Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest in Rock Creek Park

Gary Fleming

How to Recognize It

The Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest is one of the most species-diverse natural communities in Rock Creek Park. A profusion of wildflowers and ferns on the forest floor make this forest stand out in spring.

Look for it in deep, shaded, moist ravines, or on cool, groundwater-fed lower slopes whose concave shape tends to collect deep, moist soils. The soils contain elements like calcium that make them less acidic than other soils in the park, and more fertile. The source of the calcium is mineralized groundwater, or igneous bedrock. The fertile soils give the plant life of this community a more lush look than that of the Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest, which is similar but much more common in Rock Creek Park.

Listen to a podcast about this natural community:

• Natural Community: Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest

  
  

  This community grows in nutrient-rich soils, and may have a lush look compared to nearby natural communities.

  Credit / Author:

  Abby Cox

  Date created:

  10/14/2020

  Audio Transcript

  Lush greenery and biodiversity as far as the eye can see. Deep, fertile soil and wildflowers dotting the hills. You must be in the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest in spring!

  The rich, moist soil along the ravines and lower parts of slopes host a large variety of vegetation, including the majestic tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera), straight and tall. The tuliptree, also called tulip poplar, is a special part of this natural community, valued for its timber and nectar prized by bees and hummingbirds. Make sure to take the time to see if you can spot a tuliptree. Some people might say their unusual leaves look a bit like the outline of a tulip flower or even a crown! Just remember that the Park asks you to stay on the trail!

  Beneath your feet is more than just dirt. The soil here hosts nutrients and water, and provides a good home for many plants. It is packed with basic elements like calcium, making it super nutritious for trees in this community like the sugar maple (Acer saccharum) and red oak (Quercus rubra).

  You'll see a greater diversity of native plants here in the spring than in almost any other natural community at Rock Creek Park. From the forest floor with ferns and wildflowers to the canopy filled with trees like red oak and tuliptree, the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest is a feast for the eyes.

Identifying This Natural Community

Can you find this combination of key features?

• Tall, large-diameter tuliptree with American beech or northern red oak in the canopy
• (Optional) bitternut hickory, white ash, American basswood in the canopy
• Sugar maple or American hornbeam trees in the understory
• Mayapple, other wildflowers (spring)
• Several kinds of fern (late spring through early fall)
• Northern spicebush and/or pawpaw
• Notable diversity of plant species
• Located in a ravine, or on a lower, concave-shaped slope where groundwater might moisten the soils (but not in an area subject to flooding)

If so, welcome to Rock Creek Park’s Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest!

Not sure? Check out the Tips to Distinguish (below), or the Compare Natural Communities tool.

Tips to Distinguish Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest from Successional Tuliptree Forest (Rich Type) at Rock Creek Park

Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest vs. Successional Tuliptree Forest (Rich Type) at Rock Creek Park

Similarities: Both may appear lush and have a generous amount of spring wildflowers and northern spicebush. Both may have stately, mature tuliptrees in the canopy. Both can be found on low slopes and in ravines.

Tips to Distinguish: However, the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest has more tree-species diversity in the canopy. The Successional Tuliptree Forest (Rich Type) has nothing but tuliptrees in the canopy. American beech and oaks may be rising in the understory, but have not yet caught up to the stature of the older tuliptrees (probably pioneers after a clearcut).

Tips to Distinguish Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest from Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest at Rock Creek Park

Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest vs. Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest at Rock Creek Park

Similarities: Both have a canopy of some combination of oaks, American beech, or tuliptree, and generally lack mountain laurel in the understory.

Tips to Distinguish: However, the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest has more plant-species diversity. Its trees may also include white ash, American basswood, and bitternut hickory, and its understory has a lush look, especially when spring wildflowers are blooming. It is more likely to have northern spicebush and pawpaw shrubs, while the Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest is more likely to have acid-tolerant American holly.

