Sweetgum: Embedded Mysteries of a Tree and Its Rare Paneling

A tree can be many things for many people: beautiful or a nuisance, its wood low-grade or its grain profound. A sweetgum tree is all these things for me. This post will give you a tour through sweetgum's beauties and annoyances, including its surprising use as high-end wood paneling in the 1920s and 30s.

First, regard the beauty. What other tree offers such a panoply of colors in the fall? Yellows, reds, purples, orange--sweetgum does it all. True, those powerful colors are only generated by trees that receive adequate sunlight, but there is some wonderful, creative chemistry going on there. Carotenes, xanthophylls, anthocyanins--these are the words that exercise the tongue while stirring curiosity about the possible purpose behind all that color.

There was a time in my life, during my extended undergraduate career, when I acquired a fascination with chemistry, specifically organic chemistry--the chemistry of carbon, the element upon which life is built. While premeds labored through the lectures with high anxiety for the grade they might receive, I was there with a love of subject and a hunger for knowledge.

In decades since, and not talking about premeds here, I've noticed that people who are disconnected from nature tend to be intimidated by nature's complexity. In order to feel comfortable, they surround themselves with a simplified, static nature of mowed lawn and trimmed shrubs. But for those of us who love nature, its complexity is appealing--a richness that rewards endless inquiry and exploration. I remember a bus ride through New England long ago, looking out the window and thrilling at the thought of all the chemistry going on in the forested hillsides we were passing by. 

At the same time, it's hard not to be annoyed by the sweetgum's "gum balls" scattered on the ground, prickly and destabilizing underfoot.

Overabundance, too, can turn affection into surfeit. In the piedmont, stretching from central New Jersey down through North Carolina, sweetgum sprouts like a weed in areas we seek to maintain as meadows. Managing remnant piedmont prairies at Penny's Bend in Durham, NC, required mowing or prescribed burns to keep the rampant growth of sweetgum seedlings from smothering rare wildflowers. Grasslands in NJ often require similar intervention.

At least near water, one natural check on sweetgum's rampancy is beavers, who apparently love them for their inner bark laden with sweet gum--the liquid amber found in its latin name, Liquidambar styraciflua. This photo was taken during a walk at Plainsboro Preserve ten years ago. The beavers' preference was so strong, and the sweetgums so numerous, that we saw no other species of tree being chewed upon.

The vexing ubiquity in early succession that I've encountered in the eastern piedmont contrasts strikingly with my experience with sweetgum years prior in Ann Arbor, MI. Being a more southern species, the tree's native range doesn't extend into Michigan, so it's no surprise that a horticultural colleague at the University of Michigan proudly planted a sweetgum as something rare and wonderful, with its fall color and craggy winged stems. 

The sweetgum's wood, too, generates conflicting impressions. It rots quickly if left on the ground, is hard to split, and proves insubstantial as firewood. 

And yet, fifty years ago, my family moved into a beautiful house in Ann Arbor that was paneled in the most appealing way with sweetgum. The wood had a rich, warm glow--clearly a winner for paneling, but I have not knowingly encountered it since.

Then in 2023, we discovered a piece of wood from a packing crate bearing the name Demarest and Co on a wall inside the Veblen House. While researching the Demarest name, I came across an article about American Gumwood. In 1926, the Bureau of the Hardwood Manufacturer's Institute in Memphis, TN was promoting its new booklet: Beautiful American Gumwood: A superb native hardwood for interior woodwork and furniture.  

It took awhile to figure out that they were talking about sweetgum, not another eastern native called black gum. As a friend pointed out, calling sweetgum "gumwood" also risks confusion with the eucalyptus native to Australia, known as gum tree.

The pamphlet begins by describing America's great forests as being our destiny to harvest. I've included long quotes to get a sense of the rhapsodic language.

The story of American gum wood dates back many centuries. Nature requires many years of favorable growth to produce a masterpiece, and in the vast stretches of our southland forests, extending from the Atlantic to the Mississippi valley and beyond, the quiet work of building cell and fibre was going on long before DeSoto and his valiant men first beheld in wonder the mighty "Father of Waters." What a marvel of creation, when from soil, moisture, and sunshine this fine wood came into being, now to be transformed by the hand of man into products that contribute to his well being and enjoyment.

