Overview: Glennstone Nature Preserve is an 82-acre natural area in Durham, protected by the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association. It offers a short but rewarding hike through early successional habitat favored by American woodcocks, as well as bottomland forest underlain by diabase-derived soils that support some unusual plant species.
Directions: From northbound I-85, take the Glenn School Road exit (#180) and turn left onto Glenn School Road. In 0.4 miles, turn right onto Glenn Road. Continue 1.3 miles to Glennstone Drive (the second left into the housing development). Go about 0.25 miles and park near Little Valley Court, across from the gazebo, the stormwater detention pond, and the entrance to Glennstone Nature Preserve.
Observations & Ponderings: From the wooden gazebo overlooking a cattail- and woolrush-filled retention pond, visitors are often greeted by the familiar “coo-co-quereee” of red-winged blackbirds—a sound that can feel like an instant soundtrack to wetlands and summer edges. Step onto the Honeysuckle Trail, though, and any sense of “northern” familiarity fades quickly. This is classic southern Piedmont early successional habitat: dense, close-quartered vegetation with loblolly pine, eastern redbud, sweetgum, and downy arrowwood viburnum pressing in on all sides.
The shrub layer can be so thick that you may only see a foot ahead, but patient observation pays off. Farther along, southern sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa) appear with lemon-yellow, four-petaled blooms. This primrose was once used by early settlers as a remedy for whooping cough, and it later became an introduced species in Scandinavia, reaching Europe by the early 1600s. As you continue down the Honeysuckle Trail and turn onto the Woodcock Trail, watch your step—fire ants are common in sunny openings. These South American natives build conspicuous mounds and defend them aggressively with painful stings. Keep an eye out, too, for winged sumac (Rhus copallinum), a striking shrub or small tree that was historically smoked in parts of Appalachia as a treatment for asthma.
For the more adventurous, a narrow side path leads into the woods and across a boulder-strewn creek. The boulders here are diabase—magnesium- and calcium-rich rock that weathers into soils that are unusually basic for the Piedmont. One plant that benefits from these conditions is anglepod (oldfield milkvine, Matelea decipiens), a heart-leaved vine named for its milky sap. Its dark purple flowers can be lightly vanilla-scented, and by fall it produces attractive, downy-filled seedpods reminiscent of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca). Nearby, you may also find Indian pipe (Monotropa uniflora), a ghostly white plant that lacks chlorophyll and taps into nutrients via mycorrhizal fungi connected to tree roots. Partridgeberry (Mitchella repens) is another quiet treasure here—its twin flowers give rise to a single red berry, and the plant was once used by some Indigenous communities to ease pain associated with childbirth.
Each Memorial Day, the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association leads a hike through these woods to one of the Piedmont’s largest great blue heron rookeries. Great blue herons are North Carolina’s largest heron, with wingspans approaching six feet. They nest in colonies that can hold hundreds of nests. A pair typically bonds for a single breeding season, building a nest together (the male often brings sticks while the female arranges them), incubating three to five eggs, and raising one to four young. In the Triangle, yellow-crowned night herons and green herons are the other heron species commonly known to breed locally.
If you’re looking for a quick, interesting hike in Durham County, Glennstone is well worth a visit. And if you enjoy local history, keep an eye out for traces of the past—an old stone-lined spring and the ruins of a small summer cottage still linger in the woods.
Sense of Place 