Do You Know Where You Live?

You live in a place that used to be a forest!

Eastern Deciduous Forest

On The Piedmont

Four Layers Of the Forest

What Lives in a Forest?Native PlantsNative Plants have lived here for thousands of years Native Plants are food.Feed Insects which are food to small mammals and birds.They are the start of the food chain.

Canopy - The Tall Trees

Shag Bark Hickory

Name Algonquin PohickeryFlowers at age 20Hickory nuts at age 40Life span 200-300 years

Shag Bark Hickory

70-100 Feet TallIf the forest is left alone for hundreds of years you will find more hickories than any other tree.

Insects that Use HickoriesHickory Horned Devil

Largest Caterpillar in North America Comes out in Late Summer/Early Fall

More Insects That Use Hickories

Animals That Depend on Hickories for Food

More Animals That Depend on Hickories

American BeechSmooth Grey BarkIt takes 10 years to make seeds.Beeches can live 300 to 400 years.

American BeechBeech nuts were eaten by Native Americans.Many Insects, Birds and animals use this tree for homes and food too.

Insects

Birds That Prefer Beech Trees for Nesting

Animals that Depend On Beech Trees for their Nuts

More Animals that Love Beech Nuts

One small Mammal

And one Big Mammal

Native Trees are Very ImportantTrees Feed InsectsTrees Feed BirdsTrees Feed Small and Large MammalsA Big Oak Tree can feed and give homes to as many as 1000 creatures!

The Shrub Layer

Muscle Wood

Muscle WoodCarpinus carolinianaMuscle WoodAmerican HornbeamIronwoodBlue beechWater beech

Muscle Wood Flowers Feed:

Muscle Wood Favorite Nest Site For:

Muscle Wood Nuts Are Eaten By:

Mammals That Eat Muscle WoodBeaver cut down Muscle Wood for food and for their lodges.White Tailed Deer eat the leaves in Summer and the twigs in Winter.

Sassafras Tree

Sassafras TreeLeaves

Bark

Fruit

Flowers

Sassafras Tree Leaves

What are These Flies Doing?

What is it?

Insects that Use Sassafras Trees

Spicebush caterpillar rolls itself up in a leaf to hide from birds.

Spice Bush Swallowtail

Insects that use Sassafras

Yellow Poplar Weevil

18 Types of Birds Eat Sassafras

Mammals

White Tailed Deer eat leaves and twigsWhite Cotton Tailed Rabbits east twigs and bark

People are Mammals Too!Root Beer was made from the rootsUsed in chewing gum and toothpasteIn 1603 Sassafras was the first forest product the colonists exported to Europe. The bark was used as a dye.

The Herb Layer

Wintergreen

WintergreenRuffed Grouse eat berries and leaves

White Tailed Deer eat the twigs in winter

Jack-in-the-PulpitSpring Flowers fill the forest floor before all the leaves come out in the canopy and shrub layer.

What is a Native Plant?All the plants that you have just seen are called Native Plants.

What is this?

Hard to Find

Do you know this bird?

Hard to Find

What kind of birds are these?

Hard to Find

This is a special bird.Where does it come from?Where does it nest?

Why? Loss of Habitat.The birds are missing because they have lost their homes and the native shrubs that have nuts and berries that feed them They have lost the insects that need native plants to eat.

Why? Too Many DeerDeer eat a lot of plantsNative plants are their favorite.Too many deer means that all the small plants, shrubs and small trees disappear

Forest Floor with Too Many Deer

Why? Invasive PlantsAll the animals in the web cant find food if the plants that are growing dont feed insects.They cant find food if invasive plants crowd out native plants

What Invasive Plants Do

Healthy Forest

Healthy Forests Have Many Layers

Tomorrow: Invasive Plants and How you can help!

