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Plant Survey: Wooded Hillock

By Clark DeLong, 2009.

Summary: The Hillock contains a rather interesting plant community rich in plants that are not common in the Washington area. A surprisingly large percentage of the species present are in the Ericaceae family indicating that the site conditions favor them over other more generally adapted and wider distributed plant groups. I have come to suspect that this small island in College Park has received a very low level of human disturbance over the last hundred years or so. One of the key pieces of evidence pointing to that fact is that the existence of basal resprouts of Castenea dentata. This indicates that the area was not likely to have been farmed since the introduction chestnut blight in 1904. The habitat has received heavy natural disturbance during the last 15 years in the form of small wild fires and a tornado. Prior to disturbance the forest was composed of about 15-20% pine species. The Pines have not recovered and the canopy is filling in primarily with oak and beech as the climax species. Due to the fact that the canopy has been opened up a very diverse set of plant species have sprung up in the gap. What follows is a complete list of the native species that I have been able to locate on the site.

Woody Species:

Rhododendron periclymenoides (Pinxter Flower).

Herbaceous Species:

2009 Student Sustainability Council at the University of Maryland, College Park.