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Seasonal Highlights

Spring Highlights

• Yellow blooms of yellow trout-lily, Indian cucumber, northern spicebush, and tuliptree
• Pink or lavender to white blooms of eastern redbud, liverleaf, Virginia springbeauty, and violets
• White blooms of mayapple, bloodroot, smooth Solomon’s seal, Solomon’s plume, flowering dogwood, blackhaw, southern arrow-wood, cutleaf toothwort, star chickweed, and hairy sweet-cicely
• Maroon blooms of pawpaw
• Greenish to purple hoods of Jack-in-the-pulpit
• Fresh pale green leaves emerging after winter—tuliptree leaves among the earliest
• Migratory and year-round resident birds nest-building; some young beginning to hatch by mid to late spring
• Pollinators on early spring flowers such as pawpaw

Summer Highlights

• Lush greenery on the forest floor
• Multiple kinds of ferns fully unfurled
• Yellow blooms of richweed
• Orange blooms of orange jewelweed
• Tiny white blooms of broadleaf enchanter’s-nightshade
• Lime green fruit of mayapple and pawpaw
• Red berries of Solomon’s plume
• Dark berries of Indian cucumber
• Butterflies, moths and other insect pollinators
• Hungry baby birds calling to parents; busy, busy parents finding food; fledglings learning to fly
• Redback salamanders rustling under damp leaves

Autumn Highlights

• Green ferns persist until frost
• Yellow leaves of tuliptree, northern spicebush, American hornbeam, and American beech—by far the most obvious fall color
• Red leaves of flowering dogwood
• White blooms of white wood-aster
• Orange blooms of orange jewelweed
• Red berries of Jack-in-the-pulpit, Solomon’s plume, northern spicebush, flowering dogwood, American strawberry-bush, (and the invasive non-native linden arrow-wood shrub)
• Dark berries of southern arrow-wood and blackhaw
• Green pawpaw fruits with brown spots as they ripen
• Squirrels eating beechnuts and American hornbeam nutlets
• Birds harvesting berries
• Toads preparing to burrow deep in the soil for winter

Winter Highlights

• Interesting shapes and textures: majestic straight trunks of tuliptree; smooth, gray bark and “rippled muscle” trunks of American hornbeam
• White streaks ("ski-trails") on trunks of northern red oak
• Fat onion-shaped flower buds of flowering dogwood
• White-tailed deer browsing on bare twigs of trees and shrubs
• Winter birds

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Where to See It

Fairly good examples of the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest occur:

1. Low in the ravine on Cross Trail 2 near Riley Springs Bridge (north of Picnic Area 10), and
2. Along Melvin Hazen Trail in ravines and concave slopes near the base of hills in Melvin Hazen Park.

More patches can be found in southern Battery Kemble Park and along the Black Horse Trail in the bottom of a small ravine across Rock Creek from the Miller Cabin.

Map tip: To locate these places along trails, go to the interactive map of Rock Creek Park and search for "good places" or place names like "battery kemble" or "miller cabin."

Area Occupied: 90.9 acres (36.8 hectares)

Good examples of the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest occur low in the ravine on Cross Trail 2 near Riley Springs Bridge (north of Picnic Area 10), and along Melvin Hazen Trail in ravines and concave slopes near the base of hills in Melvin Hazen Park.

NatureServe and The National Park Service National Capital Region

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Plants and Animals

Plants

The beautiful Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest has a lush look, especially in the shrub layer and field layer. Here one can see plants (especially some ferns and wildflowers) found nowhere else at Rock Creek Park, growing alongside more commonly encountered plants. Thanks to relatively fertile, well-drained soils—somewhat rare at the park—the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest boasts a greater diversity of native plants than any other upland community at Rock Creek Park.

Canopy Trees

The trees whose crowns intercept most of the sunlight in a forest stand. The uppermost layer of a forest.

Photo album

• American beech
• bitternut hickory
• northern red oak
• tuliptree
• American basswood (occasional)
• black oak (occasional)
• mockernut hickory (occasional)
• white ash (occasional)
• white oak (occasional)

Majestic tuliptrees, extraordinarily straight and tall, tower above most other trees in the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest. Together with large, smooth-barked American beech trees, they form a closed, shady canopy. Bitternut hickory, which can also grow to towering heights, is usually present, though rarely abundant. Northern red oak and/or white oak may be present in noticeable quantities. White ash is less common, but where it occurs in the canopy in combination with bitternut hickory or American basswood, it is often an indicator of soils enriched with calcium and potassium.

