eco hike brochure

8/3/2019 Eco Hike Brochure

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/eco-hike-brochure 1/4

magnolia family, they are common throughout our woodlands. Their beautiful large blossoms, which do resemble tulips, appear in earlysummer. Another tendency of these trees is to grow in tight groups,

like birches, except much, much larger. Here we have a group of four massive trees essentially joined at the base.

American Beech Community

Here at the last station on the ECO-Hike is a large group of AmericanBeech trees. Since there are two mature trees and many young sap-lings, you might think that we have one female tree and one maletree. That would be reasonable, but wrong. All beech trees produceboth male and female flowers. So the proliferation of saplings is notdue to a happy coincidence of adjacent male and female trees. Astand such as this is more likely due to the other reproductive mecha-nism used by this tree: root sprouts. So what you see is an eventighter-knit family of trees than you might have first imagined. In addi-tion, there are many beech saplings scattered more widely through-out the woodland behind you. Most are not in close proximity to a ma-

ture tree. They grew from seeds. One other observation is that beechsaplings will grow in the shade of taller trees until they in turn becomecanopy trees. In contrast, maple trees do not grow well in the deepforest. They are more likely to be found at the edges where there issunlight.

Epilogue

You have come to the end of this guided hike. Continue up the trail toarrive once again at the starting point. Remember that the health of the woodlands depends on the conscious stewardship of us all.

Thank you for your interest and support.

Station 14

Sponsored by:

• The Environmental

Commission

• The Trails

Committee

• The WoodlandsManagementCommittee

Updated: 4/23/05

BOROUGH OF MOUNTAIN LAKES

ECO-HIKETrail Guide

eco hike brochure

Documents