By the mid-1920s, apparently, that enthusiastic harvest had led to more preferred species growing scarce:

Lumbermen have long known gumwood, yet vast tracts have been left standing while other interspersed hardwoods of widely varying species which happened to be wanted at the time, have been cut out. 

Overlooked in the past, sweetgum now stood ripe for the taking.

The tree itself, as it displays its lofty and graceful symmetry, is one of the glories of our native forests. Its sturdy proportions are enhanced by masses of scarlet, orange, and yellow leaves, which change, as the summer wanes. In size, it is heroic; one hundred feet to one hundred fifty feet in height, with a diameter of four or five feet, is not unusual. And some idea of the extent of growth of this important tree may be gained from the fact that with the exception of the oaks, gumwood exceeds all other hardwoods.

If sweetgums could read, they might have felt deeply flattered, but also be wondering if their tombstones were being readied and inscribed. And yet, one cannot be fully dismissive towards tree harvest--we who live in wooden houses and keep ourselves warm through the winter with fossil fuels rather than renewable energy from wood. 

This photo in the pamphlet looks reminiscent of the warm glow of the paneling I experienced fifty years ago, but doesn't capture the complexity and variety of mysteriously generated grains that sweetgum is capable of.

As the pamphlet explains:

Now no wood has more wonderfully interesting patterns than figured gumwood, but it is one of Nature's riddles to account for them. The pattern is not produced in the usual manner by quarter-sawing, although this process will improve any figure if it is already there. All one can say is that some trees have pronounced figured wood, others varying degrees of pattern, and many which show but slight indications of it. Undoubtedly the condition of the soil and the location of the individual tree affect in some mysterious way the structure of the wood. Only when the tree is felled, does the grain show itself as plain or figured. That is what makes the gumwood tree so interesting; it is like finding a }ewel, the value of which depends upon hidden qualities brought out by cutting and polishing.

The quizzled, tangled grain that makes sweetgum hard to split can bedazzle when milled.

The figure ramifies through the wood at random, obeying no known laws. Gumwood logs will each display differing patterns, some subdued, some intricate and ornate.

Go forth, then, dear readers, and if you happen upon a sweetgum along a trail at Herrontown Woods or elsewhere in Princeton, big yet not as big as the virgin timbers the pamphlet describes, know that you are gazing upon a mystery of creation, whose creative chemistry is not yet fully understood, and whose sometimes plain, sometimes profound grain is impossible to predict from one tree to another.

There's one more passage in the pamphlet that helped me understand why my family home in Ann Arbor was paneled with sweetgum. The 1926 pamphlet may have influenced the couple, Walter and Martha Colby, who built the house in 1933, but they may also have encountered the paneling during their many travels in Europe. The pamphlet explains:

Europe has long recognized the exquisite beauty and texture of American gumwood. In fact, England, France, Italy, Spain, and other countries were first to recognize its fine working qualities. In America, however, its light was for a time hid under a bushel, so far as public acquaintance with its true worth is concerned. But now, due to growing appreciation of its merit, the valuable products of the gumwood tree stand forth proudly as "American gumwood,'* nothing else -so named, and so prized. The old adage, "a prophet is not without honor, save in his own country," no longer applies, if we may adjust this metaphor to a tree.

The Many Things a Snow Can Do

Skiers must be happy with the snow that looks like it will stick around all week, but even if you don't take to skiing, a snowstorm like the one we just had presents all sorts of opportunities. 

There's the chance for a no-salt collaboration with nature: scrape as much snow as possible off the driveway in the morning, then 

let the sun do the rest. 

While covering some things up, snow makes other things more visible, like the form of this young blackgum tree at the Botanical Art Garden in Herrontown Woods. 

Clinging snow highlights last year's tulip-shaped blooms high up in a tulip tree. 

It makes white pine trees mischievous, sending snowballs my way as a breeze shakes the snow off the top of the tree. Ever get in a snowball fight with a tree? The tree will win every time.

Snow makes a botanical art garden more art than garden, turning trees into sculptures. 

Clinging snow also highlights the shape of a coppiced elderberry bush. Cut down last year because it was too big for its location, it sprouted lots of shoots that can be harvested later this winter to make "live stakes" to plant where we want new elderberry bushes to grow. 

Snow adds frosting to aging rootballs. We left most of the fallen trees in the Botanical Art Garden as art and habitat. Insects need wood for food and lodging. Come to think of it, the drop in insect numbers in recent years may be due in part to a lack of extended snow cover in the winter--cover that in the past insulated them from extremes of temperature. 

