July 11, 2022

Hello Betty Sutherland Stewardship Volunteers:

We had an awesome day yesterday identifying more native and invasive wood avens, and we have appeared to clear out the south end of the site of hedge parsley and invasive wood avens! Thanks to Helen & Alan for reminding us of everything we learned about these two plants last week, as I still find these plants tricky to ID. We had a large group this weekend - 9 lead stewards and volunteers in total. Special thanks to Pat Concessi who made a surprise visit! She helped train Gary and I, and it was just last year that Pat and I did our first site walk of Betty Sutherland Trail. It is amazing to think about all the invasives we've removed since then, and the small community that is growing thanks to everyone's dedication to our local environment! Our hard work has been noticed and we have been featured in the Toronto Nature Stewards site blog, check it out here (scroll down).

We had a lot of positive interactions with the public, with several people scanning the QR code on our poster - always encouraging to see how many people are interested in learning more about restoring and supporting the biodiversity in our ravines.

We also found several more native plants and Gary recorded them to our iNaturalist project, such as the broadleaf enchanter's nightshade. You can take a look here: Betty Sutherland Trail. Over the last few weeks we have been noticing another interesting plant, called the Narrowleaf bittercress. It is an invasive plant that we are hoping will be added to our list for next year's season. Here is a cool short video of how its seeds "explode" making it really easy to spread.

Thank you to Marlene who also added some photos to our folder, and has a really great image to identify hedge parsley (shown below). Kenton & Allen made another great observation, that it appears it is mostly the top leaves/new growth that have the distinct narrow, triangular shape (seen in the info sheets), while the rest of the leaves look more similar to other carrot family plants.

Lastly, as we've worked mostly by the trail in the south end over the last few weeks, we have noticed increased (fast) cycling traffic. As such, we encourage everyone to please use a safety vest to increase visibility if you already own one. Going forward, I will be adding this to our list of equipment to bring, and we will continue to consider other ways to increase everyone's safety when we are working by the trail.

Looking forward to our next session!