Tree lore for young and old at Great Mountain Forest

Jean Bronson was armed with a sheaf of detailed notes about trees for the Great Mountain Forest’s (GMF) display at the Weekend in Norfolk festival, Aug. 2 through 4.

On Sunday, Aug. 4, she referred to her notes as visitors tried to match tree bark samples to names of trees.

As a reporter hove into earshot, Bronson was telling a group that Connecticut is the world’s largest producer of witch hazel.

There were 17 bark samples on the table. They were: black cherry, gray birch, red spruce, American hophornbeam, red oak, white pine, clack birch, yellow birch, striped maple, white ash, paper birch, eastern hemlock, American beech, witch hazel, shagbark hickory, red maple and sugar maple.

Jean Bronson is the communications, development and programming coordinator at GMF. Her husband, Jody Bronson, is the forest manager and the logical choice to answer questions about trees.

But Jody Bronson was celebrating his mother’s birthday. Hence the notes.

“I picked Jody’s brain for two and half hours,” laughed Jean Bronson.

It was to good effect. Asked about the qualities of yellow birch, Jean Bronson rattled off the answers (stringy, grayer than white or paper birch, not as gray as gray birch) without hesitation and with only a fleeting glance at the clipboard.

Some examples from the crib sheet:

Under “black cherry,” Bronson wrote “bark like burnt potato chips.”

And the notation for “American hophornbeam,” included “shaggy bark” and the observation that the wood is good for ax handles because it bows but does not break.

A small boy ran up to the Great Mountain Forest group and announced, “My daddy would like to learn this!”

His father arrived a few moments later, puffing a bit as he made the grade.

The youngster then turned his attention to the half dozen cross-sections of trees and began counting rings.

He looked up and said, “This is 36 years old!”

Trying a smaller one, he noted the rings were harder to count. He plugged away, and reported judiciously that the second sample was “about 15 years old.”

With that accomplished, the youth whizzed back down the hill and joined several other small children, who were clambering and leaping about on a wooden train built large enough for the purpose.

GMF board member Marie Civco helped with creating paintings made by applying paint to leaves and then pressing them carefully on paper.

The Great Mountain Forest has been busy this summer, as it always is. A few weeks ago (on July 16), high school students from New York City presented the results of their science experiments at the Yale Forestry Camp at Great Mountain Forest.

The students came to GMF under the auspices of the Christodora Foundation.

Alejandro Vinueza, assistant director of the summer program, said the students stayed for nine days (as opposed to two weeks in previous years).

In the first few days, the students received hands-on instruction in streams, birds and forest management.

Then they spent a couple of days focused on their interests and designed their experiments.

The presentations were done science fair style, with very brief overviews for the audience. Then the students went to their stations and explained their experiments to small groups.

Many of the Christodora staffers are veterans of the program. Chloe Ifill, a junior at American University, said she has been in Christodora in one role or another  since the age of 11.

Program Director Damien Griffin, who teaches at a middle school in the Bronx, said the compressed time frame of this year’s program helped the students focus.

Jeanyna Garcia, 17, focused on how GMF has been managed since its founding and initial acquisition of property in 1909, by Frederic C. Walcott and Starling W. Childs.

She said the emphasis shifted over time from conservation for aesthetic reasons, to economic activity, to the nonprofit conservation and education entity GMF is today.

She also remarked on the combination of private ownership and public policy.

“Money can only do so much,” she said. 

Other experimenters included Adam Dubrov, 17,  who studied ticks and observed that ticks certainly seem to like him.

And Saquan Grizzle, 16, took a look at macroinvertebrates and water quality.

Christodora Executive Director Judith Rivkin thanked everyone for their hard work.

She noted that GMF “is a working forest. This is the greatest classroom.”