Park - Friends of the W&OD Trail (2024)

Quick Links

Click here to access a suite of very well-executed maps, created by Dmitriy Tarasov for the NVRPA in June, 2013, which include accurate measurements of the elevations of all of the Trail’s mileage markers and a selection of landmarks.

In addition, the following three files contain useful summaries of the information incorporated into Tarasov’s maps:

1. A graphical representation of the elevations of the Trail-readings taken at the mileage markers
2. An updated elevation table of the Trail (by mileage marker) (PDF)
3. An updated elevation table of the Trail (by landmark) (PDF)

Snakes

Mouse Bear (Groundhog)

Mouse bear, weatherman, woodchuck or groundhog? While walking or riding along the W&OD Trail you may have seen a thick, squat, ten-to-fourteen pound animal with thick brown fur and a bushy six-inch tail. This is the groundhog (Marmota monax), popularly celebrated for its ability to predict the propinquity of spring.

The embankments that were created when the railroad bed was laid down make the W&OD Trail an ideal habitat for this mammal; the mounds of excavated soil piled around the entrance easily mark the location of a groundhog’s burrow. Also, since the power company trims all of the vegetation in the vicinity of the power lines every two years, the low grasses that the groundhog loves grow in abundance and thus provide an abundance of food.

A true hibernator, the groundhog retires in the fall and seldom emerges from its den before March. During the winter its body temperature drops from 99 to 37 degrees Fahrenheit and its heart rate falls from 80 to 5 beats per minute. The animal survives by drawing upon the great store of fat which it has laid up during the preceding summer and fall, when it will often eat as much as a pound of grass — nearly 10 percent of its body weight — at a single sitting.

You may have already noticed how, when it senses danger or an intruder, the groundhog lumbers off at top speed — six to eight miles per hour.

Wood Duck

Introducing … one of the most colorful animals on Earth! The Wood duck (Aix sponsa)! You don’t have to go to Costa Rica or even the zoo to find it. A walk along the W&OD Trail in the Vienna area will afford a view of this gorgeous duck, sometimes called the “squealer” (because of its voice). The male Wood duck, with its crest, fiery red eyes, and dazzling greens, blacks, reds, brown-yellows, and whites, is truly a sight to see; in fact, the splendor of its plumage, suggestive of (certainly garish) formal wear, is reflected in its taxonomic name, for sponsa means “betrothed” in Latin. The female Wood duck is more drab, but attractive nonetheless.

The “woodie” is rather common in Virginia during all seasons except winter. Normally the duck is found in pairs or small groups, but may congregate in the fall before migration. “Woodies” live near still or slow-moving bodies of water that have suitable large trees — or man-made boxes — for nesting. Nesting season starts in late winter or early spring, and the female lays ten to fifteen eggs that hatch in about thirty days. Once out of the nest, the ducklings require another two months before they learn to fly.

Predators prevent slightly more than half of the ducklings from surviving to adulthood. Snapping turtles eat the eggs; minks, raccoons, etc. feed on unwary or unguarded nestlings and fledglings.

During the first months of life, “woodies” eat insects and soft vegetation such as duckweed (which, incidentally, is the world’s smallest flowering plant). Adults, however, eat mostly nuts and seeds — acorns, beechnuts, etc.

The wood duck was one of the many varieties of waterfowl which was nearly driven to extinction in the early 1900’s. Because its flesh was particularly popular among consumers of that era, the bird was hunted ferociously; and, its nesting areas were ravaged by careless logging practices. Although the “woodie” is doing well today, it still faces many pressures, the most serious of which is the continued destruction of its habitat.

Box Turtle

Often spotted on the Trail as it plods along (stopping now and again to crane its neck), the eastern box turtle — Carolina terapene terapene — has been firmly established in our area for many millions of years. Although this fascinating reptile has not yet become an officially endangered species, it is most certainly at real, ever-increasing risk due to the ongoing (and accelerating) destruction of native habitat, climatological change, AND the well-meaning hikers and children who, when they take the turtle home, inevitably bring about its premature death. This final risk, of course, is one that is within everyone’s direct power to eliminate easily: if you should happen upon one of these grapefruit-sized, brown and yellow tanks, simply enjoy its company in the wild, but please DO NOT touch it or take it home.

An entertainingly reflective appreciation of the virtues of our regional testudinate was framed for the North Carolina Legislature when that body decided to adopt the turtle as the official state reptile in 1979:

H. B. 384 CHAPTER 154
AN ACT TO ADOPT THE TURTLE AS THE OFFICIAL STATE REPTILE FOR THE STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA.
WHEREAS, the turtle is a most useful creature who serves to control harmful and pestiferous insects, and acts as one of nature’s clean-up crew, helping to preserve the purity and beauty of our waters; and
WHEREAS, the turtle is derided by some who have missed the finer things of life, but in some species has provided food that is a gourmet’s delight; and
WHEREAS, the turtle, which at a superficial glance appears to be a mundane and uninteresting creature, is actually a most fascinating creature, ranging from species well adapted to modern conditions to species which have existed virtually unchanged since prehistoric times; and
WHEREAS, the turtle watches undisturbed as countless generations of faster hares run by to quick oblivion, and is thus a model of patience for mankind, and a symbol of this State’s unrelenting pursuit of great and lofty goals; and
WHEREAS, the woodlands, marshes, and inland and coastal waters of North Carolina are the abode of many species of turtles; Now, therefore,
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
Section 1. G.S. Chapter 145 is amended by adding a new section as follows:
“§ 145-9. State reptile.— The turtle is adopted as the official State reptile of the State of North Carolina, and the eastern box turtle is designated as the emblem representing the turtles inhabiting North Carolina.”

