Joshua Nieman: The wet, loud, obnoxious sounds you are hearing are those of me, as carefully as possible, stomping through deep, deep mud and dense wetland plants that were taller than me. And I'm 6'2"! For this episode, I have journeyed deep into the wild heart of Ypsilanti Township to find an ecosystem with plant species and geography that long predates European settlers in the area. And unfortunately, true to the name of the show, the whereabouts will remain hidden this time around. I'm not going to reveal the specific location of the wetland due to its special and protected nature, but rest assured, Washtenaw County, it exists right in your backyard. Welcome to WEMU's Hidden in Plain Sight, the show where we shed light on some of the people, places, and things that help comprise who we are as a community. I'm Joshua Nieman, and today we will be venturing into Ypsi’s Highland Fen, a unique local ecosystem full of rarities that preservationists are devoted to restoring to its original state.
So, let's first back up a couple of weeks. While I was working on the Peninsular Paper Company episode, I of course met local historian and Highland Cemetery Association board leader, Barry LaRue, for an interview. After we were finished recording, we hung around for another hour or so talking about Washtenaw County and local oddities when the topic of conversation eventually turned towards the Highland Fen. I had never heard of it, and Barry explained that that was likely by design. The area is protected and preservation efforts are extensive and ongoing. It's safe to say that my interest was piqued, and so I began to search for the right people to show me around. Unsurprisingly, the process led me to the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission, and stewardship planner, Allison Krueger, answered the call. Allison then connected me to Dr. Tony Reznicek, a member of the county's natural areas technical advisory committee, former U of M professor, and world-renowned botanist and sedge expert.
With the three of us, our little Highland Fen expedition team was formed and we set out. “But, Josh,” you might be asking, “what's a fen?” And that's a good question. To the uninitiated, bogs, swamps, marshes, and fens might all seem the same. They all fall under the wetland umbrella, but fens are differentiated by the fact that their water source comes from beneath the ground. Bogs rely on rainfall. Swamps and marshes have creeks, rivers, or another surface water source. But fens form by runoff and upwelled groundwater. That leaves them with a cool, “Why are you still wet? It doesn't make any sense,” type of quality. As Allison, Tony, and I descended into the fen, the quirks of this particular water source began to reveal themselves immediately.
Tony Reznicek: One of the things you can see when you look at the most open areas of the seepage is one of the defining characteristics of areas like this, and that is the groundwater coming through the deposits from the glacier is highly charged with lime, with calcium, and when it comes into contact with the air... That lime precipitates out as white deposits like this, which this is just a little bit, but sometimes these form very large pieces. They're colloquially called tufa, and you can also get Pleistocene conglomerates from this lime cementing together gravel deposits, and there are examples of that here as well. So, it's an unusual wetland with a lot of water. A lot of species that are restricted to this kind of fen.
Joshua Nieman: Those lime deposit conglomerates can get huge, and we'll come across one later, but as we kept on through the fen, I got to truly experience some of the uncommon species Tony was talking about.
Tony Reznicek: I should note that there are also plants here which are rare and they're actually listed as threatened or endangered in Michigan, and this is one of them here. This is the Canadian burnet, which is restricted in Michigan to just the southeast portion, only Wayne and Washtenaw counties, and really the only extant localities are a few in this general vicinity along the Fleming Creek and Huron River drainage right in this part of the state. So that's quite an exciting plant for anybody in Michigan.
Joshua Nieman: The Canadian burnet, in many ways, is a very alien-looking plant. The flowers it produces are brush-like and spiny, almost looking like the type of rotary brushes you'd commonly find in an automatic car wash. It can reach heights of three to six feet and features very distinct saw-tooth-like leaves that I was able to photograph, and it's struggling, primarily due to habitat loss such as fens like this one. As we continued, the finds just kept coming.
Allison Krueger: We also had, I've got a view of it here, but a really cool find or kind of realization. The oaks got burned out on that hillside and if you look kind of in between those short oaks, there's a whole pile of blueberries, which, when I saw it in spring, were all in flower and the bees were just holding onto them because it was a windy day and it was just buzzing with life. It was really cool.
Joshua Nieman: Finding wild blueberries in Michigan isn't uncommon by any means. They're most commonly found in the Upper Peninsula and northern points of the Lower Peninsula, after all. But finding them where you don't expect them is always a treat. But that might not have been the part that you got hung up on. Allison mentioned burns?
Allison Krueger: So, we burned this—prescribed fire covered this whole hillside two years ago and it burned with such ferocity, which we think was great, that it ended up burning for two days straight. And I think that's because the site hadn't burned in, well, probably since the early aughts when TNC, the Nature Conservancy once was involved with it. The controlled burn—the habitat that we're in, the hillside prairie and leading into prairie fen environment—are both native ecosystems to Michigan and those communities are dependent on fire for continued succession, or continued success. So what we're looking to is bring the fire back to the landscape, which will help the native plants just kind of persist to the next generation. So it's a little bit of a funky scene right now because you can see some dead trees above us, which is also an intent of the fire because we envision this hillside as it was, and as Tony had documented it years ago, as a hillside prairie covered with grasses. So we are looking to kind of actively change the community makeup right now.