Snow is also really good at recycling light in the light-poor winter, and providing clues as to where you're losing heat through your roof. 

It's pretty good for skiing and sledding, too.

Training Deer to Eat MORE Japanese Knotweed

This post represents a first for PrincetonNatureNotes.org, in that it is written by someone other than me. Mark Nowotarski lives in Stamford, CT, and contacted me more than a year ago after discovering a 2014 post I had written entitled Training Deer to Eat Invasives. Independently, he had begun foraging the Japanese knotweed growing in his backyard (young shoots are edible) and noticed that deer began browsing it as well. Released from any co-evolved limits on its growth, Japanese knotweed has spread across the US and globally, displacing native species and overwhelming any human efforts to counter it. Unlike people, deer are 24/7 land managers. Their appetites decide what can and cannot grow in our yards and woodlands. Training deer to eat a relatively edible species like Japanese knotweed could conceivably, in some situations, relieve browsing pressure on the native plant species deer tend to prefer. As the deer in Mark's backyard continued to consume young sprouts of Japanese knotweed, he sent me photos and text that I incorporated into a post a year ago.

This past growing season, Mark expanded his experiments and observations, exploring how a willingness to browse Japanese knotweed could pass from one generation of deer to another. It's still unclear how much of an impact deer browsing could have on the spread of Japanese knotweed, but it's an interesting inquiry. Along the way, we learn about deer family dynamics, the potential grazability of another uber-invasive, porcelainberry, and even the possibility that deer saliva affects the chemistry of plants. Thanks to Mark for sharing his work with us.

Training Deer to Eat MORE Japanese Knotweed

By Mark Nowotarski

In our post last year, “Training Deer to Eat Invasive Plants – Japanese Knotweed”, I shared observations of white tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) browsing a patch of Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica) in my backyard in Stamford CT. The local deer had learned to browse the knotweed continuously from spring to fall resulting in drastically stunted canes. This had allowed numerous native plants to recolonize what had previously been an invasive monoculture. Steve and I speculated that perhaps if we cut the fully mature canes in other nearby patches of knotweed (i.e., coppicing), new shoots would grow and the deer local to those patches might browse the new shoots as well. I’m happy to report that that strategy at least partially worked.

Deer Raising Fawns on Knotweed

Before we talk about manual coppicing, let’s talk about how it’s occurring naturally. This first video, shot in May in my backyard, shows you what deer browsing spring knotweed shoots looks like.

A buck with new antlers approaches several knotweed shoots (Fig. 1). He gives a quick sniff, bites the top portions off, and eats them. The cut stems that are left behind are about 2 feet tall.

This particular buck may well be one of the fawns raised on knotweed in my backyard in the prior summer of 2024. Does and fawns form a family group when the fawns are born in late spring. They normally stay together and browse in the doe’s home range for a full year before dispersing shortly before the doe, if she’s pregnant, gives birth to the next year’s fawns. This is how last year’s fawns learn to eat the new shoots of knotweed that sprout in the early spring. The early spring browsing by last year’s fawns coppices the knotweed so that when it sends out new shoots at a convenient two foot height, the new shoots will be available for the new fawns born in late spring.

This year, our doe was, in fact, pregnant and sometime in June, she gave birth to triplets. Triplets are relatively rare (1 in 10 pregnancies) and indicate that the doe is well fed. By July, the doe and the new set of fawns were out browsing the knotweed previously coppiced by last year’s fawns before they dispersed.

In the foreground of Fig. 2 you can also see several native plants growing up through the coppiced knotweed. On the left is Canadian goldenrod (Solidago canadensis). On the right is Northern lady fern (Athyrium angustum) and sensitive fern (Onoclea sensibilis). The deer would occasionally take a nibble of the natives, but they concentrated primarily on the knotweed. 

This suggests that some of the native species less appealing to deer could begin to coexist with browsed stands of knotweed. I plan on trying this strategy next summer and will keep you posted.

I had set up a motion activated trail-cam to monitor how often, and for how long, the doe and fawns browsed the knotweed over the summer. They returned 4-5 times a week and browsed 5-15 minutes for each visit. This lasted from when I set the camera up in July all the way through late October when the knotweed senesced (i.e., dropped leaves and turned brown). So far this winter, the doe and fawns are still stopping by several times a week. In late October an 8-point buck also stopped by in the middle of the night. After a bit of hide-and-seek with the doe in the knotweed, they mated. We can now hopefully look forward to new fawns this spring.