We live in the Eastern Deciduous Forest on the North American Continent. You can see that this type of forest is found in Europe and Asia.We live on the Piedmont with rolling hills that have moist soil.The piedmont is mostly forest with four layers: The canopy, the small tree layer, the shrub layer and the herb layer.The canopy are the tall trees that shade all of the other plants. I am going to talk about two trees that you can find in your woods.The Native American tribe named this tree Pohickory. The European settlers shortened it to Hickory. This tree was used to build with. Native Americans ground the nuts and mixed it with cornmeal to make small cakes. The trees can also be tapped to make syrup.Hickory Horned Devil is a really big moth. Every native tree has a moth.Look how big this moth is!Upper l-r: Banded Hairstreak Butterfly; Tiger Moth CaterpillarLower l-r: Hickory Leaf Roller; Hickory Bark BeetleThese are 4 examples of many insects that use the Hickory Tree as a home.Upper left, Warbler and lower right, Rose Breasted Grosbeak depend on the insects that feed on hickories. Upper right eastern chipmunk and lower left flying squirrel love to eat the hickory nuts.Hickories depend on squirrels to plant their nuts. Red Fox, Wild Turkeys, Wood Ducks all eat Hickory nuts.You know this tree! It has that bark that everyone likes to carve their initials in!Dont do that it hurts the tree.Left: Early hairstreak. Likes to land on bare spots beneath a Beech tree. It flies very fast.Right: Beech leaf rollerTop left: Tufted Titmouse: Beech is the favorite tree to nest in. Titmice also like to eat Beech nuts. Top right: Acadian Flycatcher loves to nest in Beech TreesBottom r and l: Red Shouldered Hawk nests at the very top of mature Beech trees.Top Left: Ruffed GrouseTop Right Eastern Gray Squirrel Look at the base of tree in winter, stashed food in hole above. Bottom Left: Eastern Chipmunk Bottom Right: Fox SquirrelIn the winter if you look closely you sometimes can find porcupine tracks in the bark of the Beech tree. They climb up the tree, sit on a branch and will chew the barkBears will climb very big Beeches and eat nuts from the branches in the tree.This small tree goes by many names American Hornbeam, Ironwood. It really looks like muscles and is hard as iron. If you take an axe and try to chop it the axe will bounce back!All plants have many names. The most important name is the botanical name.The other names are called common names. This tree has three four common names. The common names talk about where the tree lives or what it looks like.Top left: Muscle wood catkin flowers. Top Right: Ring-necked Pheasants.Bottom left: Northern Bobwhite. Bottom Right: Ruffed Grouse.Left: Carolina ChickadeeRight: Black Capped ChickadeeTop l-r: Yellow Rumped Warbler, Red FoxBottom l-r: Gray Squirrel, Ring-necked PheasantSpice Bush Swallowtail Caterpillar. Which end is the head? (Right) Back end looks Scary and scars birds away.Here are four of them.L: Pileated Woodpecker, Eastern King BirdL: Red Eyed Vireo, Great Crested Fly CatcherOthers are Turkey, Bobwhites, Grey CatbirdsNever burn Sassafras it sends out sparks.These are all the plants that grow on the forest floor.People used the oil from the leaves to make a tea.Here are more examples of forest floor flowers.

BellwortBluebellsBloodrootBowmans RootNew York AsterPurple Cone FlowerWild GeraniumWild ColumbineFirst nectar source for migrating hummingbirds.Food Web. Did you notice for most of the trees, shrubs and flowers I talked about that insects, birds and mammals used them? Predators eat smaller animals that eat plants. Small mammals eat smaller animals such as birds that eat insects that eat plants. Most insects are specialist which mean that they only eat one native plant.This is a Bobwhite. Habitat loss, White Tailed deerRing-Necked PheasantYellow-rumped Warbler is a song bird that Flies from South America in the spring all the way up to Canada for the summer. It makes a nest, raises its babies and flies all the way back to South America for the winter. Many, many of these birds have died because there are no native plants to feed insects. Insects are what they feed their babies. When they fly song birds have nothing to eat or feed their babies. No small plantsNo shrubsNo small treesWhen deer eat all the small plants invasive plants are able to grow even faster!Notice that there is only one plant growing.Top left: Japanese Barberry, result of Deer browse. Bottom right: Stilt grass, result of deer browse.Bottom left and top right: Very aggressive plants: Knotweed, purple loosestrifeHealthy Forests have lots of different types of plants.Healthy Forests have many plants in every layer.