Overview: Condoret Nature Preserve, a Triangle Land Conservancy property acquired by donation in 2003, represents some of the many preserved and protected areas in and around the Triangle that are not intended for recreational use, but meant solely to preserve important ecological habitats and land for our future. The property extends 85 acres and protects riparian habitat along Tick Creek, which runs into the Rocky River (in the Cape Fear River Basin), and mainly encompasses floodplain forest and old fields.
In September 2008, we visited Condoret and found it to be exactly what its purpose implies: quiet, unmanaged for visitors, and full of the kinds of small details you only notice when you move slowly and accept a little mud.
Directions: Again, this property is not managed for public recreation—no trails, amenities, or parking lot. If you would really like to visit, please contact the Triangle Land Conservancy at info (at) tlc-nc.org. They usually respond very promptly.
My observations & ponderings: Condoret is largely composed of floodplain forest and old fields. The forest was dense and difficult to navigate, and the old field was wet and puddle-filled after recent rains. Early on, we startled a red-shouldered hawk that had been hiding at the edge of the woods, presumably scoping out prey in the field below. We also found a striking female wolf spider—one carrying young clustered across her back, and another still hefting a large egg sac.
As we moved toward Tick Creek, we came across a number of plant species you’d expect in a wet old field grading into floodplain forest, including purple gerardia (Gerardia purpurea), multiflora rose (Rosa multiflora), and wingstem (Actinomeris alternifolia). As the field gave way to forest, we noticed a millipede clasping the branches of a bumpy hackberry (Celtis laevigata), along with young walnuts (Juglans nigra) and, soon enough, the day’s most intriguing find: a strangely bent ironwood (Ostrya virginiana), its contorted trunk mottled with bryophytes.
Circling that ironwood, I began to imagine how it came to be shaped so oddly. Was it a tree bent by an American Indian to mark a long-forgotten trail? Did children of former owners find it as a sapling and decide—on a whim—to redirect its growth? Or was this form the result of vegetative growth from a fallen clone?
It is difficult to reconstruct ecological history, but I was undaunted and began to evaluate the three hypotheses.
Could the tree have been bent by an American Indian? This is the easiest to dismiss. Ostrya virginiana is slow-growing and relatively short-lived (at most ~150 years, but possibly far less in many contexts; Fehrenbach, 1983). That would place it as a sapling sometime after 1858, a time when American Indians would have been absent from Chatham County.
Could it have been bent by the children of former owners? Certainly possible—but why that tree, in that location? Would it have been worth the effort to walk through wet grass and weedy fields to bend this particular sapling? My sense is that this hypothesis is probably false.
So I’m inclined toward a third explanation: that this odd form originated when a clonal sapling arose from the roots of a fallen Ostrya virginiana. Perhaps the sapling grew across a fallen log or another downed tree, and when that support eventually rotted away, the ironwood was left in its curious posture for the world to contemplate. This fits what we know about the species: ironwood can reproduce vegetatively from cut stumps or burned/injured trees.
Sadly, we may never know the true history of that one bent tree. But at least we will never be without natural mysteries to ponder.
Resources: Interested in North Carolina’s watersheds? Visit this North Carolina Office for Environmental Education website:
http://www.ee.enr.state.nc.us/public/ecoaddress/riverbasins/riverbasinmapinteractive.htm
Want to learn more about land conservation in the Triangle? Visit the Triangle Land Conservancy website: http://www.tlc-nc.org/
Fehrenbach, W. E. 1983. Ostrya virginiana: characteristics and potentials of a little known native. Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Metropolitan Tree Improvement Alliance. New York Botanical Garden: New York. p. 61–67.
Sense of Place 