The "Green" Winter Woods

The Cape is fairly famous for it’s “gray” winters. Gray weather-beaten shingles on the houses, gray-looking marshes once all the fall color is drained away, and gray weather often dominates the winter months. People who don’t get out much see it as the Gray days of winter. Ah, but if you actually go out into those “gray” woods, you might be surprised to find out how “green” they really are.

Before I left the Cape, I brought my camera along with me as I walked the woods behind the bog, with the express purpose of capturing the green. And this is what I found, for starters, electric green moss, made even greener by the dull brown of leaves it shines out from. There is a velvety-green kind of moss that looks like felt that I was never able to get the scientific name of, and then the bushier one commonly called “Goldilocks Moss”. I love watching moss through the year, how it slowly develops its spore capsules, how the dying circles on the moss sometimes give you a clue to where certain animals have “left their mark”. Even just noting all the different kinds is entertaining, even if you don’t know what “kind” they are. I will miss moss in Texas.

There are also all manner of plants in the “wintergreen” family, meaning just that, that they stay green in winter. One that smells like teaberry when you crumble it, called “dah” “teaberry” but also “checkerberry” and simply “wintergreen”. It has a bright red berry that is edible and works as a breath freshener, very wintergreen-like in its taste. But before you go gobbling berries be sure you have the right one.

Another related wintergreen, sometimes called Spotted Wintergreen but also the much cooler sounding, Pipsissewa, stays green throughout our winter. When you see it, the fact that it is clearly striped versus spotted makes you wonder about the eyesight of those original botanists. But I found out that the “spotted” part of the name really means, “to break up” and comes from the fact that Indians used this to “break up” kidney stones. Either way, it’s a lovely plant found in the herb layer and as green in February as it is in June.

All along one trail I take is the pale green, always looking like it needs water, Sheep Laurel, or “lambs kill” for this is a plant one shouldn’t nibble on, at least, not if you are a lamb. Its drooping leaves help it to retain water but tends to make me want to drag out the watering can whenever I see it.

On the Cape thanks to our good air quality, the trees are all coated in green lichens. Lichens of every sort, crusty round patches of sage green, lots of “fuzzy ones” called “Old Mans Beard” or “Bushy Beard” that grow on the bark but do the tree no harm.

Like the epiphytes of the rain forest they get their moisture from the air. In a clever blending of two plants into one, algae and fungus, they can both hang on and make food without taping into the host plant itself. The popular pneumonic to remember this, is “ Freddy Fungus and Alice Algae took a Lichen to each other”. Well, on the Cape they took a lichen to each other in a big way and are a large part of why a gray wood, looks more like a sage green wood in winter.

Add to that the wonderful Reindeer Lichen that often covers the ground near the trail and again you have everything but a gray wood. Reindeer lichen is way cool, first because you can imagine you are on the tundra and real reindeer are right over the ridge, plus, they are such barometers of moisture in the air, that on a dry day they will feel all crunchy whereas on a humid day they are soft as can be.

Of course there are pines to add to the green, and holly. Pitch pines, and white pines dominate our woods, and the holly makes it only about 20 miles further north than the Cape and then says “uncle” to the cold. But the Cape is warm enough for it, and the robins and other birds love the berries, which get a good fertilized start on life when they pass through their digestive system, so hollies crop up everywhere. Oh the “Holly and the Ivy”, a great song to hum to yourself while you leave the mad commercial dash of Christmas and revive yourself in the “green” winter woods.

So, if this winter looks to disappoint in the way of “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas” why not take up a new tune, “I’m dreaming of a green forest” just like the one I used to know. Oh, that might be too close to home for me, for I am presently in Baltimore, about to head to TN for Christmas and then on to Texas, where I will dream of the “green forest I used to know”.