Forest and Nature

John Noel has found what he calls the “sweet spot” in Bon Aqua Woods.

It lies about one-quarter mile from old Highway 46, past hickory and tulip poplar trees, Mayapple plants, poison ivy and tall, native dandelion.

“You can feel what it would feel like to stand in the middle of an ancient forest,” said Noel, a Williamson County businessman and environmentalist, looking around him.

A few feet away rose a massive white oak estimated to be hundreds of years old. Turning in a circle, Noel could see another and then another 120-foot or taller gray-barked white oak in the distance, flanked by young, thin trees.

The state took possession last week of the 35-acre forest with trees of an “exceptional” size rare in Middle Tennessee. The public will be able to see them for themselves when it opens sometime this fall as a state natural area, a type of park.

Noel saved the trees from the chainsaw with his checkbook. He offered up $275,000 of his own money to buy the land, gaining time for the slow-moving state bureaucracy to make an offer.

A developer had purchased the land at auction, and Noel, tipped to the buy, rushed to make a handshake deal with him before anything happened to the trees.

State officials determined that the forest’s attributes, including the old oaks, a cave system and nearby historic springs, made it worth acquiring as a natural area.

After an appraisal, financing was worked out with the Heritage Conservation Trust Fund and other money set aside for special lands.

The state paid $225,000, with Noel, an investment real estate agent who is president of the non-profit Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, making a gift of the difference.

“What first got our attention was that it was a small forest of exceptional large and old trees you don’t normally find in this part of the country. That’s usually in East Tennessee,” said Reggie Reeves, director of the Division of State Natural Areas.

“For the most part, it’s a pretty pure forest. It will give the public a chance to take a short walk through a 35-acre tract that gives them an idea of what an old-growth forest is like.”

Tree-dappled land open

Most of the old growth in the state includes hemlocks, magnolia and other species and are to the east in what are often difficult-to-reach gorges on the Cumberland Plateau and the Smoky Mountains.

Bon Aqua Woods, which is easily accessible, shows signs that humans have had an impact. Some trees, for instance, were probably removed over the past century, which makes the forest more “old growth-like,” as Reeves said, than truly “old growth.” The area was part of a spa-style resort in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

The tree-dappled land is open, not clogged as many woods are today with invasive species, including bush honeysuckle, that make it difficult to walk or see the forest floor.

Umbrella magnolia, known for their large leaves, grow, too, which is unusual for the Western Highland Rim, an elevated area beside the central basin of Middle Tennessee where Nashville is.

Among the saplings in the woods, American chestnut can be found. The species was largely wiped out by a blight years ago, but rootstock is still alive in places, Reeves said.

If a treatment is found one day, the saplings that come up could live to grow old here.

Canopy is for the birds

Leaves crunched underfoot Thursday as Noel and Brian Bowen, state natural areas program manager, left the “sweet spot” and walked to one of the white oaks.

About 120 feet overhead, its branches splayed out to form part of what amounted to a green, leafy forest ceiling. Old forests offer the thick canopy that some songbirds migrating thousands of miles from Central and South America need to rest or nest.

Noel and Bowen called out bird types as they heard their songs.

“Arcadian flycatcher … Tennessee warbler … hummingbird. …”

The old trees could testify to the time when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and one tree likely was already growing when the Pilgrims arrived in a world of Native Americans and bison.

The ground (where they stand) is rich with insects and unseen microbes, the result of centuries of fallen leaves. The white bones of a dead possum now also part of the forest floor lay nearby.

“Generations over the years saw the value of preservation of these trees, and others need to do the same,” Noel said.

Source: http://www.rctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070514/NEWS01/705140343/1006/MTCN0301