Treasure hunting has an individual appeal.
Some seek collectors’ items in the bowels of crowded antique shops.
Others pick over seacoast beaches to find the perfect shell.
Botanists have recently discovered treasure in the woods of Plainfield.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Kerry Grens has more on their find.
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Visit Yatsevitch with the Forest Society
Check out rare plants in New Hampshire
[sounds crunching through forest]
Sun pierces through the thinning trees as Peter Ellis and Melissa Harty march up a steep hillside in Plainfield’s Yatsevitch Forest.
Armed with a global positioning system and an impressive mental database of species, they’re on a quest for rare plants.
As sounds of the road grow more distant, Ellis and Harty come upon the first sign that they are getting warmer: maidenhair fern.
Ellis: As an ecologist or botanist walks in the woods as soon as they come upon this plant they start to think ooh we’ve come into a special place here. We need to start looking for other unique plants.
Maidenhair indicates sweet soil—rich in calcium and magnesium—which is rare in New Hampshire.
But not in the Yatsevitch forest.
Ellis: It is very very rich. The pH was measured at 7.65. Full of lush vegetation, you can look out in between all these beautiful grand old sugar maples and just feel something special’s here.
Uncommon soils allow for uncommon plants.
And on a similar quest this summer, Ellis and Harty found the Yatsevitch forest to be a rare plant treasure trove.
They came to do a routine plant survey for the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, which owns the land.
The Society recently acquired Yatsevitch and needed to know what was on the land before deciding what to do with it.
So the botonists started out, bushwhacking through carpets of invasive black swallow wort and buckthorn.
Scoffing at ubiquitous barberry and honeysuckle, they eventually came upon the maidenhair fern.
Melissa Harty says it signaled that things were a little less than routine.
Harty: The minute I see that maidenhair fern I really start looking at all my ferns to keep my eye out for goldies or other ferns that we typically don’t see in New Hampshire.
As they ventured deeper into the woods they crested an area they call the bowl.
Harty: And then suddenly right after that when we made one comment about hey the trees are bigger here then all of a sudden we were off in different places going, I just found this! I just found this! Over here! Over here! What’s this? What’s this? I’ve never seen this! It was amazing.
Ellis: We literally spent hours just in this one acre right around this bowl roaming around and finding all these plants some of them we’d never seen before.
Harty: That doesn’t happen on a daily basis. I spend a lot of time in the forest and I can be out for an entire summer doing field work and maybe see one rare plant or I’ve gone summers without seeing any rare plants. To see seven in a day is definitely one of my most amazing field days ever.
These include showy orchis, squirrel corn, and three-leaved sanicle.
The state’s Natural Heritage Bureau in the Division of Forests and Lands recognizes several hundred rare plant species.
The Bureau’s administrator, Lionel Chute, says Yatsevitch forest is particularly special.
Lionel: It’s one of the best examples of a rich mesic forest in New Hampshire. When you go across the border in Vermont you’ll see more of it, but even in that case our understanding is that this is one of the best regional examples of this type of forest in the larger area, across state borders.
The botanists had a hunch there might be some good finds in Yatsevitch because the geology is so unique.
Eons ago, New Hampshire—which had been part of Africa—collided with Vermont when the supercontinent Pangea formed.
As Africa pulled away millions of years later, it left New Hampshire and Maine behind on the North American continent.
The two land masses smashing together created the peculiar bedrock and sweet soils of the Upper Valley.
And lead to the unusual flora of Yatsevitch, which even after a number of expeditions, keeps surprising the botanists.
[sounds come back in]
As Ellis and Harty trek past the maidenhair, a majestic sugar maple marks a change in scenery.
The underbrush thins out, light filters in, and Ellis leads the way over a ridge and drops down into a grove of maple trees.
Ellis: Oooohhhh! She found it! Haha! Alright Melissa!
And their treasure hunt this day is a success.
Ellis: So here we have a new find!
Harty: This is the goldie’s wood fern. This is one of the rare ferns that I immediately start looking for once I find the maidenhair fern. Even in a lot of rich areas you don’t find this fern. It’s an amazing find.
Ellis and Harty’s discoveries in the Yatsevitch forest compelled the Forest Society to preserve three hundred fifty acres as a nature reserve.
The Society estimates that these woods probably contain the most plant species diversity of all the thirty eight thousand acres it owns.
SOQ
