In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

2 S P R A W L This ideally situated estate, comprising six acres of excellent building land, is to be developed with high class modern residences by Sutch and Martin, Limited, of Newbury , Berks. —Richard Adams, Watership Down One morning two years after I came to Michigan, I set out to explore an extensive bog forest. An old logging road ran a few hundred yards to a plateau rising about 30 feet above the level of the bog. On this island of high ground grew large trees of sugar maple and American beech, as well as elm, basswood , and tulip tree. Community ecologists tend to be fond of beech-maple forest. This is the climax community in these parts; it is the more stable, less changing type of vegetation that, given enough time, will clothe many different types of the region’s land, from pretty wet to fairly dry. When I first saw it that fall, the forest was still green. On later trips, the maple leaves turned yellow and orange and then fell, first as individual pools around the bases of trees and then as a complete floor of yellow, with an admixture of browns and buffs from the beeches and elms. Winter was a fine time too, with the smooth, pale gray trunks of the beech and the darker, furrowed maple trunks set against the snowy ground. But spring is the glorious season. The sun floods through the leafless canopy to the forest floor. On this copious energy flourish the spring ephemeral herbs; they come up early, leaf out, photosynthesize, flower, and wither by mid-May. The names of the spring flowers of the beech-maple forest are familiar, the flowers of excursions to the woodlots of our childhoods—Dutchman’s breeches, spring beauty, toothwort, trout lily, blue and yellow violets, white trillium. They grow thickly in the temporary sunlight. One early May day, some students and I set up sample plots and found an average of 159 herb stems per square meter. This means that in one May acre of this woods there were more than 600,000 flowers. I laid out a bird census area of 15 acres and visited it several times in the early morning that summer. The forest in summer is not so much fun. Mosquitoes are a torment. Patches of thigh-high horse nettles raise itchy hives through any normal pants. Though less congenial for people, summer is the time when the forest is in high gear. The trees are making food and storing it, the insects are taking their share and tithing to the birds. Red-eyed vireos were the most common birds breeding on this island of beech-maple forest. Based on mapping where the males were singing, I decided there were six vireo territories the summer of 1962. Also among the twenty-seven breeding species were Acadian flycatchers, singing their abrupt song like a hiccup in the early morning woods. The veery, a bird I’d never heard when I was growing up in southern Illinois, sang along the slope where the beech-maple forest merged with the bog forest of birch, pine, and ash. All thrush songs are liquid and melodious, but the downward spiraling song of the veery has a remarkable quality, as though the bird were singing in a cave. In the second year of my censusing, I noticed painted marks on trees in the woods. I talked with the owner and mentioned what a nice woods it was. He agreed: “Yes, it’s about the best one still left around.” Most of the large trees were cut early that summer, and not long afterward, the bulldozers came. Now, streets curve around the little island, and substantial houses sit each on its own lot landscaped with yews, Pfitzers, and spruces. The vireos, Acadian flycatchers, veeries, ovenbirds, cerulean warblers are gone, though there are robins, mourning doves, and grackles. This woods was merely the first of the natural lands whose loss to development I’ve witnessed since I came to Michigan. Many others have disappeared, and farmland has gone too, more acres than natural lands, because there was more to start with. Robert Frost speculated on whether the world would end in fire or ice. Perhaps the more likely choice is between parking lots and lawns. Asphalt is the more destructive, but bluegrass would also suffice. The term that has come to be used for this whole process is sprawl—in earlier times...

Share