Tag: milwaukee

Posted on

Impermanence

I wish I did not go, but I am glad I went.  I took much less joy in my trip to Mauthe Lake because of all the dead ash trees all along the road on the way up and then all around the lake.  The emerald ash beetle and killed almost all of them.  I did not appreciate how many ash trees there were until I saw all the skeletons.

What to do about it?  Last time I was here, I wrote about possible solutions using GMOs. Maybe we could develop ash trees naturally resistant.  But maybe it is just the impermanent.  I also wrote about the vastness of geological time last time I was here.  The ice day did not end very long ago in the great scheme of things.  The ash forests are recent.  This kind of geography would be dominated by tupelo and bald cypress if they were farther south.  Global warming has made most concepts of “native” almost meaningless. Maybe it is time for tupelos and bald cypress in anticipation of the “new” climate.  I don’t know about tupelos, but I know that bald cypress can survive and thrive in Wisconsin, although they are not native to the state.  They tend not to reproduce is the cooler climate, but if the climate becomes less cold, maybe that will change.

I like the woods and fields familiar from my youth. Mauthe Lake was where I learned to love nature.  We were in a day camp up there when I was in 5th grade. We took the path around the lake that I walked today.  It is only a couple of miles, but for us kids it was a true adventure.  I don’t remember details, but I the feeling abides.  I don’t want change, but change is what we are getting, so we can adapt and make things better or let them get worse.

First picture show a ghost forest of the ash. Next is a recently cut stump. I counted 98 rings. Since I probably missed a few, I figure the tree was more than 100 years old. Not all the ash are dead. You see a healthy one in picture #3. Don’ know why that one did not die. It might be useful to find out and maybe help spread. Picture #4 shows some tamaracks, eponymous of the trail. Tamaracks are very shade intolerant. They tend to grow in place where others do not thrive, places like bogs. Last shows the beech on Mauthe Lake. Glad to see people enjoying being outside.
Facebook reports re Mauthe

Posted on

Wisconsin Nature

Old growth forest in Milwaukee

Cudahy nature center is actually in Oak Creek, just off College Avenue. I started coming here sometime in the early 1970s, before it was a nature center and before Milwaukee County owned it. I used to read books about ecology and natural succession and then come to place like this and try to see how it worked. This is very much my “home woods.”
The preserve is about 42 acres of maple-basswood forest (farther east it would be joined by beech, but there are no natural occurring beech trees in Milwaukee County outside the immediate reach of Lake Michigan fog) that managed to avoid being cut. I doubt it is “virgin” forest, as some say, but it sure is old growth.

An obvious sign of old growth are big trees, but there is more. If the stand is really old growth, i.e. has been there for more than a generation or two, you will find unevenly aged trees and a variety of species.

If you look closely, you can see how the forest composition has been changing. There are some very old oak trees. They are probably at least 200 years old. Some look like they grew in a more open setting, since they had lower branches, but most are very tall before they branch, indicating that they grew with lots of other trees.

The oaks, however, are not the future. Oaks are disturbance dependent, since they need a fair amount of sun. Their offspring will not grow in the shade of the parents and here you have sugar maples and basswood that replace them.

You can see that in my first photo. I saw the trunk and the bark and though “oak” but then looked up and saw maples leaves. I was confused for a second and then looked farther up and saw oak leaves. If I could jump 100 feet into the air, I would see an oak poking out above a sea of maples. The next photo shows some very big basswood trees. They are part of what we used to call the climate community. Basswood and maples will dominate this site until disturbed, since their seedlings can thrive in the shade. The third photo is one of the old oaks that I bet grew up in a much less dense forest, maybe a field. Last is me by the sign for the nature preserve.


Kettle Moraines
Continuing some observations from yesterday’s wet walk around Mauthe Lake. One thing I like about the walk is the constancy of the biotic communities around the lake; another is the constant change. It seems like a contradiction that both can be true at the same time, but that is how natural systems work.

One change I do not like is the death of the ash trees. I noted last time that the ash were still alive. Invasive emerald ash borers evidently arrived in sufficient numbers to change that. I wonder how the damp, but not wet, land near the lake will change.The ash grew well in this environment and changed it by their growing, pulling up water and transpiring it. Will the damp-land become wetland now that they are not doing that? Will the damp forest become more marsh-like. Or will some other sort of trees take up the slack from that niche? There may adapt some natural control. Emerald ash borers eat only ash. They have now eaten themselves out of a home, although I am sure there are residual populations lurking around. Maybe local birds and frogs will learn to like the taste of ash borers and they will be transformed from an existential threat to a mere local menace, maybe just a nuisance, or maybe human effort can extirpate them. Hope.

