Heritage Preserve Hike
- Jeffrey Tryon
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Story and photos by Jeff Tryon
On the morning of April 11, I led a wildflower hike along the trails at Heritage Preserve Park, on the border of Ewing and Hopewell. The long, narrow loop trail begins by going through a former farm field and it continues through young red maple forest, and then a mature beech forest. This preserve has outstanding spring wildflowers, and I’ve been monitoring them for several weeks prior. We had a nice group of 9 people in attendance, including WTGC members Barbara Lear, George Wallace, and George McElrath.
The land of the Heritage Preserve was farmed hundreds of years, and only about a third of the land contained forest. Walking the trail, you can identify the old growth forest by the large mature trees. Most of the property was crop fields, and the remainder was pasture. Farming ended on site in the late 1970s.
Friends of Hopewell Valley Open Space (FOHVOS) purchased the preserve from the Heritage Conservancy in 2008 with State Green Acres funds. FOHVOS manages the preserve to this day.
Hiking the Heritage Preserve loop trail shows several stages of forest succession — a meadow, the low wetland forest of red maples, mature bottomland forest of American Beech, and a dense stand of sweet gum trees. The low wetland and mature forest showcase a display of ephemeral spring woodland wildflowers. We were able to identify Spring Beauty (Claytonia virginica), Wood Anemone (Anemone quinquefolia), Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense), Dwarf Ginseng (Panax trifolus), and my favorite — Yellow Trout Lily (Erythronium Americanum). We also saw lots of Skunk Cabbage and Spice Bush along the trail. There are a number of vernal pools, where many amphibians breed in the spring, and small, meandering streams. As the trail courses through the forest, there are some wet or muddy areas in spring, and after rain.
After the hike, we stopped over at the neighboring Bountiful Gardens of Ewing and perused their spring plants and vegetables. They had some of the spring wildflowers that we saw on sale, and others like Trillium, Black Cohosh, Rue Anemone, and Virginia Bluebells.
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