Reds and greens in the winter woods

By Beth Sullivan

We are at the darkest days of the year. The woods can look pretty drab and it even makes me wish for just a bit of snow to change the scene. But take a walk and look closely, you will find some welcome color, red and green, to greet you for the holidays.

We all know our Pines, Spruce, Firs, and Cedars, the bigger evergreens of the woodlands. They provide great protection for birds and other small creatures when the winter winds blow and snows fall. Their cones hold nutritious seeds, high in fat and protein that the wildlife need to help them through the cold season. 

Some different evergreens

Look a little lower, the shrub layer in many of our woodlands is dominated in places by our State Flower: Mountain Laurel. Drive along many of our roads where the scenery is rocky and rough, you will welcome the sight of gnarled branches and leathery green leaves of this lovely shrub. While it doesn’t provide a food supply, the usefulness as nesting sites for forest birds is often revealed in winter.

In some of the more remote wetlands areas, our native Rhododendron (R. maximum) will stand out, green against the brown. During the severe cold, you can note that the leaves droop downward and curl into tubes. This is the plants’ adaptation to protect the leaf surface from cold and dehydration in the dry winter air. 

Rhododendron leaves droop and curl in winter.

Bright winter reds

Native hollies provide winter interest. Our American holly, (Ilex opaca) the familiar Christmas decoration, has spikes on the leaves to deter deer but the berries are feasted upon by many birds, now and through the winter, as long as they last. Robins, Thrushes, and Bluebirds in particular will find a bush and claim it!

Native winter holy

Our other native holly, Winterberry (Ilex verticillata)is deciduous, but its berries glow red on bare branches during this season. These berries often do not fully ripen until they have been cold for a long time, then they ferment, and the birds love them. This is true of many berries that remain on the bush through the winter: Viburnum and crab apple in particular. Those birds know how to wait until the vintage is perfect!

Winterberry with Mantis egg case.

Mosses for the season

Club Mosses ( Lycopodium sp.) such as Princess Pine and Ground Cedar ( They have multiple common names) will populate the ground in patches. Years ago they were harvested irresponsibly for Christmas decorations and the populations were nearly decimated. Garden Clubs have protected the species by refusing to pick it, or sell decorations using the club mosses.

Ground Cedar is a clubmoss.

Emerald green cushion moss brightens the landscape.

Many other species of moss seem to become more intensely emerald at this time of year. Sphagnum moss, which holds the water in the wetlands, is more softly colored, but look closely at the structure of each plant: miniature Christmas trees!

There are a few evergreen plants, still holding leaves: Christmas Fern for one, each ‘leaflet’ on a frond has a “toe” creating a “stocking”. Partridgeberry is a sweet vining plan with delicate evergreen leaves. The occasional red berry remains on the plant as an invitation to a ‘Partridge’ who may favor the berries. Sadly our native partridge or quail, the Bobwhite is considered extirpated from Connecticut. Only to be remembered in Christmas song, being in a Pear Tree!

On the Christmas Fern, each leaflet has a stocking toe.

Partridge Berry.

Happy Holidays to all and enjoy the winter woods. 

Photographs by Beth Sullivan.

Stony Brook Preserve

By Beth Sullivan

Tucked off the south side of Sommers lane, between Wheeler Road and Taugwonk Road, is a nine-acre parcel of land owned by Avalonia Land Conservancy. Look for the small green and white Avalonia signs posted on trees along the stone wall frontage. Named for the stream that begins to emerge and come together here, Stony Brook is a pretty and varied piece of land. There are no formal trails but in most areas the woods are open enough to make a way through and deer have made paths as well.

In places Stony Brook runs fast and clear, in others it spreads out over the forest floor

Deer use the preserve and have created small trails to follow.

An old cemetery to explore

The East and West sides rise up quite steeply in places while the brook runs along a sandy bed in the deep center. If you enter from the western side, there is a break in the wall, an old barway which actually leads to an old cemetery that is on one the edge of the preserve. Members of the Beebe and Davis family are buried here, and the lovely old stones are very readable. Before reaching the cemetery, the rough path passes through an old Pine grove that took a devastating hit during the double punch of Hurricane Sandy and the following winter blizzard; Tree tops are cracked and broken. There are no plans to try and clear the grove as we will let nature take her course, and the trees and downed trunks provide food, forage, and shelter for numerous species of wildlife from insects to birds and small mammals.