Mauthe Lake represents the headwaters of the Milwaukee River. The official source is nearby Long Lake, but it flows through Mauthe. The river was high, as you can see from my photos.

My first picture shows a nice stand of white pine along the path. They are probably (only a guess, I was unable to confirm & if anyone knows better let me know too) seventy years old, planted by CCC. Next is the Milwaukee River leaving Mauthe Lake, followed by a photo of is coming in. The “river” after that is not a river at all. the left branch is the hiking trail and the right one is a bike trail. The water was shallow and warm. Last is the ghost forest of ash trees.

Posted on

Bay View trees

Then we have trees around the old neighborhood, personal friends. The first picture shows linden trees. They were planted when I was in Junior HS, so they have been there about 45 years. The bigger one was planted second. Kids broke the smaller one off and they replace it. But the smaller one grew back from the roots. Interestingly, it never quite caught up.

Linden trees have a wonderful smell and they are flowering now, as you can see in my second picture. Lindens are European trees. They flower a little later in Europe. In Poland, they call them “Lipa” and July, the month when they flower, is called lipiec after them. Berlin’s great street is called Unter den Linden, under the linden for the trees that line it.

The American variety of this tree is called a basswood, It is taller than the linden and its flowers are less prominent, but its leaves are bigger. Otherwise, they look alike. It is like the Norway and sugar maple relationship. It is hard to see the picture, but in #3 you see the basswood tree I planted in 1972. It had only two leaves. I had to put a basket over it on hot days to keep it from wilting, but it has subsequently done okay.

Finally, is our old house. I planted the horse chestnut in front in 1966 from a chestnut I gathered from tree on the next block. That is evidently about as big as it will get. I had a few more, but the old man mowed them down. He didn’t like anything that blocked his mower. This one was spared because it used to be near a big, prickly bush, no longer extant.

Posted on

Milwaukee in the park

Milwaukee has lots of good things. Among them are beer, brats and parks. We went to a Chill on the Hill concert by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra at Humboldt Park. They now have a beer garden in the park and there were lots of places to get food. You had to pay for the beer and the food, but the park and the music were free. As I wrote up top, Milwaukee has lots of good things. Sometimes great weather is not among them, but it was today. The temperature was just perfect with low humidity and a wind brisk enough to confuse the mosquitoes.

There is a long tradition of these sorts of concerts. I used to go to them as a kid. They also have plays and other programs. We went to lots of plays by local high schools. These sorts of events are signs of civic virtue. They are put on by the community and people working in voluntary association with local authorities. The large crowds are well behaved and include individuals of all ages, families and pets.

A big crowd showed up, as you can see from the photos. Many were too far away to hear the music, but were having a good time nevertheless. It was just a nice, friendly and pleasant crowd enjoying the end of a wonderful day in Milwaukee.

Posted on

Mauthe Lake

Went up to Mauthe Lake to get my fix of glacier landscape. Mauthe Lake is a gift of the glaciers. During the last ice age, which ended only 11,000 years ago, Wisconsin was covered by ice. Ice ages last a long time. The last ice age lasted 74,000 years, more or less. The time between ice ages is short, about 10,000 years. We are overdue for the start of a new ice age. We don’t think much about this in the age of global warming, but we should recall that we can influence but not control the really big swings.

When the last period of rapid global warming occurred, the ice rapidly retreated. Some big chunks of ice persisted, buried under the ground. When that ice melted, they became depressions called kettles and the bigger ones became lakes, like Mauthe Lake. You can see all the glacial forms in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, near Milwaukee.

The kettle is a depression often a little lake or a bog. I explained its origin above. A moraine is where the glacier stopped. They are like ripples. Hard to ride your bike up and down, as I can attest from my youthful experience. The glaciers advanced and retreated, so there are lots of ripples. The farthest advance is called a terminal moraine. Sea levels were much lower during the ice age. Long Island is mostly a terminal moraine, a big one. It was not an island during the ice age. There were rivers that ran across the tops of glaciers. Sediment accumulated in the bottoms and when the glaciers melted they dropped to ground level leaving serpentine hills. These are called eskers. Sediment also accumulated where there was a hole in the glacier or a little lake. When the glacier melted, this sediment dropped to ground forming teardrop shaped hills called drumlins. There are lots of drumlins in Jefferson and Dane Counties. Capitol Hill in Madison is a drumlin.

