Colorful leaves, Schenley Park, 9 Oct 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
10 October 2022
The season has changed and the woods in Schenley Park look different than they did a month ago. The trees are putting on fall color and deer are providing more evidence of their overpopulation in the park.
Doe browsing in Schenley Park, 21 Aug 2022. NOTE: A buck-rubbed sapling is in the foreground (photo by Kate St. John)
With the growing season over there is less greenery for deer to eat and there are fewer places to browse because they have already denuded many areas.
Nothing growing on the ground in the presence of too many deer, Schenley Park, 9 October 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
What is left has been eaten down to nubs, just visible above the unpalatable invasive plants. Below, goutweed nearly hides the tops of what used to be jewelweed while pokeweed was browsed to tiny leaves and bare stems.
Favored plants are browsed to the tops of unappetizing plants (goutweed), Schenley Park 9 Oct 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Pokeweed overbrowsed by deer, Schenley Park, 9 October 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
As the greenery disappears deer eat tree saplings and small branches. In cases of deer overpopulation, such as Schenley Park, the young trees are foraged down to bonsai.
Ash tree sapling overbrowsed by deer, like bonsai, Schenley Park, 9 Oct 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Schenley no longer has enough food for deer so at night they walk into neighborhoods and browse in backyards. This is happening across the city and has prompted some residents to consider a Deer Management Plan for Pittsburgh. KDKA’s Andy Sheen reports: Some Pittsburgh residents say it’s time to get deer population under control. Click on the link or the screenshot below.
Variegated leaves add interest to the garden so horticulturalists breed plants with that in mind. Some examples of their success include goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria a.k.a. bishop’s weed or ground elder) and varieties of holly (Ilex sp.).
When these plants escape to the wild they revert to their normal non-variegated form. Goutweed is excellent example. Now invasive in Schenley Park it always has plain green leaves.
Goutweed that escaped to the wild, Schenley Park, June 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Some plants however, adopt variegation on their own. Learn why in this vintage article.
Arrowwood viburnum, Schenley Park, September 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
29 September 2022
In western Pennsylvania, where we have a high deer population, gardeners have learned from experience that white-tailed deer will eat some plants and not others. They heavily browse their favorites to the point of killing them but leave others untouched, even plants in the same genus.
Viburnum is a case in point. Gardening advice at Rutgers University’s Landscape Plants Rated by Deer Resistance indicates that arrowwood viburnum (Viburnum dentatum) is deer resistant. Pictured at top, these shrubs are healthy in Schenley Park where the deer population is more than 100 per square mile.
Deer also don’t like the Japanese snowball (Viburnum plicatum) which thrives as an invasive in Frick Park, shown below.
Viburnum plicatum fruit, Schenley, July 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
But they love our native hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) and consume it to local extinction.
Hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides) is a favorite food of deer (photo taken in Maine by Kate St. John)
Honeybee approaches wingstem, Frick Park, 8 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
17 September 2022
In Schenley and Frick Parks you can look straight through the forest if you duck your head below four feet high. In Schenley Park the ground is often bare and most plants in that four-foot zone are gone. But one flower, wingstem (Verbesina alternifolia), is doing just fine in the city parks.
Wingstem, Frick Park, 8 Sep 2022
The absence of cover from the ground to 4 – 5 feet is called a browseline (below) and is evidence of an overpopulation of white-tailed deer.
Bare ground and absence of cover below the trees in Schenley Park, September 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
According to this KDKA report, the deer population in Schenley Park is estimated at 80-120 per acre, which roughly equates to 57-86 deer per square mile. A 2010 deer study for City Parks found that the parks can support 7-8 deer per square mile, but with 8 to 11 times that number living in Schenley any plant still growing there is definitely something deer don’t eat.
Doe browsing in Schenley Park, September 2022 (photo by Kate Sr. John)
So why don’t deer eat wingstem?
A thicket of wingstem on the “elbow” trail, Frick Park, 8 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Biennial gaura (Gaura biennis) and honeysuckle vine were both blooming in pink. Interestingly, gaura flowers bloom white and fade to pink, while this non-native honeysuckle starts pink and fades to white and then yellow.
Don’t be fooled by the camera’s perspective. Gaura flowers are very small compared to honeysuckle.
Non-native honeysuckle vine, Hays Woods, 7 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
A Virginian tiger moth (Spilosoma virginica or yellow woolly bear) hung out on mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), a very common and invasive plant at Hays Woods.
Virginian tiger moth, Hays Woods, 7 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Another invasive, Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), blooms profusely at Hays Woods. Many insect pollinators love the flowers.
Japanese knotweed in bloom, 3 Sep 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Squash blooming at the maintenance heap in Frick Park, 27 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
3 September 2022
Late August colors came in orange, yellow, purple, gray and green in Frick Park and Moraine State Park.
Above, squash(*) blooms on a fence in Frick.
Yellow daisies without petals are actually tansy (Tanacetum vulgare), native to Eurasia.
Tansy blooming at Frick Park, 25 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
The deep purple of New York ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) is never true to color in my cellphone photos. Instead it looks redder than expected because the Pixel 5 Photo app apparently overcompensates for the camera’s blue bias. All cameras have problems with purple, described in this vintage article: Not Truly Blue.
