 November/December 2000 | |
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More Stories: Minnesota’s Sturgeon Resurgence Where have all the big pike gone? Where are Minnesota’s biggest bucks? Conservation plates net $2 million so far Slot limits measure up on Winnie Antlerless-only permits not a solution
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Notes from a Field Botanist: Temperatures soared during opening week of deer season last year. After returning to the cabin for lunch that Monday, I peeled off my coat and lined boots and replaced them with only my blaze orange shell and rubber mud boots. I climbed back on my stand about 1:30 p.m. (after working up a sweat just walking in), kicked off my boots, and spent the rest of the day sitting in stocking feet in 72-degree sunshine. Our unusually warm and dry fall provided us with a snowless hunting season. As I surveyed my surroundings from 10 feet high, I saw ground covered with once-golden aspen leaves now faded to tan and, here and there, patches of green. Almost anything more than a few inches high had been nipped by frost and lost its color weeks ago. What remained were a few low-growing mounds of grasses and sedges, including mountain rice-grass, Pennsylvania sedge, peduncled sedge--and lots of club moss. Clubmosses are low-growing, evergreen forest plants that look like a cross between a pine tree and a moss. While clubmosses are not true ferns, they are similar to ferns in that they reproduce by spores rather than seeds. The scientific name for the group is Lycopodium, which comes from the Greek lykos (wolf) and podium (foot). We have 17 species in Minnesota. Of these, about half are fairly common, although one species, known as rock clubmoss (Huperzia porophila), is considered a threatened species. The only known Minnesota populations of rock clubmoss occur on sandstone bluffs in the southeastern part of the state. Some species look like tiny fir trees, one resembles a miniature cedar, and others appear like a single fir branch emerging from the ground. Some hold spores in golden cones at the top; others hide their spores on specialized leaves hidden among their regular leaves. All have stems that either creep along, at, or near the surface, or stems that are buried deep in the ground. In all cases, though, the clubmoss stems send up aerial shoots, and these are the structures that usually draw our attention. For his mid-November birthday, my husband sometimes gets from our friend and neighbor Lydia a Christmas wreath made from clubmosses (or princess pines, as she calls them). These are the clubmosses that look like miniature fir trees. Since they happen to be a species with deeply buried stems, the person who collects them needs to snip off each one individually. Other clubmosses used for wreaths may be of the creeping stem variety, which offer lots of aerial shoots, as well as the creeping stem, for wreath making. As you can imagine, it’s not good for the long-term health and well-being of a clubmoss population to be yanked up, or snipped off, year after year. In a recent issue of the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, DNR botanist Nancy Sather describes two commonsense rules to follow when harvesting these plants for wreaths. First, limit yourself to just a small part of a given area for your harvest. (That is, don’t do all of your collecting in one spot; spread it out over a number of areas--and take no more than 20 percent of plants at any location.) Second, always snip off plants (the aerial shoots) instead of pulling them up. Because of concern about overharvesting, the Chippewa and Superior national forests both require permits for harvesting these plants. Although the DNR doesn’t require a permit, harvesting these and other plants is not allowed in state parks and Scientific and Natural Areas. These obscure little plants are used for more than wreaths. They have been made into medicinal teas, and the spores have been used for fireworks, stage lighting, and powdering condoms. One of the best, readily available books from which to learn about clubmosses is Ferns of Minnesota (second edition), written by Rolla Tryon and published in 1980 by the University of Minnesota Press. It includes a few color photographs and many silhouettes and line drawings illustrating different species and the structures important in their identification. In addition, see “Miniature Evergreens” by Nancy Sather in the Field Notes section of the Jan./Feb. 1997 issue of the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. |