Understory Trees

Small trees and young specimens of large trees growing beneath the canopy trees. Also called the subcanopy.

Photo album

• American beech
• American hornbeam
• flowering dogwood
• red maple
• black oak (occasional)
• eastern redbud (occasional)
• slippery elm (occasional)
• sugar maple (occasional)

Among understory trees, you may see slippery elm (another good clue to nutrient-rich soils), and American hornbeam trees, distinctive for their smooth gray bark that appears to be stretched taut over rippled trunks. In fall, sugar maple’s foliage contributes orange hues to the understory of this mesic natural community in parts of Melvin Hazen Park, Battery Kemble Park, and elsewhere.

Shrubs, Saplings, and Vines

Shrubs, juvenile trees and vines at the right height to give birds and others a perch up off the ground but below the trees.

Photo album

• northern spicebush
• pawpaw
• American strawberry-bush (occasional)
• eastern poison-ivy (occasional)
• mapleleaf viburnum (occasional)
• blackhaw (occasional)
• southern arrow-wood (occasional)
• Virginia creeper (occasional)

The abundance and diversity of shrubs helps to distinguish this community from other upland communities at the park. The most common shrubs here are northern spicebush (smell its spicy citrus-scented crushed leaves) and pawpaw (whose long leaves emit the smell of kerosene when crushed); both are found in dense patches. Northern spicebush can be showy in the early spring with many tiny yellow flowers clustered along the stems before the leaves are out. Large patches or colonies of pawpaw (some quite tall) can be seen in Battery Kemble Park, Whitehaven Park, and Melvin Hazen Park.

The Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest may also host American strawberry-bush, blackhaw, and southern arrow-wood (a dark-berried native viburnum whose leaves are easily confused with a fuzzier-leaved, red-berried, non-native viburnum—linden arrow-wood—that invades this community).

Low Plants (Field Layer)

Plants growing low to the ground. This includes small shrubs and tree seedlings.

Photo album

• beechdrops
• bloodroot
• broad beechfern
• broadleaf enchanter’s-nightshade
• Christmas fern
• cutleaf toothwort
• grasses
• hairy sweet-cicely
• Jack-in-the-pulpit
• jumpseed
• mayapple
• New York fern
• sedges
• smooth Solomon’s seal
• Solomon’s plume
• star chickweed
• violets
• Virginia springbeauty
• white wood-aster
• wild yam
• yellow trout-lily
• American cancer-root (occasional)
• cinnamon fern (occasional)
• hog-peanut (occasional)
• Indian cucumber (occasional)
• liverleaf (occasional)
• orange jewelweed (occasional)
• richweed (occasional)

Many different ferns abound here, such as the evergreen Christmas fern, the bright green broad beechfern, and tapered New York fern.

A variety of woodland flowers and grasses also flourish. In spring, look for yellow trout-lily, cutleaf toothwort, Virginia springbeauty, broadleaf enchanter’s-nightshade, Solomon’s plume, liverleaf, bloodroot, violets, hairy sweet-cicely and other wildflowers. A common wildflower is mayapple, resembling little pale-green umbrellas scattered across the forest floor. Mature plants with twin umbrella-leaves bloom white in April or May. In summer, a green lime-like fruit may hang from the plant. Jack-in-the-pulpit is another easily identified plant, with its three leaflets and unique three-inch green-and-white (and sometimes purple or brown) striped hooded flower that blooms in late spring. Bright scarlet berries persist atop the Jack-in-the-pulpit stems through the fall.

Non-Native Invasive Plant Species

Location, location, location! Expect non-native invasives to constantly move in to this desirable natural community where the soils and water supply are great. Read more about them under Stewardship and Ecological Threats.

