ENTS,

 

Hogg Woods, Butler County, PA

June 09, 2009.  Carl Harting and I (Ed Frank) visited three sites in western Pennsylvania on Tuesday.  These were Wolf Creek Narrows Natural Area, Hogg Woods, and Plain Grove Fen.  I will post each portion of the trip separately   to better organize the information.

I came across a mention of Hogg Woods in the Butler County Natural Heritage Inventory document prepared by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy http://www.naturalheritage.state.pa.us/CNAI_PDFs/Butler%20County%20NHI%201991%20WEB.pdf  On page 73 of the document was this brief description:

Hogg Woods provides an example of a remnant old growth northern hardwood forest community (NC015) which is located northeast of Slippery Rock. This community is dominated by American beech (Fagus grandifolia) and is one of two examples of a climax forest in the county, the other one being Deshon Woods in the Butler quadrangle (p. 107). For this reason, it is frequently used as an outdoor laboratory by Slippery Rock University biology classes. The community itself is less than ten acres and it is buffered by a second growth mixed deciduous forest community that has been selectively logged.)

 

I am trying to locate and document these various small patches of old forest as they are found across the state.  Carl and I decided to visit this one as part of the day’s efforts.  The property is on private land and neither of us had visited it before.  So we drove past the road and had to turn around and go back to find it.  Turning down this back road we passed a section of woods all marked with no trespassing signs.  This was the area we wanted to visit. 

 

On this topo map Hogg Woods is located in a stream valley head surrounded on three sides by strip mines.  Specifically it is between the words Strip mine on the lower left side of the map and the larger type word Strip in the mined area directly to the north.   There is a series of farm buildings and a house at the end of the road marked on the map just south of Hogg Woods.  I stopped and talked to the gentleman who owned this farm.  He told me the former owner who had posted the land had since passed away and now the property was owned by three different absentees land owners.   He gave us directions to find the big beech trees.  There was supposed to be a sign indicating these were original trees.  After a couple of missteps Carl and I found the path he spoke about.

Spicebush growing along old road – photo by Edward Frank

 It is an old overgrown road, possibly once a mine haul road cutting across the valley.  Much of the area was wet with poor drainage.  The original drainage patterns in the area had be disrupted by the old mining operation and no longer drained freely.  Off to one side was a bright orange bottomed stream flowing into the bottom.  The orange is indicative of acid mine drainage, Fe(OH)3 precipitate in particular.  

Patch of large beech trees in Hogg Woods – photo by Edward Frank

The species diversity was pretty high and there were some fair sized trees, so we started measuring toward a Rucker Index almost as soon as we entered the woods.  Following the old road back into the woods we soon came to some exceptional beech trees off to the right.  Many of these were nine to ten+ feet in girth and reaching just over 100 feet in height.  Most of the shots were from underneath as there were not lines of sight available to do the sine/sine methodology.  The heights reported therefore are generally understated by some amount, but I doubt that any of the trees reached higher than the low teens in any case.

Hogg Woods
Species	CBH (ft)	Height
Black Gum	7	89
Cucumber Tree	6.9	94
American Beech	10.3	101.5
American Beech	10.5	108
American Beech	8	102
Red Maple	10.9	102
Black Cherry	5.7	98
American Beech	10.7	107.5
White Oak	5.5	98
Yellow Birch	3.5	79
Red Oak	6	98
Tuliptree		112.4
Shagbark Hickory	5.5	80
Shagbark Hickory	8.2	76.3	in field
Tuliptree	9.2	111.5
Tuliptree	8.4	120

Looking in the area we found a number of stumps.  In addition to the beeches there was only one tree of size in the area, a red maple 10’2” in girth and 102 feet tall.  The rest of the trees were small and none gave an appearance of age.  The area had been logged at some time in the past.  The beech trees are massive, perhaps they are simply remnants that had not been cut when the rest of the area had been logged.  It is also possible that they have grown since the logging, but this seems unlikely.  

Carl Harting at large beech  with decaying base – photo by Edward Frank

Many of the beech trees showed a large amount of decay around their bases.  One large specimen had fallen within the last year or so and was lying amidst the others. I think this may be due to the general dampness of the site as a result of changes to the drainage patterns by the mining operations.  In the immediate area of the beeches the stream itself had been altered.  A high levee had been built up on the one side of a stream to keep it in its channel.   This channel modification might have kept large amounts of runoff from the strip mine from flowing directly into the flats, but at the same time it prevented water in the flats from flowing into the stream.  

Hogg Woods
Species	CBH (ft)	Height
Black Gum	7	89
Cucumber Tree	6.9	94
American Beech	10.5	108
Red Maple	10.9	102
Black Cherry	5.7	98
White Oak	5.5	98
Yellow Birch	3.5	79
Red Oak	6	98
Shagbark Hickory	5.5	80
Tuliptree	8.4	120
Rucker Height Index		96.6

There are many of the larger beeches that still appear to be healthy, but their long term future is cloudy.  The area has been severely impacted by the mining, there is the problem of beech bark disease in the population as a whole, and on top of this the land is owned by three different absentee land owners.  The Rucker Height Index for the site is 96.6 feet.  This is pretty representative of what was seen visually.  It certainly was a site worth visiting and worth documenting.  However, if I did not want to get some better photos, I doubt that I would ever revisit Hogg Woods.

Edward Frank