Cottonwood Pond: Spring is Springing

Spring is Springing

March 30, 2015

After snow melt, rains and some warm days, Spring was finally showing its face. The day was warm and sunny, and a little breezy, when I ventured down to Cottonwood Pond.

From a distance, things still looked winter brown, with occasional light patches of green. But, I knew that the warmth and sunlight must have been bringing forth some spring ephemerals.

Spring Beauty

And it did.

Serrated Toothwort about to bloom

Harbinger-of-Spring still blooming, stems reaching higher above the woods floor

Virginia Bluebells in bud

Trillium were opening up, and whorls of Mayapple plants were poking through the leaf litter, ready to unfurl like umbrellas.

I wanted to see any changes at Cottonwood Pond since the earliest spring rains. But I also wanted to find out what plant life my have sprung up in and around the pond.

Getting closer, I could see a spot of green near the west corner of the pond, in the water.

The creek was rushing, though not as high as the last time I had seen it. The Seep was very visible. And the Root Ball was beginning to look more like and island as water was surrounding it.

As seen from the west

The Root Ball was dry in spots from the recent sunshine.

The Seep

The Seep had definitely seen much more action recently. Water was eroding the channel more deeply and the whole water trail seemed wider. In fact, part of it was dividing into two routes around clumps of grass and weeds.

The green spot in the pond corner was a clump of grass that may have started before that spot was covered with water.

On the lower part of Mud Pile #1, below the Root Ball, a flat, broken object had appeared. I don't think it could have floated to that spot. Maybe it had been caught up in the root system, dropped from somewhere, when the tree was upright, and just recently washed out of the mud among the rootlets. There was so much water and mud at Cottonwood Pond that I could not get close enough to see what it was, so I zoomed in with my camera. I was very curious about what it was.

The Cove was clear to see as sunlight shone from water on the other side.

Sycamore seed balls had been breaking up. Some of the single seeds were floating on the pond's surface, where the water rippled slightly from the breeze. There were also a few small Water Striders skating on the top.

Had the pond become deeper? There had definitely been much water coming in, but had the bottom eroded down more? If so, maybe it was from the current of water that sometimes rushes in through the Inlets on the southeast side, under the Barkless Log, scouring sediment on the bottom.

I measured the deepest part of Cottonwood Pond with my handy-dandy homemade DMD (Depth-Measuring Device.)

It was 13 3/4” deep.

I looked back in my records. On March 27, 2013, it was 21 3/8” deep. On March 21, 2014, it was 15 1/2” deep.

So, this day's measurement was lower, despite the amount of water we had recently and the widening and deepening of the Inlets. But, it must be remembered that not only has water been pouring out the corner of the pond into the Seep, it has also been moving under the Root Ball through the Cove. The bowl of earth that is Cottonwood Pond has its carrying capacity.

Despite the depth measure, it seemed to me that there was more of a channel being carved through the center of the pond, in a semi-circle around the Root Ball and Mud Piles. Instead of a more gradual change in depth from shallow to deep, there is a greater difference in depth, with a more abrupt “drop-off” becoming evident.

In the pond, just inside the Inlets, I found two kinds of plants thriving under the water.

I did not yet know what either of these plants were, or how they got there, and looked forward to seeing how they would develop, and trying to identify them.

I had wondered if Cottonwood Pond would eventually support some aquatic plants, and now it seemed to have happened. Those plants had been consistently under water.

On the east end of the Root Ball, a couple of plants were growing in the mud. There was a Jewelweed seedling with just the two cotyledons. It had not yet shown the first set of “true leaves”. Will it stay there and become a full, tall, orange-blossoming Jewelweed plant?

I assumed the purple-leaved plant was some type of grass. I would need to watch that one.

Water had been flowing readily over the Isthmus between the main pond and “little pond”, and surrounded the Two-Trunk Tree.

How deep had “little pond” become?

It was becoming more of a swamp. I leaned over and sniffed. The area smelled fetid and,, well, swampy – full of decay. Mosquito larvae “tumblers” were wiggling around under the surface. A Sassafrass sapling was flourishing, roots in water, next to the Trunk.

A large stick under the water stretches across “little pond”. The deepest part was beyond the stick. I measured the depth of that part, and it came barely below the depth of the main pond. The section before the stick was slightly less than the deepest section. This meant the deepest part of “little pond” was close to 13 1/2”.

Checking my records again, I found that on March 21, 2014 it was 13 1/4” and that, at that time, it was also close to the depth of the main pond. The water in this area had been spreading out quite a bit, making the whole area very soggy.

On the other side, shrubs in the grove of Elderberry were sprouting leaves...