Herrick Fen and Kent Bog, Ohio Steve Galehouse
March 3, 2009

ENTS-

Visited a couple of sites today in Portage County, Ohio--one a fen, the
other a glacial kettle bog, located within a few miles of each other, and
with native tamarack as the unifying feature. Herrick Fen, in Streetsboro,
has a population of tamarack, and also shrubby cinquefoil and northern
bayberry; a couple of photos: .

Herrick Fen Tamaracks

Kent Bog, a glacial kettle bog, was for me
the more interesting area, with a much greater number of tamaracks, plus
northern species such as leahterleaf, grey birch, and mountain-holly.
Highbush blueberry was the dominant shrub layer at Kent Bog., with cranberry
also present. Kent Bog is listed as the most southern significant population
of tamaracks(3,500). The tamaracks in both areas topped out at only around
40'(48' max in Kent).  .

Kent Bog

More photos of the area are here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/srgalehouse/HerrickFenAndKentBogPortageCountyOhio 

Steve


Steve,

Nice report.  I like to see descriptions of different sites and small pockets of interest.  Most of the time your embedded photos work for me, but this time they did not.  I can view the photos on the picasaweb site you sent.  (Some captions on them would be nice.)

The Ohio  DNR website http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/location/KentBog/tabid/900/Default.aspx says it is only 42 acres and located near Kent Ohio in Portage County.  I a always curious about management practices used to preserve small sites such as this, but unfortunately there is little written about it available on the web.  There is a 0.5 mile long boardwalk shown on the map and in some of the photos.  Well defined trails and boardwalks do help preserve these small sites by keeping most people to a defined path rather than tramping all over.

Ed

Continued at:

http://groups.google.com/group/entstrees/browse_thread/thread/994656f8dcf71654?hl=en