Best Hikes Near Indianapolis by Nick Werner

Author:Nick Werner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780762794966
Publisher: Falcon Guides

THE HIKE

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Awalk through Beanblossom Bottoms is an open-air lesson on the restorative powers of Mother Nature. This low area was cleared and drained for agriculture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Over the years, farming was eventually abandoned and the wetland began the process of rebuilding itself. In a process known as succession, bottomland farm fields give way to wet sedge meadows and wildflower prairie, depending on the available soil moisture. The sedge meadows and prairie in turn develop into forests and sometimes, with help from beaver activity, woodland swamps. You will witness almost all phases of this metamorphosis at the nearly 600-acre Beanblossom Bottoms Nature Preserve.

The preserve has been owned and managed by Sycamore Land Trust since 1995, and adjacent parcels are protected by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Wetlands Reserve Program. The National Audubon Society has certified Beanblossom Bottoms as “An Important Bird Area.” Be sure to bring your binoculars as the property is home to a great blue heron rookery, American woodcock, Wilson’s snipe, marsh wren, sedge wren, Prothonotary warbler, barred owl, and a pair of nesting bald eagles. The state-endangered, tiny Kirtland’s snake lives here too, as does the unusual northern crawfish frog, also known—fittingly, given the property’s proximity to Indiana University—as the Hoosier frog. In addition to wildlife, the property is home to a wide variety of trees and wetlands vegetation, including the rare and beautiful fringeless purple orchid.

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