LIFE IN THE LOWER SUSQUEHANNA RIVER WATERSHED
A Natural History of Conewago Falls—The Waters of Three Mile Island
On these hot and steamy days of summer, I get to thinking about how great it would be to have a swimming pool. Maybe I would take a little dip, you know, just to cool down. But when I really get to thinking about it, I just might do what the professor has done with his pool.
Or maybe I would do what this lady did with her pool.
Wouldn’t you?
You’ve heard and read it before—native plants do the best job of providing sustenance for our indigenous wildlife. Let’s say you have a desire to attract hummingbirds to your property and you want to do it without putting up feeders. Well, you’ll need native plants that provide tubular flowers from which these hovering little birds can extract nectar. Place enough of them in conspicuous locations and you’ll eventually see hummingbirds visiting during the summer months. If you have a large trellis, pole, or fence, you might plant a Trumpet Vine, also known as Trumpet Creeper. They become adorned with an abundance of big red-orange tubular flowers that our Ruby-throated Hummingbirds just can’t resist. For consistently bringing hummingbirds to the garden, Trumpet Vine may be the best of the various plants native to the Mid-Atlantic States.
There is a plant, not particularly native to our area but native to the continent, that even in the presence of Trumpet Vine, Pickerelweed, Partridge Pea, and other reliable hummingbird lures will outperform them all. It’s called Mexican Cigar (Cuphea ignea) or Firecracker Plant. Its red and yellow tubular flowers look like a little cigar, often with a whitish ash at the tip. Its native range includes some of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird’s migration routes and wintering grounds in Mexico and the Caribbean Islands, where they certainly are familiar with it.
This morning in the susquehannawildlife.net headquarters garden, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird seen in the following set of images extracted nectar from the Mexican Cigar blossoms exclusively. It ignored the masses of showy Trumpet Vine blooms and other flowers nearby—as the hummers that stop by usually do when Cuphea is offered.
Some garden centers still have Mexican Cigar plants available. You can grow them in pots or baskets, then bring them inside before frost to treat them as a house plant through the winter. Give the plants a good trim sometime before placing them outside when the weather warms in May. You’ll soon have Ruby-throated Hummingbirds visiting again for the summer.
With the gasoline and gunpowder gang’s biggest holiday of the year now upon us, wouldn’t it be nice to get away from the noise and the enduring adolescence for just a little while to see something spectacular that isn’t exploding or on fire? Well, here’s a suggestion: head for the hills to check out the flowers of our native rhododendron, the Great Rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum), also known as Rosebay.
Thickets composed of our native heathers/heaths (Ericaceae) including Great Rhododendron, Mountain Laurel, and Pinxter Flower (Rhododendron periclymenoides), particularly when growing in association with Eastern Hemlock and/or Eastern White Pine, provide critical winter shelter for forest wildlife. The flowers of native heathers/heaths attract bees and other pollinating insects and those of the deciduous Pinxter Flower, which blooms in May, are a favorite of butterflies and Ruby-throated Hummingbirds.
Forests with understories that include Great Rhododendrons do not respond well to logging. Although many Great Rhododendrons regenerate after cutting, the loss of consistent moisture levels in the soil due to the absence of a forest canopy during the sunny summertime can, over time, decimate an entire population of plants. In addition, few rhododendrons are produced by seed, even under optimal conditions. Great Rhododendron seeds and seedlings are very sensitive to the physical composition of forest substrate and its moisture content during both germination and growth. A lack of humus, the damp organic matter in soil, nullifies the chances of successful recolonization of a rhododendron understory by seed. In locations where moisture levels are adequate for their survival and regeneration after logging, impenetrable Great Rhododendron thickets will sometimes come to dominate a site. These monocultures can, at least in the short term, cause problems for foresters by interrupting the cycle of succession and excluding the reestablishment of native trees. In the case of forests harboring stands of Great Rhododendron, it can take a long time for a balanced ecological state to return following a disturbance as significant as logging.
In the lower Susquehanna region, the Great Rhododendron blooms from late June through the middle of July, much later than the ornamental rhododendrons and azaleas found in our gardens. Set against a backdrop of deep green foliage, the enormous clusters of white flowers are hard to miss.
In the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed, there are but a few remaining stands of Great Rhododendron. One of the most extensive populations is in the Ridge and Valley Province on the north side of Second Mountain along Swatara Creek near Ravine (just off Interstate 81) in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. Smaller groves are found in the Piedmont Province in the resort town of Mount Gretna in Lebanon County and in stream ravines along the lower river gorge at the Lancaster Conservancy’s Ferncliff and Wissler’s Run Preserves. Go have a look. You’ll be glad you did.
Once upon a time, a great panic spread throughout the lower Susquehanna region. A destructive mob of invaders was overtaking our verdant land and was sure to decimate all in its path. Clad in gray and butternut, they came by the thousands. Flashing their crimson banners, they signaled their arrival at each new waypoint along their route. The Pennsylvania government called upon the populace to heed the call and turn out in defense of the state. Small bands of well-intentioned citizens tried in vain to turn back the progress of the hostiles—none succeeded. But for a cadre of civic-minded elites and some small groups of college professors and their students, few responded to a call to confine the invasion along designated lines of containment. Word spread quickly throughout the valley that farms had been overrun by waves of the merciless intruders. Agrarians reported that their orchards had been stripped; they had lost all of the fruits of their labor. Stories exaggerating the hideous appearance of the approaching aliens struck fear into the faint-of-heart. The growing sentiment among the terror-stricken residents: this horde must be stopped before pestilence is visited upon everyone in the state!
And so, on the evening of June 28, 1863, just three days before the Battle of Gettysburg, the wooden Susquehanna River bridge at Columbia-Wrightsville was set ablaze just as Brigadier General John B. Gordon’s brigade of the invading Army of Northern Virginia approached the span’s west entrance preparing to cross to the eastern shore. Thus, the rebel tide was turned away from the Susquehanna at the point some contend to be the authentic “High-water Mark of the Confederacy”.
National Weather Service radar showed a sizeable nocturnal flight of migrating birds early this morning. Let’s go for a short stroll and see what’s around.
Along the lower Susquehanna, an unseasonably mild day in early spring can provide an observer with the opportunity to witness an annual spectacle seldom seen by the average visitor to the river—concentrations of dozens, sometimes hundreds, of turtles as they emerge from their winter slumber to bathe in the year’s first surge of warm air and sunshine.
