil and native water lilies covered it – these plants flower in June, which must be an amazing sight to see. We did some more bird watching here and saw a good variety of birds (I can’t recall the names of everything we saw, but I did hear a wider variety of bird calls in this park than I’ve heard in any other park.) We then went around another corner to another park of the beaver pond to see the actual beaver dam. While there, we also spotted a huge turtle – I was told it was either a red-bellied turtle or a snapping turtle. Either way, it was the “king of the pond” for sure! We were running a bit late at this point, so we started to ascend the other side of the hill to head back to the starting point. We rounded another bend that provided a good overlook from the hillside down into the rather steep valley: there’s a huge beech tree here that is one of the largest I’ve ever seen in the wild. After that, we reached the fallen tulip tree and retraced our steps through the wilds back to the start. Forest Composition: The forest here is an interesting mix of upland and lowland species, often growing in rather close proximity to each other. Oak trees of various types (red, white, chestnut, etc.) were very common, and some reached a good size. Tulip trees were reasonably common as well, and as always seems to be the case with this species, they could grow to huge proportions. American beech trees were mixed in with the other trees, including some beech-tulip poplar mixes, which is a rather unusual mix since beech trees normally grow in higher, drier environments than tulip poplars. Some of the beech trees have reached very respectable sizes. Sweetgum trees grew in clumps in many regions, their presence given away by their spiky seed balls. I’m sure that there were some hickories in the mix as well, though they were hard to pick out from all the other trees. Maples trees grew here and there as well, and the park had a few conifers, but not many. Sycamore trees were oddly absent from the parts of the park that we visited: I didn’t see more than a few of them, and none of them were very large. The park guide who lead our group told us that certain parts of the park were once known as good areas to harvest chestnuts many decades ago, so there may still be some American chestnuts lurking in some parts of the park, but the guide didn’t know of any mature trees, so they are probably just stump sprouts as best. Here’s a weblink to the Scenic River Land Trust: http://www.srlt.org/events.shtml#walk They are a very dedicated group and I truly hope that this park achieves its great potential and thus becomes the largest and probably least altered by humanity park in Anne Arundel county. I've have some photos that'll be passed along to the webmaster so when this article is posted to the website, they can be included. In short, I highly recommend a visit to this park during one of the "Walk in the Woods" events, and especially when the park is eventually open to the general public. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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] -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
