In 1963 I helped my father till about a quarter-acre of a fallow field and plant field corn. Nearby, we had just planted autumn olive and some spruce trees in an effort to offer better wildlife habitat. The corn field, we hoped, would offer some food for deer, grouse, and turkeys over the tough winter. Well, most of that corn crop fed the myriad of gray squirrels that found that “patch” and in weeks, had eaten or stashed away every cob.

Move forward to 2023, 60 years later. After a year or two of mowing that small field, we let nature take care of everything. Eventually some white pines, a few oaks, some red maples and gray birch began to grow there. Today, I’m probably the only one who could even imagine there was once corn growing there. Some of the white pine trunks are 18 to 20 inches diameter and a few maple trees are 50 or 60 feet tall. This is an excellent example of secondary succession.

By definition succession is the process of change in the species that make up an ecological community over time. Let’s look at my first paragraph. Secondary succession in our region is determined mostly by how much precipitation occurs. This type of succession follows because there is available soil, and plants can grow almost immediately. The forest around this field allowed white pine, and maple seeds to get established and with much available sunlight they grew quickly. For a while, sweet and sensitive ferns and some goldenrods established themselves, but after a few years the rapidly growing saplings of the afore mentioned trees began to block the sunlight and “gobble up’ the water and nutrients. Eventually, almost no grasses or weeds were present. Now, under the canopy of these big trees some shade tolerant hay scented ferns can still survive. If this land was clear cut in a timbering operation, the successional process would start again.

In areas like strip mines, abandoned construction sites, or as in some of the highly contaminated soils of the Superfund site on the Blue Mountain, primary succession actually occurs. Here, where no or little viable topsoil remains, pioneer plants like mosses or lichens grow first. Once they establish roots and some soil forms, grasses, weeds, and a few shrubs or trees can eventually take hold and secondary succession can begin here. One tree that colonized the poor soil of the overburden area near these “stirippins” was gray birch. These birches probably still are the climax plants since poor soil conditions still exist.

In the Times News region, if succession is allowed, uninterrupted, an eventual climax community of oak and maple trees will dominate. If we lived on the high plains of western South Dakota or eastern Wyoming, where less annual precipitation is the norm, the climax community would be prairie grasses or sagebrush. The few trees are found along stream or water sources. If that area was farmed for a while, then abandoned, 20 years later it would not be a forest community, but grassland and sage. The climatic conditions will determine the type of climax community. In our area, it may take generations of a family to see the 120-year-old white oaks or scattered hemlocks reach the final climax stage.

Test Your Outdoor Knowledge: True/False. In our Times News region, it takes about 100 years for an inch of topsoil to form?

Last Week’s Trivia Answer: White pines, each autumn, shed the needles that are two or three years old.

Email Barry Reed at breed71@gmail.com