I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours on May 31st and a full day on June 1st 2021 to further explore the forest and see how it had transformed since a month prior. The Hickory Question One thing I wanted to do was to further understand the species of Hickory. Close inspection of the leaves of a couple of medium sized trees with reachable branches allowed me to associate the leaf type with the bark type. It turns out that the leaves with hairy / scaly undersides and rachis are associated with the trees with the tighter bark, and the hairless leaves are associated with the trees with the slightly shaggy bark. I came to the conclusion that the hairy species may be a Mockernut Hickory (Carya tomentosa). The huge leaves and a couple of close-ups of the undersides are shown below. The hairs on the undersides actually look like tiny scales.
The tight bark is composed of interwoven flat topped ridges.
I found a huge specimen deeper in the forest, but most likely this one is actually situated slightly outside my property, in an adjacent lot. I can be more certain about this identification in the autumn when I will get a chance to see the nuts which, for Mockernut Hickory, should be large and thick-husked.
I think the hickory trees with the leaves with hairless undersides and the slightly shaggy bark are either Pignut Hickories (Carya glabra) or Red Hickories (Carya ovalis), or both. Red Hickories are closely related to Pignut Hickories, and I found indeed a few old husks lying around in the forest that were somewhat pear-shaped. Below are pictures of a leaf with a smooth underside on an accessible branch of a medium-sized tree, and its bark. This tree could either be a Pignut Hickory, or a Red Hickory where the bark is too young to start flaking.
The Red Oak Question This forest is certainly filled with Northern Red Oaks, but it had been challenging to ascertain whether there are any Black Oaks (Quercus velutina) or Scarlet Oaks (Quercus coccinea) which are both supposedly common in this area. The closest candidate to a Black Oak that I had found so far was an immense tree with very dark bark, and underneath it on the ground, a sheared-off twig with several leaves attached. These leaves did not look like typical Northern Red Oak leaves - they were asymmetrical, shiny, leathery, deeply lobed, and with small tufts of hair in the vein axils, somewhat characteristic of Black Oak leaves. Northern Red Oak leaves are supposed to be symmetrical, dull, and less deeply lobed. I may have been convinced that this was a Black Oak but the bark did not seem blocky enough and thus seemed more like a Northern Red Oak. So these leaves could have just been sun-leaves from a Northern Red Oak which are very different from the shade leaves I had been finding growing close to the forest floor. Or perhaps these leaves came from a different tree. I later determined that this tree is definitely a Northern Red Oak (the vertical stripes on the trunk give it away). Anyway, some pictures below of the tree itself and a couple of the leaves.
One of the closest candidates to a Scarlet Oak that I have been able to locate is this specimen, up a very steep slope by the side of the access road that runs parallel with my forest. The canopy leaves are very deeply divided and with fewer lobes than Northern Red Oak.
I found another probable Scarlet Oak on the NW corner of the property, mixed in with some scattered White Oaks. Again, the leaves in the canopy were more deeply divided with less lobes than Northern Red Oak. I had to crawl through a thick Mountain Laurel thicket to reach it, and in the process happened to stumble across a corner pin (orange painted rebar) marking the NW corner of Lot A, which I had been searching for for a while.
The Black Locusts are not Dead! The last three times I visited this forest, I was convinced that all the larger Black Locust trees (Robinia pseudoacacia) were dead. This was due to bracket fungi growing from the bark on most of them, and very limited branching in the canopy. However, during this visit, I realized that, although many are indeed dead, several of them are very much alive, and some of them are thriving. In general, they have very narrow crowns reaching high up into small gaps in the forest canopy, and hard to see. The bark of this tree is very distinct from the other trees in this forest - deeply furrowed or ropey, and paler brown than the other species.
The first picture below is a rare occurrence of a reasonable sized Black Locust growing at the edge of a slightly more open area. The next picture is the more typical view - the leaves are barely visible, high in the forest canopy.
A better way to see the canopy of the Black Locust tree in this forest is from above by drone.... the picture below is a close-up of a Black Locust I spotted in the forest canopy in the title picture of this page.
