Hitchiti Experimental Forest

In lab we visited the Hitchiti Experimental Forest and hiked along the Hitchiti or Ernst Brendner Trail. This forest is called experimental because certain parts of it are subject to experimental burning at different intervals to study the growth and recovery of the ecosystem after an event such as a burning.

Along the hike we saw a number of different plants and soil types. Parts of the trail ran in old, dried river banks and along the side of a river. This allowed us to see very rich organic soil. We also were able to find large rocks that were in the ground that would had a number of different mosses growing on them. Two plants that we came across were wild ginger and sassafras. Wild ginger is a small root-like plant that grew out of the ground. This plant tends to prefer shaded, rich, organic soil. This makes the forest floor of Hitchiti that was shaded by large pine and oak trees an ideal place for this plant. One interesting feature of this plant is that it smells like licorice. The other plant we took special notice of is sassafras. One particular interesting point about this plant is that it expresses three different leaf strategies on the same tree. It has an oval unlobed leaf, a bilobed or mitten-shaped, and a trilobed  or three pronged leaf.

Ginger

Sassafras Leaf Strategies