Bay leaves

Natural History, May, 1997 by Robert H. Mohlenbrock

In August 1995, my wife and I visited the village of Saint Martins, located on the Bay of Fundy in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. After spending a comfortable night at a bed-and breakfast, we were ready for a day of exploration. Our first destination was the mouth of the Big Salmon River, a few miles east. Setting out on a country road, we passed over a covered bridge that spans a tributary of the local watercourse, the Irish River. Just beyond, we viewed the storied red sea caves of Saint Martins, large overhangs in the red conglomerate cliffs that have been eroded by the bay's gigantic tides. If the tide had been out, we could have walked one hundred feet or so into the sea caves.

Continuing on toward the Big Salmon River, we entered a lowland forest containing a mixture of conifers and hardwoods. Among the most common trees were red spruce budworms between 1969 and 1982. The budworms (larvae of the moth Choristoneura fumiferana) are active in late April and early May, entering the opening bus of the trees to feed on the new growth of needles. With dense fog, cool summers, and the absence of fire for nearly two hundred years, conditions had been ripe for an explosion of these insects. As trees died by the hundreds, the forest opened up, providing optimal habitat for white-tailed deer. Now, however, with young spruces and firs growing back, the deer are gradually leaving, and moose, which prefer dense growth, are returning.

Also present in the forest is mountain birch, a species more typical of high-elevation habitats but which thrives in the cool, moist conditions that prevail around the Bay of Fundy. Several of the mountain birches we saw were dead or dying, however, apparently because of sensitivity to acid fog. Heavy fog frequently rolls in from the bay, carrying sulfurous vapor emitted from paper mills in Saint John, some thirty-five miles away.

Our road ended at the mouth of the Big Salmon River. At the time, the waters were tranquil, but in spring, following snowmelt and spring rains, the river fluctuates violently, scouring the bouldery bank and the vegetation that grows among the rocks. The 150-mile-long Big Salmon River drops rapidly from highlands 1,200 feet above sea level. Along its tumultuous course, it has carved spectacular 800-foot-deep canyons.

If we could have continued eastward another eighteen miles, we would have reached Fundy National Park, but no road traversed the wild countryside. We retraced our route to Saint Martins to spend the night, and the next day followed an inland arc of highway that led over the Caledonia Highlands to the park. Cloaked with conifers, the highlands stretch from the Saint Johns River on the west to the Petit River to the east. Geologists consider the highlands to be an isolated outlier of the Appalachian chain.

Descending into lowland forest, we entered Fundy National Park from the inland side and, after about five miles, came to a parking area for the Caribou Plain Trail. After hiking a short distance on this two-mile-long path, we reached a boardwalk that crossed a twenty-acre beaver lake. The trail then passed through a rather damp forest, over a slight rise, and dropped into a pocket bog, a poorly drained depression suitable for the growth of sphagnum (more commonly known as peat moss). Farther on we came to a large, flat opening with a few scattered black spruces. This was a raised bog, with plants growing on top of nine feet of accumulated sphagnum. Here and there were "flarks," narrow rivulets of water where the bog was torn. (For more on flarks, see "This Land," April 1994.) Beyond the raised bog, the trail plunged back into forest, eventually circling back to its starting point.

After visiting Fundy National Park, we sought out the gypsum-rich area near the village of Albert Mines, twenty-five miles to the east. This white mineral was mined for a number of years until it became unprofitable to do so. At one place along a small stream, white cliffs rise nearly one hundred feet above the water. Harboring some of the rarest plants in New Brunswick, these cliffs are protected as an ecological reserve.

Botanist Rob Walker, recently retired from Fundy National Park, accompanied us and scrambled over the cliffs to show us a number of unusual plants. They are arctic species, widely distributed in New Brunswick up until the end of the Ice Age, 10,000 to 13,000 years ago. As temperatures rose, glaciers retreated, and forests developed, these plants generally vanished from the region and occupied more northerly zones. But because the crumbly gypsum cliffs discouraged the growth of trees, the habitat remained hospitable to these arctic plants.

Mixed forest, reminiscent of forests in Nova Scotia, occupies lower elevations bordering the Bay of Fundy. Red spruce and balsam fir are interspersed with red maple, quaking aspen, American beech, sugar maple, yellow birch, and other broad-leaved trees. Hobblebush viburnum and red osier dogwood dominate the shrub layer, while on the forest floor are scattered plants of blue-bead lily, Canada mayflower, mountain sorrel, wild sarsaparilla, and large-leaved aster. Moist areas harbor long beach fern, woodland horsetail, white turtlehead, snowberry, and starflower.