Our Environment: "Secret Frenchtown Park" by Scott Turner
Scott Turner, Environmental Columnist
Our Environment: "Secret Frenchtown Park" by Scott Turner
Somehow in 23 years of living and hiking in Rhode Island, we hadn’t heard of Frenchtown Park in East Greenwich.
But when Karen and I visited last weekend, we found a bucolic landscape, rich in flora and fauna. Frenchtown Park is well worth a trip.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTWe parked in the lot behind the town’s Parks & Recreation Building. There, a map explained the three connected parcels that comprised the 125-acre greenspace. An adjacent trail led us down to a pond, surrounded on three sides by thick vegetation, including cattails.
Every so often, a green frog belted out its strident “gunk” call, sounding somewhat like a plucked banjo string.
The path comprised one edge of pond. Beyond the other side of the path was thick, native lowland vegetation. The relatively giant leaves of skunk cabbage covered the wet ground. Above it grew the glossy-green-leaved shrub known as spicebush.
Often found in moist, shady sites, spicebush features foliage and fruit that produce an aroma reminiscent of allspice. The U.S. Department of Agriculture notes that given the “shrub’s habitat in rich woods, early land surveyors and settlers used spicebush as an indicator species for good agricultural land.”
Also growing trailside was the bush, arrowwood, and the tree, yellow birch. Arrowwood is a dense, multi-stemmed native that produces flat-topped flower clusters, which give way to blue-black fruits highly attractive to birds and other wildlife.
Yellow birch grows well in shade and produces its best growth in moist soils. The bark on older trees turns golden yellow and shreds horizontally. Scraped twigs and trunk of yellow birch produce a wintergreen scent.
Some 500 feet down this trail, sat remnants of the Tillinghast Mill, also called the Mount Hope Factory. The mill, built around 1813, once manufactured cotton thread.
We turned around on the trail and walked onto another forested path, heading west. These were drier woods also marked by the sound of water, which rushed along in a woodland stream a couple of hundred feet to our left. This upland forest featured some large white oaks, as well as American beech and white pine.
A few former pines were now newly sawn logs, providing a strong smell of sap to the setting.
Some of the birds we heard included Scarlet Tanager, Wood Pewee, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and Ovenbird. At one point, we detected the peeping calls of baby birds, and watched a White-breasted Nuthatch carry an insect into a nesting hole in the trunk of a red oak.
Two low-growing, white wildflowers, starflower, a member of the primrose family, and Canada mayflower, also known as false lily-of-the valley, grew on the sun-dappled forest floor.
American chestnut sprouts were the most-unexpected find. Once upon a time, the tree was a major component of the deciduous forests of the Eastern United States. Then, a non-native blight killed off most American chestnuts. Sometimes, though, their sprouts show up.
Several native trees, such as chinkapin oak and American beech, display similar foliage to that of American chestnut. But the latter’s big and straight leaves often exhibit tips that are more-sharply hooked than that of the oak and beech foliage.
As a former land manager, it is natural for me to consider plants and animals as indicators of the productivity of our environment. Pretty much all of the species I described suggest that Frenchtown Park is rich natural habitat.
Given that we live in a time when scientists warn that up to a million species may soon go extinct, kudos to the folks in East Greenwich, who created, and now maintain this important natural area.
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