Tussocks

While I was tracking wolves through the Northwoods this summer, I quite literally stumbled across a crazily unique habitat, the northern sedge meadows. Popping out from a canopy of red pines and white spruce, my boots squelched into the sprawling beginning of a sunny, open pocket in the forest. As inconspicuously different as these meadows are, I quickly found out they host an incredible diversity of small, fragile wetland obligate creatures. 

The fruits, or achenes, of Tussock Sedge (Carex stricta). Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, Sawyer Co. WI

While grasses are often naturally maintained by grazing animals, sedges are more delicate and can’t really handle being chewed on. Instead, they rely on other disturbances to grow. In these deep expanses of unbroken forests, sedge meadows are usually the result of beaver activity; where the sprawling water creates a sunny, treeless refuge perfect for the semiaquatic sedges. Almost everything seems miniature in a sedge meadow. The Tussock Sedge (Carex stricta) forms tiny islands, the namesake “tussocks,” surrounded by still, blackwater moats. Tussocks are usually pretty solid, and a human can usually walk across them for a while before getting into deep mud or water. The seeds of sedges feed birds and small mammals, while housing countless insects. Some of these species are specialized to these habitats specifically, and can't survive without these patches of open, sunny meadows of tussocks and clear water.

Careening between each leaf on these sedge islands, tiny damselflies known as Sedge Sprites (Nehalennia irene) are almost invisible. These mosquito-eating insects spend most of their lives as aquatic nymphs, deep below the surface of water that freezes for half of the year. Warm summers enable them to thrive as adults, with each generation returning offspring home to the water by autumn.

A recently-emerged Sedge Sprite, resting above a tussock of sedges. Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, Sawyer Co., WI

Maybe the most secretive of all is the diminutive Sedge Wren (Cistothorus stellaris), which constructs a tennis-ball sized nest suspended like a treehouse somewhere far beyond sturdy ground, built of sedges and wrapped around other sedges just inches above the water. Males occasionally cling to the stalks of bygone cattails above the foot-tall mat of protective sedges to sing a buzzing, insect-like dirge. Frequently, they make a series of "dummy nests" that serve as decoys to keep predators away from the real nest with eggs or chicks. When winter strikes, they also leave the meadows for subtropical, coastal wetlands along the Gulf of Mexico and Southeastern U.S.

A male Sedge Wren (Cistothorus stellaris) defending his territory's boundary. Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, Sawyer Co. WI. 

Without taking the time to stop for a moment, this entire world is invisible to the naked eye. Mighty coniferous forests, glacial lakes, and the bleached trunks of aspen groves are easy to appreciate. But a muddy, mosquito-inundated meadow? I would argue it’s just as wonderful, in its own way.