Williams Woods - Charlotte Vermont

Williams Woods is one of the last remaining Clayplain forests in the Champlain Valley. Having much clay in the soil means that the soil is probably very nutrient rich which supported much farm land in the past. Several sources will tell you that this forest is a "mature" stand but through out our walk last week, we were unsuccessful in finding more than just a few trees in any one area that would be considered old growth. The forest was mostly flat with a few areas that had a "pit and mound" topography that occurs as a result of the pit that fallen trees make and the mound the results from the roots that are now out of the ground. The dominant tree species in this stand are white oak, red oak, red maple, white pine, shagbark hickory, and white ash. Other less dominant species were hemlock, bur oak, sugar maple and beach trees.

This picture shows the result of a "downburst storm" that happened in 2007 during the summer. We learned that this phenomenon is a very localized column of sinking air that could level a trailer park or fatally bring down a low flying plane. The storm brought down several trees in just one spot in the Williams Woods which was misleading at first as to what the cause of this random spot of fallen trees might have been.

This cleared area is and was most likely used as farm land in the past. At the forest edge before the field begins, there is a line of old growth oak trees that probably delineated a property line.

This bundle of sticks and twigs probably assisted in making property lines as this area has a lack or rocks that would be used to create a rock wall.

There were several beach trees in this forest and most of them had a strange bark that made them look almost unrecognizable from their usual smooth bark characteristic. We were told that a small white insect, smaller than 1/16th of an inch burrows holes into the bark which allows a fungus to move deeply into the bark and grow, creating this rough and broken-looking texture.

Another stand we walked into later in our hike gave off a different feel with a strictly white pine forest. White pines are pioneer species that can only survive with an abundance of light. This dominance of species probably meant that this area was cleared for farming or transportation in the last 100 years, another clue of this was the train that we heard that wasn't more than a couple hundred meters away. 

We also saw several hemlock stands through out the forest. Towards the end of our hike, we found this enormous grandfather hemlock that was probably a few hundred years old.