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The Mighty Spittlebug

You order pizza. The deliveryman arrives, you grab the cash, and greet him at your door. You make the exchange and bring that hot delicious pizza box over to your kitchen table. Your mouth starts watering as you smell the melty cheese and the sizzling pepperoni. You open the box. You do not see pizza. Instead you see giant mass of spit-like foam. Your dinner is in the box, but it’s covered by this blob of nastiness. Would you eat it?

Gosh I hope not!

This is the clever plan of the spittlebug. Nobody wants to eat a ball of spit. “But hey,” Spittlebug defends, “Not only will nobody want to eat me, that spit will keep me moist and protect me from the elements.”

Doesn't this look appetizing?

Spittlebugs can be found on a number of different plants. They suck the juices out of the plant and produce this foam.

Inside the protective foam is the larval stage of the froghopper.

The spittlebug is just one of the innumerable ways nature finds a way to survive.


Blog post by Anna Leiss

Restoring our Native Wildflowers

The first time I strolled through Baltimore Woods in early May, I was astounded by the number of beautiful wildflowers bursting with color. Many of you probably saw the patches of red and white trillium lining the trails, interspersed with delicate yellow trout lily. The wildflower density and diversity at Baltimore Woods is surely leaps and bounds ahead of most New York forests, but are they as dense and diverse as they have been in the past?

White Trillium

New York State’s extensive farming history has left us with vast expanses of abandoned farmland covering over 50 percent of the state. If you discount the Adirondacks and the Catskills, this figure jumps to approximately 90 percent! As decades passed, trees, shrubs, and herbs regained their long lost territory, but these lands still lack an important ecological and aesthetic feature: their native wildflowers. SUNY-ESF professor GregoryMcGee has studied this phenomenon for the past decade and believes that there is nothing inherently wrong with these post-agricultural forests. Rather, the presence of these species appears to be limited by their sluggish dispersal rates. For instance, many of these species have migrated only 5 to 10 meters into post-agricultural woodlands from adjoining forests during the past 70 to 100 years!

Trout Lily

In the face of global climate change, these small and sparse populations of native wildflowers have a poor chance of surviving. Given the important ecological roles of these understory plants, we cannot wait for them to reestablish naturally, but planting and monitoring efforts will either require a lot of hands or a lot of time. Dr. McGee and I have created a solution by launching a citizen science wildflower restoration project. By involving volunteers and school groups we turn a need for many data-collecting hands into a valuable educational opportunity. Participants can learn about identifying native wildflowers, plant life cycles, creating experiments, and drawing conclusions from scientific data. In addition to gaining a hands-on, outdoor education, participants will gain a sense of accomplishment for contributing to a professional study that impacts their own forests. These so-called “citizen scientists” will also be given the opportunity to return to the project year after year to see how their efforts have impacted the forest.

Surely it would be easier to simply organize volunteer planting events and stop there. Why have we decided to set up study sites, gather data, and monitor these plots? In order to restore our wildflowers efficiently, we need to know which methods work for each species. 

We will answer questions like: 

• Is it worth relocating plants using root material or can we simply gather seeds?
• How many seeds do we need to sow to establish a reproducing plant? 
• Can we break root material apart and grow multiple plants, or does the root need to remain intact? 

Once this information is known, we can launch a large-scale restoration effort.

Foamflower

We couldn’t have launched this project without help from the community. We have set up plots at the Camillus Unique Area with Solvay high school students, at the Skaneateles Conservation Area with the local garden club, and with our dedicated Baltimore Woods volunteers here at the woods. So if you see the little colored flags in the woods near Phillips Pond, you have found our wildflower restoration study site. Please be sure to stay on the trail in this area, and keep an eye out for some beautiful new growth here in the years to come.

Blog post by Emily Van Ness

Purple Surprise

Baltimore Woods is bursting with life this spring which blooms my curiosity and interest for all the sights and sounds I experience on a walk through the woods. With inspiration coming from all directions, I traveled toward the Faust Garden for a hike around our wildflowers. Colors caught my eye from reddish-yellow bell-shaped columbines and vibrant little violets. Fern fronds unfolded their green and mayapple showed their single, full white flowers with a creamy yellow center. There was one flower, however, hiding its color under cover.

