LIVING RELICS OF THE ICE AGES

Bogs | Living relics of the Ice Age

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY JENNIFER HOWELL

Ididn’t know how precious and peculiar bogs were until a few years ago when I had an opportunity to have a personal tour of the Kent Bog State Nature Preserve. My guide was Scott Vernon, a botany graduate from Kent State University and a friend of my husband. The three of us set out to explore the bog at night. I was expecting to find a smelly, swampy decaying death trap in our path. I was surprised by the absolute lushness of the surrounding highbush blueberry.

They were taller than any blueberry bush I've ever seen, taller than even me. At our feet, the boardwalk was lined with carnivorous pitcher plants. There was something magical about seeing them in the wild, at night, by flashlight for the first time. They seemed exotic and special, and they are. It turns out, purple pitcher plants are a federally threatened species, among many other boreal plants in the bog.

As we went further, there was a distinct smell in the air that I hadn’t experienced since I was a kid. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It was the kind of smell that turns you into a hound, searching for any other clues. Since we were surrounded by water, there was little I could do to determine any fragrant sources. In a later conversation with Vernon, he suggested I was smelling the peat in the bog itself, an earthy warming floral scent. Peat mostly consists of sphagnum moss as well as a combination of many other decaying vegetation. Peat forms in acidic and oxygendeprived environments when plant vegetation doesn’t fully decay. It resembles soil and when it’s dried and harvested, it can be burnt as firewood.

Sphagnum moss is the foundation and one of the most important plants that help create a boggy environment. Sphagnum moss is partially composed of dead plant material. This is because it grows on top of its own decaying parts.

The Kent Bog offers many signs as you walk along the boardwalk to learn about the isolated and special habitat.

“Specialized sponge-like cell structures enable some species of sphagnum to hold up to 27 times their own dry weight in water. Dried sphagnum possesses antiseptic properties and is more than twice as absorbent as cotton. Native Americans used it to diaper their babies, and doctors relied on sphagnum for emergency field surgical dressing during the Civil War and World War 1,” one sign read.

There are several different types and ways bogs can form. The kettle bogs in Ohio were formed from the Wisconsinan Glacier, a huge glacial deposit that fell off and created these ecosystems. These are remnants of the glacial deposits from the Ice Age, which retreated from Ohio around 12,000 to 14,000 years ago. Vernon explains “kettle bogs are more rare than bogs as a whole, but the species they contain are fragile and unique, and those tend to be rare.” Bogs are nutrient-poor, so the plants that live there have become highly specialized.

One of these specialized trees is called the tamarack tree. It’s a “deciduous conifer.” Most trees are categorized as coniferous or deciduous, but the tamarack is both. The tamarack tree has needles like a conifer, and although they look like pine needles, they are much softer. When the seasons change, they drop their needles, like deciduous trees. Vernon informed me that tamaracks can be found not only in the Kent Bog, but in Triangle Lake Bog and Jackson Bog. The Kent Bog holds the largest number of tamarack trees in Ohio.

Akron also has its very own bog, the Springfield Bog Metro Park. Springfield Bog is unique because it holds two bogs. It was farmland converted into a prairie, and the Continental Divide runs through it. The Continental Divide is a natural boundary that separates the river systems on a continent. The elevation of the divide separates the flow of the water into two different directions. In the north part of the park, water flows north, towards Lake Erie and eventually into the Atlantic Ocean. Water in the southern area of the park flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

You can view the two bogs from their own observation decks. Young’s Bog is located northwest of the trail and is a naturally made bog. The second is called “baby bog” which is a manmade bog sitting southwest, closer to the center of the park.

“It’s frozen in time a little bit and we’re lucky to see it, and there aren’t a lot left,” Vernon says. “...you also want to make sure that people don’t go and be irresponsible in these places because sometimes you go and see trash there... people need to know that they are entering a one-ofa-kind place.” biodiversity each bog holds. I feel thankful to live in an area and ecosystem that can support such a special glimpse into the ecology of the past.

