Take a Hike: Sprouts, blossoms, and chestnut trees

Fall is so dazzling that it’s hard to notice anything but brilliant color, but while delighting in nature’s spectacular show, some of us are also emotionally attuned to its meaning as the end of blossoming and growth. It is also a time when some things, which may have been hidden behind a dense curtain of green, are more perceptible.

As a child in the 1950s, I was vaguely aware of the demise of the majestic American chestnut tree because I grew up among country people who spoke of its loss with nostalgia. Then the April 2, 2020, article in the Press by Marty Green, about the planting of American chestnut seedlings on the Powell conservation land, reignited my interest in this iconic tree. In conversation, Green recalled that years ago, local naturalist Dorothy Andrews had pointed out an American chestnut tree to her during a nature walk on Holy Hill.

Then one day, while walking on a leaf-covered trail in the Holy Hill conservation land, I saw it! I saw the smooth, yellow-brown oblong lanceolate-shaped leaf, 8 inches long and 2 inches wide, with the distinctive little curving hooks at the ends of each straight parallel vein. I instantly knew, felt, that it was an American chestnut leaf.

Because American chestnuts, like the tall neighboring oaks, hold onto their leaves longer than other trees, it’s easier to see the now-diminutive chestnut trees in the fall. And even though its leaves are similar in shape and color to those of the towering beech trees nearby, the color of its leaves is of a slightly less intense but richer yellow, and hang in a more downward-pointing way. All this is more observable in the fall, without the competition of so much green. Now I cannot help but see these American chestnut saplings, sprouting from the root systems of trees that grew from nuts that were produced and fell to the ground before the old trees succumbed to the blight. They are all over, and rarely do I take a walk in conservation land that I don’t see at least one sample.

Another plant that might be seen more easily in fall is witch hazel, because of its characteristic blooming in October or November. When someone told me he had seen some on Mount Wachusett last week, I was struck that even though the coarse, shrubby plant had been pointed out to me during a walk in the Hermann Orchard conservation land, I couldn’t picture it. However, I did remember exactly where it was found growing. So when I went back to track it down, I saw that it was, predictably, in bloom. Those pale, scraggly blossoms would have disappeared in the flowers of spring but now stood out from the other shrublike plants growing along a stone wall.

Having rediscovered witch hazel, it was exciting to unexpectedly come upon a circle of witch hazel recently on the Great Elms conservation land, the only thing around that was blooming in late October.