Letters to the Editors: Spring 2010
Deeryard Paradox
With great regard for Susan Morse’s Tracking Tips article in the Winter 2009 issue of Northern Woodlands, I find it accurate with my experience in winter deeryards, except for one thing.
I have passed through many deeryards on my trap lines here in the south-central Adirondacks. We also have deer wintering in our sugarbush woods. As a keen observer of weather, I’ve noticed a colder “microclime” in the softwood deeryards. The softwoods are usually in a lowland. Cold air puddles into the area. Less snow under the evergreen canopy, but it’s still there later in spring when upper hardwoods are nearly bare.
In our normal six-week-plus sugar season, I travel from home to the bush out back on an ATV. As I pass through the low softwoods, I feel the cold. I don’t need a thermometer. It is colder. Great, accurate article, but for that. Am I wrong?
Jack Leadley, Speculator, New York
What we have here is an example of dual truths. Softwood stands do hold snow and cold longer in the spring than hardwood stands do, as Mr. Leadley observes. In the depths of winter, however, they provide better cover and warmth than hardwood stands because conifer needles make superior snow and wind breaks.
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Need More Beetle ID
I am concerned about positive identification of the Asian longhorned beetle. Either there are species here in Addison County, Vermont, that look very similar, or possibly the beetle has already arrived. Perhaps you could provide some detailed information to your readers (or is that information available elsewhere or in a previous issue?) Also needed are detailed examples of what an infested tree would show as symptoms.
George Reynolds, Addison, Vermont
There are a number of wood-boring beetles that look somewhat like the Asian longhorned beetle, but the closest is the whitespotted sawyer. The two beetles share the same format and similar color and size. Fortunately, the sawyer has a nice little diagnostic feature that can bring instant reassurance: it has a small, white spot at the very front edge of its wings, right in the middle, just aft of the thorax. Both the whitespotted and the Asian longhorned may have numerous other spots on their outer wings, but the position of the spot on the native species allows for instant identification.
The whitespotted sawyer prefers conifers (the larvae munch on dead softwood logs), while Asian longhorned beetle larvae damage living hardwoods. An infected tree will show perfectly round, 2-centimeterwide exit holes. We’ve written extensively about the insect, and if you’d like to learn more, a search of our web site would be a good place to start. Otherwise, the University of Vermont maintains a nice site, as does the U.S.Forest Service.
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Best Yet
We always look forward to your new issue, and we are never disappointed. But the Winter 2009 issue is the best in our memory. Thank you.
George and Antonia Grumbach, New York, New York
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Spring Tale
Thanks to Alan Pistorius for his springtail article in Knots and Bolts. Here is something I wrote 30 or so years ago after finding thousands of them coating melting snow:
Spring Tale
On ice in sun made puddle
The Springtails formed a scum
And left for us to muddle
From where on Earth they’d come
Pike Messenger, Middleton, Massachusetts
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It’s a Poor Memory That Only Works Backward
Back to the future? One can speculate on the return of the wood chemical industry. Can research and modern technology do the nearly impossible and bring it back? The environmental and economic hurdles are countless.
The odor! Hugh Canham’s article “The Wood Chemical Industry in the Northeast,” in the Winter 2009 issue of Northern Woodlands, revived memories. The odor! Once you have smelled a working acid plant, you never forget it. The odor permeates nearly everything and everyone in the vicinity. Downwind you get the enriched version. And some folks think outdoor boilers smell bad.
Glenfield, New York, was the location of the short-lived Keystone Wood Chemical and Lumber Company plant. As a youngster growing up in Glenfield, the odor was a fact of life. The plant in Glenfield was supposedly the most modern and innovative wood chemical operation in the world at the time (possibly one of the last new plants built in the Northeast). Interesting information about the wood chemical industry and the Glenfield plant can be found in Sawmills Among the Derricks and Tanbark, Alcohol, and Lumber by Thomas T. Taber III. These books are numbers 7 and 10 in the series: Logging Railroad Era in Pennsylvania.
Patrick H. Kelly, Scipio Center, New York
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Straight Scots
Northern Woodlands always instills admiration in me, but invariably I feel the urge to add in a little extra information that may be of interest to other readers.
Virginia Barlow’s Species in the Spotlight is always instructive. My comment is related to the common name that she gives the species Pinus sylvestris. “Scotch” is a beverage concocted by the Scots – and a very enjoyable one it is. But the species is more appropriately named “Scots pine.” The crooked stems she writes of are certainly characteristic of most, but not all, Scots pine. The genetic variation in such a geographically widely occurring tree does seem to govern stem form. Southern European/ Maritime varieties are usually as crooked as a dog’s hind leg. Northern European varieties tend to be straighter – some quite imposing. Stands of these may be seen in the Adirondacks (at Axton) that were planted by Bernhard Edward Fernow on what was then Cornell Forestry School land back around 1901-02. He obtained seed stock from Northern Europe, probably from near Regensberg in Germany. Some of these trees may be seen south of Tupper Lake on Route 30. One gets the idea of why Scots pine is considered to be a good timber tree in parts of Europe.
The Christmas tree trade, on the other hand, prefers the Southern/Maritime varieties, since the needles remain green or blue-green in the winter, whereas the Northern varieties turn a yellowish green. Needle retention of both is good.
I would also add that the book review section names a “Fearsome Creature of the Lumberwoods” that I myself have experienced – the Agropelter. Although the book describes this ropey-armed, fiendish primate as hurling rocks at travelers, my experience is that the creature lives in the forest and during times of high wind hurls lethal-sized branches at unwary loggers or woods visitors. The best defense is a sturdy hard hat. I wrote up my encounter (and with other strange creatures) back in 1962 in the New York State Conservationist (Volume 16).
Larry Hamilton, Charlotte, Vermont
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