Part of Wisconsin was NOT covered by ice. This is the driftless areas around Lacrosse. Chrissy grew up in this region. Locally, they call the the “Coolie region,” A coolies is a long, narrow valley formed by glacial melt water. Grand Coolie in Washington State is an example of a very large coolie, formed when a giant ice dam collapsed releasing a torrent of water that scoured everything until it ran into the Pacific Ocean.

My pictures are from around Mauthe Lake. I walked around it. It was the kind of “solitude” I like. There were few people on the trail, but I could hear kids having fun in the lake in the distance. The second picture shows tamarack trees. Tamaracks are deciduous conifers. They are tolerant of bad and acidic soils, but very intolerant of shade, so they tend to grow on bad soils and in bogs where there is less competition. Picture #3 is scrub oaks. They are small, but old. Some of their size is probably due to genetics, but the soil is also little help. Picture #4 is the Milwaukee River. Mauthe Lake is not the source of the Milwaukee River, but it is close. The river runs through it. I first visited this in 1965, when I was ten years old. I was confused when I learned about the Milwaukee River. I recalled the polluted water in Milwaukee and worried that I was swimming in that. Of course, that was foolish. The water is clean up here.

Last picture shows a red pine plantation. It was planted in 1941 and has been thinned four times. I asked the ranger if they burned under the trees. No. I asked if they would be harvested. Yes but no clear cutting. So that means that the future will not include red pines on this acreage.

Posted on

Grant Park forest evolution

Grant Park is a place I have been going from my whole life. My parents took me there as a kid and it used to be part of my running trail, so I have been observing it now for more than a half century. There have been many changes in the forest cover.

The natural forest is beech-maple-basswood. But they planted lots of exotic trees, so you get examples of scotch pine, Norway spruce, Norway maples, white birch and larch. Parks of the woods are really European with the species mentioned above dominating.

In the time I have known Grant Park, the birches have largely disappeared. They do not naturally reproduce in the Milwaukee area. These were not North American birches, in any case. They planted European white birch. The Scotch pine will be gone soon. They do not live that long and also will not naturally regenerate. The Norway spruce will not regenerate either, but they live a long time and will be here long after I am not. Norway maple do and are regenerating. They look much like sugar maples. You can tell the difference by their bark and more easily by their seeds. They seem to occupy the same niche as sugar maples but can be rather more successful, since they better tolerate city conditions. They are pretty, but could be considered invasive.

My first picture is one of the European forests. Nothing in the larger trees is natural. There are white pine, native to Wisconsin, but not to Milwaukee County. Most of the rest are from farther away, Norway spruce, Norway maples, Scotch pine and European white birch. The next picture shows the white birch. They will soon be no more. Picture #3 is natural forest with native species and finally is the Lake.

Posted on

Grant Park South Milwaukee

Continuing on changes in Grant Park, you see a previously mowed field being left to regeneration. I noticed what I thought were red flowers, but a closer look showed that they are little maple trees. Evidently Grant Park solved the problem with deer over-population, else the deer would have killed them by now. I am a little surprised to see the maples thriving in near full sunlight. I suppose it might be harder for them later in summer and/or if it gets droughty.

An unhappy development is the near total destruction of the ash trees by the emerald ash borer. You can see a couple of dead ash trees in picture #3. Ash have an important place in the ecosystem as a pioneer tree, taking over abandoned fields. They are joined in this (in Milwaukee) by box elder and cottonwood, but each behaves a little differently. The ash often grows individually and in the open looks like a bush. The box elder forms a low branching tree and the cottonwood tends not to have many low branches at all, even when young. It is a serious loss to take out the ash.

The last picture show a loss, but a normal one. They much have had a big windstorm. I saw several broken trees. This one was a beech tree. It was rotten in the middle and the wind took it down.

Posted on

Milwaukee getting around

Safe House is a cold war themed bar near downtown. I have not been there since the cold war was actually still one. Went there with my sister Chris yesterday. You still have to go in through the secret bookcase and give the secret password.

Not much has changed inside. We had the famous drink, “Spy’s demise” and looked around. The only difference I noticed was that Donald Trump is now featured on the spy wall.

It is interesting, however, to see pictures of Lenin and Felix Dzerzhinsky. Most people recognize Lenin, Felix, not so much. He was one of the most evil men ever to walk the earth. He founded the Cheka and executed tens of thousands of people. Funny how we forget. Now he is just a prop on bar wall.