All descriptions come from the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Shrubs

Buttonbush

Buttonbush is a large, multi-stemmed shrub that grows to a mature height of twelve feet. It has opposite, entire leaves 2-6 inches long and 1-3 inches wide. They are glabrous and green above. The flowers occur in dense, round, 1 inch diameter clusters which bloom from June to September. The seed matures in the round clusters that resemble those of the sycamore tree. This plant spreads by seed dispersal and resulting seedling establishment.

Silky Dogwood

Silky dogwood is a large shrub, often 6-10 feet in height. The growth habit is upright rounded, but where stems are in contact with the ground, roots are formed. This behavior creates thickets. Young dogwoods have bright red stems in the fall, winter and early spring, which turn reddish-brown in the summer. As the shrub matures, the stems turn reddish-brown year-round and later gray. Silky and redosier dogwood, though very similar, can be distinguished by their pith and fruit color. Silky dogwood has a brown pith in 1-2 year old stems, dark green ovate leaves, yellowish-white flowers which bloom in mid-June, and bluish colored fruit which matures in September. Redosier dogwood has a white pith, dark green ovate leaves, white flowers, and whitish colored fruit. There are approximately 12,000 seeds per pound.

Gray Dogwood

Cornus racemosa Lam, gray dogwood, is a thickly branched, slow growing dogwood seldom more than 6 feet high at maturity. Its flowers, which bloom in June or July, are white and loosely clustered, and its white fruit, which appears in September and October, is set off by bright red fruit-stalks. Its leaves are opposite, taper-pointed and oval

Red-Osier Dogwood

General: Dogwood Family (Cornaceae). Redosier dogwood is a woody deciduous shrub generally 1.4-6 m (4.6-20 ft) tall. The bark and twigs are reddish to purple and fairly smooth from autumn to late spring; after the leaves have fallen, the deep burgundy branches add color to the winter landscape. The bark, twigs, and leaves are bright green in spring through summer. The simple, opposite leaves are 5-10 cm (2-4 in) long, dark green above and hairy and lighter-colored below, with smooth margins, rounded bases, pointed tips, and falsely parallel veins. Flowering occurs from June to August. The inflorescence is a cyme, with 2-3 mm (0.08-0.12 in) white to cream-colored flowers. The white berries are smooth on the faces, furrowed on the sides.

Winterberry

Winterberry is an erect moderate sized shrub, growing to heights of 5 to 15 feet tall. The smooth bark of winterberry is gray to blackish, with knobby lenticels The dense branches of this shrub grow in a zigzag pattern with an upright spreading crown. The twigs are slender, with gray to gray-brown color and small buds.
The simple, smooth, obovate to oblong-ovate foliage is sharply double toothed, with medium fine texture. The deciduous leaves are arranged alternately along the stems. Each leaf is 1 1/2 to 4 inches long, with dark green summer color turning yellow in fall, then drop off by mid-October. Small, inconspicuous, axillary, greenish to yellowish-white flowers bloom from April to July, after leaves have emerged. Like most others in the holly genus, winterberry is dioecious. Three years after planting, pistillate flowers begin to emerge in small clusters plants and staminate flowers develop on male plants with up to twelve flowers in a cluster; only now can plant gender be determined. Scarlet red to orange, globular fruit mature by late summer, often remaining on the plant into mid-winter. The berry-like fruit is about 1/4 inch in diameter, occurring singlely or in pairs, each containing 3 to 5 small nutlets. There are an average of 92,000 seeds per pound.

Common Ninebark

Native shrubs growing 1-3 meters tall, sometimes tree-like, with wide-spreading, recurved branches, the twigs brown to yellowish, glabrous; bark brown to orangish, peeling into thin strips or broader sheets on larger trunks. Leaves are deciduous, alternate, simple, ovate to obovate or nearly round, 3-12 cm long, with 3(-5) shallow, palmate-veined lobes, basally truncate or cuneate, on petioles 1-3 cm long, glabrous above and mostly so beneath but sometimes with a sparse covering of stellate hairs beneath, with crenate or dentate margins. Inflorescence of numerous flowers found in rounded clusters 2.5-5 cm wide; flowers 7-10 mm wide, calyx cup-shaped, glabrous or with stellate hairs, 5-lobed; petals 5, white or pinkish; styles 5; stamens 30-40. Fruit is compressed but inflated, ovoid, 8-12 mm long, shiny, red at maturity, glabrous or hairy, with papery but firm walls, splitting along two sides, in clusters of (2-)3-5 per flower; seeds 2-4. The common name comes from the bark, which continually molts in thin strips, each time exposing a new layer of bark, as if it had “nine lives.” This species flowers in May-July and fruits in May-July.
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There are more plants and wildflowers to come, check back tomorrow for a list of them as well as a look at the area as it is now. Once the spring arrives and this buffer begins to grow, all of the plants whose long descriptions I have listed here will be photographed and documented. Stay tuned.