One tidbit: It is unclear whether sugar maple is actually native to Rock Creek Park, but it may be. The Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest in Rock Creek Park sometimes includes Norway maple*, which looks similar to sugar maple but is a non-native, aggressively invasive species (* indicates non-native). Norway maple leaves are wider than long, and have milky sap. In fall, its leaf undersides reveal dark brown veins against the yellow leaf color.

Ecobit: Maple Tree Mystery

Maple Tree Mystery at Rock Creek Park

Sugar maple (Acer saccharum) leaves in autumn.

Do you know the sugar maple tree? (Think fall in New England, or picture the Canadian flag.) This tree is common in northern U.S. forests, and loves shaded slopes on moist soils that contain at least moderate levels of plant nutrients. Ecologists wonder whether sugar maple is native to Rock Creek Park, or was originally planted there and later naturalized. Many suspect it was planted.

Why? Clue 1: Mature sugar maple is completely missing from several sizeable old forested sections of the park where conditions seem perfect for it – such as several moist, protected ravines underlain by basic igneous rock (which weathers into nutrient-rich soil). Clue 2: Where are the oldest, most abundant sugar maple trees in the park? Right where the geology is not what you’d expect a sugar maple to prefer – mostly acidic soil (though there are a few small bodies of basic rock embedded there). Yet in a few other locations, not too far away, you find only a handful of young sugar maples. Guess what the habitat there is like? Excellent for sugar maples (north-facing moist slopes over basic rock). Doesn’t that seem backwards?

Let’s try to deduce a plausible story from the clues: What if, well over a century ago, someone planted the first sugar maples near where that oldest grove is found today? When those trees matured, they would have produced seed, which would have been carried away into the forest by wind, water, squirrels, or other small animals. If conditions were good enough, some of the escaped sugar maple seeds would have germinated from time to time. Much later, as those seedlings grew up into mature trees, their seeds would escape into nearby woods, and sugar maple seedlings would show up still farther away from the original grove. According to this story, the reason you find only a few young saplings of sugar maple in the prime habitat, is that the seeds have only recently spread that far. Where the oldest sugar maples are, is probably the "epicenter" of naturalization.

One more clue: where are some of the oldest, most abundant sugar maple trees in Rock Creek Park? Not too far from Klingle Mansion – the historic home of wealthy nurseryman Joshua Peirce, who raised trees for street plantings in the first half of the 1800s. So, what do you think? Native or naturalized? Solving this mystery will be challenging. DNA tests could compare the sugar maples of Rock Creek Park with the nearest known native populations to see whether they might be related. But even if they are, who’s to say whether birds, Native Americans, or the Peirce family first brought their seed to Rock Creek?

Northern red-backed salamander (Plethodon cinereus).

NPS / Valley Forge National Historical Park

Animals

Many animals visit the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest because of its location near streams, and because this community has such diverse plant life. Many moths, butterflies and other insects visit the wildflowers that grow only here. This natural community also has a diverse structure in terms of well-defined layers—tree canopy, tree understory, shrub layer, and field layer—that provide needed habitat for many animals.

Ecobit: Categories

Categories

In this field guide, we categorize plants as trees, shrubs, saplings, vines, or low plants. Trees no more than a few years old are referred to as saplings, and baby trees as seedlings. These roughly correspond to height categories.

It is not unusual for ecologists to use the term "layer" to refer to a height category. The canopy (or canopy layer) refers to the tallest trees in a forest (which also get the most sunlight). The understory is everything that grows in their shade, including shorter trees. The shrub, sapling and vine layer is the medium-height category. We use the term field layer to mean any low plants on the forest floor—including not only non-woody (herbaceous) plants such as ferns and wildflowers, but also short tree seedlings or very small shrubs.

Categories like these are significant, because plants of different height categories play specific ecological roles—as wildlife habitat, for instance. Birds that nest or forage on the forest floor (eastern towhees or wood thrush, for example), rely on a moderately dense understory to protect them from predator’s eyes. Bird watchers in the eastern U.S. could expect to find these birds in a natural community or successional community that has a reasonable cover of shrubs, such as the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest (Coastal Plain / Piedmont Type), Oak - Beech / Heath Forest, certain examples of the Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest, or the Successional Tuliptree Forest (Rich Type).

