Notes from the Field on September 27 Blair Pond in Cambridge and Belmont

We should bag the fruit of the multiflora rose, the small ones in the field didn't have any, but the big ones under the honey locust trees do. The plants shouldn't get put in the Phragmites area, as this will make future work there difficult. Better to put them under the trees out of the way.

I collected a lot of plants at Blair Pond, mostly non-native. The wetlands restoration is okay, but the shrubs aren't doing well, can't root into the hard clay, and there's way too much smartweed, half of which is non-native. There's nothing planted in the "wildflower meadow", which is mostly smartweed and barnyard grass. I was very pleased though to see a group of 8 turkeys there eating the grass seed heads. There was also about the same number of mallard ducks in the pond. The "trail" if you can call it that, around the pond is very overgrown. I can't believe they didn't make a bridge over the inlet stream, you have to walk through the parking lots to get back to the kiosk, which was in very good condition. The benches are nice, there was a woman sitting there reading when I came, and I saw people feeding the ducks. Unfortunately the woodlands around the pond are Urban Forest, ie. totally invasive species. DCR did an okay job with the wetlands restoration, nothing nearly so good as the parking lot meadow, but sufficient. But there's no attention to the woodlands.