Checkering Bog Near Montpelier Vermont

GermanG

Piney
Apr 2, 2005
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Little Egg Harbor
I'd like to look at this discussion from a slightly different perspective, taking a stance that I've applied more to debates that get bogged down (bogged, get it? ;)) on plant or animal species ID rather than on habitat labeling, but I think it applies here as well. One of my fellow naturalists, now retired and who was more of a birder than I was, would correct me when I would point out a Baltimore Oriole. This was after that point in time when ornithologists decided that the Bullock's Oriole and the Baltimore Oriole were actually the same species due to hybridizing where their ranges overlapped. So for several decades they were both lumped into a new species, the Northern Oriole. And birders like myself were corrected by others who had purchased the most up to date field guide (which I am too cheap to do!). Then it was decided that the hybridization was limited to certain localities and in most areas of overlap the two types maintained their specific forms. So now we have the Baltimore Oriole officially back again, and those who adapted to the Northern Oriole name can accept being corrected once again. Now during all of this the orioles were not informed or consulted. They did not know or care what they were and went happily along doing what they do, not having undergone any physical changes to warrant the seesawing of classification.

I maintain, and feel that it's important to periodically remind one's self, that in nature, and I emphasize in nature, there is no such thing as a Baltimore Oriole. For that matter, there is also no such thing as a species, genus, family, or a bog, fen, swamp or marsh. The classification systems we use and the labels we place on the species and environments is an artificial system that exists solely in the minds and writings of man, to fulfill our need to create order in a disorderly world around us. There is no disputing the need to do this, for matters of both science and amateur passion. But the natural world feels no obligation to neatly fit into the categories we've created for it. I've also agonized over the correct term for a specific habitat I was observing or pointing out, due to variations in species makeup or other factors that did not fit 100% into one of the recognized categories. Not doing the type of work where that kind of accuracy mattered, I simply started to worry less and simply let things be what they were, not what I tried to classify them as. I would still use a more general and accepted descriptive term, but stopped trying to be so specific. Or perhaps I'll even use a term such as beautiful or fascinating. But then again, that is much easier to do as a naturalist, as opposed to an ornithologist, soil scientist or some other more specialized professional. As for me, "a rose by any other name............, well, you know how it goes:).
 
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bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
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Pines; Bamber area
Mark (and German):

As I said when I first mentioned it, I'll always use the local terms; in my case I usually just call them sphagnum bogs. But if I need to be formal, I'm apt to call them sphagnous wetlands or coastal plain riverine peat swamps. But as I studied plants in the pine barrens, there were frequently very knowledgeable people providing guidance; Ted Gordon, Eric Karlin, Richard Andrus (the last two experts in sphagnum morphology). These experts used the term "poor fen" more than frequently to describe local sphagnous areas such as I've described in previous posts. I originally was skeptical, but since I have started studying and collecting sphagnum moss myself, I've been exposed to a lot of related literature, and found they are correct in using that term. In fact, the term bog, used formally, is likely incorrect for most of the pinelands, if not all. Maybe you could stretch the term bogs for those spungs (I learned that term from another expert I know) that are lined with clay underneath the sand, and only receive water from precipitation.

My definition of a poor fen Mark, is probably best described (greatly paraphrased here by me) by Andrus (1980) in his "Sphagnaceae of New York State":

Poor Fen: A mire type of wetland where at least some peat formation is occurring (DuReitz, 1954). The water supply is influenced by weakly mineralized ground water that is low in dissolved nutrients and strongly to moderately acidic.

I only responded because I said "fen" and Mark said no, not fens. I could not leave it there knowing what I know, you know?
 

Spung-Man

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Jan 5, 2009
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loki.stockton.edu
This might be a good time to explain how I became obsessively (fen-atically?) interested in this topic. Over a decade ago I served on a local environmental board, but was thrown off after discovering that two package plant sewer systems were secretly underway in my village to support redevelopment. Both locations had been wetlands with barred-owl habitat, but ever-so-slowly both sites had been drying up because of regional groundwater depletion.

One, I was dismayed that government and academic agencies missed the drying-up phenomenon that was common knowledge to us. Second, most researchers were from outside and unfamiliar with the Piney speak used by old-timers south of the Mullica to describe nuanced landforms. In middle age I put my tree expert consulting on hold and went back to get a Masters and completed a PhD program up to the comprehensives – winning scholarships and competitive fellowships towards geologic work I was doing with an eminent cold climate geomorphologist. He too saw the periglacial landforms that I saw, and that the wetlands were indeed drying up, first publishing that observation in French and Demitroff (2001).

My first mentor was Hammonton-born geologist Peter Wolfe, who first envisioned a frozen Pine Barrens (Wolfe 1953) although his first periglacial paper was about the Hunterdon Plateau near the "tor" Devil's Tea-Table (Wolfe 1943). He was under the impression that past permafrost was here, but that it was icy and wet like that of most of today’s Alaska and Canada, as were archeologists Cresson and Bonfiglio (further inspiration). We would talk about the spungs, cripples, savannahs and blue holes when I had Wolfe for a professor at Cook College (’82), what was then the State Ag School. Standing on his shoulders we demonstrated that South Jersey was colder, windier, and drier than what Wolfe first envisioned. I needed to define Pinelands periglacial landforms within geographic confines to show where they are and where they once were to test the observation that wetlands were slowly loosing their hydrofill and that their hydroperids were shortening too.

French HM, Demitroff M. 2001. Cold-climate origin of the enclosed depressions and wetlands ('spungs') of the Pine Barrens, southern New Jersey, USA. Permafrost and Periglacial Processes. 12: 337–350.

Wolfe PE. 1943. Soil and Subsequent Topography. Journal of Geology. 51: 204–211.

Wolfe PE. 1953. Periglacial frost-thaw basins in New Jersey. The Journal of Geology. 61, 2: 133–141.

 
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Spung-Man

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Jan 5, 2009
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But then again, that is much easier to do as a naturalist, as opposed to an ornithologist, soil scientist or some other more specialized professional.

Thanks GermanG,

It is a science disciplinary problem. I’ve been way too wrapped up with peer review. Trust me, that sausage making is not pretty. In retrospect my tone could easily be taken as bossy, even snarky. No one should have to feel challenged here and a number of eminently qualified experts call some Pinelands wetlands fen.

As for me, "a rose by any other name............, well, you know how it goes:).

Now are you just talking about the genus Rosa with cytological relationships of seven-chromosome gametic cells and somatic cells of 2 X 7 = 14, or are you including the section Caninae that has quite individual behavior even though their chromosome number is divisible by 7? (Uh, you do realize that's a joke?)

S–M
 
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bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,153
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Pines; Bamber area
Up to my crotch and sinking fast in a sphagnous wetland yesterday on the upper Oswego.

sphagnumsoup.JPG
 

bobpbx

Piney
Staff member
Oct 25, 2002
14,153
4,258
Pines; Bamber area
Ron, (roof-tree) has found an interesting paper that would be helpful being plopped down onto this thread, in case some future pine barren ecologist is reading it. In here (1945 so premise may be dated), the supposition is that during the ice age, a lot of south jersey subsided (sunk), but with some areas still above water as islands. They go on to propose the theory that as the ice receded, these islands helped populate areas further north with those plants the islands were harboring as a sort of refuge.

 
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