The cycle of fawns being raised on knotweed and then dispersing in the late spring to new territories may be an important mechanism for the spread of knotweed browsing by deer. The question then becomes, can we spread it even further by coppicing canes ourselves.

Expanding Knotweed Browse with Manual Coppicing

At the same time I was monitoring the deer in my backyard I also set out this past year to explore the knotweed stands in our local parks and land trust sites to see if I could find additional evidence of deer browse. About half of the stands I inspected showed signs of early spring browsing. About half of the spring-browsed sites also showed continued summer browsing. Several of the summer-browsed sites showed a significant expansion of the browsed area versus last year. This was evidenced by areas with tall old canes from last year but only shortened canes this year. The deer hadn’t eaten the knotweed last year and it grew to full height. This year, however, they started in the spring and continued through the summer and fall keeping it short.

To try out the manual coppicing experiment, I selected four sites where there was either no early spring browsing or where there was some spring browsing but no rebrowsing of the new shoots emerging from the coppiced canes. Two of the sites did not show any rebrowsing of the coppiced canes. These sites either had no spring browsing or very scattered spring browsing. The knotweed threw out new shoots which grew to full height despite clear evidence (e.g. footprints) of deer wandering by. Apparently, the deer near those stands had not been sufficiently acclimated to knotweed as a source of food.

In the other two sites, however, the deer did resume browsing the new shoots thrown out by the coppiced canes. These sites had heavy spring browsing and well-worn deer trails right next to the knotweed stands.

The next set of figures shows the history of my coppicing experiment at one of the sites where the deer resumed browsing. 

Fig. 3 is a photo taken in April. It shows what an early spring browsed knotweed shoot looks like. It also shows a new shoot emerging from the cane a few weeks after the initial browse.

Unlike my backyard, however, these new shoots were not rebrowsed. By July they had grown to full height. This, along with the well worn deer trail right next to the knotweed stand, made it an ideal location for the coppicing experiment.

The next photo (Fig. 4) shows a section of the knotweed stand where I cut a 6 foot wide by 12 foot long section of the full grown knotweed canes to about 2 feet off of the ground. 

I cut the canes at a bias so that when I inspected them later on, I could tell whether a cut cane was my doing (angle cut) or a deer browse (horizontal cut). Cuttings were placed where they could not resprout or be washed downstream.

A few weeks later I went back to inspect and, much to my delight, the deer were browsing the new shoots emerging from the manually coppiced canes (Fig. 5). 

Where I had cut the canes, the ends were frayed and the canes turned black down to the next joint. Where the deer browsed the canes, however, the ends appeared to be sealed off and even flared out as if from accumulated water pressure coming up through the knotweed. The canes below the deer browse remained green. It makes me wonder if there is something in the deer saliva that causes a deer browse wound to heal quickly. Perhaps knotweed has evolved this way from browsing by sika deer (Cervus nippon) in their home range in Japan.

Once I confirmed rebrowsing of the new knotweed shoots at this particular site, I set up another trail cam to see what sort of deer were coming by. I half expected another family of a doe teaching fawns to eat knotweed.

 

Imagine my surprise when this magnificent 14-point buck showed up (Fig. 6). It wasn’t a family group. It was a bachelor group with up to four bucks coming through at various times.

This buck and several others came by 4-5 times a week to browse not only the knotweed, but the invasive porcelain berry (Ampelopsis glandulosa) growing over the area in the foreground and hanging off of the uncoppiced knotweed canes in the background. In fact, I suspect that the porcelain berry is the primary reason the deer were there. The knotweed was just an additional food source.

The bucks suddenly disappeared in mid-September after they shed their velvet, no doubt to pursue does during the rutting season. I have not seen them since except for one poor fellow with a missing antler. Given how well-worn the deer trail is, however, I expect to see at least some of them again in the early spring.

Deer in a given area learning to eat Japanese knotweed appears to be a multi-year process. It starts with initial occasional browsing of early spring shoots. The spring shoots are then browsed more intensely in the ensuing years. Eventually the deer start browsing the new shoots growing from the spring browsed canes. If the knotweed is in a doe’s home range, then she starts to raise her young on knotweed and then the process spreads as the fawns raised on knotweed go on to establish their own home ranges.

