Work and Walk Saturday at Spicebush Woods with ‘Swallowtail Sleuths’

Be good to Mother Nature without leaving city limits. Friends of the Parks (FOTP) is asking for volunteers to Spicebush Woods on Saturday, August 1 at 9 a.m. to help with the second cleanup of the summer. Rebecca Blazer, Director, Forest Preserve Initiative, at FOTP said the aim of the clean up is to tackle some of the landscaping debris that’s been getting dumped along the maintenance road.

The debris includes old Christmas trees, old lumber, etc. Don’t worry if you can’t help this time with the cleanup.  If you just want a tour of the site, stop by for the nature walk from 11 a.m to noon.

It is your chance to be a “swallowtail sleuths.” This kind of detective combs through the thickest patch of spicebush, peeking inside leaves that have been folded and stuck together. Inside these, there may be a few caterpillars of the spicebush swallowtail butterfly. Blazer says no one has reported finding any of these caterpillars in these woods before, so willing swallowtail sleuths may make a pioneering discovery.

Spicebush Woods is part of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County’s (FPDCC) in Northwest Chicago.  It’s a triangle of woods cut off from Edgebrook Woods by the Metra railroad tracks. It is bounded by the tracks to the east, Caldwell Ave. to the Northeast and the Billy Caldwell Golf Course to the Southeast. FPDCC volunteers informally refer to this site as “Spicebush Woods” because it is home to an astonishingly large population of spicebush (Lindera benzoin), a relatively rare native woodland understory shrub that is found in only a handful of sites in all of Cook County.

Spicebush Woods is a  oak-hickory flatwoods that is often very wet. It is full of giant red & white oaks, many hard-to- find native wildflowers and grasses and wildlife such as owls, chipmunks and deer.

WHAT TO WEAR/BRING: Wear long pants, long sleeves and sturdy shoes as we might run into mosquitoes and/or poison ivy. You might want to bring water and bug spray.

WHERE TO MEET: We’ll meet at the maintenance road to the golf course (turns south off of Caldwell about halfway between the Billy Caldwell Golf Course & the intersection of Central and Caldwell). Please R.S.V.P. to Rebecca Blazer at Friends of the Parks at 312-857-2757,  x17 or BLAZERR@FOTP.ORG if you think you might attend so we can bring enough trash bags and gloves.

Another work and walk day is scheduled for a Sunday afternoon, so that some of the folks who can’t make it on Saturdays can join us then. It will be Sunday, October 4, 1-4 p.m.

What are the next steps for working at Spicebush?  Blazer says  tackling the buckthorn this winter would be a good start, but we’re going to need to strategize a bit about how to persuade the Forest Preserve District to let us cut and burn a brushpile. The buckthorn debris needs to be burned to make sure it does not come back. Up to now, there is not an extensive “buckthorn desert” like those that have taken over other sites. Young buckthorn coming up could reach a tipping point pretty soon. When that happens, the woods starts losing native species, leaving the ground bare and open to erosion and other invasive plants because the buckthorn kills the native plants with its aggressive growth.

If you have any questions about the workday or other issues, please email BLAZERR@fotp.org.

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