Association to Preserve Cape Cod

Stony Brook, Brewster. Photo by Sue Machie

What I'm Thinking...

Best to All

by Andrew Gottlieb, APCC Executive Director

No heavy message from me this week. Frankly, we are all tired from what has been a busy, productive, and somewhat tumultuous year. This is a good time to take a bit of a break, enjoy family and friends, and reflect on the positive things we have.

APCC is very grateful to the members who answered our multiple calls to action over the year as well as to those who have given generously to ensure that we had the resources needed to meet your expectations of us as the protectors of the Cape’s fragile environment.

Best wishes to all at the beginning of this holiday season.

Autumn on the Salt Marsh: A Seasonal Transformation

If you’ve visited your favorite marsh in the last few months, you may have noticed how different it looks. Much like the leaves on a tree, the plants in a salt marsh change color with the seasons, and the greens of summer fade into the yellows, oranges, and browns of fall.

Two of the most abundant and recognizable salt marsh plants in New England are smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora) and saltmarsh hay, (Spartina patens). These plants can survive in very salty conditions and play an important role in supporting a healthy marsh ecosystem. In the summer months, these plants often grow in dense, vivid green patches that cover the marsh and become golden brown during the fall.

Another common salt marsh plant is the succulent Salicornia maritima, commonly known as “sea bean” or “pickleweed” for its briny taste (yes, it is edible!). Pickleweed undergoes a dramatic transformation between summer and fall, going from bright green to hot pink. Like smooth cordgrass and saltmarsh hay, pickleweed plays an important part in creating a robust marsh ecosystem.

Basics of Bud IDs: Branch Arrangement

As fall slowly comes to an end, and our landscapes are transformed into a sea of sticks, it becomes harder and harder to identify the plants around us. But whether you’re prepping your garden beds for spring, taking inventory in your woodlands, watching out for invasive species, or just curious about year-long plant identification, bud ID is the way to go!

This first series of articles will cover the basics of bud ID, the signature features and all the terminology that’s important to keep in mind, so that throughout the winter you’ll be prepared to identify any woody plant you stumble across. Once the basics are covered, we can begin to discuss individual species and learn how to key them out in the field. But fundamentals are required for that process, so without further ado, let’s begin.

The first thing you should look at when you examine a woody plant is the branch arrangement. There are three main options: Alternate, Opposite, and Whorled. You will see alternate branching the most; imagine the branches as steppingstones all the way up the main stem or trunk. There’s a step on the right, then a bit later there’s a step on the left. With opposite branching, which you’ll still see a fair amount, branches occur parallel to each other along the stem. There are branches on either side of the stem, then a gap, then another group of two branches. You’ll see whorled branching very occasionally; around the Cape our most abundant whorled species are pines. Both white pine and pitch pine are whorled, meaning that multiple branches jut out from the main stem in a ring. Imagine opposite branching, but with more than two branches at each node.

If you’ve only got a small twig, with no branches to look at, you can still use branching patterns to help you out, just look for the buds! Buds will eventually produce the branches, leaves, and even future buds, so they have to follow the branching arrangement. (Buds actually contain microscopic versions of fully formed branches, leaves, and buds. When a bud slowly opens, these structures just expand. Mayhaps a newsletter article for a future date!)

When looking at the branch pattern, 90 percent of the time you’re going to find an opposite or alternate arrangement; either option helps you narrow down the plant significantly, but one option helps more than the other. If you’ve found an opposite branching pattern, you’re in luck; opposite arrangements are far less common than alternate, as only a few plant families and genera fall into this category. To remember them, a few different acronyms have been created, the most popular of which is “MADCAP HORSE.” Use it as follows:

M – Maple Genus (Acer)

A – Ash Genus (Fraxinus)

D – Dogwoods and Viburnums (covers genera Cornus, Swida, Benthamidia and Viburnum)

CAP – Honeysuckle Family (Caprifoliaceae)

HORSE – Horse chestnut or Buckeyes Genus (Aesculus)

It’s an odd acronym to remember, but none the less it works, so it’s what most people go by. This acronym helps narrow down things a lot if you spot an opposite branching pattern, but unfortunately, if you run into an alternate pattern, there’s no such trick, there’s just too many families and genera that are alternate.

To narrow things down further, we’ll have to move on to our next bud ID trick: bud scales—the next topic in this bud series. So, until next week, study up on your branch patterns, and start to look at the buds around you. How are they different? How are they similar? The more buds you can look at, the more prepared you’ll be to key out certain plants going forward.

