Upcoming Field Trips

NEBC Woods Hole September 2018 Away Meeting

Joint meeting of NEBC and BCCCI, exploring Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard..
Celebrating Botanical Club of Cape Cod and the Islands 20th anniversary!
14-16 September 2018

Registration

Required registration form is due by 31 August 2018.
(first save the blank form, reopen and fill it out, save again and attach to email).
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Lodging Details

To help you find lodging, check these suggestions. Note: Reservations for MBL housing must be made by Friday, August 31st.

Student Travel Grant

NEBC offers travel grants to undergraduate and graduate students to encourage participation at "away" meetings. Full details here. Deadline August 29.

Schedule of Events

Six-page printable/downloadable PDF of program schedule and all field trips.

Friday September 14 - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

• Quissett Campus Tour (3pm to 5pm)
  We'll kick off the weekend with a tour of the Quissett Campus grounds, herbarium, and WHOI archives. The property has a diverse landscape of natural and planted collections including the coastal flora of Vineyard Sound, cultural grasslands, and mature woodlands. Be prepared for a walk down to a pebble beach and back up to campus. The MBL WHOI Library Herbarium (SPWH) houses historical collections from Cape Cod and the Islands dating back to the 1870's, as well as recent accessions. This collection is currently available on-line, fully digitized. This is a singular resource for botanists studying the local flora and the conservation of indigenous species and rare natural habitats.
• Meet and Greet (5pm to 6pm)
  Following the field trip, we will convene at the Carriage House meeting room, also located on the Quissett Campus, for a meeting kick-off and details on the weekend programs. Snacks and beverages will be provided. We encourage you to mingle and make dinner arrangements with other attendees.

Saturday September 15 – Five options for field trips

1. Sandy Neck Reserve Barnstable (Don Schall and Nina Coleman)
   A spectacular barrier beach system on the north coast of Cape Cod with 4,700 acres of beach, dune, interdunal swales, maritime forest, and salt marsh habitats will be explored. Sandy Neck includes diverse maritime habitats, and, at this time of year, a landscape rich with colorful fall foliage. This is a moderate but long walk on loose sand paths, with little shade, and potentially high temperatures.
2. Polly Hill Arboretum Martha's Vineyard (Tim Boland, Director)
   Take a ferry to Martha's Vineyard to visit historic Polly Hill Arboretum with 20 acres under cultivation and 40 acres of native woodland. Historic buildings date to 1670. The Arboretum was established in 1958 by the horticulturist Polly Hill and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Arboretum contains North Tisbury azaleas, witch-hazels, winter hazels, camellias, magnolias, stewartias, conifers, and deciduous and evergreen hollies. Polly Hill plant introductions include varieties of Cornus kousa, Ilex, Stewartia, and about forty Rhododendrons. The trip includes a 2-hour tour of the property, which starts ~10am. The schedule will allow plenty of time to wander through the grounds on your own. Easy walking. The Arboretum admission fee has been included within the registration cost.
3. Frances A. Crane Wildlife Management Area Falmouth (Caren Caljouw and Brett Trowbridge)
   Come explore the 1,883-acre Frances A. Crane Wildlife Management Area (WMA), which includes abundant pitch pine-oak woodland and sandplain grassland habitats. The special ecosystems that exist on the WMA support a rich association of rare flora and fauna species. The property is owned and actively managed for game and non-game species by the MA Division of Fisheries and Wildlife. Easy walking, but no shade, and potentially high temperatures.
4. Breivogel Ponds and Shallow Pond Conservation Areas Falmouth (Carol and Walter Knox)
   This foray will investigate the sandplain grassland and vernal pool wetlands recently established in a former sand and gravel pit as well as nearby freshwater ponds created during the sand and gravel mining operation and which now support a coastal plain pondshore community and forested uplands on property owned by the Town of Falmouth. Moderate walking.
5. Cape Cod Lichens Falmouth (Elizabeth Kneiper, Hal Schaeffer, and Tom Walker)
   Take this walk through the Quissett Campus and learn about lichens common to Cape Cod that grow on the trees, boulders, soil and intertidal shore rocks. After a lunch break on the campus beach, we will carpool to sites, such as the Church of the Messiah cemetery in Woods Hole in search of more lichen diversity. Please bring a 10X hand lens. Moderate walking.

Saturday September 15 - Dinner and Presentation

• DINNER (~5:30pm to 6:30pm)
  A smorgasbord of healthy and delicious dinner options will be provided courtesy of BCCCI and NEBC at the Carriage House meeting room, located on the Quissett Campus.
• FEATURED SPEAKER PRESENTATION (6:45pm)
  In a presentation entitled "In the Footsteps of Humboldt: The Making of the Map of the Plants of the Americas", Dr. Carmen Ulloa Ulloa, Curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden, will present a historical background on the visit of Humboldt to the Andes of Ecuador, an area where she has conducted botanical work for the last 35 years, and with the collaboration of 24 coauthors will present the first assessment of the flora of the Americas that resulted in 124,993 species of vascular plants, which represents one third of the plants worldwide. Presentation will take place at the Carriage House meeting room.

Sunday September 16 - Four options for half-day field trips

1. Coonamessett Reservation Falmouth (Pam Polloni)
   A major $4.5 million project to restore the river, its herring run, and riparian wetlands is in progress. Working with the Falmouth Conservation Commission and the Coonamessett River Trust, BCCCI has recorded plant species occurrences and partnered with the New England Wild Flower Society to collect native seed to be planted along the river and in the bordering wetlands. Come see the results of removal of the lower dam and rerouting of the river channel in the former lower bog and help us investigate the flora of the middle and upper bogs prior to their restoration. Easy walking unless you want to slog through the bogs!
2. Four Ponds Conservation Area Pocasset (Nancy Wigley)
   Cape Cod supports a diverse array of terrestrial, wetland, and aquatic communities uniquely adapted to life in the coastal environment. Walkers will explore the woodlands bordering a stream that flows to Buzzards Bay and that is controlled as four ponds where bog iron extraction may have been one of the historic uses of the waterway. Moderate walking.
3. Skunknett River Wildlife Sanctuary Osterville (Brett Trowbridge)
   Massachusetts Audubon Society's Skunknett River Wildlife Sanctuary contains a diversity of woodland and wetland habitats, including overgrown cranberry bogs, freshwater ponds, pine-oak woodlands, and a young cedar swamp. Moderate walking.
4. Robert F. Smith Cold Brook Preserve Harwich Port (Rich Eldred)
   The Robert F. Smith Cold Brook Preserve protects 66 acres of wetland bogs and surrounding upland habitats in the mid-Cape area. Its abandoned cranberry bogs have several species of orchids, Iris prismatica, Asclepias tuberosa, Lobelia cardinalis, Bartonia virginica, Lilium superbum and a mix of other interesting coastal plants. Recent and historical inventory records for the property total over 340 plant species! Cold Brook flows through the bog system and eventually into Saquatucket Harbor on Nantucket Sound. Easy walking on sand roads.