Wild ginger. This perennial ground cover packs a purple surprise if you peak under the heart-shaped leaves at the low lying ground level. You will be rewarded by your curiosity with a solitary purplish-brown fuzzy flower at the base of the stem. But, don’t stop your snooping there!

Wild ginger draws you in further still when you realize the bell shaped flower is not the flower at all! The flower is sitting inside that cup-shaped casing. Meant to mimic rotting flesh, this flower is placed low to the ground for good reason. Flies emerging in early spring from leaf litter don’t have far to go before they are attracted to these caverned flowers. And flies are not the only fellow creatures enjoying wild ginger. Slugs slime their way to munch on the leaves and ants carry their oily seeds underground. Native Americans and early settlers also used to use the roots as a spice.

Next time you are enjoying a walk through the woods, I urge you to increase your inquisitiveness, with care of course. You never know what hidden treasures you might find!  

The Benthos Bares All

We are familiar with the many wonderful animals and birds that rely on the glistening streams and ponds which wind their way throughout Baltimore Woods. But some may not be familiar with the beautiful and amazing invertebrates that inhabit those same waters. As of late the woods have been bustling with the excitement of parties and school groups as they flood the woods for our stream and pond ecology programs. With all these busy little hands and feet dipping into the water and discovering these amazing creatures I thought it time to give them their spot to shine.

Aside from being amazing to look at these invertebrates play an immense role in the ecology of a stream and can be a key indicator species, meaning a species that can detect shifts in the environment. Specifically scientists have found that looking at the benthic invertebrates can be most telling. By simply looking at the types and variety of species present you can inference the water quality in an area and the health of an ecosystem! Amazing! But don't just take my word for it, let's explore some of the science:

Water Quality

These benthic macro (meaning large enough to see without a microscope) invertebrates survive in different conditions. For example some are very sensitive to poor water quality while others don't mind it. Various things, besides chemical pollution, can alter water quality; warm water temperature, murky sediment filled waters, and low oxygen levels can also lead to poor water quality and sensitive species can't survive. Therefore the types of invertebrates you find at a location can tell you about the water quality! The presence of sensitive species indicates high water quality and the absence of these species indicates poor water quality.  

Ecosystem Health

Biodiversity, or the number and variety of different species present in a particular area, is often used as an indicator for the stability of an ecosystem. This is because the more diversity present, the more likely an ecosystem can recover from a catastrophe (like a disease or plague), making it a more stable ecosystem. Many scientists correlate this stability with the "health" of an ecosystem. Hence, the more variety you see in the macro benthic invertebrates the healthier the ecosystem! 

How crazy is that! Who would think that having fun with these amazing crawly critters could tell you so much about the habitat? Now, while there are many stars to this show, below are some of my personal favorites out of the bunch.

 Stoneflies

This is a sensitive group of macroinvertebrates, which means it is pollution intolerant. We found a ton of these in Baltimore Brook at the bottom of the Valley Trail. They're a great indicator of clean, cold, healthy water like those that flow from our springs. Mayflies are easily mistaken for this little guy, who looks very similar but with the addition of a third tail and the fluttering gills along the abdomen.  

Caddisflies

I love to look at the amazing cases that these guys can make. They can be made out of pebbles, sticks, or whatever substrate is in the area. Some people even grow them in substrates containing gold and jewels and make jewelry!

Dragonfly larvae and leeches
These tolerant species were found in one of the murky ponds just off the lower parking lot, they indicated low water quality. The neat thing is that there was still a high diversity of them, we saw 3 different species of leeches. This indicates low water quality, but a healthy ecosystem.

So next time you're wondering the trails and you see a party of people wading through the streams with dip nets and poking through pails of water you'll know just what they're up to. Not only are they having some fun splashing around, but they're helping Baltimore Woods check-up on its water quality and biodiversity.