Writing from the Hudson Valley up in New York! I've been here for a few days doing some fieldwork up at Mohonk Preserve in Gardiner, New York. My fieldwork is consisting largely of scouting for tupelo (Nyssa sylvatica) throughout the Preserve, looking for upland dry and lowland wet populations.
The fieldwork has been gorgeous and awesome- about 6 miles of bushwhacking through chestnut oak-hemlock forests, rhododendron groves (swaths, walls), and along babbling brooks and streams! All around, there have been tupelo! Not necessarily in swaths, but they're standing tall (literally) amongst these different forest types.
I was able to find my upland dry trees fairly easily, fruiting and all, where I took cores and about 50 fruits from 5 different trees in these dry sites. The tupelo up in Mohonk are huge... talking ~30 meters tall and reaching upwards of 60cm in DBH!! While the dry trees were fairly easy to find, the wet individuals were much more challenging. Not necessarily to find tupelo, or to find large tupelo, but specifically to find fruit-bearing tupelo.
Tupelo are polygamodioecious, which is a complex reproductive strategy meaning that some individuals produce bisexual flowers, while other individuals may produce unisexual flowers. This essentially helps them in the absence of other tupelos to be able to be pollinated and spread, should they wish.
Interestingly, when looking for the trees in a more wet environment, we struggled to locate trees with fruit. There are some theories that individuals will become fruit bearing in response to stress, and being proximal to a higher water table would reduce stress, therefore perhaps there's less fruit for that reason... but I'm not sure. Either way, it was much more difficult to find wet and fruiting individuals. In the end though... we succeeded! All along the Coxing Kill at Mohonk.
Now the samples come back with me to Charlottesville for processing analysis, and the fruit for germination!
Super special thank you to Evan from Mohonk for helping me navigate the Preserve, and Keri and Kaylin from Vassar for coming out to help me with some of my graduate work :-).
- Ethan