Ironweed blooming at Moraine State Park, 26 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
This velvety bright orange mushroom in Frick deserved a photo on 25 August. Jim Chapman re-found it the next day and identified it as northern cinnabar polypore (Trametes cinnabarina, a.k.a. Pycnoporus cinnabarinus). By then it was already darker orange than this.
Cinnabar polypore, Frick Park, 25 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Wingstem with gray aphids, Frick Park, 25 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
And everywhere in late August there is green.
(*) Did you know that zucchini, pumpkin, summer squash and pattypan squash are all cultivars of Curcubita pepo? The plant pictured at top seems to be producing pattypan squash.
A synanthrope (syn-anthrope) [from Greek: syn-anthrope: syn=”together with” + anthropos=”man”] is a wild animal or plant that lives near, and benefits from, an association with humans and the somewhat artificial habitats that people create around themselves.
Horseweed (Erigeron canadensis) and pilewort (Erechtites hieraciifolius) are native North American plants that like disturbed soil. We notice them in August when they start to look ugly.
p.s. (*) Merriam-Webster explains that the word was introduced by botanist Theodor von Heldreich at a botanical conference in Paris, 16-24 August 1878, making its first-ever use almost exactly 144 years ago.
Doe in Schenley Park, July 2019 (photo by Kate St. John)
22 August 2022
Back in 2010 the City of Pittsburgh commissioned a deer count in the parks that found the population was too high and not sustainable for the habitat. Nothing has been done since then to reduce the deer population other than accidentally killing them with our cars.
Twelve years have passed. According to deer experts “Urban deer can live for 10 years; the deer population, if unchecked, doubles about every two years.” Schenley Park now has as much as 60 times the number of deer we had in 2010. This is truly unsustainable, even for the deer themselves.
8-point buck in Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Schenley’s deer have completely consumed all the good food plants and are starting to nibble the poisonous ones. The browse line is painfully obvious. In the process deer have eradicated their favorite plants from Schenley Park.
Orange jewelweed and yellow jewelweed provide nectar for hummingbirds and bumblebees and are a favored food of deer.
Orange jewelweed in Schenley Park in 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)Yellow jewelweed in Schenley Park in 2018 (photo by Kate St. John)
Both jewelweeds were prolific in Schenley Park as recently as four years ago.
Orange jewelweed was prolific in 2017 (photo by Kate St. John)
But this year all the accessible plants have been eaten down to bare stems. The only ones that flower are those in spots unreachable by deer — on extremely steep slopes or hidden among thick cattails in Panther Hollow Lake.
Deer ate the jewelweed, no flowers, no leaves (photo by Kate St. John)
Jewelweeds are annuals that must re-seed every year but no seeds are produced in this deer-browsed landscape. Impatiens will disappear from Schenley Park when the seed bank is exhausted.
False Solomon’s seal used to grow throughout Schenley Park and it carpeted the ground in an area near the Bridle Trail. All of it has been eaten to the ground since 2014. Here’s what it looked like eight years ago.
False Solomon’s seal blooming in May 2012 (photo by Kate St. John)False Solomon’s seal in August 2014 (photo by Kate St. John)
White wood asters used to bloom in Schenley’s woods. Not anymore. Here’s what they looked like in 2013.
White wood asters in Schenley Park, August 2013 (photo by Kate St. John)
Eradicated plants are indirect evidence of too many deer in Schenley Park. Direct evidence is their visibility every day.
A sustainably-sized deer herd would hide in the underbrush while sleeping during the day, but the browse line in Schenley is so severe there is no cover for them. The large herd has coped by becoming accustomed to people and leashed dogs.
I stood near this group of three deer on Sunday 21 August using my snapshot camera zoomed to 90mm (approximately 2x). This 8-point buck did not care that I was there.
8-point buck in velvet, Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Young doe and buck browsing in Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)Doe watches a husky dog on a leash approach in the distance, Schenley Park, 21 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Long shadows are back again, 12 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
20 August 2022
The days are getting shorter and shadows are getting longer. Pittsburgh had one and a half more hours of daylight on the summer solstice, just two months ago, than we do today.
Late summer flowers are attracting bees.
Allium flower with bee, 16 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Ornamental grasses are going to seed.
Ornamental grass at Phipps (photo by Kate St. John)
And the clouds have been interesting.
Puffy clouds over Millers Ponds, Crawford County, 15 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Can you see the face in the cloud below?
Glowing eyes in the face in the cloud, 17 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Yews are popular landscaping shrubs but they don’t last long in the face of deer overpopulation.
All yew species are toxic to some degree, but our native Taxus canadensis is less toxic than others and was used medicinally. Deer don’t read the warning labels. They love yew.
Every night they creep up behind Carnegie Museum and browse the yews along the driveway to the parking garage. They nip off the small branches and eat all the leaves. The shrubs struggle to grow new leaves for photosynthesis before the deer return.
Yew overbrowsed by deer behind Carnegie Museum, 16 August 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Deer have killed the yews closest to the sidewalk (dead twigs), overbrowsed the middle shrubs (green knobs), and cannot yet reach the tallest branches. But they are eating their way there.
Yews browsed by deer behind Carnegie Museum, 16 Aug 2022 (photo by Kate St. John)
Don’t assume their love stops with yew. There are more delectables in Schenley Park that they adore. Soon we’ll explore more.