The old headstones are still readable.

Pine trees in the grove suffered after the storms.

The southern portion of the preserve is comprised of a wonderful red maple wooded swamp. The brook stays in its bed as it flows under the stone bridge opening in the wall, but before it does, it spreads out into hummocks of moss and holes of water. Not easy walking and best done with boots. Or, to preserve the area, avoid it all together! Typical wet woodland plants, ferns, violets, and several mosses can be found here. Even in December, the tight spikes of skunk cabbage break the ground well ahead of next spring. There they will remain, covered with snow and ice until March when they will flower. In spring these vernal pools will host amphibians that require early shallow water sources for egg laying.

Moss hummocks and wet holes hide Skunk Cabbage spikes.

An old snag is great for wildlife.

Rough ledges show Earth's force

The east side is very interesting as the land rises suddenly with a craggy upheaval of rocks. If you have walked the low center along the stream, you will find yourself at the base of a rough ledge, hung with ferns, and on a cold day, icicles. The slabs of rock are thrust up in a way that makes one wonder at the geological forces within Earth that pushed them up.

Craggy ledges have become covered with ferns and saplings.

A small parcel of land, that is at the head of the Stony Brook that runs from here all the way south, through Fennerswood and Paffard Woods Preserves and all the way out to the Quanaduck Cove, it makes for an interesting ramble . Enjoy it.

 Photographs by Beth Sullivan.

Dodge Beal Project

By Beth Sullivan

Those of you have been reading Avalonia eTrails may have followed the saga of Dodge Paddock and Beal preserves--the last open space and true coastal preserve in Stonington Borough. Its history is rich, with generations of changes and uses, but in the last decade, it has truly been a sad example of how sea level rise can impact the shoreline we love.

After Sandy the entire Preserve was flooded with water and debris. 

Neighbors watched it become wetter and fill with invasive Phragmites. Hurricane Sandy devastated walls and flooded it with not just water but debris.

In the last 2 years, Avalonia has worked with CT DEEP to open a new drainage area, remove the Phragmites, create channels for better flow of floodwaters, and begin a plan for the future.

An emergency drainage culvert needed to be created.

There is more great news to share. Last month the National Fish and Wildlife service, which administers the Long Island Futures Fund, granted nearly $45,000 to the Mystic Aquarium in partnership with Avalonia to restore the landscape in Dodge and Beal Preserves. Planning has begun.

An adaptable landscape

Resiliency is a term we have all been hearing more frequently. As oceans rise and storms increase in intensity we all have to be prepared to change, to adapt. Shoreline towns are developing task forces to discuss and plan for the needs of the communities on many levels . Our landscape will have to adapt as well.

The brown areas will be replanted with native species.

The preserve area will be studied for elevation compared to sea level, soil salinity, water levels and direction of flow. A team comprised of consultants and experts from many areas will work to develop a specific plan for vegetation and plantings that will enhance the area. They will be able to withstand fresh water flooding and periodic salt water inundation. The plants will help filter pollutants that come from road run off from within the borough to prevent them from reaching the ocean. The native plants will replace the non-native Phragmites and provide much greater appeal, food, and shelter for native wildlife. Other plants in other areas will reinforce and support the land itself in the face of other storm events.

The walls around the Paddock speak of its history.

Many benefits from this grant

Wildlife will not be the only beneficiaries. The area, when completed, will be available as a model, a poster child for a resilient landscape. Local environmental groups will be able to bring volunteers to help with the project and to experience the landscape first hand. Educational signage will be installed that will enable others to learn from this effort, about the best ways to adapt to the changes that are surely in our future.

The pond will be healthier and attract more wildlife.

There will be public information meetings and active work will begin in the spring. We will keep you posted!

Photographs by Beth Sullivan. Aerial photograph by Roger Wolfe.

Pine Swamp Wildlife Corridor, Part 2

By Mike Goodwin

If you missed part 1, you can find it here.

