Nature Trails
One and a half miles of trails wind through a variety of ecosystems of the MSJ natural area, a State Landmark Outdoor Education Center maintained by the Marianist Environmental Education Center (MEEC). An ecologically based trail guide is available from MEEC. A overview map of the trails can be found here.
Oak-hickory-dogwood woods - adapted to dry conditions, these upland woods on the deposits of glacial till where the dominant vegetation described by surveyor Israel Ludlow on this land in 1802. Some of the trees are up to 200 years old. Because of the lack of occasional fires since colonization in the 1800s sugar maple is becoming more common and replacing some of the oaks and hickories.
Moist woods - This woods contains a wide variety of trees that thrive in the moist bottomlands. Spring ephemerals like bloodroot, sessile trillium, wild ginger, spring beauty, Jack-in-the-pulpit and giant white trillium grow under the trees as they leaf out. May apple, ragwort, waterleaf, white snakeroot, woodland asters and goldenrods take over under the closed canopy as the summer progresses.
Wetlands – as is characteristic of wetlands, the soil is saturated much of the year with water from the hillside seep that flows through this area. The black, sticky soil is low in oxygen, restricting the vegetation to the very different collection of plants found here: skunk cabbage, sweet flag, queen of the prairie, tall meadow rue, monkey flower, Canadian burnet, rice cutgrass and jewelweed.
Prairie - much of the tall grass prairie grows on land buried for thousands of years under sand and gravel deposited by retreating glaciers. In 1985 the glacial deposits were used for construction of I-675 and the tall grass prairie was planted in the resulting borrow pit. Common warm season grasses that grow in the prairie include Indian grass, switch grass, big and little bluestem and side-oats grama grass. Other flowering plants include gray-headed coneflower, bergamot, purple coneflower, compass plant, sawtooth sunflower, royal catchfly, mountain mint, brown eyed Susan and blue false indigo.
Wet meadow - This area has tussocks of grass that rise above the soil the vegetation is able to grow in soil that is saturated in spring and fall and very dry during the summer. Species of plants include those found in wet prairies and barrens.
Old field - Cleared grasslands gradually evolve into woodlands. The old field is in a transition stage with clusters of gray dogwoods, brambles and Osage orange with the scattering of the oaks and hickories that will eventually form the mature woods.