OTTAWA, Ill.–Volunteer Chris Woeltje off-handily mentioned the Illinois champion red mulberry was near the Fox River as we toured Dayton Bluffs Preserve in early October.
Champion trees catch my attention, so I asked him how to see it (it’s along the river trail on the north end of the preserve.)
After we finished our tours for the day at the Illinois Master Naturalist Conference, I returned to Dayton Bluffs and followed Woeltje’s directions.
There’s something righteous about clutching a thick rope to descend Heart Attack Hill (“Some enjoy the challenge, others regret their decision”). For me, nearly five years removed from a triple bypass, it felt delightfully like giving fate the finger.
If you happen to be doing a fall color tour in the Starved Rock area in the next week or so, I would suggest making Dayton Bluffs part of your day. Especially if you like hiking or walking, there’s seven miles of trails. Frankly, it’s worth a visit for itself alone.
Our morning tour was led by Renae Frigo, Land Stewardship for Naperville-based The Conservation Foundation, David Manigold, MD, volunteer coordinator with Friends of the Dayton Bluffs, and Woeltje.
TCF owns the property and Ottawa leases it as a park, a cool collaboration.
All three guides showed intense pride in what was accomplished at Dayton Bluffs, as Manigold put it, “We have a great group of volunteers that since 2013 has transformed 253 acres of woodlands and agricultural fields into a beautiful public nature area. We have cleared invasive species from the woodlands, collected and processed seed from the prairie, designed and cleared trails, built bridges, a playground, and a deck overlooking the Fox River. . . . Two years ago, we created two small wetland areas, planting and watering plugs and laying down appropriate seed.”
There was American spikenard, honey locust, late monarchs floating past, wood for tunneling bumble bees and crane flies, a first for me, erupted en masse from one patch of a path near a prairie. Asters poked through on paths. Rattlesnake master added the stark cut of its jib to a prairie. Lady’s tresses brought joy.
“We are home to over 350 species of trees, grasses and wildflowers,” Manigold pointed out.
For cemetery aficiondas, there’s a doozy of a restored settlers cemetery and Native American burial mounds.
Back to the red mulberry (Morus rubra). It’s a native, unlike the white mulberry, which is more common and came from China. Woeljte found the champion red mulberry. Manigold nominated it to the Illinois Extension Big Tree Registry (https://extension.illinois.edu/forestry/big-tree-register).
It was nominated and measured in 2022. Diameter (breast high in the registry) was 22.6 inches. The circumference was 5.92 feet. It had a height of 87 feet with a spread of 46. Manigold said other red mulberries are at Dayton Bluffs.
Manigold made a point of mentioning workdays are the second Saturday each month. TCF wants volunteers to register. Get details at the Dayton Bluffs Preserve Facebook page. More on Dayton Bluffs is at https://theconservationfoundation.org/about-us/dayton-bluffs/.
In the afternoon, Frigo and Woeltje led a tour of a recent TCF project at Belrose Farm near Wedron.
As TCF describes it, Belrose Farm is a unique place with “waterfalls, sandstone bluffs, upland forests, lowland swamps, 300+ year old oak trees, a unique slot canyon known as Hidden Shelter Canyon, almost a mile of Fox River frontage and a rare hill prairie . . . And human history is as important as the natural history of Belrose Farm. There is abundant archaeological evidence of the property’s extensive use by Indigenous peoples before the Belrose Family came to it in the 1800s.”
Woeljte mentioned that both sites have cricket frogs in number (something that’s nearly disappeared from most of the Chicago area). He also has done bat surveys. As we walked, we saw caves across the Fox River in the St. Peter sandstone bluffs. Red-headed woodpeckers hammered dead trees. We spotted a couple bald eagles. The site has blackhaw viburnum, a high quality plant, stiff gentian and slender false foxglove.
Other rare plants are being found as restoration work continues. It looks like years of work before the site opens for public access (the effort to work the hill prairie alone is something else). Information is at https://theconservationfoundation.org/belrose-farm-a-land-of-stories/.
For reasons like this, I am proud to have taken my Master Naturalist training in 2017 and maintained my certification since with the required continuing education and volunteering. More on the Illinois Extension’s Master Naturalist program is at https://extension.illinois.edu/mn.
I did my Master Gardener training in 2018 and have maintained certification since. Learn about that program at https://extension.illinois.edu/mg.
It’s immensely enriching and rewarding doing continuing ed and volunteering with a cadre of fellow-minded people who find seeing the translucent crane fly or a slender false foxglove cool, worth stopping to notice.