White Oaks located During my last visits I was only able to spot a couple of White Oaks, by drone. This time I found a handful by foot, most of them in the NW corner of Lot A, near the top of a south facing ridge, a couple of them quite large. The lower bark is blocky and only shows the characteristic flaky bark in the higher branches.
Sourwoods with Leaves This forest is full of Sourwood trees (Oxydendrum arboreum). In early May they were bare or just starting to leaf out - by early June they were fully leafed out. These trees are usually, but not always, crooked and leaning.
The leaf has spikes of white hairs along the central vein and blunt serrations around the edges.
The Search for Mountain Silverbell I have seen large specimens of Mountain Silverbell (Halesia tetraptera var. monticola) in Great Smoky Mountains National Park and find them beautiful in spring when they are covered in small white flowers. In May I only found a couple of small saplings of this tree in my forest, but no large specimens. During my day in the forest on June 1st, I found several more saplings near the southern boundary, and they started to get a little bigger as I explored a slope rising north from the boundary. Just before reaching a Mountain Laurel thicket, and after a false alarm with a reasonable sized tree that turned out to be a Blackgum, I finally found a small / medium sized Mountain Silverbell. The bark is unmistakable, spit into multi-toned flaky plates, looking like it has been slightly singed by fire. Unfortunately, it looks like the top broke off this particular tree.
High Blooms of the Tulip Trees In early May the Tulip Trees were not yet blooming, although the green flower buds were swollen. On June 1st they were in full bloom. These yellow flowers were at the very tops of the 100ft+ trees so only appearing as yellow spots from below, if at all. They were revealed in all their glory via drone.
Mountain Laurel, Cancer Root, Box Turtle, and Snake This time some of the Mountain Laurels were flowering - I think these flowers are even more attractive than the Rhododendrons I found in early May.
On the forest floor, there is also an abundance of strange looking parasitic plants which grow from the roots of oaks, called Cancer-Root or Squawroot (thanks to a friend for identifying my pictures, after my fruitless internet search). The first picture is from early May and the second picture is from June 1st.
The small stream in the SW corner of the lot turned out to be a spring, emerging directly from the ground. Near the source I spotted a box-turtle and a northern water snake about 5ft from each other.
The Forest from Above Sent up the drone and took some great shots from above the forest.
Inside the Forest On arriving at the forest on a bright sunny afternoon, it looked especially dark and foreboding inside, almost black and seemingly impenetrable. However, once past the dense undergrowth at the perimeter, it was delightful to be inside.
There is a particularly impressive Northern Red Oak on the ridge.
The ridge also has a decent sized Sweet Birch.
A large Tulip Tree growing near the southern border.
A large White Oak in the center and a very large Chestnut Oak behind it, in the NW corner of the lot. The bark of the Chestnut Oak is uncharacteristic, but the leaves are unmistakable.
I have not found any large Sassafras trees yet, but plenty of smaller ones. The pictures below are of a healthy sapling at the end of the access road.
New Trees from Adjacent Lot B: Cucumber Magnolia, Black Gum, Fraser Magnolia In 2021, I closed on an adjacent ~10 acre lot which brought my total forest acreage to 20.27 acres (or 82,030 square meters, or 882,961 square feet). I have not explored Lot B much, as about 80% of the area is covered in a thick undergrowth of Mountain Laurel / Rhododendron bushes. Lot B adjoins to the North of my first lot (Lot A), slopes up northwards to a ridge at about 3,150 feet in elevation, and then slopes down again, ending up at a small stream and a patch of more level forest with less impenetrable undergrowth. I explored its periphery briefly during my spring and summer visits and found some interesting features: (1) At least one enormous Black Gum tree, probably among the biggest I have ever seen. (2) A mountain stream which is more than a trickle (3) A couple of large Cucumber Magnolias, which don't seem to be present on Lot A (4) Probably the largest Fraser Magnolia I have seen so far
Below are two pictures of a giant Blackgum on the ridge.
A couple of pictures of the two Cucumber Magnolias (from my spring visit). Trunk circumferences at chest-height are 4 ft 5 inches, and 4 ft.
The leaf of the Cucumber Magnolia
...and the huge Fraser Magnolia (picture from my spring visit)