A Painful History 

In the center of the swamp is Pequot Island, scarcely half an acre in extent which rises 50 feet out of the water. The exact location of this island is uncertain. Soon after the destruction of the Mystic Fort of the Pequots by Major Mason in early colonial days, a ragged remnant of the tribe under the leadership of Pequot brave Squirrel Tooth, as he was known to the colonists, fought with the colonists along the east bank of the Thames River. The colonists drove Squirrel Tooth’s party into Pine Swamp where they took refuge on Pequot Island. Eventually the Indians were starved into submission and surrendered. The remaining 20 braves were bound hand and feet, put on a sloop and taken to the mouth of New London harbor and driven overboard. The women and children were placed in bondage to the colonists.

A unique mixture of habitats

Since colonial time there has been development around the fringes of PSWC but the swamp has never yielded to man. In the northern portion, there was a sand and gravel excavation that later filled with ground water to form a series of ponds. One of the major power lines in the area runs over a mile through the preserve. This is an important corridor because all large trees are continually trimmed to leave a shrub land providing a special habitat for birds and small animals. Laurels bloom in profusion here in early summer. The southern portion of PSWC contains stands of Rhododendron maximum, one of the largest of the rhododendron family. These bloom in early July and are likely to be several hundred years old.

PSWC started with a donation from Dow Chemical

PSWC began as a 97 acre parcel donated by Dow Chemical to celebrate their centennial in 1997, called the Dow Centennial Preserve. In 2003, Avalonia purchased and was gifted addition parcels from the descendants of Milton O. Slosberg and Harry Leiser. Additional parcels were donated by the Town of Ledyard in 2005 and 2014 to bring the preserve to its 387 acre current size.

The historic stone bridge over Tom Allyn Brook.

Avalonia Land Conservancy maintains an extensive trail system around the fringes of the swamp. Come for a visit and enjoy the beauty of this varied and timeless landscape.

Photographs by Mike Goodwin.

Add a Smile to your Amazon Shopping and help Avalonia

Do you know you can donate to Avalonia with every purchase you make on Amazon? 

 Join the Amazon Smile program, and 0.5% of every purchase will be donated to Avalonia Land Conservancy. Just navigate to smile.amazon.com and search for Avaloina, then click select to register your charitable organization.

It will just take a minute, and it will make you smile!   

Pine Swamp Wildlife Corridor, Part 1

By Mike Goodwin

The Pine Swamp Wildlife Corridor (PSWC).

Avalonia Land Conservancy’s largest preserve, Pine Swamp Wildlife Corridor (PSWC), is located in the Gales Ferry section of Ledyard. Most of the property is a peat swamp that is little changed since from Colonial times. PSWC has beautiful ponds, a shrub covered power line right-of-way, morasses and quicksands, glacial moraines, and open forests. The southern portion of PSWC protects an important ground water recharge area supplying the drinking water needs of local households.

Created by a glacier

The Wisconsin glacier covered all of Connecticut and Long Island until about 13,000 years ago. As the glacier receded it left a belt of huge boulders across what is now PSWC from the NE to the SW known as the Ledyard Moraine. Some boulders are thirty feet in diameter. They are piled up 3 and 4 deep and form caves in which wildlife like fox and coyote make their home. In Colonial times wolves and bears also lived there. The rocks are covered with mosses and lichens and rock polypody ferns, some are hundreds of years old. Best viewing of the moraine is from the yellow and red trails.

In pre-Colonial times the swamp was well known to the local Indians who called it Cuppacommock which translates to a refuge, hiding place, or a close place or haven. It was also called Ohomowauke meaning owls’ nest, owl-place, or a resort of owls, (mhmmau-auke).

Known to ship-builders

Early colonist ship-builders, back in the sixteen hundreds, depended on pine swamps for masts and spars for their vessels. This pine swamp was known throughout the Connecticut colony as “Mast Swamp.” Mast Swamp furnished spars for more than a century. The last known pines were removed from the swamp in 1820, the final ones having been cut to supply ships in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812. Large pines have since regrown in the swamp.

Photographs by Mike Goodwin.

Look for part 2 next week.