Standing dead trees provide dens and nests. Salamanders find shelter in the damp soils under rocks and downed trees. Fallen trees decompose rapidly on the forest floor with the help of native insects and bacteria, and replenish the soil. Worms help aerate the moist soil and keep it loose, facilitating root growth for plants.

Yellow-bellied sapsuckers drill for sap in the abundant tuliptree and other trees. They and others return to the holes for insects trapped in the sap. Squirrels, chipmunks and birds feast on the beechnuts, American hornbeam nutlets, and occasional acorns in this community.

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Physical Setting

Area Occupied: 90.9 acres (36.8 hectares)

Stand Size: Small, isolated stands.

Landscape Position: Low concave slopes that retain moisture, and moist, cool, shady ravines.

Soils: Fertile, fine to loamy soils or groundwater-influenced soils.

Geology: Mafic igneous gabbro and tonalite, and Laurel Formation.

This lush-looking forest is often found immediately upslope of the floodplains of streams on concave slopes. Soils in which the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest grows tend to be deep because they are in places where soil is not very easily washed away. They also hold more moisture than soils on hilltops, ridgelines, or convex slopes. However, they are well drained, not saturated like the soils in the park’s Red Maple Seepage Swamp or (at times) the Tuliptree Small-Stream Floodplain Forest.

Soils in the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest are relatively fertile because in many places they are underlain by bedrock rich in basic elements such as calcium and magnesium. These rocks are typically igneous rocks that can be described as mafic—that is, full of dark minerals that are sources of calcium and magnesium such as biotite, hornblende, and pyroxene. Rocks in the park with these minerals include gabbro and tonalites that are rich in mafic minerals such as biotite, hornblende, and garnet.

Ecobit: Defining Terms: "Basic" and "Acidic"

"Basic" and "Acidic"

In purely chemical terms, basic describes a substance with a pH greater than 7 (such as baking soda), whereas acidic describes a pH of less than 7 (such as vinegar). Soil scientists and geologists use this definition to describe the chemistry of soils and rocks.

Ecologists, however, often use the term "basic" to describe soils in which most plants flourish. Rather than being truly basic, they are relatively less acidic. They can form, for example, over bedrock that contains enough calcium or other base elements to positively influence plant growth.

With adequate calcium, even acidic soils are able to support natural communities such as the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest that have a wide variety of plants, even those with high nutrient demands. Gardeners are familiar with this concept: they add lime (a base) to acidic soil to raise the pH of the soil to between 6.2 and 6.8—the optimal, though still slightly acidic, range for most vegetables and flowers. In contrast, soils with a pH greater than 7.5—truly basic soils—can be toxic to many plants.

Here, we refer to lush, nutrient-demanding natural communities themselves as “basic,” regardless of the soil they grow on. However, for clarity, we will refer to soils (or their parent rocks) as “basic” only if their pH is above 7.0. Soils that are good for plant growth we will refer to as “nutrient-rich,” “fertile,” or “rich.”

These relatively fertile, well-drained soils are fairly uncommon in the park, found mostly west of where the Laurel Formation bedrock lies, on the opposite side of a geologic fault.

Occasionally, small patches of Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest can be found in the middle of areas that are otherwise underlain by acidic bedrock, such as the metasedimentary Laurel or Sykesville Formation (as seen in Battery Kemble Park). These may occur

• where soils are influenced by unmapped blocks of basic igneous rock that were trapped in the acidic bedrock during its formation, or
• where slope processes have transported nutrient-rich sediments downslope from areas of basic rock intrusions, or
• where otherwise acidic soils receive calcium-rich groundwater that has percolated through basic rock on its gravity-led underground journey.

Exceptionally large trees may be a clue to enriched groundwater or soils.

