Apr 15 Baxter Creek (again) and the Arcto-Tertiary Geoflora

Right in the Big Creek parking lot are these Yellow Trilliums. The parking lot sits on the site of Champion Fiber's kiln. Just prior to formation of the national park, a number of timber companies timbered the massive trees. Several of the trails in this area are on the railroad beds used by the timber companies.

One of the first cliff faces we encounter, has lampshade spider activity. The spider weaves a web which resembles a lampshade. 

Often hard to photograph, Bishops Cap, here is displayed against the moss of a tree.

The tree art on this basswood all occurred naturally. It is in this Basswood forest that our hike leader, Gary Walker delivered his Arcto-Tertiary Geoflora lecture. This is the name for the forest which has covered the northern hemisphere of earth for tens of millions of years. Darwin's "abominable mystery" was why did the flowering plants replace the conifers in such a short period of time. And why did this forest disappear from Europe. Darwin thought the forest appeared very abruptly in fossil records. Tens of millions of years, but who is counting. Flowering plants pushed the conifers out over a period of time, giving us the forest we see before us now. Reproduction was more efficient when you teamed flowering plants up with insects and birds than the reproduction occurring with conifers, naked seeds without an ovary. Well, maybe I missed some of Gary's lecture. As he continues, the forest here and in Asia had north-south mountain ranges. In Europe, the Alps are east-west. When the glaciation occurred, the plant and animal species moved ahead of the glaciers' advance and followed them when they receded. In Europe, the species were pushed to the Alps where there was nowhere to go and many perished. Today, we are left with a similar forest here and in Asia. We see many of the same species. Chestnuts are a great example. They survived in both North America and Asia but developed differently. When a blight brought from Asia, attacked our Chestnuts, they had no natural immunity and succumbed. We hear about many other Asian insects and fungi coming here, It does work in reverse too. Chinese people are very sensitive to Ragweed. They get upset that it came from here to annoy them. As Gary's lecture finished up, we were told that Hemlock disappeared from the fossil record about 10,000 years ago. They came back and now are dying off from the Hemlock Adelgid. Some trees are resistant, so thousands of years from now, they will re populate the area. In nature, some things take time.