If you try your own coppicing experiments, please let us know how they work out. I’ve joined a project on iNaturalist called “North American Knotweed Ecology Project” where we can share our observations. iNaturalist is a great tool for finding knotweed stands in your area. If you look carefully in the knotweed photos, particularly those taken in April and May, you can often see a deer-browsed shoot here and there. Sites with browsed shoots would be a likely candidates for coppicing experiments.

In the future I hope to learn more about the general phenomenon of deer adjusting their diets to consume invasive plants; how this affects browsing pressure on native plants; and what impact it might have on the deer themselves. The deer won’t solve all of the problems with invasives, but they may very well be an important part of the solutions.

- Mark Nowotarski

Editor's note: A related initiative is the effort to train cattle to eat invasive species. A woman named Kathy Voth appears to be a leader of this approach. 

Year-End Update on Herrontown Woods - 2025

If you appreciate this blog, one way to give back is to support the work of the Friends of Herrontown Woods (FOHW), the nonprofit that we founded in 2013 to make the preserve usable again after long neglect. Our group now manages trails and habitat on 230 acres of municipally owned land in Princeton, and rely on donor support to pay our expenses. It's been a great year, and I'd like to share some of our accomplishments. Each donation provides support and inspiration for our work to restore habitat and history at Princeton's first nature preserve.

GOOD NEWS FOR PRINCETON'S SALAMANDERS

Herrontown Woods' large size, clean water, and wet terrain make it a haven for amphibians. The Princeton Salamander Crossing Brigade, founded by FOHW board member Inge Regan, is in its third year of helping hundreds of salamanders and frogs safely cross the road during their spring migration. 30 participants include experts and beginners, Princeton High School students and faculty, professors and community volunteers. A lively dialogue via whatsapp continues yearround. 2026 will mark a breakthrough, as Princeton municipality has agreed to close the road during the rainy nights in early spring when the amphibians are on the move. The initiative was written up in the Town Topics, TapIntoPrinceton, and the Daily Princetonian.

THE BOTANICAL ART GARDEN ("BARDEN")

Visitors to Herrontown Woods often describe it as "magical" and "unique." The award-winning Barden contributes a lot to that impression, having evolved since 2017 through a merging of many talents and visions. We keep adding native plants--some 160 species thus far--and have done surprisingly well at catching the weeds before they can spread. Kids love the charismatic wood frogs in the spring and the green frogs that take up residence in the summer. On the first Sunday morning of each month, we host a May's Cafe next to the gazebo, with coffee, tea, and baked treats. 

SURPRISING SUCCESS WITH INVASIVE SPECIES

People are used to bad news about invasive species, but by being proactive we have largely vanquished many kinds of invasive plants that plague other preserves. In particular, through early detection and rapid response, we continue to protect Herrontown Woods and Autumn Hill Reservation from the uber-invasive lesser celandine. We also saved many trees by slaying a giant "wisteria monster" around Veblen House, and more recently have subdued another, nearly 3 acres in size, over near the main parking lot. Timely intervention is also protecting the preserves from Japanese angelica tree, bush honeysuckle, jetbead, porcelainberry, garlic mustard, mugwort, Chinese bushclover, and a new invasive shrub/tree so little known that it lacks a clear name. Late summer intervention is helping limit the spread of stiltgrass. All of this has been achieved through steady, incremental effort year after year by our volunteers and paid interns.

A COMBACK STORY FOR NATIVE SHRUBS

Native shrubs have a hard time of it in Princeton preserves. The combination of deep shade, deer browsing, and competition from invasive species has caused many types of native shrubs to literally lay low. The town's deer management program has helped, but pinxter azaleas, Hearts a' Bustin', and shadbush in Herrontown Woods still persist only in miniature, unable to flower. By transplanting some of these to sunnier spots in the Botanical Art Garden and caging them to protect them from deer, we are showing the public a beauty and vitality that had previously been suppressed. We're giving other native shrubs the sunlight and protection they need as well: alternate-leaved dogwood, silky dogwood, elderberry, buttonbush, and swamp rose.