Freshwater Ponds

Through the Cape Cod Regional Pond Monitoring Program, APCC has monitored 50 ponds on a monthly basis for the past two sampling seasons, collecting baseline data on how these ponds change throughout the season, and from year to year. One way that many ponds change over the course of a year is through the process of thermal stratification.

There are two distinct states ponds typically exist in: mixed and stratified. When a pond is mixed, the water is about the same temperature throughout the water column. When a pond is stratified, a temperature gradient forms in which there are three distinct layers.

The surface layer, referred to as the epilimnion, is the warmest layer, impacted by surrounding air temperature. This layer often starts forming in the spring as air temperature rises and winds die down and it becomes deeper as air temperatures continue climbing in the summer months. If you enjoy swimming in the ponds, you have probably felt the transition from this surface layer to the middle layer, known as the metalimnion. The temperature drop from the surface layer to the middle layer is typically the greatest drop and is referred to as thermocline.

In the area right below the thermocline, where water becomes colder, we often see a spike in oxygen values in the summer due to phytoplankton photosynthesizing. As we travel deeper into the middle layer of the pond, light becomes less available, and we enter the bottom layer known as the hypolimnion, which contains cold, dense water and often becomes anoxic (without oxygen) in the summer months.

As weather conditions become colder and windier in the fall, ponds experience turnover, or the mixing of the layers created during stratification. This is an important process, as it replenishes dissolved oxygen levels in deep waters and mixes nutrients throughout the water column.

Spotlight on Rodenticides

From Lower Cape TV: Cape Cod's Wildlife Dying From Rat Poison

A Cape-wide Conservation Event Calendar

The first-of-its-kind calendar highlights regional nature programs

The Compact of Cape Cod Conservation Trusts (“the Compact”) and its nonprofit members are excited to launch a new regional calendar of events. The Conservation Calendar includes programs across Cape Cod hosted by these groups. The goal of the calendar is to encourage visitors and residents to take part in nature and environmental events.

Powered by the “Communications Cohort,” an informal group of dedicated community outreach volunteers and professional staff co-led by the Barnstable Land Trust and APCC, this initiative illustrates the powerful impact of nonprofit collaborations. Events can be sorted by date, town, organization, and type and is constantly being updated.

A Cape Cod Native Plant-selector

~ to help you choose the perfect native plants for your garden.

Email membership@apcc.org and we'll send you a CapeCodNativePlants.org decal.

Sourwood

Oxydendrum arboreum

Guidelines for Cape-friendly Landscapes - an APCC publication

The Guidelines gives homeowners steps they can take in the design and maintenance of their properties that will support pollinators and birds, manage stormwater, conserve water, and protect the Cape's water quality. This 40-page booklet is beautifully illustrated by Marcy Ford with content that is easily digestible and supported by numerous resources for additional learning.

Thank you for this important book! Hopefully everyone of us with a yard will read it and put it to use! - Vicky Titcomb of Titcomb Bookshop

We've enjoyed creating it and hope it will help you with ideas to help you steward your piece of Cape Cod and maybe foster an environmental ethic in the decisions we all make in our own managed landscapes. Get your copy here—and maybe one for a friend?

We are grateful for the several retail shops that are partnering with us to make this publication more widely available: Brewster Book Store, Birdwatchers General Store, Crocker Nurseries, Wellfleet Audubon Wildlife Sanctuary, Cape Abilities Farm, Cape Cod Museum of Natural History, the Cape Cod Lavender Farm, Heritage Museums and Gardens, Titcomb's Bookshop, Sea Howl Bookshop, Soares Flower Garden Nursery, and Eight Cousins Bookshop.

If you are a retailer and would like to sell this publication at your store, please contact us.

You can also view the book's content as a pdf on our website.

The Pollinator Pathway Cape Cod is a group of organizations promoting native plants and pollinator-friendly land care practices to create a boat load of safe oases for our native bees, butterflies and a whole host of other pollinators that are crucial to the health of our ecosystems.

Join us! It's easy. There are no fees. You just need to pledge to ADD native plants, SUBTRACT a little lawn, AVOID yard chemicals, especially pesticides, and LEAVE the leaves. And, help us spread the word. Please get on the map to show your support of pollinators on Cape Cod!

You can purchase the 9-inch aluminum Pollinator Pathway Cape Cod sign at Hyannis Country Garden, Crocker Nurseries, Brewster Book Store, Orleans Conservation Trust, and

Cape Abilities Farm.

If you are a retailer, and you would like to sell the signs, you can order online here, or email pollinators@apcc.org.

APCC Merch