“My temple is the swamp. I enter the swamp as a sacred place—a sanctum sanctorum.”—Henry David Thoreau
For the past three months, I have been visiting the Hawley Bog, also known as the Cranberry Swamp, located off of East Hawley Road in Hawley. One of the highest elevation acidic bogs in Massachusetts, it was created by the natural blockage of a stream that allowed a small lake to form in a deep glacial depression. Over many centuries, a mat of acidic peat thirty feet deep has developed, which floats on open water and is home to a community of rare and unusual plant species.
The Hawley Bog Preserve consists of sixty-five acres, twenty-five owned by the Nature Conservancy and forty acres owned by the Five Colleges, Inc. Neal Abraham, former director of Five Colleges said, “The Hawley Bog offers our campuses a unique natural lab for research and discovery.” Newly documented ant species, ice-age pollen, and climate change have been studied there. The Preserve is managed by the Conservancy, and it is open to the public for enjoyment.
The trail to the bog begins close to East Hawley Road. Visitors walk on solid ground for a few-hundred feet before stepping onto a narrow seven-hundred-foot boardwalk raised over the fragile wetland. Of course there are plants to notice before you enter the bog. In May, there are red trillium and painted trillium, and yellow clintonia along the path; in June, Canada lilies; in July, Emily Dickinson’s favorite plant—the ghostly Indian pipes. But the real excitement begins when you step onto the boardwalk. The bog is home to many familiar acid-loving shrubs such as swamp azalea, viburnum, shad, highbush blueberry, and winterberry. The small cranberry, Vaccinium oxycoccos, is a low trailing plant, only inches tall, that blooms in June, with cranberries ripening in the fall. The numerous varieties of berries attract wildlife, and the bog is a favorite birding spot.
The ferns in the bog are exquisite. Early in the season, the croziers are unfurled along the boardwalk. As the summer progresses, the spirals open to produce fronds of many textures. The cinnamon ferns, Osmundastrum cinnamoneum, are stately plants, with green sterile fronds surrounding fertile “cinnamon stick” fronds. The royal ferns, Osmunda regalis, are my favorite. The geometric patterning of the fronds provides a beautiful backdrop for neighboring plants.
Three varieties of laurel are present in the bog. In May, the bog laurel, Kalmia polifolia, begins to bloom on shrubs that are about two-feet high. The blooms are similar to mountain laurel but much smaller with a more consistent bright pink. By June, the other two laurels begin blooming. The tall mountain laurels, Kalmia latifolia, are prominent at face level, perfect for admiring the stunning structure and variable pinks and whites of the flowers. Sheep laurel, Kalmia angustifolia, has quite a few gruesome nicknames reflecting its toxicity, including lamb-kill, kid-kill, and calf-kill. The bushes are midsize and bloom a uniform pink.
There are two groups of plants growing in the Hawley bog which are particularly unusual: wild orchids and carnivorous plants. From June through August, orchids can been seen in bloom, including five varieties of Habenaria orchids. By late June, the snakemouth rose pogonia, Pogonia ophioglossoides, and grass pinks, Calopogon pulchellus, are flowering by the boardwalk. By July, the ragged fringed, Habenaria lacera, the white fringed, Habenaria blepharglottis, and the green wood, Habenaria clavellate, appear. All of these orchids are discrete, delicate plants. I found it helpful to get down on my belly on the boardwalk to appreciate them.
The carnivorous plants at the bog are visually dominated by the pitcher plant, Sarracena purpurea. The dramatic leaves—the pitchers—are a soft pea-green marbled throughout and edged with maroon. They begin to emerge from the sphagnum in May and remain through the summer. These vessels are lined with downward-facing hairs and filled with fluid containing enzymes and a community of insect larvae and organisms that digest any creature falling in. The flowers of the pitcher plant appear in June and last for months. They are cheery discs on upright stems, almost otherworldly.
The other carnivorous plants are not as obvious. The round-leafed sundew, Drosera rotundifolia, is smaller than a dime and grows in the sphagnum just at the edge of the boardwalk. These tiny plants have leaves tipped with blobs of a gluey substance. Insects get stuck on the leaves, which then curl over the victim and digest it. Charles Darwin was obsessed with sundews. In a letter he wrote to the botanist Asa Gray, Darwin claimed, “I care more about Drosera than the origin of all the species in the world…it is a wonderful plant, or rather a most sagacious animal. I will stick up for Drosera to the day of my death.”
Two varieties of bladderworts live at the Hawley Bog: the common, Utricularia vulgaris, and the horned, U. cornuta. The bladderworts appear to be harmless yellow pea-like flowers at the end of the boardwalk. It is below the surface that the action happens. Bladderworts have no real root and are not anchored. Along the stems in the sphagnum moss are leaf lobes (bladders) with trigger hairs that snap closed in an instant to trap and suck in prey.
Behind the tranquil beauty that we experience in the bog, there exists an undetected world beneath the surface, which heightens its allure and mystery.
Quagmire, swampland, morass: The slime kingdoms, Domains of the cold-blooded, Of mud pads and dirtied eggs.
But bog Meaning soft, The fall of windless rain, Pupil of amber.
From “Kinship” by Seamus Heaney
August, 2018
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