Editor,
Twenty-two years ago, my wife and I found a magically beautiful white cedar glade overlooking the White River and built a home there. The incredibly few little six and seven-inch diameter oaks have over 100 tree rings. I’ve never cored any of the 40 to 60 ft. tall white cedars many over six to eight ft. in diameter, but they’re huge. White cedar glades have an evergreen carpet of a beautiful grass that is always magically green and four inches tall.
In the last year we’ve seen one of the most dramatic shifts in vegetation I’ve ever seen or heard of, and I’m a PhD level Biologist. We have sycamore growing all over this once xeric, stony hillside, groves of 40 to 50-foot tall locust trees, and privet growing everywhere, the grassy understory of the big cedar glade now being hidden by hundreds of two-foot tall hardwood shoots of every species.
We had two of our biggest white cedars die two or three years ago. They were downhill from our septic field lines, and it was obvious excessive H20 had killed them. We had cleared over 75 feet below our two-story deck towards the river. In the last two years that clearing is completely lost to sight and now has eight or ten 20-foot sycamores and 20 or more giant sumac trees 40 feet tall.
All of that has suddenly and mysteriously been taken over by escaped muscadine plants from an arbor I built beside the house. The muscadines now completely cover the entire canopy of the three 50-foot dead cedars, and four or more living cedars of the same size and are rapidly beginning to take over dozens more.
Suddenly, I can see thousands and thousands of grape clusters spread across thousands of square feet of forest canopy with muscadine and possibly some fox grapes offshoots, hanging out in midair ten to fifteen feet, looking to conquer. I believe this is called dramatic evidence of abrupt climate change.
Today, when I went outside, there were hundreds of honeybees buzzing the muscadine vines covering the sycamores that are overtaking the deck, and we can barely see the river. If this staggering amount of foliage died because of excessive heat, there would be a real fire hazard. I truly believe we are facing rather severe climate change with accompanying changes in our vegetation.
Please take note.
Ron Horton, Retired Professor of Biology