Koelliker Fen

Munson Township, Geauga County
Chesterland Quad
13.6 acres

A small sign reading "No Trespassing, Wildflowers" is the only indication that you are entering Koelliker Fen from a residential cul-de-sac in Geauga County's Munson Township. Unless, of course, you're a field botanist. Then the signs would be unmistakable. Upon entering the bowl-shaped depression, the beech-maple forest gives way to small autumn willows, northern alders, cherry birch and poison sumacs -- indications that this is a fen.

On the well-drained slopes leading into the fen, much of the forest floor remains green all winter, blanketed with foamflower and Christmas fern. In springtime, trillium and woodland phlox grow in abundance here. Ringing the fen are red maples (trees that can stand to "get their feet wet") and ironwoods, which never get to be very large.

In the fen, intrepid hikers may be tempted to hop from one spongy hummock to the next to avoid sinking knee-deep in muck. It is in these open seepage areas that a lucky visitor might see a rare and beautiful flower, the small purple fringed orchid. Other spring flowers that bloom in spring are the marsh marigold, luminous hooded lady tresses, a deep-blue Greek valerian and graceful star-flowered Solomon's seal. All the rare plants here are restricted to the seepage openings. Associated with this plant community is the cloudy arches moth (Polia imbrifera), which was first recorded in the fen in 1985, but has not been seen anywhere else in the state.

In the summer of 1991, students volunteered to control an exotic species of shrub, red osier, which can quickly form dense thickets in the fen openings. Other invasive species that threaten the fen's unique calcareous plant community are hybrid cattail and canary grass. Bissell says that periodic flooding by beavers may have once maintained fen openings; today it is an arduous process of pulling out the invaders by hand.

In 1981, when Natural Areas Supervisor Jim Bissell first came out to survey the property, "He literally danced around here," says Betty Koelliker. She had contacted the Museum after finding small purple fringed orchid on her land -- one of only ten occurrences in the state, she learned. Bissell's visit led to many other discoveries, and eventually prompted Betty and Joseph Koelliker to buy a lot that drained into the fen. A housing developer was building on 80 acres of adjacent land, and they wanted to protect their ponds from silted runoff. A total of 13.6 acres was purchased from the Koellikers by the Museum in 1989 after a year-long fund raising effort. Red foxes have dug holes into the hillside on the lot that was to be developed, and the Koellikers have observed more than one spring litter of pups being raised on the nature preserve.