The new riparian buffer at Cedar Beach will be composed of all different sorts of trees, plants and shrubs. Today I will be introducing you to these new species in advance of the spring. When the snow melts, I will be following all these plants as they grow. Here is part one:

All descriptions come from the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Trees

Silver Maple

Acer saccharinum L., silver maple is one of the fastest growing deciduous trees of the eastern and midwestern forests. Also called river maple, this name derives from the common occurrence of the species along our river systems. Silver maple shares many of its sites with red maple, but the two species are easily distinguished. Silver maple is typically a much larger tree with a much larger fruit (called a samara), but the two species are the only native maples with spring seed dispersal. The leaves of silver maple are often larger and more deeply fissured between lobes than those of red maple. Silver maple can grow 3-7 feet per year.

River Birch

River birch is native to the eastern United States; south to Florida, north to Minnesota and west to Kansas; it is restricted to stream banks and other moist places. The tree can grow as tall as 40 to 70 feet and 15 to 30 inches in diameter. The bark is exfoliating; gray-brown to ivory or copper colored. The leaves are alternate, simple, 1-3 inches long, and oval-shaped with serrated edges; they are green above and whitish underneath. Flowers are inconspicuous. The winged fruit is small, brown, and borne in clusters in the spring. River birch bears an average of 375,000 seeds per pound. Root crowns and roots survive fire and sprout vigorously. The growth rate of river birch is typically 1.5 to 3 feet per year.

Green Ash

Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marsh., green ash, is a deciduous, medium-sized tree with an open, irregular crown reaching about 50 feet in height. Native to eastern North America and is fairly common west to Wyoming and Colorado along plains watercourses at elevations below 6,000 feet. The tree is fast growing on moist bottomlands, and is extremely hardy to climatic extremes once established.
Fruits are straw-colored, one-seeded, winged (samaras), 1 to 2 1/2 inches long, borne in dense branching clusters; flowers are inconspicuous, without petals, borne in dense clusters (panicles) near the ends of the twigs, male and female flowers on separate trees; leaves are opposite, pinnately compound, 4 to 6 inches long, 7 to 9 leaflets, narrowly elliptical, long-pointed, entire, bright green above, paler below; stem straight, bark thin with network of interlacing ridges, brown to dark gray, twigs smooth; roots are shallow, wide-spreading.

Swamp White Oak

General: Beech Family (Fagaceae). Native trees commonly growing to 15–20 m, sometimes to 30 m, the lateral branches relatively persistent (slow in self-pruning), with an open, irregularly shaped crown; bark dark gray, scaly or flat-ridged, often peeling off in large, ragged, papery curls. Leaves are deciduous, alternate, obovate to narrowly elliptic or narrowly obovate, (8–)12–18(–21) cm long, (4–)7–11(–16) cm wide, usually with regularly spaced, shallow, rounded teeth, or toothed in distal half only, or moderately to deeply lobed, upper surfaces dark green and glossy, lower surfaces lighter green to whitish, softly hairy. Male and female flowers are borne in separate catkins on the same tree (the species monoecious) on the current year’s branchlets. Acorns maturing the first year, ovoid-ellipsoid or oblong, mostly 1.5–3 cm long, single or clustered in groups of 2–4, on a stalk (peduncle) 3-8 cm long; cup enclosing 1/3–1/2 of the acorn, scales closely appressed, finely grayish tomentose, those near rim of cup often with a short, stout, irregularly recurved spinose tip. The common name is from its typical habitat and its membership in the white oak subgroup.

Pin Oak

Pin oak is a moderately large tree with normal heights ranging from 70 to 90 feet with diameters between 2 and 3 feet. Trees reaching 120 feet tall with 5-foot diameters are occasionally encountered on good sites. The bark of this tree is smooth, reddish to grayish-brown during the juvenile period, becoming darker and shallowly fissured as the tree growth slows with age. The lower branches of pin oak are prostrate to descending, with smooth, slender, reddish-brown twigs. Clusters of pointed buds are located at the tips of twigs. Three to five inch alternate leaves have 5 to 7 points or lobes with bristled tips and deep C-shaped sinuses. The leaves change in color from a dark green to a deep scarlet red in fall. The leaves are deciduous but will usually persist on the tree into winter. The flowers of pin oak emerge soon after new leaves unfold in spring (April to mid-May). The acorns that develop are roundish, short stalked, 3/8 to 1/2 inches long, and capped with a thin and shallow saucer-like cup. The acorns will take 16 to 18 months to develop from pollination to maturity. When mature the acorn turns light brown to reddish-brown, and will drop from September to November. In 30 to 35 year old stands of pin oak, 4,000 to 20,000 sound acorns per acre yields have been documented. There are 410 acorns per pound. Pin oak is often confused with scarlet oak (Q. coccinea) due to similar appearance. Scarlet oak is an upland species that prefers soils with good drainage on dry sites.