A FLOURISHING WET MEADOW

Another successful FOHW project is managing the wet meadow at nearby Smoyer Park. Fed by runoff from the parking lot, it's actually a lowly detention basin converted by Partners for Fish and Wildlife long ago to native meadow through our initiative. Girl scouts had fun adding wildflower seed collected locally. A meadow is vulnerable to takeover by invasive plants like mugwort, Chinese bushclover, Canada thistle, and crown vetch, but strategically timed work each year to discourage those species has paid off. Each year the work has gotten easier as the weeds become fewer and fewer. Natives flourish if given a chance.

MAINTAINING AND IMPROVING TRAILS

FOHW was able to coordinate rapid response to clear trails and grounds after major storms this year. Winter is actually a great time to scope out routes for new trails. This year, we created a Black/White trail--to serve as an intro to Herrontown Woods for those entering the preserve from Princeton Community Village--and extended the Blue Trail down through the  "Valley of the Giants," where there are some particularly large tulip trees and oaks. Over the past three years, we've also been shifting some trails at Autumn Hill Reservation to drier, more open ground. Meanwhile, the long, locally sourced boardwalk extending from the main parking lot up to Veblen House has been getting rave reviews. We call it the Voulevarde, because it was crafted by chainsaw virtuoso Victorino, and leads to Veblen House.

NATURE WALKS

In addition to periodic nature walks by Steve Hiltner, Sarah Roberts, and others, FOHW offered forest bathing walks this year, led by Rich Collins of the Friendly Territory. Steve continued to lead walks through the Princeton Adult School on Herrontown history, ecology, and geology.

EVENTS

Along with our ongoing traditions of hosting the Lunar New Year, Earthday, the Veblen Birthday Bash, and other events, we had for the first time dancing, as part of a festive performance of Celtic and folk music by the Chivalrous Crickets.

COMMUNITY OUTREACH

FOHW is in its second year of collaboration with Princeton High School, providing expertise and mentoring as we work with Jim Smirk's environmental science students to manage two detention basins for native diversity. Students learn ecological analysis techniques while doing hands on work to weed out invasive plants. These wetlands conveniently provide complex native habitats on school grounds for study. Focus in 2026 will be restoring ecological health to one of the basins, the Ecolab Wetland, which was disrupted by necessary infrastructure repairs completed earlier this year.

GARDENING CLASSES AT MAY'S GARDEN

May's Garden--the restored and now expanded fenced-in garden site where Elizabeth Veblen once grew her vegetables and flowers--completed its third year under the inspiring leadership of master gardener Mathilde Burlion. Assisted by Andrew Thornton, Mathilde led many Grow Little Gardener workshops for young families. 

HERRONTOWN WOODS COMMUNITY COLLAGE

Conceived by artist and board member Hope Van Cleaf, the Herrontown Woods Community Collage is modeled after the mural in the Princeton Public Library. Hope has been conducting workshops in the Barden and elsewhere, with each participant contributing their artistry. The individually created tiles will be brought together on a wall in 2026 at Veblen House. 

SPRUCING UP VEBLEN HOUSE AND COTTAGE

New board members Ben Schaffer and Derek Reamy have been instrumental in organizing and sprucing up the buildings and grounds, and adding momentum to renovations. 

AN INSIDE-OUT MUSEUM

The windows and walls of the House and Cottage are being used to tell the many stories of the buildings and the fascinating people who called them home. The story of the Veblens' extraordinary lives and contributions were the first installation. To be added are the stories of the Whiton-Stuarts--the original owners who sold the house to the Veblens in 1941--and the small-holder farmers who built the 1875 farm cottage. Much research has been published at VeblenHouse.org.

COLLABORATIONS WITH PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 

Visits by Princeton University students noticeably increased in 2025. Ecology professor Andy Dobson again brought his popular undergraduate ecology class to Herrontown Woods for a tour.  Graduate students from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs offered spirited help during workdays. Members of the university's Princeton Birding Society led our Backyard Birdcount. We also hosted visits and workdays through Outdoor Action for incoming freshmen.

STEWARDSHIP INTERNS

FOHW is grateful to Green Matters for having funded summer internships in 2024 and '25. Interns Ninfa and Moss worked through the summer, keeping trails clear, cutting invasive species, and helping with events. Moss headed back to college in the fall, while Ninfa will continue to work part-time at Herrontown Woods through the winter.

GRATITUDE YOGA

We are also very grateful to Gemma Ferrell for continuing to conduct her popular Saturday morning Gratitude Yoga classes during the summer and fall on the grounds next to Veblen House. The classes are donation-based, and all donations go to FOHW. 

