Round The Square:

RTS for Tuesday, August 20, 2008

STATE FLOWER: We can all vouch for the beauty of our state flowers, the mountain laurel. When it blooms in abundance in late June, particularly along highways such as Route 59 in the Allegheny National Forest, it’s breathtaking.

But it also has ecological values.

That’s the word today from the folks at the U.S. Forest Service who point out that a wide range of wildlife make use of this colorful cover:

Animals that associate with mountain laurel include white-tailed deer, eastern screech owl, black bear, ruffed grouse, turkeys, snowshoe hare, and song birds.  Black bears are known to den in “ground nests” in mountain-laurel thickets. Snowshoe hare, ruffed grouse, and warblers hide in the dense thickets.  Many a hunter has waited in anticipation just outside a clearing in the laurel for a tom turkey to “spit and    drum” close enough for a shot.

Mountain laurel’s leaves, buds, flowers, and fruits are poisonous, and may be lethal to livestock and humans, but white-tailed deer, eastern cottontails, black bear, and ruffed grouse are known to eat mountain-laurel in the winter or during years of food shortages, according to the Forest Service.

Mountain laurel is noted for preventing water runoff and soil erosion on mountain hillsides. Researchers in the southern Appalachian Mountains found that excessive cutting of dense stands of mountain laurel greatly increased the amount of water runoff.

The leaf litter of mountain laurel contains higher than normal levels of minerals than forest trees.  The leaf litter contributes nutrients back to the forest soil as the leaves decompose. Mountain laurel is dependent on mycorrhizal fungus associated with its root system in the soil; mycorrhizal means a fungus and root association where the fungus helps the roots, and the roots help the fungus.  The mycorrhizal fungus association of mountain laurel helps the laurel obtain water and minerals from even the nutrient-poor, acidic soil of the Allegheny Plateau.

The wood of mountain laurel has a long history of uses by native and Euro-Americans. It has been used in the manufacturing of pipes, wreaths, roping, furniture, bowls, utensils, and other household goods and novelties.

In case you were wondering, Gov. Pinchot made the mountain laurel the state flower on May 5, 1933, according to the press release.

And that, of course, makes it illegal to pick mountain laurel in Pennsylvania.  

 

 

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