For our next section of our C&O Towpath walk, my sister and I did the 14 mile stretch from McKees Beshers Wildlife Management Area to Dickerson Conservation Area in Montgomery County, MD. This section takes up a huge river bend in the Potomac. It was a fine misty day with a low cloud deck and a few sprinkles early on, but with beautiful filtered light we were snapping wildflower pictures and shots of fungi and forest the whole way.
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Large-Flowered Leafcup, Polymnia uvedalia - a nice find!
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The canal was built on the bend and in places it hugs tall cliffs while the enormous flood plain spread out towards the Potomac. It was nice to find a hardy Large-Flowered Leafcup growing right on the canal. In New York this is a threatened plant and as far west as Wisconsin, it receives protection in many conservation areas. It's not rare here, but not common either. Its superpower is surviving floods along moody rivers, anchored tight with massive root systems, able to re-emerge even when buried beneath many feet of flood-built sandbar and silt bank.
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Rough Horsetail, Equisetum hyemale - a "living fossil"
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Another alluvial survivor is Rough Horsetail, a plant that has survived since Devonian times, four-hundred million years ago, when it first appears in fossil records. This period was when much of the surrounding rust iron sands were deposited from eroding mountain ranges to form the thick red sandstone cliffs that rise up along the canal. We imagined the landscape of the Devonian where this first plant emerged - a drifting continent of the southern hemisphere, Gondwana, that would eventually drift north and become part of the great Supercontinent Pangea. Horsetails hung on for the ride and have survived eons of change.
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A very young tree bank hedge - roots will knit a vulnerable bank in place.
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A mature tree hedgerow to shade the path and anchor the rise.
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Along the towpath (thank you Justice William O. Douglas) trees grow purposefully along the canal. It's hard to know which were planted by nature and which were planted (or protected) by people long ago to serve the needs of canal operations. Either way, the utility of trees in the ancient art of hedge building for farming, fencing, and road support, the park service approach to managing them seems to be paying heed to this old tradition. There were many tagged and flagged trees along the way marked for care, removal, or trimming and there was a stretch of new tree-hedge that will serve to hold banks in place as the open hedge matures. It's great insurance against the damaging floods here.
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Smooth Blue Aster - a fall beauty.
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Fall Phlox, Phlox paniculata
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Gold Moth cat, Basilodes pepita - in a "you can't see me" head tuck
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Flooding is part of the annual cycle of the life of a Piedmont river. There have been some real whoppers in my lifetime here on the Susquehanna and the general store/cafe at White's Ferry was sure to remind us that the biggest and most destructive floods of the Mid-Atlantic have happened within living memory. I remember like it was yesterday when Tropical Storm Agnes dropped feet of rain in our area of Southern PA/ Northern MD in 1972. Our family was stranded in the creek valley where we lived, surrounded by a lake of water. A mother Bobcat and her kittens took shelter in our basement and floated happily around my father's office on a sofa cushion until the flood subsided. A National Guard helicopter dropped food, emergency supplies and even the U.S. Mail (!). In this big bend of the Potomac, floods can be catastrophic particularly where people have built things like towns, canals, homes. But it was the Civil War that turned Edwards Ferry and Whites Ferry canal towns into militarized war zones caused both canal towns to decline and floods after the war swept what remained downstream.
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The developed floodplain often included ferry crossings and fords.
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The cycle of flood and saturated soils has been critical to such rich plant and animal life of the flood plain. But as easily as floods can deposit nutrient rich materials within these woods, they can just as easily remove them. Flood scouring creates interior ponds that fill with amphibian eggs and calling frogs. River boulders and large cobble are piled against enormous Sycamores that are more than able to bear the force and weight of moving water. Floods also carry seeds in and out, some native and others alien, invasive weeds. It seems this was a good year for Japanese Hops on the river bank. Ouch.
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Wingstem, Actinomeris alterniflora, tall stems and floppy flowers.
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| Dryad's Saddle Cerioporus squamosus, a large 15" bracket fungi, holding water. |
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Wood Ear Fungus - a little flabby.
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We assisted a Box Turtle, a heavy and healthy female, across a road and watched a Black Rat Snake explore a tree along the path. There were dozens of Painted Turtles hauled out on logs in the canal, their shells covered in pond weed and algae looking like great lumps of moss with heads. Frogs chirped and growled and barked and bellowed from the floodplain and the watered sections of canal and interior scour ponds, an amphibian paradise.
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Black Rat Snake, 4' and curious.
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This old Maple shaded the lockhouse in the 1800s at Lock 26
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Because a flood plain is a risky place to put a business or home and because there is fierce development that threatens to gobble up the natural heritage of Montgomery County, this river corridor is protected conservation land. For now this landscape serves as a natural commons, blending historic preservation with natural history and providing people with quiet sanctuary of protected lands - especially in these strange times. The idea of an ecological commons along this river is not new, however, as environmental historian James Rice argues in his book
Nature and History of the Potomac Country (2009). I'll review that book for our next section hike and post it here.
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The Great Bend section.
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Notes:
James Rice. Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Great article!
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