VALUING, RESEARCHING, AND PRESERVING HERRONTOWN'S RICH CULTURAL HISTORY

Oswald Veblen's extraordinary career has been gaining increasing attention since FOHW president Steve Hiltner began researching and posting about the Veblens at VeblenHouse.org in 2010. On Sept. 4 this year, Steve teamed up with historian Cindy Srnka to present a talk at the Princeton Public Library entitled "How Oswald Veblen Quietly Created Einstein's Princeton." Drawing a standing room only crowd, the talk described how Veblen played an outsized role in creating the Princeton that Einstein ultimately chose to be his new home. 

Also in 2025, an online exhibit by the Institute for Advanced Study credited Oswald Veblen for his leading role in aiding displaced scholars in the 1930s and '40s. And Princeton University named the South Terrace at Prospect House in Veblen's honor.

THANK YOU TO THE FOHW BOARD, VOLUNTEERS, AND SUPPORTERS

So much goes into sustaining a nature preserve and the nonprofit that cares for it. As we bring our mix of tradition and innovation into 2026, I'm tremendously grateful to our board, volunteers, and supporters who contribute so much meaning, community, and all-round positive energy to this charmed place in Princeton. 

Playing the Healer of Nature

One of PrincetonNatureNotes' sister blogs is FOHWard.org, specific to our work and play at Herrontown Woods, the fabled preserve that our nonprofit Friends of Herrontown Woods takes care of. Posts range from the celebratory to the comic, as in when we intervened to scuttle an attempted "theft" of a portapotty. 

For those who imagine cutting invasive species to be dull work, a recent post on that blog, Stewardship and Discovery at Herrontown Woods, might be of particular interest. It captures how elements of beauty, effort, strategy,  serendipity, and discovery can come together to make a stewardship session a rich and satisfying experience. 

Cutting nonnative invasive shrubs, we are essentially deer with loppers. Deer move through the forest looking for something edible to browse. They generally leave the nonnative shrubs uneaten, and so to prevent those nonnative, inedible shrubs from taking over, we move through the forest with our loppers with an eye for "browsing" the nonnatives, to balance out the deer's persistently lopsided appetites. Unlike deer, we aren't in the woods 24/7, and so to have a lasting effect it's necessary to treat the cut stem so it won't grow back. By releasing native plants from competitive pressure, over time we make the forest more edible for deer and other wildlife, essentially expanding the acreage of functional habitat in Princeton. 

Some would say that humans are an invasive species, so who are we to presume we can make a positive difference. But if we can be considered invasive, we are also equipped to play the role of stewards, to see the consequences of our invasiveness and act to heal the altered earth. As we move deer-like through the forest, our appetite is not an extractive search for food but for restoring balance. To abdicate on that role would be to deny what it means to be human.

I don't know if deer can appreciate beauty or serendipity as they browse, but we can. In Herrontown Woods in autumn, each leaf reveals its inner color. Each boulder is a work of nature's art, mottled with varied shapes of lichen and moss, like the mottled skin of whales navigating the oceans. To steward a preserve is, of course, a considerable task and responsibility, but in another way, working with nature is a great privilege, allowing us to realize our highest role, as stewards, appreciators, and healers of nature's creations.

Encounters With Old-Growth Forest

Ever since attending the induction of Rutgers' Meckler Woods into the Old-Growth Forest Network, I've wondered whether any woodlands closer by could be rightfully considered old-growth. Rare is the woods that was never logged. The forests we typically encounter are of more recent vintage, having mostly grown up from abandoned farm fields. There's a valley at Herrontown Woods with giant tulip trees whose massive roots have lifted the ground around them, as if perched on a pedestal of their own making. Might these and the nearby big oaks and hickories meet the standard? And what exactly is the standard for deciding? Below is an account of encounters with old-growth, old stuff, and different forms of timelessness during recent travels.

When we headed north from Princeton to attend the wedding of a young couple in upstate NY, we had no idea that the theme of the trip would turn out to be old stuff and old growth. On the way up, we stayed overnight with friends whose house is filled with old furniture--a grandfather clock, of course, but also what may as well be called grandfather chairs that had been inherited or adopted from the curb, valued for their uniqueness and style regardless of how practical they might be. Each chair around the dining room table, each lamp, vase, and bureau, had a story behind it. A crank telephone perched on the wall in the kitchen, ready to call up the whisperings of distant ancestors. I found great comfort in this approach to stocking a house, even if a chair's quirky ergonomics didn't conform to modern expectations.

