Clark Reservation State Park

 Hart's Tongue Fern Hike 

at Clark Reservation State Park

6105 East Seneca Turnpike, Jamesville, NY 13078

Saturday, September 10, 2022

Hike to begin at 10 AM

Members who attended the NYS Parks' Plant Materials Program tour on July 23 learned about the Hart's-Tongue Fern that grows in Clark Reservation State Park.  Clark Reservation was purchased by Mary Clark Thompson in 1915 to preserve its scenic beauty and geological interest, it became a State Park in 1926.

 

Mike Serviss will lead our tour featuring many of the 27 different fern species found in the park.  The entire program will last about 3 hours and some trails may be difficult for those with mobility issues.  Mike has built in several "escape" routes on the hike in the event anyone needs to leave early or is unable to navigate the trails beyond certain points.  The wild hart's tongue ferns grow on cliff-side refugia and are the most difficult to get to.

Please contact Laura Ouimette at 

canandaiguabotanical@gmail.com 

if you plan to attend. 

 

We can meet you at Clark Reservation State Park at 10 AM on September 10, or Laura will help to arrange carpools for the journey from Canandaigua and surrounding areas to Clark Reservation near Syracuse, NY.  Hikers are encouraged to bring water, hiking poles, and snacks/lunch.

For more about Clark Reservation State Park:

https://www.friendsofclarkreservation.org/

https://www.friendsofclarkreservation.org/projects

August 21 Mushroom walk: https://www.friendsofclarkreservation.org/events-1 

Colton Ratey with Hart's Tongue Fern at NYS Parks Plant Material Program tour

On the sunny warm morning of Saturday, September 10, 2022 Mike Serviss met a dozen members in front of the Clark Reservation State Park Nature Center for a Fantastic Ferns Walk.  Mike shared extensive information about the history, status, genetics, lineage, and current efforts to protect the Hart's Tongue Fern.  Before hiking to the Hart's Tongue Fern, Mike gave us a Fantastic Ferns walk checklist and this Fern Life Cycle information:

We started in the Clark Reservation's Native Plant Garden

Sensitive fern - sensitive to first frost and drought

Christmas fern - green all year

Notice Christmas fern leaves look like tiny Christmas stockings

Northern Maidenhair fern

Maidenhair fern has black wire like stems

Ostrich fern

Fertile stalk

taking a closer look at the spores

Pause to appreciate Mildred Faust

Bulblet fern - kidney red and lays down

Marginal wood fern - twice disected

Lady fern

closer look at lady fern

Maidenhair spleenwort

Rock polypody/Rock cap fern

walking fern

American hart's tongue fern

Not in Peterson Field Guide, Ferns.  But Bruce has it in his fern field guide.

More information about American hart's tongue fern (of which Mike shared with us): 

https://www.fs.usda.gov/wildflowers/plant-of-the-week/asplenium_scolopendrium_americanum.shtml

RARE NATURAL COMMUNITY DISCOVERED IN THE HONEOYE LAKE WATERSHED, Bruce Gilman

RARE NATURAL COMMUNITY DISCOVERED IN THE HONEOYE LAKE WATERSHED

Submitted by

Bruce Gilman, Professor Emeritus and Finger Lakes Herbarium Curator

Finger Lakes Community College

Canandaigua, New York 14424

 

            Although recently retired from FLCC, I continue to study and learn about the natural communities of our wondrous Finger Lakes region.  This fall I visited one such area in the Honeoye Lake watershed.  This site had always intrigued me because of the unusual presence of northern white cedar, a tree of alkaline soils, growing in an otherwise acidic landscape.

It was quite a surprise to find what else was growing there, but I’m getting ahead of my story.

 

            Natural communities in New York State have been ecologically classified and described by the New York Natural Heritage Program (www.nynhp.org).  Communities are organized first into one of seven systems, with each system further divided into subsystems.  The Honeoye discovery falls into the palustrine system, then the open peatland subsystem.  It is specifically named a rich sloping fen.  So it is an unusual type of natural wetland community.  The Heritage Program also ranks each natural community type for its rarity.  A rich sloping fen, based on the information available to the Heritage Program, is ranked S1S2, meaning there are less than 20 documented occurrences across New York State, making it especially unique and vulnerable.

 

            So what characterizes a rich sloping fen?  They are small natural communities that occur in shallow depressions on gentle slopes composed of calcareous glacial deposits.  Rich sloping fens are minerotrophic wetlands fed by small springs.  So far, the Honeoye Valley has one known location with this unique set of conditions.  The high hills surrounding the Honeoye Valley serve as aquifer recharge areas, creating just the right conditions for artesian springs along the valley floor.  Groundwater upwelling through calcareous glacial deposits becomes mineral rich and has a high pH.  The water is cold and constantly flowing through the fen in tiny rivulets.  Rich sloping fens are usually surrounded by upland forests and transition downslope into shrub swamps and shallow emergent marshes.  Biodiversity is very high, with scattered trees and shrubs, and a nearly continuous layer of herbaceous plants and mosses.

 

            Shrubs of the Honeoye rich sloping fen include arrowwood, red osier dogwood, mountain holly, gray dogwood, alder-leaf buckthorn and several species of willow.  Virgin’s bower is the characteristic vine.  Herbaceous plants include field horsetail, marsh fern, cinnamon fern, spotted Joe Pye weed, spreading goldenrod, various sedges (especially Carex flava and C. hystericina), purple-stem aster, cat-tails, purple avens, tall meadowrue, mannagrass, water-horehound, tall coneflower, golden ragwort and the insectivorous sundew.  The sundews, named because their glandular hairs glisten like dew in the sun, are tiny plants that grow on mossy hummocks in the Honeoye rich sloping fen.  The hairs are stalked glands that produce digestive juices.  These juices increase in production once insect prey has been captured on the sticky leaf.  Research in England estimated that six million insects were caught annually in a two acre fen!