American Sycamore

General: Planetree family (Platanaceae). Monoecious, native, deciduous trees with an open crown, among the largest of Eastern deciduous forests, reaching heights of 18-37 meters, and the greatest diameter of any temperate hardwood tree — the largest known range 3-4 meters d.b.h.; twigs zig-zag, with only lateral buds, these completely covered by a single scale within the petiole base and not visible until after the petiole detachment; bark of upper trunk exfoliating in patches, leaving areas of inner bark exposed, a patchwork of browns, yellows, and greens against a background of white, the darker bark with age falling away in thin brittle sheets, exposing younger and lighter-colored bark. Leaves are deciduous, alternate, 10-35 cm long, palmate-veined and roughly star-shaped, with 3-5 sharp lobes, the blades often as broad or broader than they are long, truncate to cordate at the base, on petioles to 12 cm long; a leaf-like stipule at the petiole base is persistent during early growth. Staminate and pistillate flowers in separate, tightly compacted, ball-shaped clusters. Fruit is single-seeded and indehiscent (an achene), 8-9 mm long, with a ring of bristles at the base, numerous achenes in a pendulous, ball-shaped fruiting head 2-5 cm in diameter, the individual achenes drifting in the wind if the head breaks up on the tree. Common name apparently borrowed from the European sycamore maple (Acer pseudoplatanus L.), which has similar leaves.

I was standing in front of the statue of General Trexler at Trexler Park when I decided to write about parks on a blog. As I began my journeys, the day that changed me and my future happened at Cedar Beach Parkway. It was a particularly hot afternoon and I was stumbling around the various constructions in the Old Fashioned Garden when I thought of how nice it would be to cool off. I decided to go into the creek to try and attain this cooler feeling.

When I was younger, and I don’t remember with what organization or any names involved at all really, I attended some sort of nature camp at Cedar Beach and of all the various activities we did during camp time, I remember overturning rocks on the bottom of Cedar Creek the most. As I stood creek side, twenty years later, I thought of the excitement I felt as a child not knowing what to expect when I turned a rock over.

One leg at a time, I got myself into the creek. Where I stood, the water was rather cold and the sun had become more comforting than suffocating. Around me was thick vegetation. I had walked into the riparian buffer behind the reflecting ponds.

The plants were high enough that I could not see past them. I was alone, knee deep in cold water, in a place where no one else was and perhaps no one else had ever been. I certainly had no idea how many people wandered into the water to walk through this buffer. I knew how close Linden Street was, but it felt as if I had gone a thousand miles from where I had been before stepping in.

I took a deep breath and stood.

When I left the creek that day I walked alongside its banks to where there was no riparian buffer. I looked at the eroded creek banks, the sediment build up, the exposed roots of the willow trees hanging thirstily above the water and I thought: Why in the world has this been allowed to happen? I had just had a genuine experience with nature in an urban park and twenty feet downstream, nature was genuinely being abandoned. I was confused.

I began to do research and I started to learn about riparian buffers and proper management of watersheds. I wanted to fix the problems that were leading to the environmental degradation of these open spaces. I learned about invasive species and began to lose sleep over the Japanese knotweed in Trout Creek Parkway. I saw kids splashing in the filthy water in Jordan Park and I wanted to change the problem. At this point, I had changed. My blog had become the outlet to share my observations and concerns.

In October, I was able to spend a day planting hundreds of new species alongside Cedar Creek where a few months prior I stood in awe of the terrible conditions of the creek bank. In a few weeks, once all this snow has passed into memory, these plants will begin to grow. A long vein of new life will erupt in Cedar Beach Parkway and the first steps towards ensuring the ecological health of that park will be taken.

It is my hope that the experience I had, that brought me where I am today will be shared by many more people with the development of this new riparian buffer. I also hope that this will lead to new environmental educational programs in the park, especially for inner city children who otherwise would never have the chance to experience nature in this way. General Trexler wanted our parks to serve that purpose after all; it is time for them to do so.

Tomorrow will be part one of a two part post detailing the new plants, trees and shrubs that will begin growing in a few weeks alongside Cedar Creek. I’m beyond excited about it.

Related Video:

If you haven’t seen it yet, this is a video I made about the problems facing our parks, and the future of them:

This past Saturday morning a team of volunteers descended on Cedar Beach Parkway to begin the planting of a riparian buffer. The people present worked a long, hard and fun day on what became a beautiful autumn afternoon after a rainy, humid morning.
The trees, shrubs and wildflowers we planted were all native and will all help reestablish wildlife habitat, improve water quality, help abate flooding and a whole long list of other positive things that will change Cedar Beach Parkway for the better.






The work I did at Cedar Beach on Saturday was probably the most honest work I have ever done. As I am writing this on Sunday evening I am profoundly sore and achy and it is wonderful. I left Cedar Beach thick with mud and the sweet smell of soil in my nose. I left feeling like I had done something to profoundly help one of our parks in a way that will be lasting and inspiring to future visitors for years to come. I am thankful for the opportunity to volunteer and I am very proud to have done so.





I will document the chokecherry, cardinal flowers and everything else we planted on Saturday on this blog for as long as I write it. This spring when life returns in neon green buds and baby leaves, you can count on seeing this buffer grow and flourish here on Remember.




What a day it was on Saturday and what a great thing went on that I am lucky to be part of. Often times, here in Allentown, the future of our parks is hotly contested and debated. Without question or conjecture, I can tell you that on this Monday morning one of our parks has been changed for the better and now, an example has been set that will allow all of the citizens of Allentown an experience that many of our parks are currently lacking and very much in need of.




Much more to come on this, especially next spring…