The Bog Path Trail is part of the John P. Saylor Trail (JST) system in Gallitzin State Forest and has been on my list of wetfoot muck walks to do this year. In early July I had my chance to walk it and wanted to make another loop with the JST. It was hot and very exposed, however, and my big black dog Amos did not care for any of it, so we made a quick four-mile out-and-back hike instead. A few of the board walk sections were slightly flooded since there has been so much rain and the main trail was a bit mucky, too, but all the better for a good muck and for cooling off in the shady edges.
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The Great Bog |
Bogs form when old lakes, ponds, or wetland fill in with Sphagnum Moss. In older bogs the moss can often can be several feet thick! I pushed my hiking pole into the moss mat at several locations and found the moss to be about three feet before touching the bottom of this shallow wetland. There was very little open water except for a stream inflow and lots of open sky. Where the Sphagnum was thick enough to create little spongy islands, some trees, Spruce, Alder, Poplar, and White Birch grew.
A bog is mostly dead plant material trapped beneath a cover of living Sphagnum. This creates an oxygen-poor, highly acidic, nutrient poor environment. With such difficult growing conditions that reach extremes of cold and hot seasons during the year, few plant species thrive in the open here so plant biodiversity can be low depending on how far from the wooded margin they can grow. The plants that do survive in a bog, however, are super interesting and right away I came across one of my favorites.
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Leaves adapted to catch insects - Northern Purple Pitcher Plant |
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A very sweet treat - Northern Purple Pitcher Plant |
Northern Purple Pitcher Plants (Surracenia purpurea) appeared as soon as we stepped out of the hemlock woods into the sun. I'd hit the bloom period just right, happy to see all those weird flowers poking up like War-Of-the-Worlds spaceships high above mounds of highly adapted, insect-catching leaves. It was prime time for insect capture and for every pitcher leaf I peered into there were two or three insects captured in enzyme-laced water inside. How do Pitcher Plants avoid capturing their own pollinators like Bumblebees? The flower grows high above the pitcher leaves, often by a foot or two (!), and the pollen and nectar of the flower is incredibly sweet smelling and tasty, super attractive to Bumblebees. The scent of the pitcher leaf water, however, emits an odor not so attractive to bees but very attractive instead to flies, beetles, and ants.
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Tawny Cottongrass |
As we continued across board walk sections out onto the open bog, Tawny Cottongrass (Eriophorum virginicum) lifted its spidery flowers above the thick moss blanket. Come fall these flowers will look like wads of cotton held aloft by their spiky bracts. Neither a relative of the cotton plant nor a grass, the cottongrass is a sedge that grows only on deep, old peatland. Seeing Cottongrass is a sure sign you've found an old bog.
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Dewdrop, Rubus dalibarda |
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Margins in the cool shade |
To keep Amos from overheating I brought him out of the sun into the cool, moist shade of the woods edges quite a few time and explored the margins of the bog. Here I found Dewdrop (Rubus dalibarda) growing in profusion. I'd hoped to see this showy little groundcover at least once this year and here it was growing throughout the hemlock margins where ever we ducked into the shade. Dewdrop loves bogs but not too much sun, so encountering it here was a real treat. In PA it is only found along the Allegheny Front and only around but not in the open bog.
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Feeder stream |
We crossed a feeder stream where Amos wanted to grab a sip of water but he soon discovered it tastes pretty bad, quite acidic from tannins and peat. He drank all of his water bottle and half of mine in his little collapsible bowl but nothing seemed to help with the heat except to keep ducking into the cool muddy margins of Hemlock and Rush. I knew it was time to start heading back to the truck after a few miles in. It is no fun being a big black dog during a Pennsylvania heat wave in an open bog!
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Cool mud beneath Rush beds |
We found an old section of boardwalk that helped us cross a small stream back into the shady woods. The old wooden planks were cool on Amos' paws. As he gets older, now eight years old, he - like me has grown less and less tolerant of heat. I sometimes worry about this and today was a worry day. It was brutally hot with high humidity and I didn't want him (or me) to get sick out here especially since he'd gone through most of the three liters of water I was carrying. We got back to the truck where I keep a five gallon jerry can of cold water and he drank his fill while I started the engine and the air conditioner.
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Back to the woods |
Back at our campsite at Blue Knob State Park high on the mountain (where it was at least ten degrees cooler than in the bog) Amos climbed atop his camping bed in the shade and quickly zonked out. We kept the next day's hike to the cool mountain summit trails. We'll be back when the JST is cooler to enjoy another muck hike before the year is over. Well done, old boy.
Yellow trail (4 miles) out-and-back |
Notes:
Flora of Pennsylvania - Dewdrop https://www.paenflowered.org/apgii/rosales/rosaceae/rubus/rubus-dalibarda
U.S. Forest Service - Pitcher Plant https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/sarracenia_purpurae.shtml
Gallitzin State Forest (maps) https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dcnr/recreation/where-to-go/state-forests/find-a-forest/gallitzin