Over Thanksgiving break, I went home to Boston to celebrate the holiday with friends and family. While there, I visited one of my favorite local natural areas, Cutler Reservation in Needham. The park is bordered on one side by I-95, which is eight lanes wide and provides a pretty consistent motor noise. While the park has many acres of hardwood and mixed forests, with species such as Norway Maple, Yellow and White Birch, and Eastern White Pines, among other common tree species, the most interesting parts are where the forests give way to an area called “Great Plain”. Great Plain is a flat, open, freshwater marsh that makes up a majority of the land of the park. The plants present in the marsh are thick, tall, and intertwined. For the most part, the Common Reed covers the dry border areas, and Cattails fill in the areas under shallow water. This park is within the Middle Charles River, and its’ water level is defined by the flow of the river. This spot differs from my location in Burlington primarily in the plant life on the plain. While the forest around the plain has some of the same/similar species, the plain is completely different, trading the canopy of trees for an open marsh. In response to reading the Honorable Harvest before, instead of leaving a gift, I decided to clean up some trash on the boardwalk.