It’s been speculated that bogs were the reason for the last Ice Age because of the sheer amount of carbon they can absorb from the atmosphere, cooling the planet over time. Bogs and the peat that grows in them are an important resource for the future of climate control. Ohio has lost many of its bogs in the past decades due to agriculture, development, fire, mining, recreation, or natural succession. I hope with our efforts we are able to preserve and protect these precious relics we are living beside.

Left: The boardwalk and vegetation at Kent Bog Right: Sphagnum Moss in the Kent Bog

Resources

Local Bogs Tom S Cooperrider-Kent Bog State Nature Preserve, Triangle Lake Bog State Nature Preserve, Jackson Bog State Nature Preserve, and Brown's Lake Bog.

Bog Preservation Friends of the Kent Bog help protect and preserve the wetlands. If you are interested in becoming a member, volunteer, or want to learn more about their activities: Email them at fotkb@sbcglobal.net.

Book Recommendations Description of the Ecoregions of the United States by Robert G. Bailey

Plants and Vegetation: Origins, Processes, Consequences 1st Edition, Kindle Edition by Paul Keddy

Botanical Essays from Kent: Some Botanical Features of a University Town in Ohio by Tom S. Cooperrider

Bees are like dogs and cats and children: they require care, commitment and some education.

Beekeeping classes and a little book learning is a wise idea. Then, and only then, should people gather the appropriate supplies, a $150 to $200 investment to start — not including the cost of the bees.

Bees won’t just find a new hive and fly in of their own accord. The prospective keeper has to buy a box of bees and a fertilized queen from a dealer ($150 or so), divide an existing hive or catch a swarm: a big, scary looking bunch of bees that likely belonged to someone else a couple hours ago. But then they just flew away, likely because they were unhappy with their current living conditions. Maybe they felt crowded, for instance.

When honey bees swarm, they can’t be stopped. They will march out of their hive with their queen and fly in a low circular cloud until they’ve collected about half their hive mates, then fly to a holding area, where they will hang out for a short time while scouts search for a new home.

It’s an amazing sight when a swarm lands. Just try to imagine a big glob of 15,000 buzzing bees. It would certainly be a threatening sight if you didn’t understand what’s happening. So here’s an important personal safety tip for those tripping over each other trying to get away: Bees gathered as a swarm are as gentle and as harmless as they will ever be, because they have no babies and no food to protect. Anyone who says they’ve been attacked by a swarm of bees was probably attacked by two or three bees who were accidentally disturbed or is talking about some other type of flying creature. Don’t run for the pesticide if you see one of these big globs of bees in a tree, a bush or on the tire of a car in a parking lot. They can often be collected and re-homed by an experienced beekeeper. The Summit County Beekeepers Association has a helpful list online if you need a name.

One thing that the keeper will try to do is find and save the queen, who is likely buried somewhere in the middle of that glob. If she is there — and she should be — the keeper can start a new colony. Every colony needs a fertilized and productive queen to survive. During her two to threeyear lifespan, she will lay 1,500 to 2,000 eggs per day from late winter through late fall, which is necessary because a typical worker bee (always female) lives only about six weeks and a critical mass of bees is required if the colony is to survive.

Most of a worker’s time on earth is spent in the hive, first as a nurse bee taking care of newly hatched brood, then as a house bee, whose job is to keep the place tidy and help make honey. After three to four weeks, she becomes a guard. Only in her last weeks of life will she become a forager, doing her pollination thing and bringing pollen and nectar back to her sisters.

There are a few males in the hive called drones, though there are not many. One can imagine what their only job is. They tend to live a little longer than the females, but they are kicked out of the hive and die in late fall. The females don’t want them sitting around all winter eating honey and watching football.

A little-known fact about bees is that the queen produces different, fatter bees in the late fall that are able to survive most of the winter. How is it that eggs from the same queen can live for either six weeks or three months? How can a queen survive up to three years? Scientists don’t exactly know.

Could it be something in the water? It’s believed Juan Ponce de León came to the New World via the second journey of Christopher Columbus. He stayed in the Americas for many years, but he never found the elusive Fountain of Youth.

Maybe he should have looked in a few back yards in Akron.

// Jeff Davis is a retired writer, editor and teacher, and a member of the Summit County Beekeepers Association. He prefers his honey on hot biscuits.

Getting ready to swarm, or just hanging out on the front porch?