Sunday, October 14, 2018

The walk will also include portions of Keyes Farm Conservation area. The next, and last nature walk for the year, will be on Oct. 14th. We’ll meet and park at the Town Forest picnic area on River Road (map 3 in the Pepperell Trails Guide). We’ll have the usual signs up along the road to help identify the site. The walk starts in a managed pine forest on the Town Forest. Fall flowers are mostly asters, goldenrods, and bur-marigolds (beggar-ticks). I hope we’ll see witch-hazel flowering, always a fall treat. We’ll go through open areas and up a slope where water seeps out creating wetland habitat (the trail is usually sufficiently dry to keep us out of the mud). The Red Trail Loop on the Keyes Farm property goes through oak forests of different ages. The return on the Red Trail is next to a nice wetland around a stream where we will see different plant and animal habitat than on the upland areas.