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Natural Processes

Natural processes shape the land, create soil and topsoil, influence the water supply, and help determine the plants and animals that live in each natural community. Some natural processes act on large scales and affect more than one natural community at a time.

In This Community

Important natural processes in the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest include

• soil formation
• canopy gap regeneration
• microclimate
• processes that create soils that are not too wet, not too dry

In the Broader Landscape

Some natural processes act on large scales and affect more than one natural community at a time. For example, in Rock Creek Park three natural communities are found in similar positions in the landscape. The Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest, the Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest and the Coastal Plain Oak Forest all occur on rolling uplands and lower slopes of ravines, where they are protected from extreme weather conditions—such as the greater exposure to sun and wind at higher elevations, and flooding at lower elevations.

In fact, these three natural communities can be grouped into a larger unit that ecologists refer to as the Mesic Hardwood Forest Ecological System. An ecological system is a group of several natural communities that share many of the same natural processes and aspects of physical setting. By extension, they may also share many of the same plant and animal species.

Explore This Natural Community's Ecological System

Click below to learn more about this ecological system and its natural processes.

Mesic Hardwood Forest Ecological System in Rock Creek Park

• Mesic Mixed Hardwood Forest Natural Community

• Coastal Plain Oak Forest Natural Community

• Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest Natural Community

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Ecological Threats

Each natural community faces ecological threats that could change its defining features, leading to its decline.

Non-Native Invasive Plants

The fertile soils of the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest naturally support a diversity of plant species; unfortunately, those soils also support a wide variety of non-native invasive plant species. The harms caused by non-native invasive plants include competition with natives for soil nutrients, sunlight, and pollinators, and degradation of animal habitat. (* indicates non-native)

• Chinese wisteria* (vine)
• chocolate vine* (vine)
• English ivy* (vine)
• garlic mustard* (low plant)
• Japanese barberry* (shrub)
• Japanese honeysuckle* (vine)
• Japanese hop* (shrub)
• Japanese maple* (tree)
• Japanese snowball* (shrub)
• Japanese stiltgrass* (low plant)
• linden arrow-wood* (shrub)
• mile-a-minute weed* (vine)
• multiflora rose* (shrub)
• Norway maple* (tree)
• oriental bittersweet* (vine)
• porcelain-berry* (vine)
• privets (shrub)
• sweet mock orange* (shrub)
• wine raspberry* (shrub)
• winter creeper* (vine)
• winged burning-bush* (shrub)

Diseases, Pests, and Other Threats

Current and potential ecological threats for the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest in Rock Creek Park include the following:

• Excessive deer browse: decimation of wildflowers, oak seedlings, and shrubs (but not pungent northern spicebush or pawpaw)
• Emerald ash borer (potential): damage to green and white ash
• Viburnum leaf beetle (potential): damage to southern arrow-wood, blackhaw, mapleleaf viburnum
• Asian long-horned beetle (potential): damage to maples and slippery elm
• Gypsy moth: damage to northern red oak
• Dutch elm disease: damage to slippery elm
• Elm yellows (potential): damage to slippery elm
• Beech bark disease (potential): damage to American beech
• Sudden oak death (potential): damage to oaks
• Dogwood anthracnose: decline of flowering dogwood
• Flash floods: damage to plants in the lower elevations of this non-flood-tolerant community

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Making a Difference

The well-being of natural communities depends not only on land managers, but on all of us—neighbors, visitors, fellow inhabitants of Earth!

Park Management

Park staff monitor and protect natural communities in many ways to help deal with threats from non-native invasive plants and insects, diseases, and more.

