By CHRIS GAJEWICZ
BG Naturalist
Stephen W. St. John came to Bowling Green in the 1840s. He was an attorney from New York State and came to BG with the hope of developing a successful law firm in Wood County and of becoming what we would call today, a “Gentleman Farmer”. St. John owned much of what is currently Wintergarden/St. John’s Nature Preserve although its appearance in the 1800s was very different from what it is today.
We know from land records, all of the meadow area was utilized for the planting of row crops and the St. John’s Woods woodlot was used as a pasture for hogs. We also know someone lived in the general area of the west side of St. John’s Woods, although no foundations or structures have been found to date. We have located a dump site within St. John’s Woods and it looks as if it was active for quite a long time leading us to believe that human habitation was not far away. From the plant record, (meaning plants that are currently growing in the general vicinity of the west side of St. John’s Woods), someone who had knowledge of medicinal plant use had a loose garden of healing plants. Perhaps the people responsible for these plants were share croppers of some sort and their dwellings were not built on foundations making it difficult for us to now determine where they actually lived. The St. John house still stands on Sand Ridge Road and is occupied.
St. John’s Woods is a leftover from a time when farmers actively managed woodlots on their farms. Many used these woodlots for lumber, fuel, fencing materials and in St. John’s case, for pasture. For the longest time I was under the assumption that St. John pastured his hogs in the woodlot out of frugality; there was a free food crop and natural shade. Oak trees in the woodlot were large and could provide shade but they also provided acorns and in all likelihood, there may have been American Chestnut trees growing in the woods prior to the introduction of the blight in the early 1900s which killed them all. The oaks; Red, White, and Black, all produced fruit abundantly as did the Chestnuts. Recently, I was listening to NPR and I heard an interview with a woman from Connecticut who has revisited the European tradition of finishing her hogs with … acorns! Mr. St. John wasn’t just being frugal, he was being true to his family’s French roots. It was, and still is, a common practice in many parts of Europe, including France, to let the hogs roam free. The hogs eat natural foods that include a steady diet of acorns and chestnuts which add a great deal of flavor to the meat. Each year at the end of the season, St. John would take his acorn stuffed, “piggies”, off to market and the next year the cycle began all over.
Historically, that’s how St. John’s Woods was managed… indirectly… by hogs. The hogs didn’t limit themselves to the acorn and chestnut crop, however. They ate pretty much everything they could find that was palatable. This means that any wildflower that poked up out of the ground in the spring was immediately consumed. Today, there really aren’t a lot of types of wildflowers growing in St. John’s Woods as a result. The wildflowers in abundance seem to be those which contain high amounts of oxalic acid like Mayapple, Jack-in- the-Pulpit, and Wild Geranium, all of which either taste bad or sting the mouth. Normally in a Midwest woodlot like St. John’s Woods we should be able to find Trillium, Bloodroot, many types of ferns, Hepatica, and a multitude of other forest floor plants and they simply aren’t there.
Prehistorically, St. John’s Woods, as well as the surrounding area was managed by the Native American Indian populations who lived in the region. Growing up I was always taught that Indians tread lightly on the earth and I suppose that may have been true in some cases. Archaeology and evidence prove that the native population in the Americas altered the environment to fit their needs and managed the plant and animal populations as necessary, many times, drastically. There is no doubt that Indians regularly burned large areas of forest and prairie for the sole purpose of slowing successional growth and thwarting forests from taking over grassland areas. They burned thousands of years ago and they burned into historical times. Over time, some plants adapted to fire while some did not. Fire was a quick way to remove plant material and they burned as often as they could to keep these areas free of undergrowth. By keeping the forests and grasslands free of underbrush, Indians could easily travel through the forests and hunt the animals they needed for protein. They would also be able to collect nuts and berries and grow crops to feed their families.
The forests our pioneer ancestors “discovered” had actually been managed for a very long time. For more information on the human impact on the environment in the Americas, I would suggest reading, “1491”, and “1493”, both by Charles Mann. St. John’s Woods is the closest thing we have in Bowling Green to old growth forest and through the dedicated efforts of one of our staff, the woods became a part of the National Old Growth Forest Network. As you walk through the woods note the largest trees; the White, Red, and Black Oaks, all have remnants of lateral branching. This tells us the trees used to stand alone and apart from one another. Since the hogs no longer manage the woods, smaller trees and shrubs have grown up and into the canopies of these larger trees. These smaller trees will eventually die out. Trees that fall in St. John’s Woods will generally stay where they have fallen and will eventually turn back into the rich soils of the forest floor. Now that many of the non-native shrubs have been removed from the woods, visitors can easily see the undulation of the sand ridges that are located in the park. These ridges stand taller than the swampy areas around them and are actually former beaches from Lake Erie which has long since receded to its present location. People for thousands of years have travelled and possibly lived for short periods of time on these ridges in the swamp.
Today, St. John’s Woods lets us see what a forest looked like when our pioneer ancestors first arrived in Northwest Ohio. We can imagine spreading oak trees with prairie grasses and forbs, (flowering plants), growing in abundance, Eastern Woodland Bison and American Elk, cougars and Black Bear, and the occasional group of American Indians living, hunting, farming, and managing the forests; all would have been a common sight. St. John’s Woods is a remnant of our local natural history and like a classic car, the natural resources staff and volunteers intend to do their best to maintain this piece of history for generations to come.