The next morning, we walked through Borden's Pond, a second growth woods whose scattered "wolf" trees and sedge meadows also have a story to tell. When the area was logged long ago to make pasture, farmers left a few scattered trees as shade for the livestock. Those trees, lacking any competition, with sun all around, grew thick lateral branches, so different in shape from the straight, younger trees--the "second growth"-- that grew up after the pasture was abandoned. This can't be called old-growth, I suppose, but it certainly has individual trees that go way way back.

Conveniently, the route to the wedding took us by Landis Arboretum, which too had some craggy old trees, standing next to the farmhouse. In the woods beyond, though, was an area declared to be old-growth, with a series of signs explaining how to distinguish old-growth from the second growth forest all around.

Don't expect big trees only, but a few big trees lingering in a mixed age stand. Around six old trees per acre is typical. In this photo, only one of the trees can be considered old growth, in this case a hemlock extending back 250 years. 

Really old trees lose their symmetry, with thick upper limbs and tops broken off by storms endured over the centuries, creating what's called a "stag-headed top." Look for mounds and pits on the forest floor--undulations caused by the lifting up of root balls as trees fall. And look for coarse woody debris on the forest floor in different stages of decay, where stable conditions and slow decay have allowed opulent growth of moss and fungi. One of the interpretive signs offered a clever way to judge a tree's age, not by its diameter or height--since some trees grow much faster than others--but by how far the moss has managed to grow up the trunk. 

One week later, I was in Durham, NC, where I started a watershed association 26 years ago, creating a string of preserves before moving to Princeton. I always get together with my botanizing buddies when I visit, and this time Perry Sugg, Cynthie Kulstad and I decided to stop by the 82 acre Glennstone preserve I had worked with a developer to create. We were walking down a sewerline right of way, with no particular destination in mind, when I thought of a special place to visit.

Just down the hill from the remains of a summer cottage, next to a rocky creek, are the remains of a spring where the owners of the cottage must have gotten their water. A small pipe sticks out of this half circle of stone, near the bottom. The ground there is consistently wet, but I've never seen water actually flowing out of the pipe. Last time I'd been there, I'd found a robust patch of JoePyeWeed, a tall wildflower found nowhere else in the preserve. This was also the only place I've seen smooth alders in the area. Apparently, the stable water source allowed the plants to survive droughts.

On this visit, armed with awareness gained at Landis Arboretum in upstate NY, I was able to focus in more on what sorts of trees were growing nearby. Past logging had left only narrow corridors of the original forest intact. Buffer regulations had forbidden harvest of trees within fifty feet of the stream. One tree in particular caught my eye, a towering shortleaf pine. 

The rough bark at its base brought to mind the Landis Arboretum signage:

"The bark changes on most species when the trees are over 150 years old, looking very different from the bark of younger trees.

Excellent signs include balding bark, shaggy bark (separating or curling strips), craggy bark (deeply grooved, fissured bark), and platy bark."

On this particular shortleaf pine, the bark changed dramatically about 20 feet up, from shaggy to smoother, platy bark extending to the top. That would suggest the tree is well over 150 years old.

The bark at the base was deeply grooved. 

Other large trees with distinctive, eccentric bark rose from the creekbanks. I doubt that this narrow band of mature trees along a stream would fit the definition of old-growth forest, even if the trees were old enough. The Network prefers stands of at least 20 acres. If there had been time, we could have followed this narrow band of old trees downstream, to better dream of what this woods had been before the logging. 

Late afternoon light caught the tops of these towering remnant trees rooted in a distant time yet still growing towards the sun. The experience of being there in that charmed hollow was not unlike the sense of timelessness felt while staying in our friends' house with furniture firmly rooted in the past. 

Keeping with the theme of old stuff, the young couple's wedding reception took place in the Hotel Utica, dating back to 1912, with massive, ornate chandeliers and tree-like columns. The groom's father was happy his son had chosen a place so steeped in history, but mourned that the glorious woodwork had been painted over during a recent renovation. 

It was the groom's father's idea to include an antique phone booth at the reception, where wedding guests could leave a message for the newlyweds, using an old dial phone. 

Click on "read more", below, for text from the Landis Arboretum's interpretive signage, describing in more detail the qualities to look for in old-growth forest.