Here are a few ways Park staff are managing some of the ecological threats to the Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest:

• Excessive deer browse: deer management plan in place since 2012 using lethal and non-lethal means¹
• Gypsy moth: bacterial and viral insecticides, naturalized fungus, release of parasitic wasps
• Flash flooding: efforts to reduce stormwater runoff
• Potential arrival of diseases and invasive insects: vigilance of Park staff and visitors

Ecobit: An Extra Set of Eyes

An Extra Set of Eyes (Rock Creek Park)

Emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is a threat to Rock Creek Park's ash trees along streams and in mesic natural communities.
Leah Bauer, USDA FS Northern Research Station

It takes a village to keep natural communities healthy. Alert Rock Creek Park staff if you see any of the following along the trail:

• diseased vegetation
• infestations by non-native insect pests
• infestations by non-native plants, especially Early Detection Rapid Response species
• dumped mattresses, tires, appliances and other environmentally damaging trash
• unauthorized trails
• homeless camps
• issues with stormwater runoff
• anything that looks amiss.

If you do see something you’d like to share, make a note of your location and jot down a description of what you see. If possible, take a picture. Contact Rock Creek Park's Chief of Resources Management at 202-895-6010.

For more about what to look for, explore the Plants and Animals section or the Current Water and Land Use section under Stewardship and Ecological Threats of Rock Creek Park.

If you happen across a display of wildflowers or other beautiful scene, Park staff would probably enjoy hearing about that too!

You Can Help, Too!

If you are interested in helping to take care of the natural communities of Rock Creek Park, here are some ideas:

Volunteer

• Learn about volunteering at Rock Creek Park.
• Team up with Rock Creek Conservancy, a citizen-based, non-profit organization that hosts volunteer restoration events for the benefit of the lands and waters of Rock Creek. Contact: www.rockcreekconservancy.org, [phone], or [e-mail].
• Team up with Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy, another citizen-based, non-profit organization that hosts volunteer restoration events in partnership with the National Park Service to restore a 27-acre historic gem on one of Rock Creek’s tributaries in the nation’s capital.

In the Park

Trails:

Stay on trails and respect fences. Park staff sometimes put up fences to keep out deer or to discourage foot traffic in erosion-prone areas. You can help by staying out of fenced-in areas.

Pets:

Keep your pet on a leash so that it does not disturb animals or dig up plants. Clean up after your pet to help keep streams and rivers clean.

Keep Your Eyes Open:

Alert park staff if you see any of the following along the trail: diseased vegetation, infestation by non-native insects, invasion by non-native vegetation (especially Early Detection Rapid Response species), trash, unauthorized trails, or anything that looks amiss. Make a note of your location, take a picture if you can, and contact Rock Creek Park’s Chief of Resources Management at 202-895-6010.

At Home

Landscape with Natives:

Many non-native invasive plants started out as—or still are—popular landscaping plants, so you can help limit their spread by choosing native plants for your yard. If you do plant non-natives, remove seeds and berries before wind and animals spread them. English ivy won’t produce berries unless it’s climbing a vertical surface, so keep it off trees and walls.

Protect Streams:

Keep litter, fertilizer, pet waste, and yard waste off the streets where it can wash into the storm drains that lead directly to creeks. Consider installing a rain garden in your yard to slow down stormwater run-off and help recharge the groundwater.

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Conservation Status and Classification

How vulnerable is a natural community to being eliminated? How similar or dissimilar is it to other natural communities? These questions are answered by naming and classifying natural communities, which helps us identify them and understand where each is found.

The U.S. National Vegetation Classification is the standard often used to classify natural communities.

Conservation Status

Conservation status indicates how vulnerable a natural community is. Learn more about conservation status, which can be measured globally and regionally.

Global Conservation Status: G4? – Apparently Secure? (Status uncertain)

Subnational Conservation Status: D.C.: SNR – Not yet assessed

Classification

Official names reduce the confusion by providing a common language for talking about natural communities.

Abbreviated Common Name: Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest

Common Name: Basic Mesic Hardwood Forest (Northern Coastal Plain-Piedmont)

Scientific Name: Fagus grandifolia - Liriodendron tulipifera - Carya cordiformis / Lindera benzoin / Podophyllum peltatum Forest

Scientific Name Translated: American Beech – Tuliptree – Bitternut Hickory / Northern Spicebush / Mayapple Forest

Classification Code: CEGL006055

Associated Ecological System: Mesic Hardwood Forest Ecological System in Rock Creek Park

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