Hemlock Draw

Our first station in Baraboo Hills was Hemlock Draw. Baraboo Hills are very anciant mountains, but they were slowly eroded to the hills we see today. It's very important in terms of conservation, this is the largest wooded area under protection in Wisconsin, and it has a crucial role e.g. in maintaining bird populations.

bracken fern

Among the species we took a look at was bracken fern (Pteridium spp.), which occurs pretty much on every continent, except Antarctica. Its success is partly thanks to the fact that herbivores don't really like it - but we still don't fully understand why that is.

prickly ash

Prickly ash (Zanthoxylum clava-herculis) is in the citrus family (not a real ash), and it's also often called the toothache tree or tingle tongue because of the numbness of the mouth, teeth and tongue induced by chewing on its leaves or bark (thus relieving toothache). It was used for such medicinal purposes by both Native Americans and early settlers. When fully grown, the bark has distinctive corky spines, hence the scientific name (Hercules' club). It's often confused with Aralia spinosa, often called Devil's walkingstick or Angelica tree, which also has nasty spiny stems, but it doe not have the medicinal properties of Z. clava-herculis.

Moving in, we discovered squawroot (Conopholis americana) under some beech and oak trees, this parasite that gets its food from tree roots, doing no photosynthesis itself.

wood nettle

squawroot

And along the trail some of us got intimate with wood nettle (Laportea canadensis), which has a stem covered with stiff white hairs that have the capacity to sting when they are rubbed against. This nettle is native, unline stinging nettle (Urtica dioica), the way to tell them apart is the former has alternate leaves, the latter has opposite leaves. But they hurt all the same if you walk into a patch.