Learning to Look Up

by Swapna Subramanian

When I walked into forests, my eyes would immediately gravitate down. I’d ignore the light flitting through the tree leaves, ignore the swaying of the branches, ignore the ridged bark, and settle on the leaf litter and logs. What I wanted to see were the creatures that lived under the discarded, dead parts of the magnificent trees that most people go to the forest to see.

I cared about salamanders. I have always loved wiggly creatures, beginning with worms on sidewalks, and I began my first research project assisting my zoology and botany teacher with studying the diet of red-backed salamanders (Plethodon cinereus). When I caught my first red-backed salamander under the canopy of an old-growth forest, I fell in love with the forest. My free time was consumed with exploring forests, and I quickly learned how to identify the perfect log that a salamander might live under.  Whenever I found myself in a forest, I spent my time flipping logs and inspecting the coarse soil underneath for the familiar red-striped back of a salamander.

My eyes were glued to the forest floor.

Our zoology and botany class went

on a field trip to a nearby forest. I got out of the van, and my eyes immediately dropped to scout out potential salamander abodes. My teacher began lecturing about trees. I continued my scanning -- trees were uninteresting. A salamander decides where it goes and what it eats; a tree simply stands there and provides a backdrop. As my teacher spoke, I discreetly flipped logs when no one was looking. Then I heard something intriguing:

“Plants employ many strategies to ensure their fitness.”

What? Plants don’t strategize, salamanders strategize! I tore my eyes away from a particularly tempting log and tuned in to my teacher’s lecturing. My eyes were opened up to the world above the salamanders.

Plant strategies actually begin below the salamanders, in the soil. Tree seeds often wait for the most optimal conditions to begin growing, and stay dormant in the seed bank until they have sufficient light and water. In forests with a dense canopy, this means that plants sometimes wait to start growing until another tree has fallen, and when that gap of light peeks through the canopy they grow very quickly to take advantage of the resource before other seeds do.

Plants have strategies as they grow as well. A huge problem in the forests of Pennsylvania is the abundance of deer, which resulted from the extirpation of their natural predators, like wolves. Deer now constantly come by and eat up tree saplings after they worked so hard to grow. But some plants have developed a way to avoid getting eaten- resistance. My teacher pointed to many trees and identified them as black cherry or red maple. These trees are ones that deer don’t like to eat, and now they are taking over the forest as the deer eat away the tree species that usually made up our forests like oaks. Plant strategy is changing the entire composition of forest tree species!

I used to always look down when I went into a forest. But when my gaze was pulled away from the forest floor and I learned that trees strategized, my viewpoint changed. I had been dismissing the trees because I thought they were boring, just standing pretty. But salamanders need the trees to drop their leaves and logs to make the abundant and diverse forest floor they live and hunt in. And the trees can only get up there if they end up getting sun and avoid deer predation, if they strategize. And which species of trees make it up to the canopy and drop their dead plant matter could affect the whole dynamic of the forest floor.

When I go into a forest today, my eyes take a different path. They sweep over the trees . . . and then go to the forest floor. I do still look for salamanders! But I have a more complete understanding of the forest. I see that a tree has fallen, resulting in a salamander log, but also note many young saplings growing to try and fill the canopy gap. I see an abundance of red maple leaves among the leaf litter, and I know the deer have been acting on this forest. I learned that to fully appreciate the forest, I can’t only look down. I also have to look up.

Swapna is an Ecology & Evolution and Anthropology undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh, who wants to make scicomm and outreach a big part of her career!

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Photo Credits: Lead photo by Swapna; bottom two photos provided by Randy Cassell, Swapna's zoology and botany teacher who taught her to look up.

Fidel and the Hopeless, No-Good, Super Sad Raspberry Bush

by Fidel Anderson

I tend to think of the world in colors. 

While some people think in words, or numbers, or letters, I organize my life via color schemes. As a film major, every story has an associated palette that helps me visualize the scene: seedy noir narratives are neon colors with a smudge of black, an adventure tale through the swamplands are deep sunset tones, and an arthouse story is full of pastels. 

When it comes to my childhood, though, I associate it with only one color: a deep, rich fuchsia. For my Film 2 class, I made a film entitled “raspberry valley,” in which a girl enters a dream world as she listens to an old-timey educational video about growing up. In this alternate universe, the girl becomes a kid again, playing with stickers, eating gummy bunnies, and plucking raspberries off the tips of her fingers. She’s immersed in her childhood even though she should be growing up. My roommate, who stars in the short, asked me a simple question after agreeing to be in my project: 

“Why raspberries?” 

I didn’t quite know what to say. Admittedly, it was the image of someone eating those dark red-pink raspberries off their fingers that sparked the idea for the film, but I couldn’t explain exactly why I imagined that particular fruit. 

“Uh…” I started to answer, “because they’re one of the cheapest to buy from the store and they’re colorful?” 

The answer was sufficient for her, but it nagged at me. Why did I choose raspberries over every other available fruit? 

When I was younger I moved houses a lot, and I tend to correlate certain times of my life with the various streets I’ve lived on. When I think of raspberries, I think of Main Entrance Drive. On this quiet, residential street, we had a long driveway that led to a door that went into our basement. Next to this door was the smallest, weakest, most pathetic raspberry bush you could imagine. It would only ever grow two or three misshapen berries at a time, but I would pluck one off as soon as I got home from school. No matter what it looked like to anyone else, I loved that sad little raspberry bush.

"Next to this door was the smallest, weakest, most pathetic raspberry bush you could imagine. It would only ever grow two or three misshapen berries at a time, but I would pluck one off as soon as I got home from school."

