While I don’t hunt anymore, I’m convinced that it was my hunting—and fishing—experiences that taught me the most about the outdoors in my early years. When you’re after your quarry, all your senses are at their sharpest. Each animal you hunt requires different tuning of your senses. Squirrel hunting was one of my favorite—perhaps because it was in the middle of October, which in Michigan is an absolutely glorious season.
Squirrel hunting on a calm day is rather easy with crisp and newly fallen leaves providing that give-away rustle and motion that catches your attention quickly. It’s a totally different thing on a windy day. All the leaves are moving—on the ground and in the trees—and the wind in the trees masks the rustles created by little feet.
On a squirrel hunt one windy October day, I gave up stalking because my own footfalls in the dry leaves were hampering my hearing acuity. So I sat down with my back against a tree in order to study the woods mostly with my vision. But it was a sound that got my attention. It was sort of a “snap” over my head followed quickly by a “dup” in the leaves behind me. “A squirrel is in the tree above me nibbling an acorn,” I whispered to myself—slowly looking up. Couldn’t see a thing, though. Yet the snap. . . dupping kept up. I got a kink in my neck by my constant craning. “Snap. . .dup” it went again. It was very close to me—and frustrating me. Why couldn’t I see the critter? It had to be close enough to hit with a stick.
So I stood up, turned around, and faced the tree. “Snap. . .dup” again. And my eye caught something landing in the leaves behind a tall shrub to the right of the tree: a shrub with many small trunks no larger than two inches in diameter. Now that the sun was really warming the woods, something in the bush was snapping more and more, sending projectiles out over ten feet. After several minutes of examination, I discovered that the bush was spitting seeds!
I had just been introduced to the wonder of witch hazel seeding—and why the shrub is sometimes called the “snapping hazel.” It is a real oddity. It fruits, flowers, and buds all at the same time: late fall. Most of us know it as the source of the smelly astringent that our mothers used on Q-tips to clean out our grubby little ears.
What’s with the seed thing? Well, because it has so many trunks and lives in the understory of the woods, it airmails its seeds as far as thirty feet away so that when they germinate, they don’t have to complete with the parent plant for sunlight and nutrients!
After the hunt, of course, before I got back into my car I also had to take care of a bunch of other seeds that were being dispersed another way: by hitching a ride on my jeans—various burrs and what we called “beggar ticks” that had points sharp enough to make it all the way through the fabric.
I never cease to be amazed at the unique means of seed dispersal that the Creator has built into His creation. His wonders never end.
See you outdoors!
Dean
November 10th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Oh, the wonders of nature.Our creator certainly has supplied us with variety.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Dandelion seeds floating as miniature hot air balloons, Maple seeds twirling like helicopters, you mentioned beggar ticks, and down south we have beggar lice with a sticky substance which latches onto clothing to be dispersed along the way, acorns falling, etc.: Our Creator surely must have enjoyed His art, fashioning the varied methods of spreading life and I believe He knew we would be fascinated with it too.
November 12th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I really enjoyed this insight into the dispersal of witch hazel seeds. It reminds me of how God directs sowing the seed of His Word, each of us doing it differently, yet all for the same goal.
And it’s amazing the variety of ways in nature that God has seed spread; it sometimes displays His sense of humor. My favorite example is the relationship between the Binturong of SE Asia and the Strangler Fig. In the rainforest this vine is considered a primary canopy plant because it provides a good home for innumerable plants, insects, and animals. But it’s a challenge for it to reproduce. Seedlings need lots of food to survive in the poor soil usually found in rainforests, so the Strangler Fig’s seeds are not only large, but also protected by a hard coating. And getting the seeds dispersed any distance from the parent plant is difficult because rainforests are usually so dense that wind blows over the tops of the trees instead of through them. The Binturong has a natural preference for the Strangler Fig’s fruit, and is the only known animal with digestive enzymes capable of softening the seed’s coat so it can germinate. The Bint eats the fruit and moves along as the digestive enzymes are cleaning the seed off, and then a good distance from the parent plant the animal excretes it in a fertilizing mound of droppings. What a plan! For this reason the Binturong is considered a keystone species, that is, a species which many other species depend upon for their survival.