December on the Trolley Trail
/The Howard County Conservancy organized a winter hike for its volunteers last week on the Trolley Trail (Trolley Trail #9 near Ellicott City/Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum). We were celebrating the end of another fall field trip season. About 40 people met in the Banneker parking lot and headed out.
The connecting trail from Banneker to the Trolley Trail was through the forest and very muddy. There was an Osage orange tree that had dropped its fruit recently. Most of the fruit look pristine. When I got home, I did some research and discovered that the fruit is not eaten except sometimes by squirrels. One theory is that the fruit was eaten by large mammals that are now extinct (ground sloth, mammoth, mastodon) and that these animals would have spread the seed. Now the tree is propagated by people for its wood and as windbreaks.
We headed north on the Trolley Trail first. I didn’t take many pictures because I was so busy trying to keep up with the group. It was the same the last time I was on the Trolley Trail in 2015 with my Master Naturalist class (posted about it here).
There was some stream restoration (and maybe something else since there is infrastructure like sewer lines in the streambed) that was active next to the trail. The stream did look more scoured than the last time we were in the area.
We reached the end of the trail at the north and retraced our steps…passing the trails to Banneker to continue south on the Trolley Trail.
We got to the part of the trail that was damaged in the last flood. Repair work was not complete, so we stopped before getting down to Ellicott City; I turned around and took a picture back along the trail. The asphalt of the trail was damaged by the flood; the asphalt edges were uneven, and pieces were missing.
There were bright green Christmas fens on the cliff to the right
A little further back up the hill, winter trees looked good against the sky. It’s easy to pick out the sycamores this time of year.
A waterfall was scenic rather than roaring. I thought more about what it must have been like during the flood to sweep away asphalt a little further down.
We’ve gotten so much rain this fall/early winter that the moss is thick and bright green – like a carpet.
We made the muddy trek back up to Banneker to retrieve our cars…and head for lunch with healthy appetites.