Joshua Nieman: And as we made our way through the surreal collision of burnt trees and flourishing new life, entirely new oddities began to reveal themselves.
Allison Krueger: So, with all the geology Tony could teach you, don't forget about the randomized headstones that have ended up here that we don't know the history about.
Joshua Nieman: A headstone had dropped from the cemetery above and now lay embedded deep within the fen. Nature had already begun reclaiming it as its own. The unique flora and unintentional decorations really gave the environment a sense of being a place of forgotten things. It really was like stepping into a pocket of the past, and as we continued the species kept revealing themselves.
Tony Reznicek: This prairie euphorbia, the flowering spurge that Allison pointed out, recovery of some of the shrub oaks is proceeding and these are low dwarf oaks and you can see the wild rye that is a plant of open settings that's coming back.
Allison Krueger: Oh yeah, this is a great, this is a wetland plant called Chara that only grows where there's constant water.
Tony Reznicek: If you look around you will see as part of the dominance prairie grasses like big bluestem and we passed some Indian grass on the way down and there is that kind of component in these fens.
Allison Krueger: Are the deer eating these? The deer eat these? Oh, something's eating it. Something's eating this. I'll take their help. These are, this is an invasive tree that's coming in with the management of this area. So usually we have to come in and we do like a cut and dab and kill it at the base. But something's working in our favor and it appears to be eating it, which we'll take the help with. Oh yeah, let's go.
Tony Reznicek: There's a Houstonia canadensis, the little native bluets, looking good, I'm glad to see that.
Joshua Nieman: This was an entirely foreign language to me, I kind of just smiled and nodded along, but I photographed what I could and had Tony ID everything so you can take a look for yourself. Now back to the fen. If you remember from the beginning I said that the ecosystem predated European settlers, but that doesn't mean it predates human involvement by any means. In fact, studies indicate that indigenous people were very deliberate with their decisions.
Tony Reznicek: So what the origin of these communities is, is actually land management, we believe, by the native people, who actually used sites like this, for example, those sandy areas up top and the bluff for visibility and the river nearby, this would be an ideal for utilizing for Native people's transportation routes.
Joshua Nieman: And as we continued further in, very much in the footsteps of those who came before, eventually we found one. A giant lime boulder. It almost looked like it had a face in the way it had formed. It was very interesting.
Tony Reznicek: Yeah. Here's one of these Pleistocene conglomerates that has been glued together by lime. This rock post-dates the glacier and it's actually a function of lime-rich water coming through the landscape and gluing this together and then the deposits around it eroding away over time and being washed into the river post-glacially. And this rock actually grew up, so to speak, in the open. And you can see the fragrant sumac there, which is an open ground species. So, this also was once open.
Joshua Nieman: This was our point of turning around, however. We began the arduous journey back, and here's where I wanna give a little shout out to Allison and Tony. They were moving through the landscape like elegant gazelles. I could not believe it. I was trudging around in the mud, out of breath every five or so steps. It really seemed like they just twirled through the conditions while remaining so poised for educational opportunities. I really gained a lot of respect for the physicality of the work they were doing. My pride could not allow them to know how much I was suffering. But I think they saw through it anyways. Though I was huffing and puffing and dragging my feet by the end, it was still such an amazing opportunity to explore this ecosystem and see what the world looked like before you or I could begin to recognize it. So I'll leave you with this. The Highland Fen's location is not a secret, but it isn't advertised either.
Allison Krueger: We don't, as you can see, getting down here is not the easiest thing. So can you, you know, the logistic sides for county government is building a trail down here isn't actually really like feasible as is. And then when you layer the other part to this, which is we're here to help protect rare habitat, you really see a reason for it being maybe left open and available, but not promoted.
Joshua Nieman: If you want to learn more, potentially see it for yourself, or simply get more information, reach out to the professionals! Tony and Allison love talking about it, and I promise they won't bite. I'm Joshua Nieman, and this has been WEMU's Hidden in Plain Sight. Who knows what will shed light next? Thanks for listening. The funny thing, I didn't want to say this because I don't want to jinx it. I am like deathly afraid of spiders.
Allison Krueger: Oh, well then the rains have helped.
Tony Reznicek: One thing to note, actually, is that botanists don’t just wander idly through these habitats and look at them – although it might seem so. They actually work on documenting on them and this documentation takes the form of plant collections deposited into museums.
Allison Krueger: I also wanted to just give a shout out to Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission. They are my boss, but more importantly, they are the organization that manages the Natural Areas Preservation Program that helps protect land and resources across Washtenaw County. The NAP program, as it's commonly called, helped purchase Highland Fen and now helps to support the stewardship activities needed at Highland Fen. And we've actually now protected nearly 6,000 acres of land across the county.
Joshua Nieman: I’m also scared of ticks... and I’m not a fan of scorpions either.
Music in this episode provided by Adam Plomaritas
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