The color of those few raspberries astounded me—the shades of fuchsia that would pop out amongst the sea of green foliage—and always grabbed my attention. Distinguishing itself from the muted tones of the concrete driveway, I could always point out my small little bush to any passerby. Bright, vibrant, and unique, these shades of pink defined my late elementary and early middle school years. When I think of exploration, imagination, and my childhood as a whole, I tend to think about walking home after a long day of school, plucking a dark pink raspberry with one hand while carelessly opening the basement door with my other. This private routine that I created for myself remained a sacred ritual for years; I’ve loved raspberries, and the color pink, ever since. 

My family is close friends with the people who moved into the Main Entrance house after we moved away, so we visit them fairly frequently. Our friends are not very good at landscaping and our once neatly-kept front yard is now littered with overgrown shrubs and haphazardly planted flowers. It is, in the nicest way possible, a hot mess. In the corner of the clutter still stands our sad little raspberry bush. Although covered by the surrounding plants, I can see the berries trying their best to grow through the other plants. My raspberry bush is the only thing that hasn’t changed about the Main Entrance house since I left in seventh grade and I’m grateful for that. I may have not been able to pinpoint why I associated my childhood with the color pink at first, but that didn’t matter—it was about the memories I was trying to convey. And that’s all I’ve ever really needed to tell a story: a feeling, a color palette, and a couple of raspberries.

Fidel is a junior at the University of Pittsburgh double majoring in Film Production & Natural Sciences and minoring in Creative Writing. She was born in Wales and lived in Turkey for two years before moving to Pittsburgh, where she spent the rest of her childhood. She has an affinity for stories that take her around the world and introduce her to a variety of subjects.

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Photo Credits:(Top two photos) Scenes of "Best Supporting Fruit" from Fidel's film "raspberry valley" Vimeo link for raspberry valley; (Bottom photo): Courtesy Wikimedia Commons ulleo on Pixabay [CC0].

Waiting for Greener Days

by Jeremy Collings

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I have completed this past Fall semester feeling as though I’ve just nearly escaped a bear attack. My propensity to agree to one too many responsibilities has resulted in a bit of burnout. To make matters worse, this semester leads into my least favorite time of year. Daylight is a scarce commodity, and every time I walk outside, the cold air makes me violently shiver. To make matters worse, the holidays bring with them the stress of getting gifts and being present for family traditions. These struggles make December a rather unpleasant month in my eyes.

What really makes this time of year so hard, though, is the lack of plants. Of course, what I am referring to is that most plants in central New York--where I currently live--are nowhere to be found by December. The botanical term for this disappearance is senescence, in which many perennial plants have killed off portions of their shoots, and most annual plants have died altogether. Only the plant seeds remain, to stratify during these cold months to germinate anew next spring. The resulting scenery of leafless stems and buried seeds isn’t quite as exciting to me as that of the growing season.

During times like this, when I am stressed, overwhelmed, or otherwise upset, taking a stroll and seeing my favorite plants provides a sense of belonging. Being able to see and identify all the members of local plant communities makes me feel grounded in the ecosystems that I work, play and relax in.

skunk cabbage peeking through snow in early spring

In early February, I seek out the eastern skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus, right) that has begun to sprout and melt the surrounding snow. Little spikes of green dotted with reds and purples are surrounded by rings of grass or mud where the snow has been melted by thermal radiation emitted from these plants. After a long and cold winter, skunk cabbage reminds me that brighter days are just on the horizon.

From March to May, I await the arrival of the myriad of spring ephemerals that pop up in the understory. I look forward to seeing spring beauties (Claytonia virginica, top), bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis, top), and trout lily (Erythronium americanum, top) for the short duration that they are flowering.

In mid-summer, I tend to spend time in wetlands. I always enjoy making cordage out of the leaves of cattails (Typha spp.). My soft spot for sedges causes me to look for the spiky green inflorescences on the water’s edge. I’m particularly fond of the Carex section Vesicariae. Their flamboyant, air-filled perigynia seem to fit the mood of summer. I’m still a novice at identifying this tricky family, so I often find myself admiring these peculiar plants to the sound of amphibian calls as the sun sets.

a late-fall witch hazel flower

In August, more and more patches of gold start to appear in fields and meadows as various species of goldenrod (Solidago spp.) bloom. In the coming months, my attention is fixed on members of the Asteraceae family. Of course, I love to identify the meadow goldenrods as well as the smaller and more delicate understory species. The New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) provides a stark contrast with its purple flowerheads. The last of the goldenrods form their less colorful cypselae sometime in November, just before witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) crafts its spindly yellow flowers that satiate my thirst for floral displays till the snow falls.

Now, there are no flowers outside of the campus greenhouse. It is difficult to persuade my body to endure the cold for a retreat into the woods. I am learning to appreciate what beauties remain (for there are many). Christmas ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides) maintain their deep green color, and I can occasionally spot some that have escaped being covered in white. The fertile fronds of sensitive ferns (Onoclea sensibilis) look like magic wands sticking out from the snow. The deciduous trees appear as wooden skeletons, covered in mosaics of lichens and mosses. The evergreen conifers provide a sense of stability in these harsh months. My favorite among them, the eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), forms quiet stands that I can hide in when the wind is biting. When I do make it outside, I find myself sitting on a particular fallen black cherry (Prunus serotina), reminiscing about the times I’ve spent with my favorite plants throughout the year. I find solace in the knowledge that they’ll return.

Jeremy is a senior at SUNY Cortland and finishing up his B.S. in Conservation Biology. He loves exploring, experiencing, and learning about the ecology of plants.

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Photo Credits: wild leek (Allium triccocum, top) and witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana, bottom) courtesy Sara Kuebbing; skunk cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus, middle) courtesy the author; spring beauty (Claytonia virginica, top), trout lily (Erythronium americium), and bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis, top) courtesy Mason Heberling.