Spring Peeper

(northern) spring peeper = Pseudacris crucifer crucifer (Wied-Neuwied, 1838)

this photograph © John White – Virginia Herpetological Society

These watercolor and pencil studies, drawn by Carl (also spelled “Karl”) Bodmer in 1833 during his travels in North America with the prince of Wied-Neuwied, almost certainly represent the first time in history that an effort was made to record the phenotype — that is, to image exactingly in the service of science the visible characteristics — of what is now commonly called the spring peeper.

The shrill, whistling chorus of the spring peepers, a brief recorded sample of which is provided below, normally begins to swell in marshy areas along the Trail a week or so before the vernal equinox, and is one of our area’s earliest signs of the advent of the season.

There follows on this page first the text, translation, and explanation of the first published attempt to describe the spring peeper scientifically; this description was an important part of the effort to assign to the frog a Linnaean binomial, whose purely morphological designation (the only scientific option available in that era) was subsequently refined by later researchers into a more precise, neo-Linnaean trinomial, viz., Pseudacris crucifer crucifer. Then a few details are noted concerning the naturalist and explorer Alexander Philipp Maximilian (1782-1867), prince of Wied-Neuwied, who undertook a journey of scientific investigation in North America from 1832 to 1834.Good collections of photographs of the spring peeper may be found on the web sites of the Virginia Herpetological Society and Berkeley.

Prince Maximilian’s scientific description of the spring peeper:

Hyla crucifer [= spring peeper (see the explanation below)]: Eyes large; snout somewhat rounded; legs long and slim; large stomach covered with granules; forefoot with four fingers, of which the second (counting from the outside) is the longest; hind foot is five-toed, the second toe from the outside the longest, the inner and outer toes being shorter and of roughly the same length, the remainder are short, with gaps between them; coloration: basic color of the upper portion is yellowish-grey or brownish-grey, and the back is marked by a broad St. Andrew’s cross of a darker color. Frequently this marking consists of several angled stripes whose tips, pointed forwards, create an even broader St. Andrew’s cross on the back and neck; in other cases the lines are not solid and along their lengths run a couple of stripes which create pointed angles directed forward; the forward crossing frequently directs its branches toward the raised eyelids between which is located a bend the point of whose angle is directed backwards; a dark stroke that runs through the eyes continues through to the side of the stomach; throat dark grey-brown; skin of the throat beneath the edge of the lower jaw blackish brown; stomach soiled yellow; shank with obscure dark bends. Legs and shanks overflow on the underside a reddish-flesh brown.

A small, lively frog whose body from snout to rump’s end measures one inch. The cry is a clear whistle that rises somewhat at its finish. During mating season, the throat took on a spherical shape.

An explanation of the scientific designation of the (northern) spring peeper

“Pseudacris,” the genus (the first part of a scientific name, or taxon, normally derived from Greek), means “false cricket” (or locust, or grasshopper — the Greeks did not rigorously distinguish these). The cry of the NOVA peeper, which is entirely the product of the hormone-driven male defending a tiny plot of muck as it seeks to attract a mate, deceptively (pseudo-) suggests that of certain types of cricket (acris); the similarity is readily apparent to anyone who has ever heard thousands of overlapping cries during the great chorusings of early spring. “Crucifer,” the species (and second portion of a taxon, normally derived from Latin), means “cross-bearing,” after the fact that the back of the frog is marked with an “X” that is more or less irregular in shape. (The repetition of “crucifer,” which extends the bi- to a trinomial, indicates that our frog is a distinct subspecies.) So, the combination of Greek and Latin elements is intended to telegraph a succinct description of the frog in question — and does so successfully, in fact, although, for want of common study of the so-called classical languages that had already begun to evaporate from curricula after World War I, increasing numbers of not only scientists but also both scholars and intelligent laypersons have come to find such encoding obscure.

For more information regarding Prince Maximilian, follow this link.

Butterfly Milkweed

Clustered blooms of one variety (Asclepias tuberosa) of the butterfly milkweed glow in the westering sun of early summer. The leaves of the plant are the sole source of nourishment for the Monarch caterpillar, and that diet preserves the distinctively marked creature against predation by rendering its flesh extremely unpalatable, even toxic. When it emerges metamorphosed from the chrysalis, the butterfly, also distinctively marked and unpalatable, possesses a proboscis instead of jaws so that it is able to feed only on fluids.

Because of the loss of much of the milkweed along the path of this butterfly’s lengthy annual migration through the United States from its hibernating grounds in the forests of Central Mexico to Canada, the World Wildlife Fund has instituted a volunteer program, the Monarch Squad, through participation in which citizens are encouraged to prevent a significant collapse of the population (sometimes termed a “quasi-extinction”) by planting milkweed along the migratory path of this species.

Chicory

With its stamens curling like long sticks of sugar-dusted blue taffy, the center of the chicory (Cichorium intybus) blossom forms the natural allure of one of the most generously distributed weeds to be found along the Trail. Ancient Roman gardeners actively cultivated the plant for its leaves (used in salads); some moderns continue the practice. Practitioners of herbal medicine prepare a tea from the root, and maintain that the beverage helps to soothe the “sour stomach.”

Crown Vetch

Crown vetch/crownvetch (Coronilla varia), which is native to Europe, southeast Asia, and northern Africa, is considered to be an invasive species, and yet it is commonly planted along roads and waterways in order to provide quickly and easily ground cover for the control of erosion. Although the nitroglycosides that it contains are toxic to horses and non-ruminants, animals that chew the cud are able to ingest this plant to no ill effect.

N.B.: Both chicory and crown vetch — but not butterfly milkweed — are considered to be invasive, non-native species and, as such, the Friends advocate the cultivation or encouragement of neither in the park.